A new book, based on a study of 2,577 households from Yamuna Pushta two years after they had been moved to Bawana in the outskirts of Delhi, documents the devastating impact of urban displacement. The study found that displacement significantly raised both unemployment and dropout rates from schools.

Almost every day, minor earthquakes shake up parts of Indian cities. They are so small that they go virtually unnoticed. The media certainly does not notice them. Nor do the majority of the people in these cities. Because the earth shakes only for a few, for the poor, for those who have no security of tenure, for those who have lived decades under the shadow of the bulldozer only to face it suddenly one day, with very little warning.

Every day, in some part of urban India, ‘illegal’ slums are being demolished. The demolitions are most evident in the bigger cities where the vision of creating a ‘global’ city is held out as justification. Thus, to make cities like Delhi and Mumbai ‘global’, poor people are forced to move because the land they live on is needed for a ‘public purpose’. That could be the expansion of a road, an airport or a railway line. But it could also be the building of shopping malls, tourist centres, hotels and luxury apartments. All these serve the ‘purpose’ of building a ‘global’ city. And if these people are unwilling to move voluntarily, then the State feels justified in using force. As a result, the shelters of the poor are routinely demolished. And no one takes note of the cost of such brutal displacement.

An invaluable addition to the meagre documentation on urban displacement is the study conducted by the feminist resource group in Delhi, Jagori. Based on their study of a community displaced from the banks of the Yamuna to the outskirts of Delhi, the book Swept Off the Map: Surviving Eviction and Resettlement in Delhi by Kalyani Menon-Sen and Gautam Bhan (published by Yoda Press)* documents the devastating impact of displacement on people who were a well-settled community for over three decades.

What is especially significant about this study is that the methodology and data collection incorporated the views of the affected communities and trained members from it to participate in the study. This lends the study an authenticity that is often lacking when you send in researchers who do not comprehend the nuances behind the responses of displaced communities.

The study also incorporates what the researchers term the ‘feminist lens’. Explaining this they write: “Methodologically, feminist research differs from traditional research because it actively seeks to address and account for the power imbalances between women and men, and between researcher and subject. It is also a strategy for challenging the social inequality built into mainstream research methods. Most significantly, it recognises and builds on the standpoints and experiences of women in particular and other marginalised groups in general.”

This again is crucial as the role of women in such communities and the special burden they have to bear as a result of displacement often goes unacknowledged. By applying a feminist lens, you ensure that these perspectives also inform the study, thereby making it more representative.

Thousands of families from the Yamuna Pushta colony were forcibly evicted in 2003/2004 and those ‘eligible’ were given plots in Bawana, 25 km outside Delhi. The Jagori study brings out the impact of displacement on livelihood, on the quality of life and on the environment in terms of safety and security. The first is particularly important for people who live at the margins, where every additional expense can push them into inextricable poverty.

The 35,000 households in Yamuna Pushta had to move because the Ministry of Tourism decided that the area next to the river should be beautified to attract tourists. Shopping malls, hotels, riverside restaurants and walks are part of the plan. Obviously, there was no place for a slum colony.

However, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) had only organised 6,000 plots, ranging from 18 to 12.5 sq m, in Bawana in 2004 when these families were asked to move. The ‘eligible’ were those who could prove they had lived there either before 1990 (entitled to 18 sq m) or before 1998 (entitled to 12.5 sq m). The plots were not free. Families had to pay Rs 7,000 for the larger plots and Rs 5,000 for the smaller ones. What is worse, the lease on the plots extended to five years with no guarantee that it would be renewed.

The process of proving eligibility was in itself fraught. Many families did not have adequate proof. What they had was not always accepted without a bribe. In the end, most families paid more than they were required to. As a result, many families cut their losses and moved elsewhere in the city in the hope that they could evade eviction for a few more years rather than accept the offer of ‘resettlement’.

These families probably made a wiser choice. For those who did move found themselves in an area where the local population resented their presence, where basic facilities were minimal, where it took a two-hour commute on unreliable public transport to reach the city and where there were few avenues for employment.

The study covers 2,577 households from Yamuna Pushta two years after they had moved to Bawana. It found that displacement raised levels of unemployment significantly. When poor communities live inside cities in mixed income areas, it is easier for them to find work. Women, for instance, work as domestic workers and are able to earn more because they can work in several houses. When such communities are moved outside the city and placed amongst other displaced people, there are fewer avenues for work.

