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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

After The Circus by Anuradha Raman

Off With Their Rights...

    * As many as 3 lakh slum dwellers in Delhi were evicted before the Commonwealth Games
    * When a family is evicted, each member loses many rights—the rights to livelihood, shelter, health, education etc
    * Of some 60,000 beggars on Delhi streets, more than 50,000 were removed for the Games

***

Forget the razzle-dazzle and the hype over the recently concluded Commonwealth Games (CWG) in Delhi. The human cost—paid, as always, by the poor—has been mind-boggling, the extent and force of its effects far greater than the corruption which has been in the media’s focus. According to the Delhi Shramik Sangathan, quoted in the exhaustive report prepared by the internationally reputed Housing & Land Rights Network (HLRN), in the five years from 2003, when India won the bid to be the host for the Games, close to 350 slum clusters housing three lakh people were demolished in Delhi. Most of these slum-dwellers had been living there for over a decade. Only a third of them have been resettled.

In fact, the homeless have had a bitter struggle ever since India won the CWG bid. Without voter IDs and ration cards, most of them were forced to rebuild their lives from the debris left by demolition drives. Their only shelter from the elements are plastic sheets and other flimsy material; the police won’t allow them to use anything more permanent. Miloon Kothari, former special rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council and executive director of the HLRN, says,  “There is overwhelming evidence to suggest slums were demolished for reasons connected to the Games. The government lives in complete denial.”

With the Commonwealth Games declared a success, the slum-dwellers’ voice is something that Delhi doesn’t want to hear. They remain ignored and go unlamented in the din surrounding the corruption stage-managed by a public-private partnership of politicians, officials and business.

As autumn lends a nip to Delhi, residents of Shaheed Arjan Das camp, having braved the summer heat and relentless rain, wonder and wait for winter in their shelters, made of tarpaulin or plastic sheets propped with rope, lumber, loose bricks, material retrieved from the screens used to keep slums hidden from road view during the Games.

At the cluster of some 300 jhuggis along the open drain behind the swanky Thiagaraja stadium, built at a cost of Rs 300 crore for the netball events, the residents—mostly migrants from West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh—are waiting for Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit or her son Sandeep, an MP. “We voted them to power,” says Raj Kumar, a resident of the cluster and father to five children, “and this is how they repay us!” His children had to discontinue their studies, as they had lost their home. Most residents of this jhuggi cluster have voter IDs and ration cards. Some even have passports. But they weren’t allowed to stay. There are some whose parents couldn’t survive the shock of demolition. Manoj Kumar, whose father died of shock after seeing their home razed, says, “Is there something wrong with simple dreams and hopes that clash with the hopes of India Shining?”

For those living in Shaheed Arjan Das camp, who were told in January 2009 that their homes were being demolished for a parking space, there was surprise in store: no parking lot came up. In fact, a year later, but for the open drain there’s little to prove that their slum was in the way of Games projects. “We were not informed till the last day that our homes were being removed,” says a slum-dweller.

Kothari says gross violation of the UN’s basic principles and guidelines on development-based evictions and displacement took place in not informing the affected parties and denying them a chance to seek reprieve. The guidelines aim to minimise displacement and call for alternative solutions. The guidelines are rather stringent as far as eviction goes: only in exceptional circumstance, with full justification and procedural guarantees, can people be displaced. Besides, the government must enumerate the steps to be taken by the state to protect people’s rights prior to, during, and after eviction. Comprehensive “eviction-impact assessments” are to be carried out beforehand. And compensation and rehabilitation packages must be consistent with human rights standards. According to Kothari, it’s specifically prohibited to disrupt the education of children, specially during festivals or exam time. Some of the Delhi demolitions happened during Lori, the harvest festival.

The Delhi High Court intervened when it clubbed four petitions that sought relief, rehabilitation and relocation of slum-dwellers. Former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, A.P. Shah, who was instrumental in passing a judgement that stood by the poor, says, “The manner in which the evictions have been carried out, in direct violation of the law with no prior notice, no consultation with communities, and with use of force and intimidations, and without any compensation and rehabilitation, amounts to gross violation of the right to shelter, right to livelihood and a host of other human rights.”

The judgement, passed with Justice S. Murlidhar on February 11, says: “...it is not uncommon that in the garb of evicting slums and beautifying the city, the state agencies in fact end up creating more slums.” Shah says Article 19, which guarantees that citizens can move freely around the country, is being trampled upon when the state pushes people out of specific regions or cities. In particular, the judges observed: “It cannot be expected that human beings in a jhuggi cluster will simply vanish if their homes are uprooted and their names effaced from government records. They are the citizens who help rest of the city to live a decent life; they deserve protection and respect of the rights to life and dignity, which the Constitution guarantees them.”

Ironically, the judgement has been referred to a larger bench by the present chief justice and relief to the slum-dwellers, which was to come in four months’ time from the date of the judgement, will get more delayed. How long it will take, no one knows. The slum-dwellers haven’t a clue.