Asia Times: Street dwellers visible but ignored


	April 22, 2000	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Street dwellers visible but ignored
By Bharat Dogra

NEW DELHI - Kalimuddin makes a living selling ice water from an insulated cart outside Delhi's bustling railway station. He is as homeless now as the day he arrived here from his village in eastern Bihar state 20 years ago.

At night, Kalimuddin sleeps where he can on the pavements. He cannot use the government-run shelters because he has to keep an eye on the cart, hired out from a demanding owner.

Jaswinder, a rickshaw puller at the nearby Ajmeri gate area is better off. At night, he can turn his rickshaw upside down for a temporary home and sleep under it. He even has a plastic sheet to spread over it for rainy nights. Winters are tougher for then Jaswinder must hire out a quilt at around 25 cents a night to keep from freezing. ''That's too much but if I buy my own quilt I have nowhere to keep such a bulky thing.''

There are no reliable estimates on the total number of homeless people who live where they can on the streets of India's large metropolises of Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta and in the smaller cities and towns but the number could easily exceed 2 million.

It is common to see individuals and families taking shelter where they can under flyovers, in culverts or in large water pipes. Those that sleep on the pavements are often reported to have been run-over by rashly driven vehicles.

A joint-survey conducted by the union ministry of welfare and Unicef about 10 years ago estimated the population of street children alone in eight cities to be about half a million. More recent studies in Delhi by voluntary agencies estimate the number of the shelterless at more than 100,000 - nearly a third of them street-children.

A scheme for the welfare of street children was launched in 1993 to provide community-based care of street children and this scheme is being implemented through 81 voluntary organizations in 23 cities.

Additionally, the urban homeless are covered by a government scheme providing night-shelters and sanitary facilities for pavement dwellers. But the needs of no more than 10 percent of the 2 million urban homeless are likely to have been covered.

If slum dwellers, many of whom fall under the category of the ''precariously housed'', because of sheer flimsiness or because they stand to be bulldozed by authorities at short notice, the numbers of the urban shelterless would run into tens of millions.

While homeless women are far less in number than are the men, the difficulties they face in meeting sanitation and shelter needs are severe because facilities simply do not exist for them.

No attempt has been made to secure for the homeless surplus lands which could readily be used to construct shelters or housing schemes. Most of the land is eyed by builders and land sharks. A Planning Commission document admits the ''failure to curb or prevent concentration of urban land holdings, profiteering and ensure equitable distribution of land''. Records show barely 8 percent of 220,000 hectares of land declared surplus as having been taken over by the government for housing development for poorer sections of the people.

On top of it there are mistaken notions regarding the homeless such as that they lack community ties and are likely to remain a floating population incapable of forming close community ties. Take Kalimuddin's case. Though shelterless he is part of a group of about 20 people from Bihar who, like him, sell ice water for a living. ''We stick by each other in times of trouble because we come from the same state and speak the same language and have a common culture,'' says Kalimuddin.

Indeed it could be said that India's pavement dwellers have a better sense of community spirit than well-to-do folk who live in posh colonies but often do not even acknowledge each other's presence.

Many of the pavement dwellers are, like Kalimuddin or Jaswinder, economic refugees who have had to leave their villages because of diminishing returns from tilling the land, failure of crops or natural disasters. Illiterate and uncomprehending of the ways of cities these villagers settle down to existences which are worse than the ones they left behind. Often the only comfort they get in times of trouble comes from each other.

It has been argued that this sense of community spirit could easily be tapped to involve them in the planning and management of shelters or other arrangements. According to voluntary agencies, when asked, footpath dwellers readily agree to cooperate in the management of night-shelters if only these could be built for them by the government.

But for that the government has to, first of all, officially acknowledge the presence of pavement dwellers.

(Inter Press Service)

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