Man on the street

It’s 1.30 on a freezing January morning. A battered Maruti Eeco pulls up next to the pavement under the Govindpuri flyover in south Delhi. Three men jump out of the van and tug at Dileep’s worn-out blanket, still damp from last week’s rains. “No sleeping under flyovers. Chalo, chalo, night shelter chalo,” says Nitesh Kumar, project coordinator at Society for the Promotion of Youth and Masses (SPYM). Dileep sits up and shakes his head. His companions on the pavement — a lone man and a family — also refuse to budge. Nothing convinces them to move, neither the comfort of a warm blanket, nor a roof over their heads or even the prospect of hot tea and rusk for breakfast. Clutching his worldly possessions — all of two plastic bags — Dileep asserts all is well where he is. What he means is that he still has a quarter of Havaldar whiskey and two bananas left to see him through the night. “Kitna piya hai? (How much have you drunk?)” Kumar asks. Four quarters, Dileep says, holding up five fingers.

In a lane behind the Kalkaji temple, also in south Delhi, VK Rathore from Chhapra, Bihar, too has claimed a patch of the pavement as his own. A BSc in Biology, he is now a “full-time sharaabi (alcoholic) just like Amitabh Bachchan”. Don’t be a policeman with me, he warns us, before rattling off his other ‘home’ addresses — a bus stop at Modi Mills, a cosy spot across the Lotus temple. As the van approaches the Moolchand Hospital flyover, Sriram Gupta simply breaks into a run. Anywhere but a night shelter, he hollers. For Kumar and his team at SPYM, which manages 67 rain baseras (night shelters) in the city, this is business as usual.

No roof overhead

According to the 2011 Census, 1.77 million people in India are homeless, with homeless families forming 28 per cent of this. Delhi, with a population of 16.7 million, has nearly one per cent living on its streets. However, this number is contested. The Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) claims 18,805 people are homeless, the Census puts the number at 46,724, and according to surveys by NGOs, there are at least 1.5 lakh homeless people, that is, one per cent of the total population. Some reports also indicate that more than 100 homeless people have died this winter. While the agencies sharply differ over numbers, they agree that people are too reluctant to leave the streets. “One of our biggest problems is to convince the homeless people to move to rain baseras. They somehow prefer to sleep under flyovers, at railway platforms and on pavements,” says Kumar. With over 90 flyovers in the Capital and several record-breaking minimum temperatures this winter, the issue has caught the attention of the Lieutenant-Governor, the Supreme Court and High Court and even the PMO.

On January 23, from 10pm to 4am, we accompanied Kumar’s team as the rescue van skirted past pavements and flyovers in south Delhi, scanning for the homeless, prodding blankets, disturbing sleeping shadows. Simultaneously, several other rescue vans were operating in other parts of the city, picking people off the streets, depositing them at nearby shelters. That night only 10 people were rescued. Many refused. If some said “jua lag jaayega (we’ll get lice)”, many others feared robbery. Some had moved earlier, only to return to the streets. Satyanarayan, couched under the Okhla flyover, said he couldn’t move without his adopted strays, Sheru and Kaalu. Two elderly ladies, who had homes in Kalkaji, were keeping a nightly vigil over their sons’ flower shops near the temple. Drug addiction is another major deterrent. “Forty per cent of the homeless are drug addicts and prefer to stay outside,” says DUSIB member (Finance) Ashish Joshi. “Addicts often sell blankets donated by citizens for money to buy drugs.” DUSIB has approached the High Court to police several night shelters, including those in Nizamuddin, Bangla Sahib and the Yamuna Pushta areas.

On a high

Seven-year-old Suleiman is addicted to white ink. During one inspection, Joshi had found the boy slouched in a corner of the children’s shelter near Jama Masjid, sniffing a handkerchief soaked in the fluid. The shelter houses nearly 20 male children aged between six and 20. While drugs flow freely, meals are hard to come by. Most children in the shelter have no memory of their families, and many refuse to go to school. Even in the shelters at Nizamuddin and Bangla Sahib in central Delhi, which are located adjacent to police stations, the dargah and the gurudwara, drug cartels operate with impunity. For children and adults who want to quit their addictions, options are few. “There are 32 drug de-addiction centres officially, but only three are operational,” says Indu Prakash Singh, executive member, Shahri Adhikari Manch: Begharon Ke Saath.

