July 26, 2024

8 min read

For the love of God

Many small traders who migrated to Ayodhya decades ago are returning to their villages having lost their shops to the town’s recent redevelopment

Jigyasa Mishra

AYODHYA, Uttar Pradesh: Rakesh Kumar Pandey was barely six years old when his father migrated to Ayodhya from their village about 35 kms away in the early 1990s and rented a small shop to sell incense sticks, vermillion, garlands and red and gold scarves on the road leading to the temple of Lord Ram.

Pandey, now aged 40, recalls visiting the temple every Sunday with his father, who bought him sweets on their way back home.

But these fond memories of his childhood and growing up in Ayodhya were replaced by uncertainty when plans to redevelop the town started taking shape two years ago.

It was the beginning of the end for Pandey’s life in the temple town.

“Things were all fine until about two years ago,” Pandey said, speaking to The Migration Story on a video call from his village that he and his family returned to in February this year after their shop was demolished to make way for wider roads and swankier stores.

“We didn’t just lose our shop but our father too, who died right after our shop was demolished. This wave of so-called development turned out to be destruction for us.”

Like Pandey, several small traders who had migrated to Ayodhya decades ago, drawn to it for the love of God and business potential it offered, are returning to their villages, having lost their shops to the town’s recent redevelopment, according to a local traders’ union that has over 1000 members.

“Around 4000 shopkeepers have been affected due to their shops getting demolished either partly or completely while 1500 have been displaced to other locations where they could afford a smaller shop,” said Nand Kumar Gupta, president of Ayodhya’s Udyog Vyapar, a local union of traders.

The union estimates that a quarter of the nearly 1000 small shop owners who lost their shops to the road widening project have since migrated to their villages in the past 10 months.

Ayodhya’s district collector Nitish Kumar declined to speak to The Migration Story.

Some of those who lost a minor part of their shops have since reconstructed them, but owners of several small shops like Pandey’s decided to move on.

“Ayodhya always attracted pilgrims and my father saw business potential here,” Pandey said, whose shop was located in Nayaghat area on Ram Path, the main road leading to the temple.

“We are small businessmen, and this is all we had.”

File footage of the demolished structures on the road leading to Lord Ram’s temple in Ayodhya.
Footage courtesy: Shweta Desai

IN GOOD FAITH

Prime Minister Narendra Modi consecrated the grand temple dedicated to Lord Ram on January 22, in Ayodhya, located in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.

It is also amongst the most impoverished with few employment opportunities owing to lack of major industries and nearly a third of all households landless – factors that have for years fuelled migration of locals to other Indian states for work.

For migrant families like the Pandey’s, however, Ayodhya was a cozy town. It was not too far from their village and offered a business opportunity, that helped them settle down here.

Pandey’s father turned one of the three rooms of their home into a shop, the family living in the other two.

In 2022, the authorities came knocking on Pandey’s door, informing him that the private land on which their home and shop was built had been acquired by the government and they should vacate the space.

The Pandeys kept the faith and hoped that appeals from small traders like themselves would be heeded to by the government. But last year, two of their rooms were demolished during the road expansion project.

Pandey received Rs 101,600 as compensation which, he says, was “not even half of its worth”.

Left with one room, Pandey initially didn’t give up and spread out the pooja items on a bed in his house itself but received no customers. Business soon started dipping, and he found himself borrowing money from relatives, eventually falling into a debt trap, in what was a major setback for his father.

“I took my mother, wife, three children and returned to my ancestral village to begin farming,” Pandey said, adding he now works on his less than an acre of land.

“We do not wish to return to Ayodhya,” Pandey said.

RELOCATED, UPROOTED

Ayodhya, revered by Hindus as the birthplace of Lord Ram, has in the past few years seen a blitzkrieg of development activity: roads have been widened, a new international airport has been constructed and facilities such as 24×7 stores and cafes added to Ayodhya train station.

The once narrow and congested road that wound its way from the post office junction to the Ram temple, is now wider and dotted with new restaurants and shops that survived the demolition drive and continue to sell prasad and pooja items to the thousands who visit the town every day.

Ayodhya is recording nearly 100,000 tourist footfalls every day, according to residents and officials.

The Ayodhya Development Authority (ADA), a state body that oversees Ayodhya’s planning and development, constructed 350 new shops, each unit selling for anywhere between Rs 8 and 16 lakh, based on their size, said Satyendra Singh, secretary, ADA.

The ADA also gave easy finance options to those interested, Singh added.

Local shopkeepers estimate that 450 shops were built in different locations of Ayodhya as a relocation option for businesses on the main street. These areas included Teribazar Chauraha, Koshlesh Kunj railway station road and Amaniganj in Faizabad.

But many traders were not keen on moving to these locations as they were both unaffordable and far from the main temple.

However, others have found new opportunities and better profits.

“I have grown up in Ayodhya and the city it has become now, is drastically different, especially in terms of employment generation,” said Kapil Dev Mishra, a professor of History at the Mahatma Gandhi Chitrakoot Gramoday Vishwavidyalaya, in Madhya Pradesh.

“I have met and spoken to small vendors who are earning like never before.”

Arjun Singh (47), a sweet shop owner who sells laddoos for prasad at his shop on Ram Path is one such beneficiary.

“My shop was not affected by the demolition since it was behind a few shops. In fact, my sales have improved due to the number of people frequently visiting our city now. I have also raised the prices of laddoos from Rs 250 per kg to 400,” he said.

‘RETURNING TO MY VILLAGE’

Soon after the consecration of Lord Ram’s temple in Ayodhya, daily wage worker Ashish Kumar decided to migrate to the pilgrim town from his hometown Barabanki, 108 kms away.

He believed that the temple’s popularity would draw people and create new work opportunities.

Seven months later, he is planning to return to his village, his small business of selling tee shirts with Jai Shree Ram emblazoned on them, not fetching him the returns he had imagined.

“I came to Ayodhya because several people in my group were planning to migrate as well. It appeared like a far better opportunity than doing daily wage work in Barabanki,” said Kumar.

“Besides, who wouldn’t want to live and work in the city of Lord Ram,” he said, folding the tees to pack his shop up for the day, with his wife.

Many like Ashish Kumar, moved to Ayodhya after the temple’s consecration ceremony from nearby districts to try their hand at small businesses, or to sell bangles, plastic toys and religious texts and pictures of Lord Ram and that of the newly-consecrated temple on the streets of Ayodhya.

But their plan hit an administrative roadblock.

“We can’t set up carts on the main road,” Ashish Kumar said, explaining how business can’t take off if he is so far from the temple.

“We enter the lanes but the traffic police or the constables threaten to demolish our makeshift shop if we don’t move away,” he said.

A traffic constable on duty said that hawkers add to traffic snarls and hinder public convenience.

Kumar said his earnings were about Rs 10,000 a month, but he was spending much more than he had factored in. The biggest expense being the one-room house he has rented for Rs 3,800 where he lives with his wife and two children.

“I am planning to go back to the village and do what I used to do,” Kumar said. “Work as a daily wage labourer.”

Jigyasa Mishra is a freelance journalist who reports on gender, health and environment