Cold, Cruel and Criminal : Slum Demolitions in Winter

[Central Asia and Arabia may be ours,  And all of Hindostaan too;
No home to shelter us –Yet all the world is ours!
Evicted from our hovels, And from the benches too;
Our caravan now Roams the roads forlorn 
Our pockets are empty; Why else would he abuse us?
That sentry of ours, That sentinel of ours!
All the buildings there, are Are grabbed by the rich –
Only Bambai’s foot-paths, Are left for our nests!
Our schooling incomplete, And our wages likewise -
Who can bother to know, The depths of our grief?]

• Sahir Ludhianvi,
  Phir Subah Hogi, 1958.
  The song is a satirical take on the nationalist Mohammad Iqbal song ‘Saare jahan se accha, Hindostan hamara.’ The State demands nationalism from the very people it disowns; the poor have to call the country and the police ‘hamaara’ but the latter do not call the poor ‘hamaara’!

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Why should poor people’s homes ever be demolished? Why should Governments ever organize demolitions – in any weather – in the name of clearing ‘illegal occupation’ of pathways or public property, ‘beautification’, and so on – when we all know that every party in power had promised not to demolish jhuggis and to give pakka homes to the poor?There are any number of court verdicts in favour of the right of the poor to home and livelihood – these verdicts disapprove of draconian jhuggi demolitions and order for complete rehabilitation as well. It is also well known that the authorities plan demolitions on weekends and holidays, to prevent the slum-dwellers from approaching Courts for relief. Who, then, is on the wrong side of the law – the slum-dwellers or the Governments?

Homes cannot be ‘charity’ for those whose hard labour is indispensable to the city – it is their right! Governments leave the poor to fend for themselves – and when the poor somehow create some shelter for themselves, how dare the Governments and authorities declare this shelter as ‘illegal’? If at all there is any law that can be used as a weapon to demolish the homes of the poor, change such a law that goes against citizenship and humanity!

This December, with the onset of the biting and bitter cold, the bulldozers have arrived at several slums in the would-be ‘Smart Cities’ of Chandigarh and Delhi. In both those cities, there is a continuous cycle of demolition, resistance, court intervention – and again demolition.

Chandigarh: Room For Malls and Parks, Not For Poor?

On 3rd December in Chandigarh, the administration demolished 500 shanties. The demolition in Kabadi Colony was announced on the night of the 2nd December and carried out in the early morning, denying any chance to the poor people to organize resistance or obtain a stay from Courts. The demolition of 500 homes in Sanjay Colony was also announced for December 10.

The Sanjay Colony residents approached the CPI(ML), and a CPI(ML) delegation met the Advisor to the Union territory of Chandigarh, who then agreed that the demolition would not take place in winter. On 6th December, six left parties holding a march against communalism also visited two such demolition sites to express solidarity with the homeless people.

On 26th June, Chandigarh papers had carried a notice for demolition of the Dhanas slum. The courts were then on holiday. A Stay Order from the Court could only be obtained on 30th June, not before.
In between, the people of Dhanas organised resistance to the demolitions. At a protest in front of DC office, there was a severe lathicharge, and 39 people had to spend 7 days in jail only for trying to protect their homes and lives. Four CPI(ML) activists Kanwal, Hasmeet, Navkiran and Vijay were subjected to custodial beating.

Now there is a Petition pending in Supreme Court against the demolitions and the status quo has to be maintained in Dhanas. Meanwhile, a notice in the matter of custodial beating of the four comrades has been sent by a court to the SHO Udaipal and DSP Satish Kumar. Complaints about the same are also pending in the National Women’s Commission and SC/ST Commission.

Chanda, a migrant from Bihar, lives in the Kabadi Colony and works as a domestic worker, cleaning homes. She commented in anger, “They keep talk of ‘beautification’, and in the name of beauty, they have lots of space for parks! But we – who clean their homes and their malls – are ugly, aren’t we? Our homes are an eyesore, aren’t they?”

