WUNRN
Attached is the Report of the former
UN Special Rapporteur on Housing, on Women & Adequate Housing, which
includes multiple issues on the vulnerabilities of women from homelessness
and inadequate housing.
___________________________________________________________________
UN News Centre
India
- UN Expert Sounds Alarm on Dire Situation of New Delhi Homeless
20 January 2010 – A United Nations independent human rights
expert today voiced concern over the deaths of homeless people in India’s
capital from a cold wave, underscoring the need for adequate shelter to protect
them from harsh weather.
“The lives of hundreds of homeless people in India are at risk as temperatures near zero degrees,” said Raquel Rolnik, the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.
Ten homeless people have lost their lives in the past month in New Delhi, while some 100 people have reportedly died in northern India due to the freezing cold over the last few weeks.
The number of homeless people in India has grown since 2007, but the number of shelters for them has plummeted from 46 to 24 in New Delhi, Ms. Rolnik pointed out.
This year’s Commonwealth Games appears to be driving the closing down of shelters in New Delhi, with public authorities evicting homeless people and tearing down their places of residence in spite of the frigid temperatures.
Late last month, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi demolished a temporary night shelter on Pusa Road, leaving 250 people without shelter and allegedly resulting in the deaths of two people. In spite of an order by the Delhi High Court on 7 January requesting the immediate restoration of the shelter and the protection of the uprooted families, authorities have yet to help them.
A further 400 people were evicted from an area they were using as shelter at Pul Mitahi, where many construction workers for the Commonwealth Games and Dalit families were living.
Ms. Rolnik, who reports to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, welcomed the Delhi High Court’s ruling and urged authorities to “halt the demolition of homeless shelters, to provide immediate assistance and adequate shelter to the affected persons, and not to evict homeless persons in the winter, on humanitarian grounds.”
________________________________________________________________________
----- Original Message -----
From: WUNRN
ListServe
To: WUNRN ListServe
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 5:55 PM
Subject: India - Homelessness - Invisibility - Arrests - Homeless
Women & Children in India
WUNRN
INDIA - HOMELESS WOMEN & CHILDREN
Street-Side Story
Though the homeless exist in large numbers, society tries to render them invisible, says a recent study on homelessness in four Indian cities. Arpan Tulsyan reports on the findings.
04
June 2008
- If Census 2001 figures are anything to go by, India has about two million homeless
people. But that number in itself is under-reported, given the lacunae in
enumeration procedures. Surveys by various non-government agencies and even
certain autonomous branches of government bodies reveal that this figure is at
odds with the ground situation.
Not
only are there gaping holes in the procedures followed for gathering statistics
concerning the homeless, but the official definition of the word also leaves
much to be desired. Negative public perceptions about the homeless, created by
media portrayals, have also adversely impacted policy decisions about
homelessness in this country.
A recent
study titled Living Rough; Surviving City Streets, conducted over
2006-07 by the New Delhi-based Centre for Equity Studies, shows that though the
homeless exist in our country in large numbers, the society at large tries to
render them invisible, and shockingly, attempts to blame the homeless for their
situation. The study, which was supported by the Planning Commission, explored
the realities of homeless life in four Indian cities: Delhi, Chennai, Patna and
Madurai. Three hundred and forty respondents were interviewed for the study.
The
invisibles
According to
the official definition, the word homeless is used for people who do not live
in a 'census house', such a house being described as a 'structure with a roof'.
This description does not consider people who live in makeshift arrangements,
shelter homes, or deplorable housing conditions. Besides, the government's
official surveys are conducted in the day, when it's difficult to trace the
homeless. The quality of data suffers also because the homeless themselves are
wary of persons in authority, or in this case, census enumerators. This should
partly explain why various reports on homelessness in India present figures
strikingly different from official ones.
A report of
the non-government organisation Action Aid in 2003 estimated that the total
homeless population in India is 78 million. Micro-estimates indicate a
similarly high rate of homelessness in Indian towns and cities. In Delhi, the
Delhi Development Authority says that at least 1,40,000 people, or about a per
cent of the population, is homeless. In Chennai, a civil society survey in 2003
found that the number of homeless people was twice the official estimate, and
stood at 40,500.
Compounding
the problem is the lack of proper analytical tools to identify and locate the
homeless. In fact, lack of relevant information is the main reason behind
perceptions about the homeless, which are "largely false", as Suzzane
Speak and Graham Tipple from Global Urban Research Unit, University of
Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK, note in their study on the homeless in nine
countries, including India. This UK-based Department for International
Development's study, titled Perceptions, Persecution and Pity: The
Limitations of Interventions for Homelessness, was conducted from 2001 to
2003. Negative perceptions have influenced policy makers and silenced the
political voices of the homeless, Gerald Daly, a faculty member of Canada's
York University, writes in Migrants and Gatekeepers: The Links between
Immigration and Homelessness in Western Europe, an article published in Cities,
volume 13, February 1996.
