The people of the Hanuman Masdoor slum have enough to worry about already. If the women work at all they are poorly paid cleaners. Most of the men are scavengers, gleaning a pitiful living from recycling the waste of Delhi? 14 million inhabitants. Raw sewage flows past the homes ?built over an open drain in the west of the city ?and children play amid the rubbish and flies.
Now the 1,000 families who live in the shantytown have fresh problems. The national government has announced an unprecedented initiative: mapping India? slums.
Though ministers claim the scheme will make life better for slum-dwellers, the inhabitants of Hanuman Masdoor are worried.
Supporters of the plan say it will allow municipal authorities to provide basic utilities where they are lacking and plan education and health services. But critics say the data gathered by the survey, almost certainly the biggest of its kind anywhere, will simply open up new opportunities for India? notoriously aggressive land mafia.
The plan is ambitious. According to official statistics, one-貞eventh of India? urban population live in shantytowns. In cities such as Mumbai the proportion is much higher.
The country? slums ?the result of huge influxes from poverty-stricken rural areas into the cities ?have seen anarchic and unplanned growth.
Using detailed images shot from satellites, the government aims to establish once and for all where India? slums are and how many people live in them.
The plan is the brainchild of Indian Minister of State for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Kumari Selja and will use technology developed by the Indian Space Research Organization.
?ost of the time the plans are based on projections rather than hard data,?she told reporters last week. ?e plan to map the whole country so that we know about the slums in each city.?br />
A key aim, the minister said, would be to map the ?on-notified?or unofficial slums.
However, Ramendra Kumar of the Delhi Sramek Segathan organization, which works with slum dwellers across India, said that the survey could serve only two purposes: to benefit the property developers by showing where potentially vacant land was or to show ?here slums are illegal and justify the forced relocation of inhabitants.?br />
Such expulsions have been going on for many years ?the giant Dharavi slum in Mumbai, made famous by the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, has been the subject of successive bids to relocate some or all of its estimated 800,000 inhabitants ?which have accelerated in recent weeks with the approach of the Commonwealth Games to be held in India in October.
In a bid to clean up Delhi, local authorities have intensified a program of razing slums in the center of the city or clearing them from roadsides on key routes.
The Hanuman Masdoor slum, built like an estimated two-thirds of such communities on public land, lies alongside the road leading from the center of Delhi to the international airport.
Last month bulldozers arrived with no warning to demolish a 5m wide strip of houses along one side to clear space for advertising hoardings that will hide the ragged shantytown from passing traffic.
Ka Tanana Nair, who chairs the community council, said that she had been assured by municipal engineers that the slum was not scheduled for demolition. She remained unconvinced, however.
? have been here 20 years. Once we had nothing. No water, no electricity, just wooden shelters. Now we have all that and solid homes too,?she said. ?ut there are slums nearby that have been demolished, so now we are worried.?br />
According to Kumar, more than 300 slums have been relocated in recent years, but only half of the 250,000 people that he estimates have been forcibly moved have been found new homes.
Selja has fueled fears by saying that the new satellite mapping initiative will allow the government to take ?imely?action ?hile relocating slum-dwellers to places closer to their work,?though she added that the campaign would also allow authorities to ?lub two slums into one and free up land.?br />
The minister was not available for an interview last week.
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