“There were concerns about their safety,” said
an official in-charge of the project on condition of anonymity. In the
shadow of the world’s tallest statue coming up to symbolize unity—which
the Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate tomorrow—rumour and
fear spread due to an atmosphere of disunity.
Work stalled temporarily and a one-day awareness program was
hurriedly held. “We visited the labour camps and assured them of
safety,” the official quoted above said. Since the prime minister was
slated to visit soon, local police stepped in and offered all possible
support.
Other migrants in other parts of the state weren’t so
lucky. An estimated 80,000 of them fled the state in early October,
following the rape of a 14-month-old girl on 28 September, allegedly by a
migrant worker. Hate messages urging attacks on migrants went viral on
social media.
The BJP and Congress blamed each other for fanning the fire.
Some of the online messages made no mention of the rape, focusing
instead on how migrant workers were taking away job opportunities meant
for locals. Companies of special reserve police mobilized around the
auto and industrial hub in Sanand-Hansalpur area, a cluster seen as a
showcase of the Gujarat development model. About 200km away, in one of
the few patches of land in Gujarat where migrants went about their work
in relative calm, finishing touches were being done on the Sardar’s
face.
For Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who placed a premium on national unity,
and whose call for “common endeavour” prominently adorns the government
website about the project, the atmosphere was less than ideal to soar
into the skies in statue form.
There had already been enough murmurs of unhappiness due to the price
tag on this bronze-sculpted piece of Gujarati pride, an estimated
₹2,900 crore ($430 million)—
a large portion of which came from the government and public sector firms which doled out large sums from their CSR budget. The Statue of Liberty in New York, on the other hand, was funded largely through private contributions.
Now,
with the date of inauguration looming into view in the very month in
which large numbers of fellow Indians fled the state; amidst a farming
season that has seen acute water stress in the Narmada catchment, where
the statue is also located; and with agitators from Sardar Patel’s own
community persisting with a quota protest—the voices of unhappiness
about the cost have found new company. A number of tribal villages in
the immediate vicinity of the Sardar Patel statue have also called for a
bandh on 31 October to protest the lack of adequate rehabilitation
efforts.
“At a time when Gujarat is facing a water crisis due to lower
availability in the Narmada dam, I think the statue project could have
been postponed by a year,” said Ghanshyam Shah, a leading political
expert based in Gujarat and author of Social Movements in India. “The
statue is nothing but somebody’s whim to create the tallest one in the
world so that the name of the person who built it will automatically be
attached to it. If the statue does not please the Patels or the tribals,
whom does it please?” Shah asked.
If the state government
is indeed aware of the many ironies that have come to cast a cloud over
the statue’s inauguration, then there has not been much public
acknowledgment—a fact which is borne out even by the television ad
campaign meant to bring attention to the Statue of Unity project.
In the ad, a youth is shown travelling by train while reading a book titled
Patel.
It has a picture of India’s first home minister on the cover. He turns
to his co-passengers and inquiries about their identities, asking even
for their
When the co-passengers ask him to prove his identity first, the youth
shows them the book he is carrying and explains how people in India
would have needed a passport to travel to different parts of the country
had it not been for the efforts of Sardar Patel in creating an
undivided India that we see today.
The ads were aired as out-of-state workers were boarding similar looking trains heading out of the state.
The impact on business
“The
threat to north Indian migrant workers has affected many projects in
the state. Most of the large construction projects depend heavily on
migrant workers,” said a leading Gujarat- based industrialist who did
not wish to be named.
“Many of
them working in our under-construction projects have fled and are likely
to return only after Diwali. Such incidents may have happened in
Maharashtra or elsewhere, but have never happened in Gujarat. It
reflects the failure of the government to take necessary steps to curb
violence,” the industrialist added.
Even as chief minister
Vijay Rupani appealed for peace,
the government has also moved to enact a new law which will mandate
industrial units to allocate 80% of the jobs to those domiciled in
Gujarat. While Gujarat has an existing industrial policy that reserves
85% of jobs for locals, implementation has been lax. The new law is
expected to include more stringent provisions in case of non-compliance.
A state government official, when asked if the Statue of Unity adheres
to the policy of giving 80% employment to locals, refused to comment on
the matter, saying only that the issue would be examined.
