It is no doubt that Delhi has some of the most anti-poor policies that Indian cities have seen in recent years, particularly regarding the criminalisation of beggars and the unnanounced and politically motivated slum eviction drives (refer to the 2005 Yamuna Pushta River Eviction for example).
"India plans to round up beggars to shield foreigners from New Delhi's rampant poverty during the Commonwealth Games, seen as a showcase of the country's emerging economic might.The drive comes as the government is rushing to build 39 plush hotels to house visitors, new roads and overpasses and an air-conditioned Games village to accommodate athletes for the sporting event to be held in October 2010.
"We Indians are used to beggars but Westerners are not and so we need to clean up," New Delhi's Social Welfare Minister Mangat Ram Singhal told AFP, saying the crackdown on beggars would go into high gear on Monday.
"We'll catch them all," he said." (click here for full article)
"Amid the series of announcements of free homes in the city for underprivileged segments, the very promoters of the concept say it is a bad idea.
Be it the allotment of two houses each to the child actors of Slumdog Millionaire, the frequent demand to rehabilitate pavement dwellers or the CM's declaration to rehouse all the slum dwellers of Behrampada whose homes were razed in a fire last week, the issue of whether the state can and should provide free housing has always given rise to a stormy debate.
Experts, who have devised such schemes, say free housing is a failed concept. From former chief secretary Dinesh Afzulpurkar, who devised the slum rehabilitation scheme (SRS), sociologist Neerja Mattoo, trustee of the Jai Ho Trust that donated homes to the Slumdog actors, to urban expert Prof R N Sharma, who has written a paper on the subject, agree that free housing fuels social inequities and "recycles poverty'', bringing in much less parity...." (for full article, click here)
The State of Maharashtra's sledgehammer henchmen have now demolished the home of Rubina Ali, who plays the young Latika in the movie Slumdog Millionaire. This same state government had promised these two child actors new homes. What is going on? If this does not set an example of the twistedness of Marashtra's Slum Rehabilitation Authority, I do not know what will. Again, the slumarazzi were there to capture the event on camera. Here is one of the photos.
I wrote my Master's thesis last year on slum demolition campaigns in Indian megacities, looking at the local political motivations behind bulldozing and the informalization of poor housing. I had become interested in the topic after learning about the Yamuna Pushta River eviction in Delhi in 2004-2005 and the Shanghaization of Mumbai in that same year. Both these drives saw thousands of families displaced. Demolitions without notice are about the politics of control-whether looking at Mugabe's Operation Murambatsvina or demolitions of houses against Palestinians by the Israeli government. Indian cities, however, are a paradox-the combination of slumdwellers being some of the biggest voting blocks, as well as forming the majority the population of urban cities in globalizing cities such as Mumbai makes demolition drives difficult to comprehend.
The Yamuna Pushta River Evictions of 2005 under the supervision of BJP Jagmohan Malhotra are really something incredible. Lets see how this community now votes, looks like Congress Party is taking hold. "New Delhi: Delhi is not always the flyover to a great destiny; it is also a stopover for the slums, the displaced and the migrant worker who can't afford a better home. But unlike a Mumbai or Kolkata, where they stare in your face, slums in Delhi are conveniently tucked away in the fringes of the city. “Police come and claim the plot belongs to them. They threaten to evict us, the fear of losing our homes haunt us,” says a slum dweller Harish. But they still remain the largest votebank for politicians and therefore their empty promises never stops. “I will develop the state of the slums,” says Congress candidate Krishna Tirath. “The roads in our village are in a terrible condition,” tells another slum dweller. Rickshaw puller Mohd Alam's family like many others living along the Yamuna banks were evicted in 2004, to make way for the Commonwealth Games. Half of the displaced were given pieces of land far away in Bawana where the city ends. “It was barren land when we came here, we have had to build up houses on our own. Government didn’t help us,” says Alam. Attempts to legalise slums have been going on for decades. The latest being the Delhi Laws Special Provision Act, it states - No slum cluster will be shifted unless land is required for a 'public purpose'. They may be tired of the poll promises, but for the 45 lakh displaced in the Capital, their vote remains their only ticket to development." (for link to article, click here)
MUMBAI: Voters from slum pockets will continue to wield huge clout in the ensuing Lok Sabha polls, with the delimitation causing their strength to increase dramatically in constituencies that have Bandra and Colaba.
North-Central, which has Bandra, will have 74% slum voters, while earlier North-East, which had Bandra, had only 56% slum votes. Likewise Mumbai South, which has Colaba, earlier had 14% slum voters, but the figure has shot up to almost 27% now.
A demographic analysis of Mumbai's Lok Sabha constituencies shows that in two constituencies three-fourths of the voters reside in slums and in yet another two over 50% are from slum. This silent but huge voter base may finally decide the electoral fate of candidates. (to read more, click here)
Bangalore (IANS): Slum-dwellers have suddenly become much sought after by political parties of all hues with loads of cash to lure them to election rallies. Many of the slum dwellers openly admitted that their vote would go to those doling out more money. With the general elections around the corner, the 600,000-odd residents of about 800 slums across the city look for a 'windfall' by attending political rallies and casting votes in favour of a candidate whose party pays the highest. Be it a paltry Rs.150-200 for a rally or Rs.500-600 for a vote, elections are a good time for the slum-dwellers to make a quick buck. "It's a ritual all political parties indulge in at elections. They grease the palms of slum-dwellers for their votes. But these illiterate voters end up choosing a wrong candidate," lamented Issac Arul Selva, convenor of Slum Janandolan Karnataka (SJK) and a resident of the L.R. Nagar slum in the suburbs...(read more here)
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