RECLAMATION, NOT BEAUTIFICATION
At least 49 demolition drives were conducted in New Delhi between Apr 1 and Jul 27, with nearly 230 acres of government land being reclaimed, Kaushal Kishore, the junior minister for housing and urban affairs, said in parliament in July.
“No house has been demolished to beautify the city for the G20 summit,” he said.
The demolition of the Janta Camp shanties came as a rude shock for Mohammed Shameem, another resident, who said he thought the “big people” attending the G20 summit would “give something to the poor”.
“The opposite is happening here. Big people will come, sit on our graves and eat,” he said.
For Kumar, who works as a clerk in a Pragati Maidan office, the demolition of his home and the eviction of his family had larger connotations.
“If we relocate from here, my children’s education will also suffer. Here they are able to study because the school is nearby,” he said.
Two of Kumar’s children – five-year-old Srishti and 10-year-old Eshant – attend a government school in the area. His younger daughter, Anokhee, is nine months old.
The family, which also includes Khushboo Devi’s father, had been residing in their shanty for 13 years until they were asked to vacate the land “because the area had to be cleaned”.
“If they have to clean, that does not mean they will remove the poor. If the poor are looking so bad, they can make something nice, put a curtain or a sheet so that the poor are not visible,” Devi told Reuters.
As the bulldozers departed after reducing their homes to rubble, Kumar and his wife began organising their belongings, which lay strewn by the side of the road.
Afterwards, they piled these into a three-wheeler which transported them to their new accommodation – a single room located 10km away, for which they paid a monthly rent of 2,500 rupees (US$30.21).
Their daughter, meanwhile, carefully lifted a peach-coloured dress that had been thrown to the ground, along with everything else that her parents owned, and dusted it off.
Two months later, in August, the family returned to a part of the Janta Camp area that had been spared by the bulldozers, paying a higher rent of 3,500 rupees for a room.
“It was difficult for my children to go to school every day from the place we were staying in earlier. I want them to study and do well, we returned for their sake,” Kumar said.
Source: CNA
