Saturday, January 26, 2008

Bangalore squatters protest

I missed this in late December: Squatters in Bangalore, who had occupied their community for two decades, protested after the municipality evicted them with no warning. They claim that the city sold off replacement housing rather than allocated it to them. The Hindu has details.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is really sad that squatters were evicted without any notice. Government may say they are stayed there for illegally, but they're not staying there for the intention to acquire that land, they staying because they don't have own land. Government should give some alternate to them, after all they too Citizens of India.
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Clay said...

We really need to figure out how to shame these governments into respecting their citizens. After the eviction is too late.

On that note, I've been working on a web mapping system that would allow community leaders and NGOs to publicize ongoing land disputes and share information about their areas. Ideally, I'd like it to be a living record of the world's squatter cities, but that won't happen without user generated content.

A map can be a powerful political tool however.

deathknight_101 said...

Personally, I know absolutely nothing about what squatting is truly about. On a different note, however, I am interested in learning more about this topic. The illiteracy of "Smith" does little to validate the knowledge of this topic. On another note clay, you seem to be very well versed in these issues, but you failed to leave a web page or other way of accessing your map.

If you have that information, please send the site of the map to deathknight_101@hotmail.com