The Politics of Slum Demolition

The demolition drive in Delhi in 2006 and in Mumbai bring to mind the striking observation of Pierre Bourdieu who said that the underclass is regulated by the 'the left hand' of the state as well as its 'right hand'. The left hand of the state manifests itself through education, public health care, social security, and social housing while the right hand of the state is symbolized by force, coercion and police.1 The 'right hand' of the state, at least in Delhi and Mumbai, was evident as the bulldozers tore apart the slums of Delhi and Mumbai. As the journalist P. Sainath pointed out by February 2005, nearly 90000 slums had been razed to the ground in Mumbai. In the Trans-Yamuna area of Delhi the Delhi Municipal Corporation demolished 1000 slum dwellings. The ferocious pace of demolition commenced when the Delhi High Court directed the Municipal Corporation of Delhi to demolish the 18000 illegal structures, which came up during 2001- 2005 in violation of bye laws, zonal laws, encroachments on government land and putting residential properties to commercial use. This led to over-crowding, congestion and traffic snarls in the city. Interestingly enough, though the Delhi High Court ordered the demolition of both jhuggis and other unauthorized structures belonging to the middle and upper classes (including powerful politicians) the vociferous protests were made by the middle and upper classes. The media attention was also focused on the anguish of the trading class who were locked out of their shops by the Government, which sealed the shops. The Delhi Assembly passed a resolution 'directing the Municipal Corporation of Delhi to stop the demolitions immediately.' But the protests were muted, to say the least, when it came to demolition of about 150 jhuggis in Mayur Vihar and almost 300 jhuggis in Patparganj (East Delhi colonies). The brutal demolition rendered more than 400 families homeless.2 The same story was repeated with respect to the demolition of 6000 slum houses in Ashok Vihar, which was done with brutality. The slum protesters were savagely beaten and both the very young and the old were not spared.3 But again there was very little public protest. The studied indifference to the plight of the urban slum dwellers by the middle and upper class and also the political establishment stems from the fact that slums are perceived as failed communities representing the flotsam and jetsam of failed industralisation. The truth of the matter is that apart from China, where urbanization is powered by manufacturing-export engine and vast inflow of foreign capital, the cities in the rest of the developing world lack that stimulus. As a result, notes Mike Davis, 'Urbanization, elsewhere, has been radically decoupled from industrialization, even from development perse. Some would argue that this is an expression of an inexorable trend: the inherent tendency of silicon capitalism to delink the growth of production from that of employment'.4 More perverse is the phenomenon that in spite of urban recession in many parts of the developing world there was no reversal or slowing down of the migration from the countryside to urban areas. 'Part of the secret', writes Mike Davis, 'was that IMF- (and now WTO-) enforced policies of agricultural deregulation and 'de-peasantization' was accelerating the exodus of surplus rural labour to urban slums even as cities ceased to be job machines. Urban population growth in spite of stagnant or negative urban economic growth is the extreme face of what some researchers have labeled 'over-urbanization'5. 'Instead of being a focus for growth and prosperity,' the authors of an UN-Habitat report conclude, ' the cities have become a dumping ground for a surplus population working in unskilled, unprotected and low-wage informal service industries and trade.' 'The rise of [this] informal sector,' they declare, 'is . . . a direct result of liberalization.' 6 Compounding the problem of joblessness confronting the slum people whether in Delhi, Mumbai or elsewhere in the developing world is their tenuous hold on land. Winter King, a legal scholar, wrote in the Harvard Review that 85% of the urban residents of the developing world occupy properties illegally. Lacking proper title to land they get into informal arrangements with slumlords and politicians where there is acquiescence to the illegal settlements provided there is regular