The young boys of Kabadi Colony go to school from the pavement. The teenagers also work in the Elante Mall – the biggest mall in Chandigarh – that is just on the other side of their slum.
CPI(ML) leader Kanwaljeet said, “The authorities don’t even pretend to issue notices before demolition anymore – they just tell us that notices were issued ‘long ago’!”

A Dead Baby in Delhi

The bulldozers arrived in the Shakurbasti shanty around 9 AM on December 13th. There had, as usual, been no notice to warn the slum-dwellers. In retrospect, some remembered having seen a ‘kaccha’ (rough/unofficial) notice at a couple of places, which they had taken to be a crude attempt to spread rumours. The shanty is on railway land, next to a railway track. The homes here have no mud walls or roofs – they are mere plastic tents.

When the bulldozers arrived and began demolishing the huts at one end of the jhuggi, people began fleeing from the other end in a panic. “Humlogon ko mauka hi nahin mila, JCB lekar sab aa gaya aur bhagdad mach gaya” (We got no chance to do anything, the cops arrived with bulldozers and there was a stampede) said Javed, a migrant worker from Bhagalpur, Bihar to the CPI(ML) Liberation team that visited Shakurbasti after the demolition.

And in the panic, something heavy fell on a little baby, killing her. When the parents came back from the hospital with their baby having been declared dead, the police stepped in and took the father and the baby back to the hospital, and ensured that the dead body was not handed over till the next day. This was clearly because they wished to avoid any eruption of public anger.

The Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has been praised for responding to tweets from passengers on delayed trains, and arranging milk for their babies. But railway officials felt no compunction about the death of this baby – whose parents can’t tweet. The Railway officials now claim that the baby died ‘before the demolition.’ That is a half-truth. The baby did not die crushed by a bulldozer: but she died in the panic and confusion created by the impending demolition.

The Government claims the people of Shakurbasti – migrants from Bhagalpur, Araria, Khagaria districts of Bihar as well as Jhansi, UP and Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh – are ‘illegal occupants’ of railway land.

Now around a 1000 families are forced to live in the open in the extreme cold, dependent on ‘relief’ materials distributed by concerned citizens. But they are not asking for ‘relief’ – they demand the right to continue to stay on the same land.

Harbu, a middle aged woman worker from Jhansi told the CPI(ML) team –“Gaon men barsaat nahi hota tha isliye yahaan aa gaye. Phoos ki jhuggi bhi tod di- ab hum kahaan jaayen? Jhansi se aaye hue 50 parivaar hain yahaan. Mere ghar ka kuchh nahin bacha.” (50 families from Jhansi came here because of drought in our village. Now they’ve broken our shack, there’s nothing left of my home, where will we go?)
Md. Moinuddin, a tea shop owner who has been a resident of the area for more than two and a half decades accused the AAP government of playing politics, “It is our home that we demand not their alms – they are distributing AAP caps, what will we do with that, just let us live here in peace!”

“Meeting Muslim labourers who came to Delhi in 1989-1990 from Bhagalpur and have lived ever since in Shakurbasti, isn’t it likely that many of them fled Bhagalpur after the communal riots of 1989,” says CPI(ML) activist Abhishek.

Last year too, there was a huge demolition of the Kusumpur Pahari slum, and before that, at Mansarowar Park, near Shahdara, followed by protests, visits of some political leaders, distribution of relief materials, and also a stay order by the Delhi High Court.

Last December, bulldozers had also reached the slum on a stretch of nearly one and a half kilometers next to Railway tracks in the Wazirpur Industrial Area. But they had to beat a hasty retreat despite the accompanying posse of police and officials, because of resistance by CPI(ML) cadres and slum dwellers. Only a few dozen houses could be razed. This was also followed by a High Court stay Order.

