Hazards Centre

shelter

shelter situation in delhi

Housing has been and continues to be one of the key areas of intervention for Hazards Centre. The Centre got involved in housing issues when in early 1999 a few community groups working in unauthorised colonies of Delhi sought our assistance in filing an intervention petition on the issue of regularisation of unauthorised colonies in the High Court of Delhi. At around the same time a number of groups working in slum clusters sought Hazards Centre’s assistance in providing them with research, technical and advocacy inputs in their struggle against eviction and resettlement of slum clusters.

In the course of assisting these groups the Centre realised that the root cause of the problem of housing for the poor in Delhi lies in the utter failure of Delhi Development Authority (DDA) in fulfilling its mandate of providing adequate number of housing units for all sections of Delhi . Moreover the Master Plan of Delhi delegitimises the self-initiative of communities in building their own habitats. This has resulted in over 60 per cent of the population of Delhi living in slum-like conditions in under-serviced settlements. Instead of holding the DDA accountable for its acts of omission and commission and correcting the elitist thrust of the Master Plan the government is on a spree to demolish slum clusters and keep the residents of unauthorised colonies in a state of constant insecurity by not regularising their settlements.

Delhi is not unique in this respect. The situation prevailing in all major cities of the country is almost similar. The National Common Minimum Programme (CMP) of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had made several promises for improving the conditions of the urban poor. In particular, a commitment had been made to the needs of slum dwellers for massive expansion of social housing in the towns and cities. It had also been promised that forced evictions and demolition of slums would be stopped, and the urban poor would be provided housing near their place of occupation.

One and a half years have passed since the CMP was adopted but so far there has been no progress on any of the promises made. The Jawahar Lal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), launched by the Union Government in December 2005 and all recent Master Plans, propose to house the poor through private-public partnerships in multi-storied flats – which is another way of commercialising land that does not sub-serve the need for social housing. At the same time, assaults on the habitat of the urban poor have continued unabated in the last one year, often under court orders, while cut-off dates have ensured that more than half the evicted families have not got alternative plots, in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Lucknow, Indore, Vadodara, and Ahmedabad.

The vision of adequate housing for all remains unachieved despite the fact that:

The Draft National Slum Policy of 2001, which has yet to be ratified by government, had stipulated that no slum would be relocated more than 2 kilometres distant from its original place of habitation, in order to protect the livelihoods of the urban poor.

Most government policies, including that of Delhi , stipulate that in-situ upgradation of slums has to be the first priority in any slum improvement programme. Eviction and relocation are supposed to be resorted to only as a last measure, when the land is required for an over-riding public purpose.

A comprehensive listing of all slums and informal settlements was recommended under the Draft National Slum Policy, but there has been no systematic census of slums and slum-dwellers since 1991, leaving large numbers of the urban poor without any certification of identity or residence.

With reference to the UPA Government’s welcome policy of reviewing the performance of various Ministries, there has been no such review of the nodal Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation, particularly it’s Slum Department.

In the first city Master Plans of the 1960s, the plot size for a family was generally 80 yd 2. However, over the next four decades, this has been arbitrarily reduced to as low as 12.5 m 2, even though the Indian Standard IS 8888 states that the smallest dwelling size in urban areas should not be below 15 m 2, which itself is inadequate.

India has been ratifying its legal obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) since 1966, thereby promising to protect and respect the economic, social and cultural rights of each citizen, including the legal right to adequate housing.

The Indian government accepted the fundamental obligation to protect and improve houses and neighbourhoods, rather than damage or destroy them, when it adopted the United Nations Global Shelter Strategy in 1988to achieve adequate housing for everyone by 2000.

During the 2nd HABITAT Conference in Istanbul in 1996, India was party to the definition that, “Adequate shelter means more than a roof over one's head. It also means adequate privacy; adequate space; physical accessibility; adequate security; security of tenure; structural stability and durability; adequate lighting, heating and ventilation; adequate basic infrastructure, such as water-supply, sanitation and waste-management facilities; suitable environmental quality and health-related factors; and adequate and accessible location with regard to work and basic facilities: all of which should be available at an affordable cost.”

In 2004, at the World Health Organisation’s technical meeting on Housing-Health Indicators, the Indian government accepted the consensus that a family requires a minimum of 60 m 2 of floor space for a dwelling unit. The technical experts clearly stated that they considered less than 8 m² per person to be unacceptable because physical and psychological problems could appear in children.

It is clear from the above that mere policy guidelines are not enough to provide relief to the urban poor. Consequently, we believe that it is a matter of urgency that the Government introduces a National Housing Bill for enactment by Parliament. Such a Bill should include the following provisions:

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