THE STATES

Shifting to misery

ANGELA SAINI

As Delhi's slum-dwellers prepare to vote, they face the threat of eviction any day after polling.

RESIDENTS of the slum clusters in Delhi fear the Assembly elections more than others do. The elections mark the cut-off point, after which they will not be protected by the June 26 ruling of the Electoral Commission preventing evictions from encroached land in Delhi. "There will be a drastic change when the elections are over," warns Reeva Sood, an activist of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working in a resettlement colony.

ANU PUSHKARNA

At a resettlement colony in Shiv Vihar. The residents' plight has only worsened after they moved to the place.

The prospect of a cleaner, greener Delhi and secure shelter for the city's urban poor will no doubt be welcomed by many. Unfortunately the reality is very different. Relocation sites often provide less access to basic amenities than the original slum clusters. Furthermore, the 2002 report of the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) states: "In about 75 per cent of the cases the plots allotted to slum-dwellers were sold or changed hands ultimately leading to a continual cycle of encroachment and expenditure on resettlement."

Research by the Habitat International Coalition showed that there were 2,16,000 households living in 46 resettlement colonies in and around Delhi in 2001. Over the past few years, many of these have come to Shiv Vihar. A colony of about 5,000 plots on the outskirts of west Delhi, this place used to be a forest. Shingari, a mother of five who came from Janakpuri and has lived in Shiv Vihar for three years, describes her early experiences of the new home. "It was just mud when we first got here. It was dark," she says, "We didn't sleep at night because we were scared. This place was just a jungle."

An evicted slum-dweller pays Rs.7000 for temporary lease of a plot of land, and the government subsidises with up to an extra Rs.50 000 a person. But it is difficult to believe such amounts of money have been spent in Shiv Vihar. The living conditions endured by slum-dwellers in Delhi are admittedly poor, but Shiv Vihar provides little improvement. Although some residents have built pucca houses, the funds for such enterprises are only available to those willing to take a loan. With the most basic brick dwelling costing Rs.1 lakh, residents immediately become burdened with large debts. There is no electricity, so the nights are as dark as when Shingari first arrived. The only available water is dirty and infected with insects, she explains, fearing for the health of her children. Construction of a school building began only four months ago. For two years, the few children who attended school sat in tents. Prior to that they had no school at all.

With so many plots to fill, the authorities have brought slum-dwellers to Shiv Vihar from different parts of Delhi. Having lived in close-knit communities for years, being suddenly uprooted and placed among strangers has been a testing experience for many of them and tensions sometimes arise. The cohesive atmosphere that exists in many of the city's slum clusters is noticeably absent here.

In Janakpuri, Shingari used to work as an agent for a dispensary. Prem, a relatively recent arrival from Shalimar Bagh, says she was a domestic worker. In Shiv Vihar, neither has employment. While they talk, a drunken man winds his way unsteadily through the street, begging for a cigarette. The condition of many men who sit outside their new homes, playing cards all day because they have no means of earning an income, is not very different from his. Away from the heart of Delhi, most of the slum-dwellers are unable to reach their former places of employment. Some work as labourers or masons where new pucca houses are being built in the colony, but unemployment remains disproportionately high compared to slum clusters in Delhi.

ANU PUSHKARNA

In Shiv Vihar, beyond the shacks that have served for several years as a school for the slum-dwellers' children, construction of a school building progresses at snail's pace.

Slum resettlement in Delhi is the responsibility of the Slum and Jhuggi Jhopri Department of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). It has undertaken a three-pronged strategy, comprising relocation of slum clusters, in situ upgradation of slum clusters and informal shelters, and the extension of minimum basic civic amenities for community use. The strategy was adopted with effect from 1990, which means that encroachers on public land prior to 1990 are not entitled to resettlement at all. According to the 2002 report of the GNCTD, the three-pronged strategy has so far been a failure. "The number of JJ clusters had increased from 929 in 1990 to 1,100 in 2001," states the report.

In a recent study of global slums, the United Nations has stated that the "accepted best practice for housing interventions in developing countries is now participatory slum improvement". Nevertheless, the MCD is pressing ahead with its relocation programme, often without consulting the slum-dwellers. Since 2000, 11 new resettlement colonies have been created, many of them with thousands of plots waiting to be filled.

The removal of jhuggi jhopri clusters is all the more unjustified because the authorities were involved in their existence, says Reeva Sood. When migrants arrived to work in Delhi during the 1970s and 1980s they were forced to live on public land. "The mafia within the system promoted slum dwellings," says Reeva Sood.

The "mafia" about which she speaks is said to include elements in the police, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and agencies that have taken money from the slum-dwellers or simply overlooked the presence of slums, despite the fact that it is a case of illegal occupation of land.

Whatever be the motives behind the MCD strategy, the forced evictions of slum-dwellers is an apparent violation of human rights. Article 21 of the Constitution emphasises the "right to life", which incorporates the rights to shelter and livelihood. Miloon Kothari of the Habitat International Coalition says: "Because the practice of forced eviction results in the loss of livelihood, it is a prima facie a transgression of Article 21." Forced eviction and inadequate resettlement also violate a number of international instruments. These include Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 14(2)(h) of the Convention on Elimination of Discrimination against Women, and Article 27(3) of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. India is also a signatory to the 1996 Istanbul Declaration, which states that "adequate shelter and services are a basic human right" and that it is the state's duty to ensure that they are attained. Besides the right to shelter and services, many in Shiv Vihar would also claim that they have been deprived of their rights to education and livelihood.

The state's human rights contraventions have not passed unnoticed by the slum dwellers and NGOs. There have been people's rights organisations representing the urban poor in Delhi since 1982, when the Delhi Jhuggi Jhopri Sangharsh Samiti (struggle forum) was created. Today, the Delhi Janwadi Adikar Manch (DJM) works for the rights of industrial workers, Sajha Manch has formed a coalition of slum-dweller groups, and the Jan Chetna Manch fights for the rights of slum dwellers. Arun Bhandari of ANKUR, an NGO that helps create rights awareness among the poor, explains that regular protests and demonstrations are the only way to make the government conscious of the people's plight. A case against forced evictions was brought before the Delhi High Court in November 2002 (Okhla Factory Owners' Association vs GNCTD), but Bhandari complains that, "the order given by the High Court was completely anti-people". A White Paper on slums, promised by the MCD on May 27, 2003, has still not materialised.

Though consistently deprived of their fundamental rights, slum-dwellers are among the best voters. Keen to assert their democratic rights and obtain the much-sought after identity status provided by a voting card, the voter enrolment in jhuggis exceeds 90 per cent. In most constituencies, however, politicians neglect their interests unless they form the majority. Resident welfare associations (RWAs) often push for their removal. Reeva Sood cites a case where a politician told her that he was morally on the side of the slum-dwellers, but evicted them because of pressures from other sections. Because history has shown that the slum-dwellers tend to vote Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party has been accused of relocating slum-dwellers from certain areas where they could have an effect on the polls. But with wealthier citizens defining the agenda for slum relocation irrespective of party politics, Delhi's slum-dwellers feel increasingly disenfranchised by the state. What use voting rights, if they are not even recognised as equal citizens?

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