In the inaugural session of Parliament, after the new government was formed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi set an ambitious target — every Indian must have a house by 2022. That’s easier said than done. Nearly 4.5 lakh homeless families (Census 2011) in the country need accommodation, that is, around 55,000 houses must be built every year. More than a quarter of the total homeless population in urban India lives in the top five metros. “According to the Delhi Master Plan, around 19 lakh sqft of space is needed to house the homeless in shelters. We have about 2.44 lakh sqft in shelter space currently, which means a deficit of 87 per cent,” says Singh, who has worked with the homeless for over a decade.

Outside Jama Masjid’s Gate No.2, as night falls, pilgrims, workers, homeless persons and migrants occupy the steps leading to the mosque, jostling for space, fighting over blankets. “Currently, we have 256 shelters, out of which 13 are exclusively for families, 20 for children, 19 for women and two for differently abled persons. A majority are permanent, 111 are porta-cabins, 37 are tents, nine are in DDA community centres and two at metro stations,” says Joshi. On an average night, around 200 homeless persons are rescued from the streets of Delhi.

Baby Hamza was born in the first week of January in the Jama Masjid night shelter, when her mother Shehzadi couldn’t get to the hospital. On the neighbouring bed, Shakeela lies with her child, weak with illness. A domestic worker, she was forced to flee her workplace in Mumbai. “They made me work from 4am to 11pm, without a break. They owe me ₹9,000 for a month’s work,” she says. Across the city, people from all walks of life have moved into rain baseras. If some are domestic workers looking for jobs, some have run away from abusive husbands. Some are drunks; some are migrant workers, building the Metro. Few have steady jobs or identity proofs, and only a few children go to school.

Yet, 40-year-old Kamla Gopalchari stands out in this assorted multitude, drawn largely from the poorer classes. “I am Kamla Gopalchari, very glad to meet you,” she greets us in English at the Bangla Sahib women’s shelter. She hails from Mumbai, where until recently she lived with her younger sister in a two-room flat at Shivaji Park. A Bachelor of Arts, she was a teacher at a local school. For the last seven months, she has been living at the shelter, eating one square meal a day at the gurudwara, fighting a case with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). How did a middle-class, well-educated person with earning capacity end up here, we ask. Evicted from her Mumbai flat by “Shiv Sena thugs” in 2007, Gopalchari’s life took an unforeseen turn, as her sister and she moved to the streets of Hyderabad, then to a state-run hospital ward in Amritsar. In 2012, sister Pushpa died of an illness at the hospital. Accusing the hospital of negligence and misdiagnosis, she filed a 28-page complaint with the NHRC in November 2013; her file is still under process with no hearing scheduled yet. At the shelter too, Gopalchari is an outspoken protester. She writes regular complaints, detailing verbal abuse among the women, robberies, and the misconduct of shelter officials. Fifteen-year-old Vaishnavi, who occupies the blanket next to her, is her only friend. Vaishnavi, whose mother ran away from home, has recently returned to school, joining Class V. Tumko kaunsa subject sabse achcha lagta hai, we ask her. “Karela,” she says, with a wide grin. “I have started giving her tuitions in English, Math and Hindi for free,” says Gopalchari, as she gently nudges Vaishnavi and clarifies, “They asked subject and not vegetable.”

With two shiny trunks, where she keeps her four saris and documents, Gopalchari is now resigned to a semi-permanent residence here. “I never wanted to leave Mumbai. My belongings are still there. But until this case is resolved, I won’t leave.” If her story tells us how precarious life can be, for others like Bihari babu Rathore, the street is the only reliable home. “Come find me anytime,” he says. “I’m available 24 hours.”