While
there is no official data on migrant workers, estimate pegs their number
at 4-8 million, making them integral to state’s economy, said Indira
Hirway, director and professor of economics at the Centre for
Development Alternatives (CFDA) in Ahmedabad. “The state has the lowest
minimum wages in the country and this helps maximise the profits of
organizations and factories,” she said. “Luxurious projects like the
Statue of Unity should ideally come up in times of prosperity and not
when there is such high level of inequality in society,” she added.
The other prominent group for whom the statue has come to represent a
litany of pre-existing grievances is the string of tribal villages in
the immediate vicinity of the project site. Govindbhai Tadvi, village
head of Wagadia, says that about 1,500 people in his village have lost
their land and are yet to be rehabilitated. Tadvi, who works as a
supervisor at site, says that the locals have not really benefited. The
state government has pinned its hopes on the employment which will be
created if the expected 14,000 tourists visit the area each day.
Statue of Unity should come up in times of prosperity and not when there is such high level of inequality in society- Indira Hirway, director, Centre for Development Alternatives in Ahmedabad
But
the tribals aren’t buying such long-term promises built on hopes and
estimates. About 75,000 people belonging to 70 villages have expressed
their intention to oppose the unveiling of the statue by PM Modi by
observing a fast today.“No food will be cooked in all these 70 villages
and we will put black flags on our houses as a sign of protest,” said
Lakhanbhai Musafir, a resident of Mathawadi village that lies about 5 km
from the Sardar Patel statue. “We are not against the BJP or Sardar
Patel. In fact, we have a lot of respect for Sardar Patel who led a very
simple life and I am not sure if he would himself approve of such a
grand project,” he added.
Musafir added that the people living
near the Sardar Sarovar dam, which is a few kilometres away, are not
getting Narmada waters despite the canal passing nearby as the
government is yet to finish work on its canal network. According to RTI
activist Rohit Prajapati, the government should have spent the money on
the welfare of the tribals and in completing the canal network instead
of building the statue.
We have a
lot of respect for Sardar Patel who led a very simple life and I am not
sure if he would himself approve of such a grand project- Lakhanbhai Musafir, a resident of Mathawadi village, about 5km from the Sardar Patel statue
Statue of ironies
“It
is a statue of ironies and you can take your pick. They do not want
Patel of unity but Patel of uniformity,” said noted sociologist Shiv
Visvanathan. “The bigger the statue, the bigger the lie, and that’s how I
see it. Given the displacement of tribals in the area, it is more of a
displacer than a unifier. Appropriating history in the age of propaganda
is not new, but our memories go far back and cannot be displaced so
quickly,” he added.Sardar Patel was a member of the Congress, but is a new-found hero
for the BJP, which contrasts his iron man qualities with the perceived
weaknesses of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister. Modi has,
on several occasions, said how
Patel had repeatedly been ignored by the Congress and was not allowed to become India’s first prime minister.
But the attempts to own or re-own the legacy of one of India’s
most-noted leaders from the Patel community have to also grapple with
the present-day ongoing agitations for a quota in higher education and
government jobs. The movement’s spearhead Hardik Patel has been at
loggerheads with ruling BJP governments in both the state and the
centre.
With the government in no mood to accede to their
demands, the Patels have also threatened an agitation on 31 October, the
birth anniversary of Sardar Patel. Hardik Patel is expected to address a
rally in Junagadh district, which is likely to feature former finance
minister Yashwant Sinha and BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha.In the face of this unending fight for a piece of Sardar Patel’s
legacy by a variety of groups—ranging from castes and states to
political parties—noted historian and biographer Ramchandra Guha, said:
“All I would like to say is that in the words of Gopalkrishna Gandhi,
the Congress ‘disowned’ Patel, whereupon the BJP ‘misowned’ him.”
Meanwhile,
work at the Statue of Unity itself has progressed almost in a vacuum,
unaffected by the many agitations. After all, it was conceived, in part,
to symbolize the development vision and speed of execution of the
‘Gujarat model’ of development which Modi popularized.
For Mohammad Miyan, a 25-year-old electrician from Bihar who has been
working on the Sardar Patel statue and the associated museum, the
“stories of how people like me were treated” was just stories.
“Our
contractor assured our safety. There are about 25 other workers from my
village alone here,” he said. Miyan’s worksite colleague, Sandeep Kumar
Gord, who is also from Bihar, was taking measurements, checking whether
the statue was balanced. “I have only heard that PM Narendra Modi is
making this statue. I do not know anything beyond that,” he said
