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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Wishing well for poor by Sreelatha Menon

A letter from SC commissioners was followed by an order of the apex court to clothe, feed and protect the homeless in night shelters

The winner gets trophies, but the losers, who are the majority, are ignored. What happens to them? The political masters, for instance, are winners in a way. At least they win elections. They get to be affluent and move with the wealthy, again a victory of sorts.

That perhaps makes them lose sight of those who live on the streets, go half hungry and poorly clad even in the worst of winters.... In spite of governments in the last 60 years, it took the intervention of a few good men to bring the warmest-ever ruling from the apex court for these poor. These men were, as if, using the court as some kind of wishing well. They whispered a wish and it came true...

This was the order of the court on January 20 to clothe, feed and protect the homeless in night shelters, within hours of the order. The order followed a letter from the two commissioners of the Supreme Court, N C Saxena and Harsh Mander, appointed to oversee the implementation of its rulings in the decade-old Right to Food case.

This letter on January 13 sought to draw the attention of the court to the condition of people braving severe weather conditions, living in the streets, with little to cover them, and even less to nourish them. The letter succeeded in linking the Right to Food case with the winter deaths of the poor, saying malnutrition was making people unable to bear the cold and this was killing them.

Therefore, the court, when it gave its orders, not only asked for night shelters, but blankets, water and food for the poor who lived on the streets of Delhi.

Approximately 150,000 homeless in the capital had just 33 night shelters to protect them from the harsh winter that hit the city and northern parts of the country this year. The next order came a few days later, asking other states to report in the next ten days on the number of night shelters they had. The commissioners have told the court that Mumbai and Patna have no shelters, while Lucknow has eight. They have also asked the court to direct states to provide at least one feeding centre for every set of 20,000 people.

The commissioners, who have been working for the court, have been silently turning the entire Right to Food petition into a movement for getting the poorest and the most vulnerable people of the country what any human being should rightfully get — the three most basic requirements of man: food, clothing and shelter. And the court has allowed them to use it as a kind of wishing well for the poor. The earlier orders or wishes included setting up of feeding centres in every habitation to serve hot cooked meals to all pre-school children in these centres, and in schools.

Of these, Commissioner Saxena, a former bureaucrat, had last year headed a committee set up by the rural development ministry to suggest a criteria for identifying the poorest of the poor. And he had asked for automatic inclusion of the most vulnerable groups of people, including destitute.

Harsh Mander, the special commissioner of the Court in the Right to Food petition, runs an NGO called Aman Biradari, which has been guiding street children to night shelters set up by it.

Biraj Patnaik, principle advisor to the commissioners, says a favourable order on February 9 will be a turning point in the manner states deal with some of its most vulnerable citizens and create a set of durable and legally-enforceable entitlements for them.