Blaming
the victim
Their
'homelessness' makes the homeless more visible than the rest of the poor, and
thus, more offensive to public sensibilities. Consider what a police official
in Patna has to say in the study: "Everybody has a house somewhere or the
other. They are all lying. They are responsible for their poverty. There is no
scarcity of work opportunity. There is a scarcity of people who are willing to
work. These people are lazy." While such labelling may be convenient for
the rest of the society, the study shows that homelessness is caused by extreme
poverty, unavailability of low cost housing, unstable employment, unemployment
and destitution or family abuse.
In the
study, about 46 per cent of the people reported extreme poverty as the primary
reason for homelessness. Most of these people have migrated in search of
livelihoods, but urban centres offer only irregular, uncertain employment.
Besides, urban areas come with an attendant set of problems: the cost of living
is much higher than in rural areas; there are no community support systems; and
they have to pay for everything, including water and toilets, which are free in
rural areas.
Some
respondents said they could not afford to rent a house (the highest such
incidences were reported from Chennai). The reasons cited were absence of
low-cost housing in cities and the pressure to save and send money home. A
United Nations Development Programme concept note prepared for a project on
strategies for urban poverty reduction, being implemented since November 2003,
stated that 95 per cent of legal urban space was used and kept for the benefit
of the most privileged five per cent of the city population.
Rampant
corruption in the system ensures that this situation remains unchanged. The
most recent example is in the city of Bangalore, which has woken up to a land
scam by its development authority. The land meant for building affordable
housing was sold to VIPs and politicians who faked eligibility (as reported in
the television channel NDTV on May 20, 2008).
Criminalising
the homeless
Under Indian
laws, homeless beggars are treated as criminals and booked under various
beggary laws. The Bombay Beggary Prevention (1959) Act defines beggars as
anyone soliciting alms and who have 'no visible means of subsistence',
including those who sell small articles at traffic lights and other public
places. When penalised, beggars or homeless persons have to face hearings at a
special court and may be sent to an institution, or can bail themselves out by
paying money.
In Delhi,
the homeless are most scared of a van called Seva Kuteer. This van rounds up
the homeless and beggars and they are put in beggars' jails for up to three
years. The children at the railway station call the days of raids as 'chhapa
din', literally meaning days of raids, and escape from the station as quickly
as they can whenever these occur, writes Harsh Mander, director of the Centre
for Equity Studies and the author of the consolidated report on homelessness in
four cities, in the study.
The study
found that 15 per cent of the respondents in Delhi were arrested for living on
the streets, 14 per cent for begging, and 5.5 per cent for other crimes. In
Chennai, 5 per cent reported being arrested for living on the streets or
begging, and 6 per cent for other crimes, whereas Madurai reported 7 per cent
being arrested for begging, and 8.5 per cent for sex work and other reasons. In
Patna, 7 per cent of the respondents were arrested for living on streets, and
two men for begging. This is likely to be a significant underestimate, because
of the stigma of arrest, both for crimes and for begging that homeless people
themselves carry, Mander writes in the study.
When a chief
minister or any VIP passes through an area, the homeless on those streets are
driven away. The homeless in Chennai say this happens for about four to five
times a year. A homeless man from Patna, who sleeps in Gandhi Maidan, says in
the study: "We get beaten up badly for sleeping here." The cruelty
with which homeless are evicted from their makeshift houses is narrated by a
homeless woman in Patna: "Halla Gardi (literally commotion, here used to
refer to bulldozer) displaces us. When the administration pulls down houses, it
also throws away our food and breaks our worldly belongings. They kick at our
chulla and bring it down. The bamboo is torn. Suitcases are thrown away. They
abuse us. What can we do? We have to stay here so we keep mum."
Homeless
people are also more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of a crime.
Not only are they robbed of their meagre possessions and savings, but women and
children are also more prone to sexual assault, most of which is committed by
persons in authority, say Speak and Tipple in their study. An anxious homeless
woman, living on the pavement with her five children and husband who works as a
construction labourer in Patna, says, "There are lots of dangers, lots of
thieves are around who pick up our stuff and run away. Goons come to threaten
us. One person from our group stays up at night. Only after five in the morning
can we relax."
Most
homeless people are not beggars. The study found that just about 28 per cent of
the homeless live on mendicancy. Most beggars were old widows and persons with
disabilities. As Madurai is considered a hospitable temple city, and as charity
is high on the agenda of pilgrims, the city had the highest number of
destitutes (90 per cent live on charity), followed closely by Patna that had a
significant number of leprosy patients. Adult, able-bodied beggars were mostly
unemployed people who were also looking for work. A few daily wage labourers
too begged on the days when work was unavailable.
The study
found that most homeless were working for long hours in difficult jobs to earn
their daily food. About half of the sample population were working as casual
wage labourers or in unstable occupations like rickshaw-pulling, construction
labour, shoe polishing, performing on the roads, and rag-picking. These were
largely the options available to men. Among women, about 10.5 per cent worked
as domestic helps, and 3 per cent were home makers. Due to acute hardships,
some homeless reported taking recourse to extreme ways of earning income, like
'renting of body' (about 2 per cent reported commercial sex work), and 'sale of
body parts' (6.57 per cent, though in Patna, 13 per cent of the respondents
were professional blood donors). It is important to note that most of them were
women.
