For four years, 60-year-old Palanisamy from Koundapalayam in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore district has been going from pillar to post to get the two cents of land the government promised him in 2013.
Bound to a wheelchair since he lost movement in his legs in 2011, Palanisamy says that he has been denied the basic facilities for living a dignified life despite approaching the Coimbatore Collector multiple times.
Palanisamy earns a meagre living running a roadside store selling handkerchiefs and lunchboxes. He was one of 750 people in Coimbatore who received a patta for two cents of land in 2013, under a project to provide land for members of marginal communities who do not own houses or have been living on poramboke (commons) land for 30 years.
However, he is still to receive the land, though he says he has submitted five petitions to the Collector.
“I do not know if others have received that land or not. They all live far from my place and I cannot go and check if they got it,” he says.
Palanisamy’s life changed forever when he suddenly suffered problems of blood circulation in his legs in 2011. “I was working as a watchman, and one day I fell down and could not move both my legs. From then on, I have not been able to work,” he says.
With his meagre earnings and with not even a house to their name, says Palanisamy, life is a difficult challenge for his family. “I earn about Rs 100 per day by selling lunchboxes and handkerchiefs. I work from eight in the morning till 1pm. We live in a rented house. We have been trying to get my 29-year-old son married, but people always ask us if we have our own house,” he says.
It’s not only the land grant to Palanisamy that has been interminably delayed. He alleges that he’s been facing a similar runaround of many months for getting a modified battery-powered two-wheeler from the government.
"It has been 3 months, they keep delaying it. I do not know who will provide the battery vehicle. We had gone to the doctor 10 days ago (to obtain a disability certificate for getting the vehicle). He asked many questions, and after that he said that he will contact us. We had received letters from the Collector so we took it and went to the doctor, but he said, ‘You have got letters from the Collector why have you come to me? you should collect the vehicle from the Collector itself.”
All Palanisamy wants now is a house of his own. “It has been four years that they have not provided the land. Now, they should build a house and give it to us under the Green House scheme,” he says. The Green House scheme of the Tamil Nadu government involves building solar-powered houses for the benefit of the poor in rural areas.
Coimbatore Collector Hariharan told TNM that he was unaware of why there was a long delay in providing Palanisamy land sanctioned for him. "We do not know why the delay in providing the land happened. We will look into that matter. He has asked us for a house under the Green House scheme instead of the patta that was provided to him in 2013. We will speak to TEDA (Tamil Nadu Energy Development Agency) and try to get him a house under this scheme," he said.
This is not the first instance of a complaint arising of long delays in land grants by the Coimbatore administration. Last month, around 50 people living near Mettupalayam had also complained to the Collector that they had not received the two cents of land promised to them.