New Delhi | Portal
When residents of a slum in New Delhi’s Janta Camp neighborhood learned that the G20 summit would be held in the Indian capital, 500 meters from their homes, they hoped it would benefit them too. Instead, they had no place to stay.
Couple Dharmender Kumar and Khushboo Devi and their three children were among dozens of people whose homes were demolished in recent months a move that residents and activists said was part of a “beautification” project for the summit on June 9 and 10 . is.
Some favela residents appealed to the capital’s Supreme Court to stop the evictions. However, the court found their settlements to be unlawful. And then the local authorities asked them to vacate the room by May 31st.
Officials in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government say the houses were built illegally on government land and their removal is an ongoing measure. Homes in slums like Janta Camp take years to build, and most residents work nearby and have lived there for decades.
The demolition work began four months ago, on a morning in May. Videos show makeshift shelters made of metal sheets being demolished by bulldozers as residents look on, some crying.
The slum near the Pragati Maidan convention center, the main venue for the G20 summit, is a landmark of New Delhi’s urban landscape, where many of the 20 million residents live in unplanned areas. In 2021, the Housing Minister told Parliament that 13.5 million people were living in unauthorized locations in the city.
“The government is demolishing houses and removing vulnerable people in the name of beautification without any thought about what will happen to them,” said Sunil Kumar Aledia of the Center for Holistic Development, an organization that works with the homeless. “Residents should have been notified in advance and allocated places for relocation.”
Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that residents have no right to be on public lands and the most they can do is ask for more time to vacate those properties.
According to the Housing Ministry, at least 49 demolitions resulted in the restoration of nearly 93 hectares of land from April to July. The ministry denies that houses were demolished for the purpose of beautification or gentrification.
Mohammed Shamee, another resident of Janta Camp, said he thought “the important people attending the G20 summit would give something to the poorest.” “But the opposite happens. The important people will come and sit where we used to live and celebrate.”
For Kumar, who works as a clerk in an office in Pragati Maidan, the demolition of his house and the displacement of his family will impact the lives of his children. “Their education will also be affected; They can study here because the school is nearby.”
Two of her children Srishti, 5, and Eshant, 10 attend a local public school. Their youngest, Anokhee, is nine months old. The family, which includes Kumar’s father, had lived in their hut for 13 years until they were told they had to vacate it because “the area needed to be cleaned,” he said.
As the bulldozers left the area after reducing their houses to rubble, Kumar and his wife began collecting belongings scattered on the road. They then packed everything onto a tricycle to drive to their new accommodation a single room 10 kilometers away, for which they pay a monthly rent of 2,500 rupees (R$150).
Two months later, in August, the family returned to a part of the area that had escaped the bulldozers and paid a higher rent of 3,500 rupees for a room. “It was difficult for my children to go to school every day from our previous place of residence,” Kumar said. “I want them to learn. We came back because of them.”
With a population of 1.4 billion, India is now the world’s most populous country, according to United Nations estimates, having overtaken China in the first half of the year.