Vilappil won this time too. The villagers ‘smoked out’ an entire government machinery and a meek police force to topple a High Court order.
After a showdown that lasted just two hours, the district administration, admitting failure, left the scene, as a jubilant village challenged the judiciary and the state in a manner never seen before. The machinery for the construction of a leachate treatment plant did not reach Vilappilsala waste treatment plant and, by the look of it, never will.
The scene had been set from Thursday evening itself. The people of Vilappil were out on the streets, offering ‘pongala’ before the Sastha temple at Nedumkuzhi, preparing themselves against the arrival of the trucks, and assembling in small and big groups, throwing the very idea of prohibitory orders into thin air.
On Friday morning, as news reached Nedumkuzhy that the two trucks with the machinery had left the City Corporation office, people began creating bonfires at many junctions. They threw chairs, branches of trees and everything they could lay their hands on into the fire, creating an orange blaze that kept the police and the district administration at a safe distance.
While the state was preparing to implement a Court order, which had asked the Corporation trucks to be given protection to transport machinery on or before August 3, the presence of MLA and Deputy Speaker N Sakthan at the agitation venue itself was telling. He said that there was no garbage to be treated at the plant, the people had begun using the water from the river and things had become normal. ‘’Then, why is a leachate plant needed?’’ he asked.
The people then formed a human chain in front of the Samyukta Samara Samithi ‘pandal’, displaying a resistance none could pierce. From lining up newborns to the aged, they displayed a fierce determination that was scary. It was a repeat of the February 13 incident when, for the first time, the Corporation had tried to take garbage trucks to the plant and had failed miserably.
The people threw the hot ‘pongala payasam’ over the police and two policewomen were injured. When the police tried to arrest the Samithi members, they resisted and tension developed. After two hours, ADM P K Girija, who was heading the operations, called it quits. ‘’We do not want to do anything against the people,’’ she said.
The people then turned many police jeeps topsy-turvy, threw stones at the police force and created a confrontation that sent the outsiders back home.
A celebration followed, bringing curtains down on a drama that has taken mass uprising to a new level, dismissing the judiciary and the state into mere establishments.
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