Where the Courts and the Law Stand

The Delhi High Court has clearly stated in 2010 in no uncertain terms that “jhuggi dwellers are not to be treated as ‘secondary’ citizens. They are entitled to no less an access to basic survival needs as any other citizen.” And “It is the State’s constitutional and statutory obligation to ensure that if the jhuggi dweller is forcibly evicted and relocated, such jhuggi dweller is not worse off. The relocation has to be a meaningful exercise consistent with the rights to life, livelihood and dignity of such jhuggi dweller.”

The Delhi High Court repeated this position while staying demolitions in Kusumpur Pahari and Wazirpur in 2014 and gave direction to the Railways for guaranteeing a proper rehabilitation plan. Neither the Railways nor the Delhi Government have shown any seriousness in complying with the HC Order. Ironically, in spite of the Court order, Railways continue to paste demolition notices at the Wazirpur jhuggi, creating a sense of fear and insecurity among the poor families.

Senior journalist Olga Tellis reminds us again in an article written in the backdrop of the Shakubasti demolition, of her 1981 petition in Mumbai that led to the Supreme Court’s judgement in favour of Pavement Dwellers in Olga Tellis & Others v Bombay Municipal Council [1985] 2 Supp SCR 51, Housing, Rights case. That verdict made it mandatory to provide alternative accommodation before every act of demolition. This applies to all Metro cities in India. But it is clear that the Governments and authorities know full well that Courts have consistently held jhuggi demolition without prior rehabilitation, to be illegal and unconstitutional. Yet, they deliberately, openly and routinely flout these verdicts – because these verdicts and the Constitutional principle underlying them go against the dominant discourse of ‘development’.

“It is only very rarely that one hears of demolition of big farm houses and bungalows built defying all rules and laws, and no one ever talks of demolishing malls that have come up illegally on Delhi’s Aravali forest land, or the Commonwealth village on Yamuna’s banks,” points out Munna Yadav, a CPI(ML) activist in Wazirpur.

The Modi Government at the Centre is of course openly pro-rich and anti-poor. But what about the responsibilities of the current Delhi government which enjoyed a popular mandate from the poor in the last elections and which has a separate Slum Board and a minister is assigned for the job? Even if Railways falter in compliance, it is the responsibility of the Kejriwal Government which promised housing for all, no demolitions and all basic amenities at affordable prices, to make a concrete time-bound plan backed by fund allocation, on a priority basis. Doing lip service, blaming the Centre and Railways, and distributing AAP caps to the evicted people will justifiably anger Delhi’s poor.

The Pattern of Demolition Drives

There is a peculiar modus operandi for slum demolitions. The authorities know the demolitions without prior rehabilitation are an absolute violation of the constitutional and legal rights of citizens. Court orders are ignored – unless by chance they are in favour of demolition!

The demolition orders are generally issued on the last working day of the week so that demolitions can be carried out on a holiday, preferably at an odd hour, to avoid any possibilities of any legal or official intervention. This timing also serves to counter any kind of resistance from the people and activists because in case of arrests they will have to wait in custody for a minimum of two days, during which police will have a free hand.

In many cases, the eviction notices are not even served to every home or announced publicly. Instead, the authorities claim that the rough notices pasted in a couple of places months ago, is the ‘eviction notice.’

Even if the Court notes violations of laws and civil liberties on part of authorities during demolition, and orders a stay, the officials enjoy full impunity for their misdeeds, and there is never any order to compensate or rebuild the demolished houses and shanties.

Rebuilding their jhuggis, for the poor, is like rebuilding their lives again from scratch. No government intends to completely rehabilitate displaced people, though they talk of rehabilitation for judicial as well as public consumption. The majority of jhuggi dwellers have no proof or document of residence – and they therefore fear they will be left out of any rehabilitation promises. In the Wazirpur case the High Court has asked for a proper list of inhabitants but a year later, there is still no proper survey to compile a list of residents. So, residents there fear that some hurriedly prepared incomplete list may be submitted to the Court any day, denying their existence.

