Unwanted citizens

Unless the link between employment and housing is acknowledged, slums can only be shifted, not removed. The experience of Delhi highlights this fact.

AMAN SETHI in New Delhi

WHAT started off as an aggressive demolition drive by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) following a Delhi High Court directive to remove the 18,000 or so structures across Delhi that violated building bylaws soon petered out in the face of protests by politicians, trader unions and affected residents. At the time of going to press, 330 illegal extensions have been demolished and 62 properties sealed.

Chief Minister Sheila Dixit said that the government was concerned about the demolitions and was considering passing an ordinance to halt them. What the Ministers, the media and the MCD seem to have missed is the fact that almost two-thirds of Delhi's population lives under constant threat of eviction.

According to the Economic Survey of Delhi 2003-04, only 23 per cent of Delhi residents live in planned colonies. The rest are forced to reside in unauthorised colonies, jhuggi-jhopri (JJ) clusters, designated slum sites and resettlement colonies. In the past decade, the MCD's slum wing relocated a total of 51,461 JJ cluster households, and demolished even more. So why is everyone, from the Chief Minister to the press, silent about slum eviction? The primary reason is the relentless, and often brutal, policy of slum clearance legitimised by the urbanisation discourse. The assumption is that a slum is a localised eruption on the flawless skin of the city and must immediately be excised to prevent a sore.

Much is written on the inhuman living conditions in slums and their role in breeding crime and disease. Thus, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and the MCD claim that slum clearance is merely a precursor to a resettlement process that shall provide clean, safe and hygienic housing for all citizens. Unfortunately, the resettlement process is rarely realised.

Contrary to popular belief, slums are highly structured and regulated spaces. They arise in particular places at particular times and so are very context-specific. Migrants to the city choose to live in particular slums on the basis of a host of factors such as proximity to the workplace and the demographic composition of the slum.

For instance, the Barapulla settlement at Nizamuddin (now relocated to Bhalaswa) had a significant Muslim population, while Sanjay Colony in Bhatti mines houses members of the nomadic Oud tribe. Kalakar Colony near the Shaadipur bus depot is home to magicians, animal trainers, puppeteers and child acrobats; and Ekta Vihar near Ramakrishnapuram is the nerve-centre of Delhi's wedding musicians' network. "Ekta Vihar is perfect for our business as we have enough space for our horses and equipment," explains Johnny, a drummer. "Most orders for wedding bands come to Ekta Vihar, and we allocate the contracts amongst ourselves." Moving the settlement would fragment the close community of musicians and ruin their business.

"You cannot just come and settle down in a basti," says Sohan, a resident of Sonia Camp, R.K. Puram. "You need to talk to the pradhan and convince him." The pradhan is one of the most powerful people in the basti, except that most bastis have at least three different pradhans. Depending on his specialisation, a pradhan allocates space for a house, ensures power supply, gets gas connections or protects residents from predatory policemen using dalali.

While it is difficult to translate dalali and its myriad definitions, the term may be loosely understood as "negotiation" in all senses of the word. Although not strictly illegal, it makes possible the creation of loopholes where there are none, and the exploitation of existing ones.

The Rs.200 a month electricity connection is an example of successful dalali. Before the privatisation of power distribution, most slums depended on power supply tapped illegally. However, after privatisation, an agreement has been worked out where residents pay Rs.200 a month to the electricity pradhan and get enough electricity to power a few gadgets.

No one is quite sure how to become a pradhan, but the two prerequisites for successful dalali are "connections" and "reach" - both measured in terms of the pradhan's relative closeness to the levers of power. Of course, dalali costs money and the more intricate the task, the higher the price. Converting a jhuggi to a pukka construction is one such task. "It cost me Rs.30,000 to build my house in the Gautampuri basti," said Ashok Kumar, "and another Rs.2,000 to ensure that the Slum Wing didn't break it down." Police cases, by contrast, can cost from Rs.500 to Rs.20,000 depending on the case. "Eviction is one thing that we can do nothing about," said Shiv Kumar Kotiya, a pradhan from Sonia Camp. "Once the court gives its orders, no one can stand in its way. Not even the MCD." Evictions are carried out when the land-owning agency, usually the DDA, notifies the settlers. The matter is then handed over to the slum wing of the MCD, the agency charged with evicting settlers and resettling them on empty plots. At present, for a down payment of Rs.7,000, pre-1990 residents of slums in Delhi are allotted six metre by three metre plots with seven square metres of common space, while post-1990 but pre-1998 settlers are allotted six metre by two metre plots.

Settlers are sometimes allotted one-room tenements in multi-storey buildings. However, this policy was adopted after the V.P. Singh government passed a law that made it mandatory for slum eviction to be accompanied by the simultaneous provision of alternative housing sites. Yet, this too is not enough. Former Prime Minister V.P. Singh admitted in an interview with Frontline: " The problem of slums is an issue of housing, it is an issue of employment." Employment, he points out, is the primary reason why Delhi attracts thousands of workers every year. However, the wages paid to these workers make owning a house or paying rent a difficult proposition. Low wages also imply that household budgets for daily conveyance must be kept at a minimum. In the past decade, most slum-dwellers were resettled on the periphery of the city - Bawana, Bhalaswa, Holambi Kalan, Rohini. Settlers, uprooted from the heart of the city, now find themselves on bleak moonscapes. "I earn about Rs.100 a day," said Rajesh, a resident of Sector 4 Rohini, "but the commute costs me at least Rs.40 a day." Rajesh works as a tourist guide in Paharganj and used to live in the Paharganj basti. The basti was demolished in 2001-02 and the families were shifted to single-rooms in multi-storey tenements in Rohini. Three years have passed and the residents are still waiting for clean drinking water, a sewerage system, and employment.

Women, in most cases, are the worst hit by relocation as many of them work in households close to the slum. Relocation has offered them the choice of leaving work or leaving their children behind. Multi-storey structures have meant that piped water rarely reaches the top floors and drinking water must be carried up several flights of stairs. "We were better off in the slums," says Rani, a resident of Sector 4, Rohini. "Water wasn't a problem, there were open spaces, and ventilation. These tenements are like prison cells." In situ upgradation, where basic infrastructure is provided to the slum, is increasingly seen as a viable alternative to existing DDA practices.

While the policy finds mention in DDA projects, there has been no upgradation for the past five years. Apart from elite discourses on "cleaning up the city", slums have also come under attack from powerful real estate lobbies. The draft for the 2021 Master Plan for Delhi already reveals the hand of the builder lobby in its emphasis on "public-private partnerships" for housing, lifting of rent control, reduction of housing targets for the poor to 55 per cent from 70 per cent of all housing constructed, and the move to cost recovery.

Understanding the "slum question" is possible only when one is willing to ask fundamental questions about how a city should be planned. The first category that must be questioned is that of "prime land" and its usage. Unless the connection between employment and housing is acknowledged, slums shall never be removed; they shall only be shifted. In this context, it is often easier for the state to frame the slum issue as a problem that can be addressed by rendering the poor invisible.