Delhi
– like all other Indian cities and especially the metros
– is a study in contrasts. Too often, however, the contrast
between rich and poor in this city is often presented
as reflecting the difference between new and old, or
integrated versus marginalised. This is typified in
the hoary journalistic cliché about malls and
skyscrapers coming up amidst decaying and impoverished
slums, suggesting that dynamism is creating the shiny
new things while deprivation is the result of backwardness.
Yet this particular way of looking at it may be missing
the point. Much of what is new in this city is also
poor; and many of the poor are poor not so much because
they have been “marginalised” and left out of the system,
but precisely because they have been drawn into it,
in ways that have been adverse for them.
And this process of impoverishment in turn is often
the result of the urge to create the gleaming urban
infrastructure that is currently seen to exemplify both
progress and societal affluence. The megalopolis of
Delhi has seen many phases of this: before the Asian
Games in the early 1980s; during the phase of rapid
urban construction and displacement in the 1990s; and
now in the many works planned as the city prepares to
host the Commonwealth Games in 2010.
Such development is usually presented in the media as
an unmitigated boon, and the large displacement of people
that it typically causes is ignored. Slum clearance
is now a positive phrase in the media, seen as part
of urban beautification and modernisation - a perception
very far removed from the days of the Emergency when
the forcible evictions from “unauthorised colonies”
played such a large role in creating public antipathy
towards the ruling government of the time. And it is
further argued by officialdom that resettlement improves
the quality of life of those who are moved, by taking
them from haphazard and ramshackle residences without
access to utilities and public services, to planned
neighbourhoods in which essential services are provided.
This particular myth is blown sky-high by a new book
that describes in systematic but wrenching detail one
such process in Delhi: the story of the forced displacement
of those formerly living in the river-bed settlement
of Yamuna Pushta and the resettlement of some of them
into the newly created colony of Bawana. (“Swept off
the map: Surviving eviction and resettlement in Delhi,
by Kalyani Menon-Sen and Gautam Bhan, Yoda Press 2008)
Menon-Sen and Bhan begin by documenting the violent
evacuation of more than 150,000 people who were resident
in the Pushta colony, to fulfil the plan to develop
the 100-acre strip on the banks of the Yamuna into a
promenade for residents and tourists. In February and
April 2004, houses were razed to the ground in several
operations, until finally in the heat of summer the
violent demolitions supervised by the UP PAC forced
out all the residents.
Resettlement was to be on the basis of proof of residence
in the form of ration card or voter identity card –
but very few families had a complete set of documents,
and of those who did, many lost them in the fires and
subsequent demolition. While newspaper reports spoke
of 35,000 families in residence, the DDA survey recorded
only 16,000 “genuine claimants”, and finally only 6,000
families were resettled in Bawana.
There are no records of what happened to all the others
(more than one lakh people) and clearly officialdom
has not been concerned with their fate. Indeed, MCD
officials bragged that they deliberately delayed the
distribution of allotment parchis by three months “so
that only genuine cases would be left”, ignoring the
fact that the poorest people are the least likely to
be able to wait that long, or even to afford the money
necessary for down payment.
The survey that forms the basis of this book found that
more than half of the surveyed households lived in plots
of 12.5 sq.m., while just under half had plots of 18
sq.m. On average, this implies that 5 people share a
living space of 10 feet by 12 feet. Many of them still
live in kuccha houses. The pucca “houses” amount to
tiny matchbox-like constructions with a single window
and no space for sanitary facilities. In any case, there
is no sewerage system. In all cases, the surveyed households
had larger plots, sometimes houses, in their previous
basti. Insecurity of tenure makes things even worse:
instead of title deeds, the Bawana residents have been
granted five-year leases with no certainty of renewal.
But it is in the provision of basic amenities and public
services in the resettled colony that the monstrous
nature of the public policy becomes most evident. While
the majority of the Bawana residents surveyed had access
to metered electricity at their previous residence,
in Bawana only 3.7 per cent had regular meters. The
rest – more than 95 per cent – had wires connected to
the overhead lines, in an informal system based not
on theft but on regular monthly payments of Rs. 100
or Rs. 150. The official service provider had failed
to provide electricity even after two years of residence,
and instead allowed the “local suppliers” to run this
system. The authors note that for the residents, therefore,
the choice between legal and illegal services simply
does not exist.
