Mirage Housing: Is this housing for slumdwellers?

The Indian Constitution, through an interpretation of Article 21, gives us each the right to life - shelter, food, water, education, a means of livelihood. In a landmark judgement in 1997 in the Nawab Khan case (originally filed twenty-one years earlier), the Supreme Court ruled that notice has to be given before the residents of slums are evicted, and alternate accommodation has to be provided.

It also put the onus on the government to devise schemes for inexpensive, subsidised or concessional housing for the poor and deprived, and to give land for them to build on, not far, if possible, from their original habitats and places of work. The most flaunted scheme to come of this was the Indira Awas Yojana.

The Nawab Khan case referred to a gentleman in Ahmedabad, so in 1998 the municipal corporation passed an order granting 25 sq m of land to any jhopadpatti facing demolition as long as the residents could prove that they were there from earlier than 1976. (Wouldn’t many of them be dead leaving behind multiplying families?)
As the AMC passed from the Congress to BJP, the rules and regulations and orders kept changing. Activists brought stays against demolitions and fought all the way to the Supreme Court to stay the demolitions.

Fast forward to the NDA government’s last innings and the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. A sum of Rs500 crore was given to the city to build 20,000 homes in four-storey buildings — two rooms, kitchen, bathroom, toilet, covering 36 sq yards, with proportionately small financial inputs by the state and the city, and by the would-be owner.

Having visited dozens of broken-down and fear-filled jhopadpattis during my campaign, I decided to file an RTI to find out what, if anything had happened to this.

To my question as to how many of these homes had been built, how the Rs500 crore had been used and who the homes were assigned to, I was told only that a total of 16,244 homes had been built. No one would say who the owners were — “People were asked to fill in forms with Rs1,000 and we drew lots. Those were assigned homes”. What about the Rs500 crore? They had no record of having received it, but we were informed that each unit cost Rs1,78,000.

I decided to go and check out these homes, how big they were and who lived in them. Our first stop was Murlidhar Awas. The buildings look dirty and dank from the outside. We knocked on a door. Sangeetaben welcomed us in. There was a single room 10 ft by 13 ft, with an alcove of a toilet and bathroom with no door or door jamb separating it from the tiny single room. Another alcove housed what could be called a kitchen. No storage.

Sangeetaben’s husband earns Rs2,000 to Rs2,500 a month. Her loan instalment for the house is Rs600, AMC tax Rs435, gutter tax Rs160, maintenance Rs100. If the instalment for the mortgage is even a day late, she is charged penal interest.

With the remaining Rs750 or so she must pay her two children’s’ school costs, transport and food for four for a month. Does she have a below poverty line card, I asked. No, the state government does not think she is poor. Why does she not try and put up some shelves? She gave me a pitying look and picked up a hammer and nail. As she hit it into the wall, a chunk of the ‘cement’ fell to the floor.

Who is being hoodwinked? Where should Sangeetaben turn to protest against inhuman, substandard, degrading, degraded, soul-killing facilities that our government has provided her as a citizen of this country? But for the government she is one more tick mark for the website — home provided.