flow of bribes and rents to the slumlords and political bigwigs. With the result the slum dwellers get into quasi-feudal relationship with politicians and slumlords. Any hint of disloyalty on the part of the slum dwellers would invite swift retribution in the form of demolition of their dwellings.7 The withdrawal of the State from urban planning represents a crisis of unparalleled dimension. According to Adhikari, 'the state is unable to undertake long term rational plans for the development of the city and for controlling the urban chaos because of lack of adequate resources and due to the general contradiction that exists between rational planning and interest group politics.' 'Thus in most of the third world countries,' says Adhikari, ' in the name of urban renewal programme, one of the most sort after solutions by the policy makers, for making the urban areas a better living place, is an increase in the slum demolition activities. This in turn leads to a continuous struggle for survival of the slum dwellers who have to wage a daily war to hold on to their tenements, which are often unauthorized settlements on government or private lands'.8 In the absence of sensible urban planning the steady encroachment of land by the urbanized poor becomes inevitable. The urban poor are forced to settle on hazardous areas such as toxic dumps, near refineries, near railroads and highways. The slum habitats have no infrastructure to speak of. There is no sanitation facility and no provision of drinking water. In Mumbai the sanitation ratio is one toilet seat per 500 inhabitants. The contamination of water by human and animal waste is responsible for the scourge of chronic diarrhoea, which kills infants. In the slums of Delhi there are 1500 shanty colonies housing over 3 million people with the average population density of 300000 people per square kilometer.9 The magnitude of squalor in slums is so mind numbing that it lends itself to the trope that slums are synonymous with 'racket' or 'criminal trade'. 'A false impression', says Rajindar Sachar, 'has been created that pavement dwellers are unsocial elements; that a majority of them are criminals and unemployed. This is sheer slander. Pavement dwellers are an important part of the daily economy of city life. They are in reality the victims of an unjust social order.'10 In the city of Delhi alone about 40000 children are labourers, 30000 assist in shops, another 30000 work in teashops and 20000 work in repair shops. Around 100000 children work as domestic helps in well to do homes.11 The Global Report on Human Settlements estimates that the informal workers constitute 'two-fifths of the economically active population of the developing world.'12 As lowly paid workers living on meagre subsistence they offer critical support to the formal sector of the economy. Concerted public action is possible if one pierces the veil of prejudice against slum dwellers. It is imperative to legislate a National slum policy to provide the right to shelter to the urbanized poor living in slums. The legislation should also provide that no demolitions should take place unless proper show cause notice is issued to the affected parties and alternative means of accommodation provided. India being a signatory to the Istanbul of 1996 which declares 'Adequate shelter and services are a basic human right which places an obligation on governments to ensure their attainment by all people' makes demolition by the state without providing alternative accommodation to the evicted slum dwellers an unprincipled act. The National Slum legislation should enshrine the principle enunciated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and cultural Right 1956: 'Evictions should not result in individuals being rendered homeless or vulnerable to the violation of other human rights. Where those affected are unable to provide for themselves, the State Party must take all appropriate measures, to the maximum of its available resources, to ensure that adequate alternative housing, resettlement or access to productive land, as the case may be, is available." 12 Also imperative for social change is to break the urban apartheid, which divides the villas, spanking new shopping malls from the zopadpattis of the urban poor. This requires attitudinal change from viewing slums as festering wounds of disease, crime and wretchedness. As Davis reminds us 'The demonizing rhetorics of the various international 'wars' on terrorism, drugs, and crime are so much semantic apartheid: they construct epistemological walls around gecekondus,

favelas, and chawls that disable any honest debate about the daily violence of economic exclusion.'14 For it is only by breaking the epistemological walls that divide us from the urban poor shall we have taken the first steps to regain our humanity. --------1 Bourdieu, P., Contre-feux. Paris; Raisons d' Agir Editions, 1998(English translation: Acts of Resistance: Against the tyranny of the market. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999) 2 Whose City Is It Anyway- Amit Bhaduri and Arvind Kejriwal- Times of India -29-12-2005. 3 Senseless Demolition By The Government Of Delhi-V.B.Rawat, Social Development Foundation- Trishna- Volume 1, no 17 &18(24 November 2005) 4 Mike Davis- Planet of Slums- New Left Review- 26, March- April 2004. 5 Mike Davis-op cit. 6 UN-Habitat, The Challenge of the Slums: Global Report on Human settlements 2003, London. 7 Winter King- illegal settlements and the impact of titling programmes, Harvard Review, Vol.44, no 2, September 2003. 8 Sanchayeeta Adhikari- Urban Planning and Politics of slum demolition in Metropolitan Mumbai- Department of Humanities and Social Sciences; IIT-Powai. 9 Delhi Slums-the reality-www.asha-india.org 10 Civil and Political Rights of Slum Dwellers- Rajindar Sachar. 11 Delhi slums op cit. 12 UN-Habitat op cit. 12 Rajindar Sachar op cit. 14 Mike Davis op cit. C R Sridhar