Hammer to earthmover: reclamation as revolution

It was May 22, not Dec 31. It was a Tuesday, not Saturday. Still people were out in packs on Kochi’s Mahatma Gandhi Road. The usual promenaders – girls windowshopping and boys ogling at them – were outnumbered by the new spectators. They braved the summer sun to inspect the day’s work and took photos and videos of it on their mobile phones. Newsmen on camera and laymen on mobiles aired updates of the urban spectacle.

The spectacle was piles of rubble and disfigured buildings. Earthmovers had gone to rest until the next morning. And traders were busy removing signboards and pavements, which they suddenly realized, were jutting out to the public road. Gas cutters and pickaxes were doing overtime, for tomorrow earthmovers would be merciless.

The demolition drive along the primary arterial road in Kerala’s commercial capital was a cause for celebration. People thronged the roadside as if they were on a festival ground, gazing at reclaimed footpaths and a few side roads fenced in by big-time hoteliers and merchants. Nostalgic old-timers were looking for the lost paths of their city.

Elsewhere in the state, earthmovers were razing illegal constructions that had been choking lakes and rivers. Acres of government land recovered and forest saved. Everywhere, people cheered the demolition men. And the man who started it all, chief minister VS Achuthanandan, was an overnight hero despite his own comrades’ reservations.

CPI MP Panniyan Raveendran was heard saying that VS was playing Suresh Gopi, the actor who single-handedly burned down or bombed traitor-politicians, rogue cops and terrorists who manipulated them all. Though Panniyan has an axe to grind (his party office in Munnar was among the first constructions to be brought down), he was giving a realistic comment.

But was it the action that made the drive a thriller?

There was an evident spark of optimism after all these cynical days. Law was not an ass always. Despite all the bribes and red tapes, the great Indian bureaucracy was still an instrument of law. When political will and popular wish met, it has proven to be a red-letter day. It is the same spark that helps Suresh Gopis and other angry young men on screen collect at the box office.

Digest this: A resort in Wayanad, owned by the son of former director general of police KJ Joseph, deviated a river to form it into a swimming pool on its premises. A multi-storeyed resort in Munnar, owned by the wife of electricity board chief engineer BS Balakrishnan, was built on land exclusively leased to cultivate cardamom.

So when resorts across the state that have been choking the lifelines of the populace fall, what else could the people do other than cheer the earthmovers? Vembanad Lake, Kollam Lake, Periyar River, Kallayi River, Lakkidi River and so many streams have been reclaimed by encroachers including business leaders and media barons.

Back in Kochi, a city badly in need of public spaces despite its long shoreline, citizens were strolling down a road fenced in by a hotel to pave the way to its star sister and a canal filled up by a theatre to make a parking lot. Private was suddenly public. Observers have been striking parallels between the first communist government of Kerala and the present. VS government's actions may not match the land reforms of 1957, but there was something revolutionary in the air as people reclaimed public spaces as policemen watched.