Backpage

Between the ‘from squalor to splendour’ initiative of Minister Jagmohan and the ‘hullabol’ against the proposed demolition drive announced by former PM V.P. Singh, we are well and truly into the silly season.

Jagmohan provides strong competition to Murli Manohar Joshi as the favourite dartboard character for the liberal-left intelligentsia. Ever since his association with the Turkaman Gate demolitions during the Emergency and his somewhat questionable role as governor of Jammu and Kashmir, the minister has excited strong passions. He comes across essentially as a loner, supremely convinced and thus intransigent about his views. Little wonder that his resolve to clean up Delhi, targeting in particular illegal constructions and encroachments on public land, has many worried.

So while owners of commercial establishments and those living in palatial houses in ‘unauthorised’ colonies like Sainik Farms and Anant Ram Diary, not to speak of the farmhouse owners of Mehrauli, along with their protectors and supporters in the DDA, NDMC, MCD and the political establishment, are apprehensive about the potential loss of investment (and illegal earnings), since the minister’s drive is equally directed against unauthorized slums and JJ settlements, the votaries of the urban poor too are up in arms.

This is where the erstwhile Mandal messiah steps in. Returning to the political scene after a long self- imposed hibernation, V.P. Singh has decided to target slum and pavement dwellers as his new chosen constituency. No demolition without appropriate rehabilitation and alternative residential sites is the new slogan.

In itself, this standoff is as old as the planned development of the city. On paper, at least, Delhi, like most cities, is to be ‘developed’ as per a master plan. Not only are areas and sites earmarked for designated purposes – commercial, residential, parks and green areas, recreational – we have agencies to oversee proper implementation. The fly in the ointment is the plethora of rules and regulations, usually incomprehensible and self-contradictory, which not only create a huge leeway for interpretation (creative freedom) and potential margins for rule enforcers, but force ‘honest and rule abiding’ citizens into illegality.

Slums are a totally different matter, reflective not only of the relative absence of earmarked land at appropriate pricing for poorer citizens but also of the needs of new migrants pulled in by the opportunities of the city. Many have nowhere else to squat since already built-up areas are much too expensive and planned cities have no free space for fresh colonisation. The most convenient sites are thus unoccupied public spaces – roads, lands designated as green areas, alongside railway tracks, river bed and nullahs – preferably where the squatters can tap public services (water, electricity) and be close to places of work.

Efforts at slum clearance (as distinct from improvements via regularization and upgradation of services) are caught in a double bind. At one level, it is apparent that most slum dwellers have no viable alternative. They are in the main poor and hardworking citizens exercising a strategy of survival while rendering valuable and needed services to the city at low cost. Classifying them as illegal and slums as breeding grounds for pestilence and crime is unwarranted.

On the other, since they are ‘ unauthorised’, weak and insecure they are forced to seek patronage (as also suffer extortion) and often form part of a criminal/mafia operation to colonise public land which can subsequently be regularised and turned to alternative uses. Inaction, thus, is not merely a humanitarian ‘live and let live’ policy; it feeds into the growing power of land sharks operating in cahoots with corrupt officialdom and unscrupulous politicians.

Just as Jagmohan’s drive, not just to beautify the city but to re-impose a regime of law, can be criticized for being insensitive to the plight of the urban poor denied citizen rights, V.P. Singh’s ‘hullabol’ too comes across as populist rhetoric. Cynics, of course, claim that he is foregrounding the poor only to stymie any action to regulate the city; that it even weakens the drive against the elite wrong doers. The greater tragedy is that despite decades of experience with such stand-offs, neither the state nor civil society organizations have managed to evolve a process that could meaningfully accommodate diverse needs and expectations.

As long as cities represent opportunities for advancement, they will attract migrants, whatever the difficulties they face in the demanding environment. Swifter development of non-metropolitan areas will no doubt help. That, however, should not be an excuse to shy away from institutionalising a consultative process that grants to the poor the rights of equal citizenship. The alternative is both chaos and barbarism.

Harsh Sethi