On the
street, still a family
A common
though erroneous notion is that homeless people are extremely mobile, and
largely social isolates, say Speak and Tipple in their study. Even if some
percentage of the homeless moves frequently, a large number of them are stable,
sleep in the same locations and have mutually supportive arrangements. V
Dupont, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Research for Development
in France, illustrates in his 1998 seminar presentation titled Mobility Pattern
and Economic Strategies of Houseless People in Old Delhi, that many handcart
pullers of Old Delhi cook, eat and sleep in the same area, thus also providing
security to each other.
Most
homeless migrants, who come to cities in groups, belong to the same village or
caste groups. About 24 per cent of them even have adopted relatives on the
street. Saroja and Rampyari, two homeless widows in Delhi without families,
decided to adopt each other as mother and daughter. A street boy in Delhi
adopted a disabled old man as his grandfather: he would carry him for long
distances on his back, and save the money he earned by rag-picking to pay for
his food and medicines. Street boys tend to live in gangs, sharing everything -
food, clothes and intoxicants - and teach each other trades such as rag-picking
and recycling drinking water bottles. They protect each other from street
violence and the police, and feed each other in sickness, says Mander in the
study.
Almost all
migrants maintain regular contact with their families in the village, send
money home and often go back in times of needs and festivals. This is true even
for many widows and leprosy patients, who visit their families occasionally.
Myths
about mental health
It's
perceived that most homeless are mentally ill or emotionally unsound. However,
the study found that only 1.47 per cent of respondents were suffering from
mental illness, and all were from Delhi. Most had healthy minds and did not
show any signs of psychological disorders. Moreover, mental illness could be a
result of homelessness, rather than the cause. Speak and Tipple write,
"The vast majority of even the most destitute of street dwellers must be
emotionally robust in order to construct the complex strategies by which they
survive."
While many
feel pity for those on the streets and consider them helpless and unfortunate,
Speak and Tipple's study states that some street children provided for
themselves better than their parents could. Remaining homeless was often an
economic decision, a strategy to survive at a low expense in the city, so that
some money could be saved to sent back home. As Mander writes, the study found
that 23.25 per cent of the respondents in Delhi, 7.5 per cent in Chennai, and
13.4 per cent in Madurai were sending money home. In the category of homeless
people who did not send money home, the majority were children, many of whom
had disengaged their ties with their families.
A burden
on infrastructure?
The homeless
are considered to be a burden on civic infrastructure. A Delhi Municipal
Corporation official is quoted in the study as saying, "Almost all of them
[the homeless] use illegal electricity connections and we are unable to check
them." A police official in Chennai shares a similar opinion in the study:
"There are many problems due to homeless people. They cause traffic jams
and accidents. They bathe, wash and do everything else on the roads. In all
these ways, they are a disturbance to the public."
Facilities
such as toilets, bathrooms and water are not easily accessible to the homeless.
Each such service that a homeless person needs has to be paid for, and in cash.
Having to pay often means that they must relieve themselves in the open, bathe
less frequently or in the open/behind plastic covers, and access unclean water
through public taps, leaking pipelines, or from petty dhabas where they eat. A
homeless construction worker in Patna says, "We go to the radio station
(building) to bathe. If we have trouble, we name our contractor. If we don't
take his name, then we will not be let in. We will be beaten up with a stick
and will be chased away."
The study
found that while 55 per cent of homeless people use community toilets, over 20
per cent relieve themselves in open spaces. A similar proportion bathes in
community pay facilities, whereas around 24 per cent bathe at public toilets.
Due to the prices that are often prohibitive for them, only 35 per cent bathed daily,
says the study.
Night
shelters, the only government scheme meant for the homeless, hardly offer any
benefits. The Delhi Municipal Corporation runs 17 night shelters, of which none
are exclusively for women. Two of these night shelters have a room each for
women, but they do not feel safe there. Moreover, these shelters charge Rs 6
for 12 hours of stay. In Patna, a Housing and Urban Development Corporation
official says that despite the availability of funds, no new shelter has been
constructed in the past three years, even as existing ones become
non-operational. Moreover, the conditions of night shelters seem to be
appalling.
Perceptions
and policies
More
research is required to assess the impact of negative perceptions on the
homeless, their social interactions and on public policy. However, some of
these aspects have been investigated. The perception of the homeless as
criminals makes their arrest and harassment official and justifiable. It
devalues their contribution to the informal sector, and leads to lower payments
and livelihood insecurities.
As the
homeless are seen as dirty and unkempt, this image is used to legitimise their
eviction from their makeshift arrangements. Termed as transient, and thereby
difficult to trace, they are not given voter identity or ration cards that
require 'address proofs'. As a result, they are excluded from the benefits of
citizenship. Instead of targeting homelessness, it's the homeless who are
targeted in this country for no reason.
Arpan
Tulsyan
04 Jun 2008
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