Govt Causing Homelessness As It Chases Housing-For-All Dream: Survey

While the government is spending an enormous amount of taxpayers’ money to chase its Housing-for All-by-2022 dream, it destroyed six homes every hour (that amounts to 147 units in a day) in 2017 for beatification projects, development works, wildlife protection, disaster management and “unknown reasons”. According to a report by Delhi-based non-profit organisation Human and Land Rights Network (HLRN) that was published in February this year, authorities-- the Centre as well as states-- demolished 53,700 homes last year, forcefully evicting about 2.6 lakh people across the country. These numbers, says the report, titled Forced Evictions in India in 2017: An Alarming National Crisis, are only conservative estimates and the actual figures on displacement might be much higher. The report also highlights several other disturbing facts involving India’s demolition drive.

Reasons unknown: While there have been 213 cases of eviction in 2017, 99 of these drives (46 per cent) were carried out to make India slum-free or turn its cities smart or to host big events.  In 53 cases which is 25 per cent of the total cases, the eviction drive was to pave way for development projects, including road expansion. While 30 or 14 per cent cases pertained to wildlife protection, 16 or eight per cent incidents took place in the name of disaster management. The reason behind the remaining 15 or seven per cent eviction cases is not known.

Causing homelessness: At least 700 people were evicted every day last year, in a manner that defied global and local standards set for carrying out such exercises, says the report. While pointing out that the number of people evicted in 2017 has increased when compared to 2016, the report also says that 60 per cent of homeless people in India are in such a state because of the government’s demolition drives. Ironically, the government brought down 6,937 homes to provide housing for all. In Hyderabad, for instance, about 2,800 families lost their homes so that the Telangana government could build for its Two Bedroom Housing Programme. Similarly, about 3,600 houses in Vadodara and 550 houses in Indore were brought down to build homes under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. The affected families, in most cases, were guaranteed no resettlement.  

Hosting at a cost: While becoming the host of large-scale events means the economy getting a boost among so many other things, it is also the cause of imminent displacement of people. The West Bengal government, for instance, demolished 88 low-income homes and evicted 5,000 street vendors and 18,000 rickshawpullers in Kolkata and Salt Lake City to host the Federation of International Football Associations’ (FIFA) Under-17 (U-17) World Cup tournament from 6–28 October last year. It also  evicted 1,200 families for the Kolkata Book Fair.

Causing disorder through orders: Though Indian courts, including the Supreme Court, keep reiterating that the right to housing is as an “inalienable component of the fundamental right to life”, the interpretation of their judgments by state authorities led to 17 per cent of the total evictions last year, points out the report.

Going far and wide: Eviction drives left no part of the country untouched. From mega cities to far-off villages in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, urban and rural areas underwent a similar harsh treatment.