The Political Economy of Slum Demolitions

In the case of slums, the phrases ‘unauthorised’ and ‘illegal occupation’ are bandied about a lot. When will we confront the reality that a major part of Delhi, and of every other city for that matter, has been developed in quite an unauthorized manner through property dealers, developers and land mafia in nexus with politicians on various kinds of public lands? The latter enjoy impunity and are able to get legal permissions in due course. Even in those cases, it is common people who buy houses with their hard earned money who sometimes have to fear eviction.

There are more than 1100 colonies waiting to be regularized in Delhi as per the government’s own decision, but three governments have changed since the decision was taken! In case of jhuggis people generally ‘buy’ a jhuggi and take a risk. The authorities remain mute and deaf without any concrete positive plans for housing, and middlemen keep flourishing in the process. Suddenly, after years of having invested and lived in a slum, people are evicted!

Jhuggi dwellers constitute the biggest segment of every city’s labour resources who toil at extremely cheap wage rates. They are migrants who have shifted to the city fairly recently – forced out of the village by agrarian crises created by economic policies. Owing to hard conditions and consistent deprivation of minimum legal rights they have very limited options and almost no bargaining power. As a result they are a captive source of cheap labour and primitive accumulation for capitalists and elites. Their evictions and displacement further decreases their bargaining power, ensuring an even cheaper labour force. Demolitions are not aimed only at making parks, clearing roads, or clearing public land of ‘encroachments.’ Demolitions have a solid economic logic; they help depress labour costs, keeping them at extremely cheap and dehumanized levels, by keeping workers continuously vulnerable and insecure. Every plan (every decade or so) to ‘modernise’ a city, ends up displacing the slum-dwelling working class to the outskirts of the city – thus pushing them to the city’s geographical margins as well as its political and economic margins. Remember – every eviction makes poor peoples’ lives costlier, as they have to commute from a farther place to their work place, have to rebuild their shanties, and pay extra bribes to the police and middlemen.

Housing and shelter are an essential part of social reproduction and reproduction of the labour force – and the capitalists and the State try to make this cost the private burden of the individual labourer and their family. Slum demolitions are an exercise in humiliation – that’s why they succeed even when they fail. Even if a demolition is stayed by the Court, it has served to remind the class of labourers of their insecurity and lack of dignity.

There is a pattern here. The jhuggi demolitions keep taking place – even if protests, promises and judicial interventions stall them from time to time. The city authorities are highly successful in displacing poor dwellers in a systemic manner exactly as per the ‘Plan’: whether its Master Plan, NCR Plan, or some other Plan.

The essence here is that the class of poor workers, especially migrant labourers, are denied their democratic rights. The democratic movement in the cities – that does, from time to time, organize resistance, relief, and stay orders from the Courts – needs to consider new strategies of resistance that can effectively force government to accept that poor jhuggi dwellers are very much an essential and inalienable component of the city. We need to force the authorities to acknowledge that the slum-dwellers are not there because of their survival needs alone; but because their cheap labour is sought by factories, construction sites and homes in the city. The city that demands their labour cannot shrug off responsibility for their housing, shelter and dignified living. Dignity and recognition are key here – not ‘charity’ and ‘humanitarianism’. The city authorities that allow developers and real estate mafia to flout the law openly, need to be forced to recognize the inalienable right of workers to a secure and dignified life. For such a campaign, we need to build wider solidarities, and issues of the right to shelter and housing cannot be left to some NGOs working in this sector. It must be an important component in ongoing struggles for democratization of city life, and an inalienable component of Trade Union struggles also.

The poor, the migrant labourers are not ‘waste,’ they are not flotsam and jetsam; they are the first citizens of every city. No country can be allowed to deny them a right to secure housing and livelihood.

(With inputs from Agnitra, Abhishek and Navkiran)