Bulldozers miss red light target in Goa, hit labourers

Mahabalesh war Raiker (55) shows his business card: “Goldsmith, Ward 7, House 47, Baina, Vasco Da Gama”, it reads. Then he gesture...

Mahabalesh war Raiker (55) shows his business card: “Goldsmith, Ward 7, House 47, Baina, Vasco Da Gama”, it reads. Then he gestures at his premises — a pile of rubble. ‘‘I ran this business here for 30 years,’’ he says.

Until June 14, when the Goa government rolled bulldozers into this hutment area on Baina Beach as monsoon rains fell. Three days later, Baina looks like a 15,000-sqm earthquake zone, with piles of shattered concrete and twisted metal. ‘‘This should have been done years ago,’’ says A. Fernandes (35), a resident of MPT Building, which overlooks the hutments of Baina Beach. ‘‘AIDS used to spread from here. Murders happened here. Everyone knew Baina as the place for prostitution.’’

Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar echoed him on Wednesday, saying: ‘‘Baina made me feel sick the first time I visited it.’’

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But among nearly 1,300 people displaced by the demolitions ordered by the Bombay High Court, only around 300 are sex workers. The other are labourers and domestic helps living here since the 60s. Four buses sent in by the Goa State Commission for Women to ferry the sex workers to accommodation in a former children’s home north of Panjim returned without a passenger. ‘‘Most have returned to their native states,’’ Parrikar said on Wednesday, a claim met with scepticism by Forum for Justice, a group of NGOs working in Baina.

Arz, one such NGO that has been working here for the past six years, says the demolitions have only worsened Goa’s problems. ‘‘It’s not true that they have returned to their native states,’’ says Arun Pandey of Arz. ‘‘With women spread out instead of one place, they don’t have access to condoms and they don’t have the protection from abusive clients that they had from being close to other sex workers,’’ he says.

Fatima Todkar (24) from Guntur in Andhra Pradesh came to Baina six years ago to pay off a loan she’d taken to cover the costs of her newborn daughter. She turned down the state’s offer of rehabilitation. ‘‘They wanted to put us in jail,’’ says Todkar. ‘‘They’ve said I can’t continue my business,’’ she says. ‘‘But how can I survive otherwise? I have no money to start up elsewhere and I can’t go back to my village.’’

The others turned out of Baina have nowhere to go either. Around 450 have landed up at Bhute Bhat, a sports hall turned into an emergency shelter. Christopher Braganza, who ran the D’Souza Bar in Baina since 1967, has lost his business though he paid for renewing his licence on May 17. ‘‘Why did they give me a licence if they were just going to knock down my bar a month later?’’ he says.

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‘‘It was impossible to distinguish between them,’’ says Parrikar. ‘‘Rehabilitation and compensation will be offered to those who come forward.’’

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