Urban India can't wish away homelessness by hailing the demolition drives of its 'heroes' like Jagmohan
The migrants and squatters, like "plague or some other rare kind of fever" will cripple and kill Shahjahanabad (Delhi's Walled City) too. Its traditions, its culture, its charm and its new pattern of living, which we have envisaged, will all be swept away by the flood of migrants and squatters.
- Jagmohan in Rebuilding Shahjahanabad
Gouge out the human sores that afflict our cities then. Hurl out the "migrants and squatters", those filthy men, women and children who ail our megalopolises.
They flood our metros, storm our cities by the hundreds every day, to stay on and dig up hovels which deface our urban habitats. Wreck their shanty dwellings. Raze the dirty dump clusters they call homes. Clear the pavements of them.... And then, wallow in some middle-class machismo at having rid your city of its invaders, encroachers and unauthorised occupants. Applaud the even-handed minister who did justice a good turn by ordering the demolitions of slums and farmhouses alike. Cheer the bold bureaucrat who bulldozed the sidewalks clean of hawkers and other illegal occupants.
That's precisely what urban middle-class India has been doing over the past two months - lauding its self- righteous demolition men; Union minister for development Jagmohan and Mumbai's deputy municipal commissioner (now officer on special duty) G.R. Khairnar. For, between them, the two men have tirelessly annihilated many unauthorised "migrant" homes and illegal "squatter" shops. Jagmohan has already razed over 4,000 slum dwellings in the Capital, and reportedly plans to clear her of another 1,000 slum clusters. And having run aground more than 4,500 illegal structures as a part of his campaign against illegal hawkers and shopkeepers among other unauthorised dwellers, Khairnar has announced that he intends to make the most of his extended tenure of six months which will end in December this year.
The cities will smell cleaner then. The walkways will be neater. The urban town planner's aesthetics will thrive once again. At least, till the time that the banished lot inch their way back, onto the streets that have been the only home they've known. Because they have nowhere else to go. In this, their country, whose cities have over six crore people barely surviving in slushy, soiled, stinking enclaves called slums. Where even the most casual headcount tells a disgraceful story of more than two million people - half of them in urban India - who are roofless. Many of whom touch our lives daily, many even work hard for us through the day, returning to a fitful sleep under the open skies at night, in scorching summers and in freezing winters.
Bimla's family of five is a recent addition to this growing tribe of the homeless. Last December their hutment was reduced to rubble as bulldozers carried on a demolition drive in the capital's Nabi Karim slum settlement. Seven months later, Bimla and her four children continue to live amid the debris of the ruined slum, as do hundreds of other erstwhile slum residents. Shorn of all cover and dignity, they cook, eat, sleep, defecate all in the open. "For whatever it was worth, my meagre hutment protected my 15-year-old daughter. Now I agonise for her security," says the harried mother, "I have to be out carting my tea-stall through the day, I go mad with worry and anxiety that no one rapes and kills her by the time I am back." Being homeless, the single mother mumbles below her breath, is like being naked.
Ashame Dilip Sarkar will never experience. Born and brought up on the west pavement bordering Calcutta's Central Avenue, the 12-year-old has never known home. Currently sharing a makeshift arrangement - a cloth secured to the iron railing of a park at one end and to bricks on the other - with five others of his family, the child is only too glad to get a night's sleep. He must be sufficiently rested to drive his cycle van in the morning. Because residents of this roofless world on the many pavements of this country must all work very hard to make ends meet. Like Dilip's neighbour Gita Sardar. A domestic help for four households, her income is supplemented by her husband who is a rickshaw-puller. But even then the Sardar couple and their three children battle a financial crunch, finding it difficult to make both ends meet. Aware that on the streets one must earn continuously to survive each day, Gita worries that times can only change for the worse: "We shudder to even think how and what we'll eat, where we'll stay when we grow old?"
Sexagenarians Babu Govind and Shubada have an unpleasant answer to Gita's question. Having lived on the pavement near Mumbai's Haji Ali for almost 40 years, they know that only the fittest dare make any claim to the dignity of labour on the harsh streets of India's metros. A timber worker in his younger days, the lower portion of Govind's body was rendered lifeless after a brief illness. Old now, he begs for survival, Shubhada accompanies him sometimes. For the rest she guards the three utensils that are the couple's sole worldly possession. Times are tough, and even more so when the cops come yelling to throw them out. Says Subhada: "Once the rains are over, the police will visit us at least once a month, screaming at us to move. Then we would shift out to another lane and then come back in two or three days."
It's unbelievable how so many exploiters stalk those who have nothing. The police, politicians, local dadas, land-sharks, builder lobbies, drug-pushers all join in to extract their pound of flesh off India's most disempowered lot. Not that we - with our healthy cynicism of the system - don't already know this.
