Rahul Maganti

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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For over a year now, Kollati Narayana has been walking six kilometres
every day from Jakkampudi
village to Vijayawada city’s famous Punnami ghat, on the banks of the Krishna river. From
around 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., he works here along with a few others, catching fish
and selling them at the riverbank.

Narayana,
27, who is partially blind, then walks back home for another six kilometres.  “I walk because I can’t spend 40 rupees on an
autorickshaw,” he says. “I hardly earn 50-100 rupees per day.” His daughters,
four and two years old, are also partially blind.

















Narayana has been forced to do the 12-kilometre walk after the house
on Punnami ghat,
where he had lived since he was born, was demolished in mid-2016.  That modest house belonged to his brother, to
whom Narayana gave an occasional token rent. He now pays Rs. 1,000 as rent for a
house in YSR Colony in Jakkampudi. (His brother too moved there after the
demolition, but the smaller space cannot accommodate Narayana’s family.)

In
June and July 2016, around 2,000 houses, most of them occupied by fish workers,
were demolished in Vijayawada. In their place, more than 18 ghats were built for devotees
coming for the Krishna
Pushkaralu – a festival that
occurs once every 12 years. The old Punnami ghat too was expanded from a small platform to
a large space for visitors and devotees – it’s a ‘VIP’ ghat, very close to the Indrakeeladri temple of
Goddess Kanakadurga. 

The
cleared area stretched for 20 kilometres along the river, starting from Ibrahimpatnam town near the
Vijayawada-Hyderabad National Highway to the Prakasam Barrage. Chandrababu Naidu, the chief
minister of Andhra Pradesh, spent at least Rs.
1,000 crores (according to newspaper reports) of public money on the
festival event. 

A year
after the festival, the ghats look deserted. Lanke Maheshwari, 60, Narayana’s neighbour at YSR Colony, who cleans
fish at Punnami ghat,
says “This has been a fishing market [and home to the fishing community]  for 70 years. But on that day the bulldozers
razed down the walls of our houses. The bricks and dirt fell in our food plates.
We also had a temple and a small shed to rest or save ourselves from getting
wet in the rain. They removed everything.”

Most
of the demolished houses did not have pattas (titles), and the state viewed them as
‘encroachments’ that don’t merit compensation. But after a series of protests
by the families and people’s organisations at the site of the demolition, and
when the adjacent national highway was blocked by protesters,
in September 2016 the revenue department and collector asked each family to pay
Rs. 66,000 – this would entitle them to a house in YSR Colony. Those who could
afford the amount, paid. Others, like Narayana, have been forced to pay rents
they can barely afford. 

YSR Colony
was constructed by the state government under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. Many communities displaced by various infrastructure
projects in and around Vijayawada are sent off here. However, the infrastructure
in the colony itself is poor – barely any buses to the city,  poor sanitation, and no government hospitals or
schools nearby.

While Vijayawada is on the left bank of the Krishna river, which runs
along the border between Krishna and Guntur districts of Andhra Pradesh,  on the right bank too communities are being
displaced. Amaravati,
the government’s new showcase riverfront capital, is on the right bank. Around
4,000 families of fish workers across 10 fishing harbours might be moved from
here. The 10 villages where the harbours are located are home to around 50,000
people in total (according to documents of the Capital Region Development
Authority).

















Polakampadu is one of these 10 harbours. In early 2017, the fish workers at this harbour – which now stands at the
entrance of the new ‘world-class’ city – resisted being displaced for the Kondaveeti
Vagu Flood Water Pumping Scheme by sitting on a relay hunger strike for 108 consecutive days. The scheme, to the south of Amaravati, with a total budget of around Rs. 230 crores (according
to the scheme’s documents), is aimed at keeping the capital region flood-free –
this is the region that stretches from the Kondaveeti vagu (canal) to the banks of the
Krishna.

“It is
foolish on the part of the government to first construct the capital in a
flood-prone area and then [come up with] the Kondaveeti scheme to solve the problem of
flooding,” says Ravula Mahalakshmi, 55, who earns a living cleaning fish at
Polakampadu harbour,

 “I earn 50 rupees  on a weekday and 150 rupees on Sundays,” she
says. “But now hardly any fishes are left in the river [due to polluting
industries upstream]…” Mahalakshmi’s two daughters – one is unmarried, the
other is  a divorcee – also lost their
livelihoods after apartment complexes came up in the last two years as part of
the new capital city, replacing the fields where they worked as agricultural
labourers. “We used to share a good fish with our neighbours in the past. We no
longer do that and instead sell all the fish. Even then, we don&#39;t earn enough,” Mahalakshmi
says.

“The
actual reason for the Kondaveeti vagu scheme is that the CM doesn’t want labourers [and fishermen] to live at the entrance of his world class city for people in
suits and boots with fancy cars. He wants to drive us out and this scheme is just an
excuse for that,” says Venkata Narayana, the president of the Polakampadu
Fishermen Cooperative Society (set up in 1954). Around 400 fishing families
from the villages of Tadepalli,
Undavalli and Seethanagaram in Guntur district are members of this
society, one of 10 fishing such societies in the area.

As a part of the Kondaveeti canal scheme, a thriving two-acre harbour and market space with
10 sheds was demolished in January without any known official plans to resettle
or compensate the fish workers. After the displaced families protested, the state
government promised compensation – Rs. 50,000 per boat, and each woman whose
income came from cleaning fish would be given Rs. 25,000. No money has been
given so far.

The government also allotted around an acre as alternative space for
the Polakampadu harbour and market, some 200 metres upstream. But a part of
that has been occupied by a political leader, who has fenced the plot. And,
except for one makeshift shed, there is no infrastructure at the new location to
support the daily lives and livelihoods of the fishing community. 




















Other plans for Amaravati are also in motion – including water parks
and weekend getaways on the riverbank.  Meanwhile,
with fewer fish in the river, the main source of income of the fish workers is already
drying up. “Of
the 400 fishermen in our society, hardly 100 [continue to] fish,” says Venkata.
“The rest mostly work as daily wage labourers at construction sites in
Vijayawada and Guntur.” Probably at the same sites that are crushing their own
lives.

Unquiet on the riverfront

નદીકિનારે વેદનાની લહેરો

آندھرا پردیش: ریاستی منصوبوں سے اجڑتے ماہی گیر

நதிக்கரையின் அமைதியின்மை

অশান্ত নদীতট

नदीकिनारी सारे अशांत

ଅଶାନ୍ତ ନଦୀ ମୁହାଣ

নৈৰ পাৰত অশান্তিৰ বন্যা

Vijayawada

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Unquiet on the riverfront

The fishing communities on the banks of the Krishna in Andhra Pradesh are being forced to leave their homes and livelihoods due to the state’s many riverside projects around Vijayawada and the 'new' Amaravati

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