In Bawana, many women chose to travel to Delhi every day to hold on to their jobs as domestics as they saw no other option. This meant waking up at 4 am, doing household tasks, taking a two-hour bus ride into Delhi, working through the day in one or several households, and then returning in the evening to continue with household chores. Men looking for work as daily labourers also went into the city but stayed there during the week only to return on weekends. Travel costs constituted up to 28% of a family’s monthly income. Almost half the population studied felt they had no option but to commute to the city for work

The lack of work opportunities and the higher costs also forced many more members of each family to undertake wage employment. A direct impact of this was evident in school enrollment where 40% of those in the 5-18 age-group were not enrolled in school. Yet, half these dropouts did attend school in Pushta. So it is evident that the new location and its impact on livelihood had contributed to the higher dropout rate.

In all respects, the families that moved are worse-off today than they were when they lived in Yamuna Pushta. The authors conclude that “impoverishment and violations of rights are an integral and inevitable part of the kind of resettlement that is being implemented in Delhi”.

Is Delhi an exception or is such violation of rights integral to all plans of remaking cities into ‘global’ cities? Compared to Delhi, Mumbai appears better but only slightly so. This is principally because of the policy adopted by the Maharashtra government in 1995 to provide free housing for all ‘eligible’ slumdwellers (those who could prove residence before January 1, 1995). Although the policy has been riddled with corruption and indifferent implementation, in a decade thousands of former slumdwellers are in secure housing. The new seven-storey structures that dot the city, a part of the slum redevelopment scheme, are not outside the city limits. This also ensures that people’s livelihood options are not disrupted.

Although many resettled slum households have seen a drop in income because of the additional expenditure on commuting and the monthly outgoings in the formal housing, most acknowledge that this is worth escaping the threat of eviction and the poor living conditions. The typology of the housing, the uniform seven-storey structures where residents cannot pay for the upkeep of lifts, are not ideal and women, in particular, express anxiety about safety. However, there has not been a systematic study of resettled slumdwellers to arrive at any definite conclusions.

The worst-off amongst the urban poor in Mumbai are the pavement-dwellers. Until 1995, they faced the threat of demolition all the time. But the 1995 policy of the Maharashtra government removed the distinction between pavement-dwellers and slumdwellers and guaranteed all alternative accommodation if the place where they lived was needed for a public purpose.

In addition, under the World Bank-funded Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP) and Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUIP), all affected slumdwellers and pavement-dwellers are guaranteed an alternative and the cut-off date has been extended to 2000.

As a result, some 19,000 families who lived along the railway tracks in Mumbai have been resettled and 10,000 families living on pavements along roads that are being widened as a part of these two projects have also been promised alternative accommodation.

While those living along the railway tracks readily accepted resettlement, pavement-dwellers have resisted. There are reports every other day of demolitions and stone-throwing by the pavement-dwellers. The reason they resist is because they know that being moved out of the area will destroy livelihood options. All of them live on daily wages and proximity to place of work is far more crucial for them than for slumdwellers. Hence, even the promise of security of tenure does not seem to compensate for having to move.

Also, in Mumbai as in Delhi, the process of proving ‘eligibility’ is problematic. In Mumbai, for instance, many pavement-dwellers do not have their documents as during demolitions these are often destroyed. Although there is a list of a dozen or so documents that can be produced to prove eligibility, the actual document used depends on the whim of the particular officer. Many municipal officers insist that only the electoral roll is valid. Yet, many pavement-dwellers are not listed because they have no address. As a result, when the time comes to resettle them as part of schemes where they are entitled, pavement-dwellers find they are left with nothing – no place on the pavement and no alternative.

Furthermore, in Mumbai the hope that the date for establishing eligibility will be extended to 2000 adds to the complexity of resettling the urban poor. As more people come into the city looking for work, they also survive in the hope that one day they will be ‘eligible’ for an alternative. Meanwhile the real solution to the problem, the creation of large-scale affordable housing, is barely being addressed.

The system for establishing proof of eligibility is just one of the issues that reveals what the authors of the Delhi study call a “poverty of imagination” of city planners when it comes to dealing with the urban poor. All poor people in cities want to improve their living conditions even if it means moving out. But the process must be transparent and inclusive. It cannot consist of threats of demolition followed by corrupt officials demanding money for ‘eligibility’ from those who are entitled to an alternative. It also cannot mean asking people to move without giving them security of tenure as in Delhi in return for vacating land for a ‘public purpose’. That is the very least that the city can give back to the poor.

At root the problem is the vision of ‘global’ that necessarily seems to exclude the poor. It is based on a refusal to acknowledge the place and the contribution that the urban poor make to a city’s economy. Unless the concept of ‘global’ is expanded to mean ‘inclusive’, Indian cities are likely to hear more stories like the ones of the families displaced from Yamuna Pushta.

*Swept Off the Map: Surviving Eviction and Resettlement in Delhi by Kalyani Menon-Sen and Gautam Bhan; published by Yoda Press; pp190; Rs 250.

(Kalpana Sharma is a journalist and writer based in Mumbai. She is the author of Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia’s Largest Slum)

InfoChange News & Features, June 2008

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