Left out in the cold
MADHU GURUNG
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As more people migrate to Delhi in search of a living, a skewed housing policy ensures that most of them remain shelterless during the deadly winters.
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POKHAR and his wife Tiliya sell papers, incense and roses at a red light in Delhi's Dhaula Kuan area. Their two older children have taken to wiping windshields and bonnets of cars and smiling for a tip. The youngest child, a three-month-old baby, lies in a hastily erected cradle tied to the branches of a tree, wailing from time to time.
For the city on the move, they are a nuisance. Yet, this family are actually skilled artisans. Back in their native village close to Alwar, their Kumhar (potter) community prides itself on making perfect water pots. However, with demand for mud pots falling, the Kumhars are sinking into poverty. Pokhar and Tiliya had little option but to migrate to Delhi in search of a livelihood.
At nightfall, Pokhar herds his family to a tiny hut close to a shelter set up for the homeless by the Delhi government. The shelter is run by Ashray Adhikar Abhiyan (AAA), a shelter rights campaign sponsored by the NGO Actionaid. The shelter takes in either single men or families of women and children. Pokhar and his family prefer to live in the makeshift hovel where they can all sleep together. They huddle to ward off the winter cold, build a fire and cook dinner. Pokhar stays up longest, trying to feed an old discarded car tyre to the embers. Despite its pungent fumes, it offers some warmth against the winter cold.
In transit
Delhi's first human development report found that migration to the capital is more than one-and-a-half times the national average. Every day, 665 people flee to Delhi to ward off unemployment as traditional work is phased out. Twenty-eight per cent of the rural population is landless and even those who have land cannot earn a livelihood due to lack of irrigation or recurrent droughts. They come to Delhi in search of a livelihood. They find work but skewed housing policies ensure that most of them simply cannot find housing.
For the shelterless migrant, winters are a bane, with temperatures falling as low as two degree Celsius. It is the time when they are most prone to falling ill and dying due to exposure. There are, according to AAA, over a hundred thousand homeless people in Delhi. Their numbers are growing as slums are being demolished to make way for parks, shopping malls, the metro and roads. People are on the streets as they have not been been given alternative plots or houses. There is no serious attempt at rehabilitating the urban displaced.
Says Paramjeet Kaur, director of AAA, "Most people don't believe that such a large number of people in Delhi are homeless. That is because our laws do not recognise the homeless, rather they make their very existence illegal. The homeless have no identity cards, no ration cards, no voter's cards. With no identification they cannot access government schemes and cannot be a vote bank for politicians who rarely address the problem of urban poverty. Middle class people resent the presence of the poor and want them out of sight. There is also the issue of encroachment of pavements by the poor versus rights of pedestrians. Society, in general, views these people as petty criminals and bad elements."
What is little known is that the vast majority of homeless people are manual workers who contribute their labour to build and maintain the city's roads, buildings, flyovers and parks. The homeless provide the city with basic facilities such as transport, cheap cooked food, fresh vegetables, and services such as haulage and cartage of goods and repair of vehicles, because they work as rickshaw pullers, vendors, mechanics and daily wage labourers. Yet most of the amenities they build or nurture are denied to them.
No basic necessities
Neither officialdom nor better off citizens are willing to recognise the contribution of the homeless poor and provide them even the most basic needs of shelter, a toilet, and clean water for drinking and bathing.
"The homeless have a right to shelter, right to life and livelihood. The State is accountable to everyone. Those who migrate from their villages are already in a very derelict condition and living on the streets only leaves them vulnerable to disease and abuse. Our experience is that the mental health of women on the streets is very fragile," she says. "What makes our work difficult is that every six months or so MCD officials looking after slums are transferred. We have to convince a new set of officials that shelter is the basic right of the homeless. The Delhi Government does not have a policy on the homeless. Although the Chief Minister is supportive, the bureaucracy is not very open."
Tiring work
Day in and day out Paramjeet and her team work tirelessly, going from one shelter to another, all over Delhi. Their schedule is gruelling. Dividing Delhi into four zones, they take turns every two nights, driving around throughout the night, ensuring the shelters are properly run and each homeless person on the street has a blanket and warm clothes to ward off the cold. The team agrees that only those who are committed can stay on in a job that causes quick burnout.
Currently there are nine permanent shelters put up by the government and run by AAA throughout the year. The administration has been persuaded to put up tents in the winter. Currently there are 34 tents put up in 21 places. But the total capacity is not more than 4,500 people, leaving the majority out in the cold.
For the past two years Munniji, 65, moved into the tented shelter put up every winter behind the Nizammudin dargah. She has lived by the shrine all her life, begging and being fed by the faithful who throng the dargah. Her parents lived on the streets after they left Alipur to make Delhi their home. Her six children, two boys and four girls, were born on the pavement behind plastic sheets helped by other women like her. Her husband, who did odd jobs, died leaving her to fend for herself. For the past two years she has been a caretaker of the ladies section of the tent. Her greatest fear is dying as an unclaimed corpse on the road like her mother had a year after her father, when she was just seven and her eldest sister was 11. Her only aim is to, "live in a pucca nayan basera" so that she does not go unclaimed like her mother.
Says Parmjeet, "People are being uprooted all the time and the divide between the have and the have-nots has increased. It's imperative that the government has a policy for the homeless. It would help in changing the attitude society has towards them. The homeless do not want sympathy, only empathy so they too can live with dignity."
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