Watching slums getting demolished during the Covid period and in extreme heat conditions and seeing the State use bulldozers as a weapon to punish those who criticise governments and their leaders, one would not imagine that the poor are completely protected by constitutional law and the various judgments of the Supreme Court. These lay down that all persons including the poor are protected by Article 21 of the Constitution—right to life—and that there can be no ‘life’ without the right to housing. Politicians, particularly from the central government, often say that since slum dwellers have no title to the land on which they are staying, they are ‘rank encroachers’, and their dwellings can be demolished any time without prior notice. But when even judges call slum dwellers ‘encroachers’ despite the judgments of the Supreme Court, it is particularly painful, and shows how low we have fallen in our understanding of human rights and role of the courts in protecting the poor.