Lost in Transition

Amidst a razed slum area, stands alone the house of Shakuntala, a sweeper and mother of five children. In a kuccha house covered with plastic sheets tied with ropes, lives her family of eight with high hopes that one day they will also be given a land of their own.

On 8 March 2006, the slum dwellers of Pushpanjali slum in Pitampura, Delhi, were moved to Bawana, on the outskirts of Delhi (on Delhi-Haryana highway), by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) under the beautification project of the State government.

“I was born in here. These municipality people have moved everyone but we are left behind because I do not have a ration card,” says Shakuntala.

Families with no ration card and no voting card were the ones left behind here. More than 100 people in Pushpanjali slum alone have not been given land in any of the areas allotted for the slum relocation project in Delhi (These areas are - Bawana, Narela, Kondli and Madanpur Khader). They still live on, isolated from their community, on the land where they claim they were born, with no drinking water and no electricity.

Sanjay Upadhyaya who runs a tea stall on the sidewalk shares the same plight as Shakuntala. “We came here from Uttar Pradesh in 1987. I have lost my ration card and have spent some 50-60,000 rupees bribing the DDA officials. Still we have not been given land in Bawana.”

Bawana in North-West Delhi is one of the areas where plots were given as per the slum rehabilitation scheme. Two plot sizes, 18 square metres and 12.5 square metres are available in this area. Under the cost-distribution rules as fixed by the Union Urban Development Ministry, the beneficiaries of the plots were to pay Rs.5,000 irrespective of the size of the plot. The rest of the price was to be borne by the Delhi Government and the land owning agency.

Despite this rule, the families who got 18 square metres plot had to pay Rs.7,500 out of their own pockets.

According to a report released by the vigilance department in 2007, more than 500 DDA employees are under scanner for grossly misutilising the funds for the slum rehabilitation scheme. The plots meant for the evicted slum-dwellers in Bawana are sold to property dealers for building shops and multi-storeyed permanent structures. The corner plots and the plots on the main road fetch Rs.4 lakh in the market, while ordinary plots are worth just Rs.50,000. The local MCD and DDA functionaries get a cut from the contractors who get the plots allotted in their names.

The whole area in Bawana for the slum rehabilitations is divided into five blocks – A, B, C, D and E. Slums dwellers in these five blocks came in 2004 and are mostly from the Yamuna Pushta region. Their slum was demolished in the same year and at its place now stands a state of the art facility for athletes competing in the Commonwealth games scheduled to be held in Delhi in 2010.

Four years in a cramped, unhygienic piece of land, yet there is no electricity in the mornings and evenings. Out of the 8,000 houses in these five blocks, hardly 400 have electricity connections.

DDA claims that they have installed 16 hand-pumps for drinking water in the five blocks. But the residents complain that there is hardly any water in them. The situation gets worse in summers when there is water scarcity.

The three far off blocks – F, G and H were set up in 2006. None of these houses have electricity connections. Pradeep Bharadwaj, a private electric contractor in Bawana says, “The electric poles have not yet been put up by the New Delhi Power Limited (NDPL). NDPL gives out contracts to private companies for giving electricity connections to the houses. No tender has been released yet by the NDPL for these three blocks.”

Block B lies on a low land area and is flooded during the rains. With no proper drainage system, the water is left stagnant which provides a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Maqsood, a resident of the same block says, “Last rains a lot of people got malaria. We do not even have a hospital nearby. The nearest one is some four kilometers away. The doctors there do not speak our language and they don’t treat us properly.”

Resettlement areas in Delhi are on the outskirts of the city, far away from their earlier sources of income. There is no scope of earning one's livelihood and with poor standards of sanitation, hygiene and medical assistance are virtually non-existent. Those who still cling on to their old jobs in the city start their day as early as four in the morning to reach their places of work in time. Not to forget the added expense of everyday commuting.

Narendra, school van driver in Pushpanjali says, “We bring women and children here everyday from Bawana. Most women who used to work in the bunglows here full time have left work. The ones who work till afternoon still come.”

The government just gave the land to build houses to the people who were moved to Bawana from all around Delhi. The slum dwellers then had to build their own houses on that land. Given the small chunk of land allotted, none of these houses have toilets.

With all these problems persistent in the resettlement land, those who were evicted from their slums and were not given a share in the resettlement area are still struggling for it.
“I give rent for sitting on this footpath. Policemen come and harass me almost everyday. Once we go to Bawana, at least no one will move us from there. We will have our own land,” says Sanjay.

Sanjay is lucky for his house was not demolished along with the other houses in the area. But he lives under the constant threat of loosing the roof on his head any day. The ones whose houses were razed to the ground have nowhere to go.

When asked if these people were given an alternative arrangement, Devender Singh, Supervisor, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, Slum Development, Bawana said, “They must have gone somewhere; many run away. How are we to know?”