Under the heat of the scorching sun, 17-year-old Pinky Pal was going through the rubble that used to be her family home. Days before, demolition crews had razed her community to the ground, and many families were now using makeshift tents as shelter. Pal’s father had made one for their family as well, and he was taking a nap in it after a long, hectic day working as an e-rickshaw driver. Pal, however, was determined to salvage as much as she could get her hands on from what was left of their former house, especially their household appliances and utensils.
In mid July, following a Supreme Court order, the Municipal Corporation of Faridabad (MCF) had crews demolish Pal’s house along with hundreds of others in the slum village called Khori, located on the Delhi-Haryana border. The order left the lives of an estimated 100,000 residents, among them some 20,000 children and 5,000 pregnant or breastfeeding women, in limbo — and exposed to a virus that has had governments across the globe in panic.
At the time, India was still in its second wave of coronavirus infections. At the wave’s peak, the country’s daily COVID-19 tally touched the half a million cases per day mark. Between 1 March and 14 July, India recorded 254,000 deaths due to COVID-19. By 21 August, the official COVID-19 death count was 434,000, although independent analysis indicates that the real number could be much higher.
Scientists and doctors in the meantime say that the second wave is not over for India which, as of 12 August, was still witnessing over 33.000 COVID-19 cases daily. Yet as India and the rest of the world struggle to contain the spread of the deadly virus, thousands of residents in Khori have had one more to add to their pile of worries: homelessness.
“Government doesn’t think about the poor, they are saying ‘don’t venture out, COVID will kill you,’” Pal wailed in the midst of the rubble. “Now they have destroyed our houses, where was COVID?”
“We do not have anywhere to go,” the teenager added, crying. “I am in class 11th, everyone is talking about online class. Where will I take classes?”
A resident of one of India’s slums contemplates his future as demolitions of homes in other communities continue. With nowhere to go, they remain vulnerable to the pandemic.
A forest instead of a village
Khori is located on the foothills of the Aravalli ranges, and is under the Faridabad district of the state of Haryana, bordering the national capital, Delhi. The Aravalli ranges constitute a fragile ecological zone spreading across Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, and Gujarat. Covering approximately 40 hectares, Khori is government property; classified as forest land, it is protected by the Punjab Land Preservation Act, which was passed in 1900 and now covers both Haryana and Punjab.
The Haryana state government wants to use the land to grow an urban forest on it, as Haryana has only 3.59 percent of geographical land under forest cover. A recent report by the Hindustan Times says that the Faridabad Metropolitan Development Authority already has a redevelopment plan for the area in the works.
The question, however, is why it is insisting to push through with such plans even though it means throwing thousands of people out of their homes during a pandemic.
Last year, the Supreme Court of India had also ordered the demolition of 48,000 jhuggis (makeshift houses) along the railway tracks in Delhi. But the central government deferred any immediate action, telling the court that the decision would displace over 200,000 people in the midst of a pandemic.
The Supreme Court had passed its first order on the Khori case before the first wave of COVID-19 infections began in India. On 19 February 2020, the Court, after hearing a plea filed by MCF, called for the removal of all encroachers in Khori. India’s COVID-19 infection numbers began to rise soon after. Yet, with the order, 1,700 houses were demolished in September 2020, then 300 residential structures in April 2021, followed by other demolition drives.
The Supreme Court reiterated the judgment last April and again in June and set a deadline of six weeks to complete the demolition. The Court also rejected a plea filed by Khori residents to put a stay on the demolition unless the state government resolved the issue of resettlement.
With the court setting a deadline for clearing Khori till 23 August, MCF started a full-fledged demolition drive from 14 July. By the 23rd, the court had given Haryana authorities a two-week extension to continue the removal of the structures.
These days almost all demolition is done. Some Khori settlers have left to rent accommodations elsewhere, but many others like Pal’s family are still there, using tarpaulin and tin sheets to create makeshift shelters.
From bad to worse
Poverty is coercing many residents to live on charity of nearby temples and churches that offer temporary shelters and food. Some residents are even selling bricks from the remains of their houses to make ends meet.
