India
Schools, offices, markets and restaurants have been ordered to close for three days as the city cleans up ahead of the arrival of world leaders
The first time Saroaj Devi heard about the G20 summit was when high green walls were being built around the Delhi slum where she lives.
She soon realized that the new barricades were intended to hide her impoverished homes from the foreign leaders and dignitaries arriving in India’s capital this weekend for the G20 summit: part of a £100m facelift, in which Delhi has experienced a brilliant upgrading. while its poor communities were removed from sight and several slums were razed.
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“They covered our area so that poor people like us and the poverty in the country are not seen by people arriving from abroad,” says Devi, 50. “When there are elections, every politician comes to us. They eat with us and make promises. But today they are ashamed of our presence.”
Large posters bearing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s face have been put up on the outside of the billboards that now surround their slums, greeting G20 summit delegates likely to pass by.
For Devi and other residents of Coolie camp in south Delhi, this weekend’s political summit will be a blow not only to their dignity but also to their livelihoods. To ensure safety and keep the streets clear as the likes of Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak and Olaf Scholz arrive, a blanket curfew has been imposed on the 32 million people living in Delhi. All schools, offices, workplaces, markets, restaurants and non-food shops must remain closed for three days, traffic on the roads will be restricted, all food deliveries have been banned and people are advised to stay at home.
A general view of a slum cluster area after the clean-up operation ahead of the G20 summit at Janta Camp near Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
While the Delhi Police has issued several statements to reassure people that this is “not a lockdown”, this applies to the city’s poorer residents and daily wage earners, many of whom live hand to mouth and Those who cannot afford to lose even a single day of work say the impact will be devastating.
“Don’t we have to go to work and eat? Should we die because we are poor?” says Devi, who works as a cleaner earning 3,000 rupees (£28) a month but is now taking a pay cut she cannot afford.
“I never miss a day of work, even when I’m sick, just because I can’t afford to lose money. But what can poor people like me do in such situations? Poor people like us will only curse this event because we will suffer and our bellies will be hungry.”
Vineet Singh, 35, who runs a small grocery store in the slum, said the barricades hid his shop from view and he had to cut a hole in it so customers could get in. His earnings had already dropped from 1,000 rupees (£10) a day to just a few hundred rupees. “I have a family to support,” he said. “Who will compensate for my losses?”
In Hafiz Nagar, a slum settlement opposite the shiny new conference center where the summit will take place on Saturday and Sunday, residents say they have been prevented from leaving their homes by police for days. Mohammad Imran, 45, says he has not been able to work for several days: “We are treated like insects, not like people.”
In recent days, more than 4,000 homeless people living under flyovers and on streets have been moved to shelters on the outskirts of Delhi. Harsh Mander, a civil society activist in Delhi, says there has been “a kind of frantic attempt to either drive the poor out of the city or erase them from the public eye.”
“We are the fifth largest economy in the world, but the reality is that we also have the largest population in the world living in poverty,” says Mander. “Pushing the vast majority of impoverished people out of sight is an attempt to obscure the downside of economic prosperity, namely extreme inequality.”
The closure was also particularly annoying for street vendors, who suffered losses for three days. They were previously directed by the Delhi government to renovate and modernize their stores for the G20 summit at their own expense, but now they cannot open stores.
Sunil Sharma, 39, who runs a tea shop near a Delhi metro station, says he had to take out a loan of 50,000 rupees (£500) for repainting and renovation after he was ordered to paint his shop in saffron color to delete. “The authorities want to make this city look better by making us suffer,” he said. “I still have to pay back this loan. Things look better from the outside now, but life is getting more difficult for us.”
• This article was amended on September 8, 2023 to correct the spelling of Olaf Scholz’s last name.
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