Geetanjali Krishna: Living next-door to an abattoir

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

When Nizam bought his dream house a few years back "" a two-room DDA flat in east Delhi, he was happy that he had decent neighbours.

But thanks to the Delhi government and Supreme Court, he now faces the prospect of living next to goats, sheep, buffaloes, pigs, chickens, fish and maybe even the stray turkey or two.

For just next to his colony, barely 250 meters from his house, Delhi's state of the art abattoir (or butcher khana, as he calls it) is coming up, and the government also proposes to shift the large animal mandi (market), from Old Delhi, there. He and fellow-residents are, not surprisingly, rather miffed.

"I spent my life's earnings on this flat," said the 50-year-old, who's been a driver in a private company for the past 25 years, "but didn't, in my wildest dreams, imagine that I'd share my address with a butcher khana!"

Whoever heard of an abattoir cheek-by-jowl with a 900-home colony? Irate residents fear increased pollution and traffic, a bad name and falling property rates when it becomes functional in February next year.

Sant Ram, who runs one of the 926 dairies in the area, said, "all that blood and gore is bound to attract carrion birds and animals from all over. Also, our cows will probably stop giving milk when they sense so many animals being butchered nearby!"

He also pointed out the ecological fallout of shifting the abattoir to a residential area: "I found out that it takes 45 litres of water to clean one butchered animal. We hardly get any drinking water here. What will happen when the abattoir begins functioning?" he demanded to know.

The colony residents, mostly Hindus, are also worried about the condition of their ground water when all the blood from the abattoir leaches into the soil.

The colony's RWA had formally lodged their protest against the building of the abattoir, and had even obtained a short-lived stay order.

"When we went to the site where the abattoir was coming up to protest, the police took us "" men, women, children and all "" to the station and released us only in the evening," said J J Chopra, who has been living here for 15 years.

He said that with the animal market next door, the volume of traffic would rise "" but the roads there are ill-equipped to handle that.

"Counselors, government officials and even the MLAs have been unable to help us," he lamented. But Chopra and friends haven't a leg to stand on, as the abattoir is technically outside the limits of their colony, even if it's within striking distance of it.

Now that even the Supreme Court has ruled that the abattoir must be built in Gazipur, Chopra, Sant Ram and Nizam are resigned to their fate. The MCD has assured residents that the abattoir will use hygienic, modern machines, that won't pollute the area.

But sceptical residents wonder how a place where hundreds of animals are butchered everyday, can ever be clean. Many have already begun to sell their homes and move out in the belief that the abattoir will probably cause the property rates there to fall further.

But as far as Nizam is concerned, the tragedy is that even after he sells his flat in Gazipur, he won't be able to afford a similar apartment elsewhere.

"Everywhere else, whether one looks at Noida, west Delhi or north Delhi, property prices are much higher than they are in Gazipur!" said he, "it's enough to put one off meat forever!"