The absence of adequate access to drinking water is
also striking. Remarkably, piped water to households
was simply never part of the plans for the resettlement
colony. There are a few public taps in each block, with
erratic and infrequent supply of less than three hours
each day, causing long queues and lots of time wasted
by female members of the household. This water is also
unsafe for drinking according to laboratory tests. In
any case, more than half the households are forced to
rely on hard water from tube wells dug by private providers
who charge by the bucket.
Sanitation – one of the most essential public services
– is equally underprovided. The number of toilets is
far too small – amounting to one toilet sets for 80
people on average, so there is huge overcrowding, especially
in the mornings. Toilet management has been outsourced
to an NGO that maintains the toilets poorly, and there
is no monitoring by the MCD. By the NGO charges a fee
that is quite hefty for the poor: amounting to Rs. 4.62
per family per day, or around Rs. 135 per month, which
was 8 per cent of the monthly average household income
of Rs. 1500. Not surprisingly, there is widespread incidence
of gastrointestinal and water-borne diseases in Bawana,
especially among children.
Waste management also does not seem to have entered
into the plan for Bawana. There are no dustbins, no
garbage disposal points, no landfill sites. There is
no designated space for throwing garbage, much less
for sorting it. This is particularly ironic, since many
of the Bawana residents work outside the colony as rag
pickers and sanitation workers.
The reduced access to the Public Distribution System
for food is another significant feature of the households
in Bawana. The system requires re-issue of ration cards
with every change of address, so all the residents had
to get new cards, and many had not been able to do so
despite trying for more than two years. The survey found
that only 60 per cent of the households had valid ration
cards, compared to 88 per cent in their previous location.
Three-fourths of those surveyed had BPL cards in their
previous location; only half held them in Bawana. In
any case, the ration shops in the colony open rarely
and on random days of the week and provide rations only
to the head of the household, so that one-fifth of the
households reported that they sometimes or never got
their rations.
One thing the resettlement plan for Bawana did provide
for was health facilities: both a primary health centre
and a functioning dispensary. However, neither of these
existed in the colony even two years after the resettlement.
The nearest health care facility remains a hospital
5 km away, and residents reported a mobile MCD health
van that makes infrequent and random trips to distribute
medicines. So there is naturally a profusion of private
clinics with “doctors” of varying degrees of qualification
and reliability, who charge relatively high amounts
for each visit and for all medicines.
Schooling has been another major casualty of the resettlement
process. Forty per cent of the children aged 5-18 years
in the surveyed households were not enrolled in the
nearest school, and there was evidence of significant
declines in enrolment rates for both boys and girls.
One important reason for this was the perception of
harassment and humiliation in the local schools. There
was also widespread feeling that girls are not safe
to travel to the schools in the vicinity.
The resettlement has also led – expectedly – to a decline
in work opportunities, as forms of livelihood in the
earlier residence were lost and workers are forced to
commute long distances to find work, which is both difficult
and expensive to do. The survey therefore found clear
evidence of unemployment and under-employment, as well
as being forced to work for much lower wages in informal
activities and home-based work. The authors come to
the conclusion that material well-being of Bawana residents
has been severely compromised, with a majority of families
living at or near the poverty line.
The study therefore shows that the Yamuna Pushta-Bawana
resettlement has led to a decline – in most cases, a
sharp decline – in the material conditions and quality
of life of the resettled people. Not only has the provision
of basic services declined, but in most cases they have
been privatised and made more expensive for worse delivery.
It is not an accident that the poor, who have been forcibly
moved with such violence, disruption and loss in this
urban transition, have been treated with such cynicism.
It is clearly inbuilt into the very approach, as the
absence of planning for basic facilities for sanitation
and waste management in the resettled colony indicates.
And it is reinforced at each point in the struggle of
these residents to meet the minimum necessities of life.
Yet it is the people who live in colonies such as these
who provide the work force essential to maintain the
quality of life of the middle classes of the same city
and indeed make possible the economic expansion that
is then symbolised by the malls and the flyovers. Unfortunately,
what the authors call “the disappearing politics of
the urban” means that urban policy making and management
is increasingly bereft of attention to the basic conditions
of life for such residents, despite the fancy talk in
new initiatives such as the JNNURM.
Every urban planner and administrator in India should
be forced to read this important book. Or better still,
perhaps they could be made to spend a few days – or
even just 24 hours - just living in one of the “homes”
in Bawana, experiencing the same conditions. Maybe it
is only then that addressing these basic issues will
get the priority it deserves.
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