But unlike us, 14-year-old Pankaj had to learn about the abusers the hard way. They played havoc with his life when he took to the streets after running away from his Hapur home five years ago. The nine-year-old spent a year in a Hardwar jail, received a crack in his skull from a local ruffian and was kicked around from sidewalk to sidewalk till he learnt to gratify the powers that rule lives on the pavements. Now scavenging for survival at the New Delhi railway station over the past three years, he pays Rs 20 to the cops who patrol the station every day. And one-third of the rest of his income to a group of older boys who allowed him to sleep in a grubby area of the station. Most of the remaining money Pankaj uses to waste himself away chasing smack: "But these days I also save some for Anil, my six-year-old friend. He came in to stay here a year ago when his jhuggi, along with his entire family, was burnt down. He's too young to earn enough to survive on these mean streets."
Living 18 years on the pavement near Delhi's Jama Masjid, Sammo, in her forties, hasn't still learnt to earn enough for sustenance. Doesn't help that the parrots she sells are a banned commodity now. Doesn't help that the son who'd help her sell them has now grown up to be a mechanic's helper and won't spare so much as a paisa to help Sammo. Doesn't help that the liquor that she is addicted to is becoming increasingly spurious and expensive. She complains: "Even the man who rents out khatias (cots) to pavement dwellers here has hiked his price to Rs 10 a night. I could buy a cot with the kind of money I am paying him every month. But then, he knows, I don't have a safe place to keep it when I work during the day."
THIS sense of insecurity in lives shorn of permanence is what the politicians peddle on. Loyalty and votes are bought off the vulnerable in return for promises of protection. Sprawling along the dirty beach, Mumbai's Mora Gaon slum in Juhu is essentially a Shiv Sena stronghold. Wary of the builder lobby coveting their land with increasing zeal and intensity over time, the fisher-folk who live here have little choice but to derive succour from the assurances that the Sena doles out about guarding the slum's interests. In turn, Mora Gaon residents constitute the crowds in Sena rallies, organise its functions and campaign aggressively for the party during elections. Much like those who live in the Capital's Yamuna Pushta slums - significantly dubbed Sanjay Amar Colony and Indira Colony by its residents - do for the Congress. Says resident and shopkeeper Syed Ahmed with aplomb: "From sloganeering to rioting we do anything for the party. And it protects our rights. We aren't bothered about the demolition drives that are on, thanks to our political connections nobody dare touch us."
Lakshmi has no one to turn to for help as she seems confronted by imminent eviction from her thatched hutment on the Musi riverbed near Hyderabad's Chanderghat. With an eight-month-old infant to take care of, the idea that she is losing her home to the Nandavanam project's beautification plans seems like a cruel joke to her. "Who's interested in the pucca houses that the government says it'll provide us with 15 km away in Amberpet! I work as a maid, my husband is a rickshaw-puller. How are we supposed to earn staying in a house on the highway so far from the city?"
Says Hyderabad-based Brother Verghese Thecknath of chatri (Campaign for Housing and Tenurial Rights): "Most slum-dwellers prefer their hell-hole to the promised moon. Add to that the fact that administrators seem to feel only the rich have the right to need homes close to their workplaces. No wonder there's such a lack of interest in shifting to ill-planned rehabilitation colonies." Chances then are that Lakshmi would probably sell her pucca house and return to live in a slum in the city if she is bulldozed into a "resettlement" so oblivious to her needs. Like those of the Capital who were compensated with houses in the Capital's Madangir Colony because they were thrown out of the Delhi's Walled City in the mid 1970s. They sold off the allocated houses, preferring to stay in slums closer to their place of work. Worse, those who did move into the resettlement colony sold their makeshift homes in the Walled City to new squatters before moving out.
And 25 years later, the Walled City still teems with roofless men, women and children who fill up all the nooks and crannies of the filthy area. Heaped up on the sidewalks, near the garbage dumps, sleeping precariously on the road dividers with cars zipping by - they are everywhere. Having outlived numerous demolition drives, beautification plans and resettlement policies.
"As they will, until more urban developed land is made available," observes Vinod Tiwari, director of the National Institute of Urban Affairs. Restricted access to housing finance, price distortion due to speculations in the real estate markets leading to exorbitant prices, the use of black money in most property deals and lack of transparency in such acquisitions, feels the expert, all add up to keep more and more people on the streets and compound the squatter problem. "Then again, a more comprehensive analysis of the problem of urban homelessness will reveal that it cannot be isolated from larger issues such as overpopulation, the state of our rural economies, increasing migration into urban centres and the lack of relevant education and sufficient employment. "
If only 30-year-old Arumugam knew he'd have to contend with mighty forces as these when he came in to Mumbai seeking employment from Tamil Nadu's Salem district. He arrived less than a month ago; he's a broken man already. The pinched car cover that he uses as a roof over his head, is flung onto the road by the sea-breeze every once in a while. Shocked into reticence, he does little else but stare into the sea for most of the day. He's ill, hungry and penniless. Says a woman who lives in a hutment nearby: "And he doesn't know that Khairnar is expected to clear this seaface of squatters in a few days." Even if he knew, Arumugam probably wouldn't care. He'll make claim to another few yards of urban India, till another demolition drive....