Residents of Khori are mainly informal workers, making a living as rickshaw drivers, domestic helpers, guards, and day laborers. Even before their homes were destroyed, Khori residents were already having a tough time surviving and only eating two meals a day. Cleanliness — or the lack thereof — was also a nagging problem, as lack of information and resources forced residents to live in unhygienic conditions.
With the pandemic, many of them were also rendered without work; as per estimates, 80 percent of workers in the informal sector lost jobs during lockdown (of which India has had at least one nationwide last year, with many local governments declaring their own afterward).
Ishita Chatterjee, a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, says that during the nationwide lockdown last year, the “closure of the state border had an immediate impact on commuting as most residents worked in Delhi, Gurgaon, and Noida and many had no personal transport.”
“Lack of savings to cushion the health and economic disruptions due to COVID-19 has deeply impacted residents,” she adds.
Chatterjee observes as well: “Since many residents have documents of Delhi, assistance provided by the Haryana government couldn’t reach them as they were ineligible. Distress card tokens were issued to those who had no ration card by the Haryana government, but these too couldn’t reach them. They had to rely on NGOs and local gurdwaras (Sikh temples) for help.”
And while there are no official data on the COVID-19 caseload in Khori village, Chatterjee says that those infected with the virus most likely went untreated and unreported as “access to hospitals was limited due to mobility problems, high expense, and lack of hospital beds.” During the second wave, she says, “they were neither able to get admission into hospitals nor access oxygen cylinders.”
Harsh eviction
Residents say that police personnel often entered their houses and threatened to take action amid the pandemic. After the demolition order was issued, activists and residents who dared raise a protest were beaten up by Haryana police. Journalists were barred from covering the demolitions as well.
“These people are poor, they at least deserve dignity, which was denied to them,” says Chatterjee. “Their privacy was violated, and this prolonged battle for saving their home left a huge toll on their mental well-being.”
Locals take to the streets to protest the Supreme Court of India order for the demolition of 48,000 jhuggis, or makeshift houses, along the railroad tracks in Delhi in 2020. Central government deferred action in consideration of over 200,000 people who would be displaced during the pandemic. In Khori village this year, however, there is no such stay for its residents.
Newsclick journalist Sumedha Pal, who has been covering this issue, says, “From my work on the ground, the residents state that they are in deep despair over the evictions and the violence, police brutality, and state apathy. Electricity and water supplies were snapped for over a month leading up to the evictions. Moreover, multiple detentions and arrests were made, creating an atmosphere of fear. The way in which the process was carried out had glaring issues, with residents being made to feel dispensable and dehumanized.”
The bit of good news is that MCF has finally devised a resettlement plan for Khori residents, who will be allotted EWS (Economically Weaker Section) houses in Dabua Colony and Bapu Nagar, which is at around 15km from their current location. Newsclick reported, however, that MCF has yet to give tenders for repair work on the EWS flats, which also would not be ready to accommodate any resettler for at least the next six months.
In addition, to be eligible for resettlement, the Khori residents must meet certain conditions. First, an applicant household should have an annual income of up to IDR 300,000 (about US$4,040). Second, the head of the family must have his name in the voter list for Badkhal Assembly constituency as of 1 January 2021. Third, either the head of the family must have an identity card issued by the Government of Haryana as of 1 January 2021 or any member of the family must have an electricity connection issued by the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam.
In an article for the Indian Express, Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli, senior researchers at Center for Policy Research, note, “The Khori residents have been repeatedly vilified as ‘forest encroachers’ even though most of them have some documentation to show that they were sold small plots of land. But no government agency has bothered to check the documents and trace under whose patronage an entire settlement of nearly 10,000 houses came up on public land.”
“Nobody here came overnight, people have been living here for more than 10 years,” a Khori resident also says. “I have been living here since 2004; some have been living here since 2001, 2002. For many years nothing happened, but in the last six months they demolished our basti (settlement) twice. Where should we go?”●
Mayank Jain Parichha is a journalist based in India who covers socio-political issues. He is currently studying religious deras (or residential sites of religious leaders).
