By Sanjay Kumar
As many as 3 million people could be left homeless after the most expensive Commonwealth Games in history, reports Sanjay Kumar from New Delhi.
Durga Sahu is shining tiles outside the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. The swanky Delhi venue is the location for the opening and closing ceremonies of the two-week Commonwealth Games that began this week, an event that was supposed to see India stepping onto the international stage the same way Beijing did when it hosted the 2008 Olympics.
Curious to see how one of the thousands of workers involved in preparing the venues feels about the event, I ask one worker I see while I'm on a guided media visit what he thinks about an extravaganza the government has dubbed the ‘pride of the nation.’
But Sahu doesn’t really want to talk about the Games and I have to press him to respond.
‘What pride are you talking about? This stadium is being built on the graves of poor people like me,’ he says. ‘I want to move away, but where will I go? I have two sons and a daughter to feed and there’s no way I can sustain them without working part-time here as well.’
While much of the international media’s attention in the weeks leading up to the opening ceremony Sunday was on the sometimes woeful conditions of the athletes’ village and speculation was rife over whether the Games might in fact be cancelled, Sahu is just one of an estimated 3 million people who will have been displaced by the time the event closes.
‘I’ve been living in this area behind the stadium since 1968 and have been supporting my family by selling fruits from my cart,’ Sahu says. ‘But they demolished the whole colony and so overnight we were left homeless. I had to send the family back to my village in Orissa.’
He’s far from alone. Among the 3 million are between 1.2 and 1.5 million migrant workers as well as an estimated 100,000 families whose homes were bulldozed to make way for bridges and parking lots needed for the Games.
The colony where Sahu and his family used to live was located near the Sewa Nagar railway crossing that now overlooks the glittering Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. It was home to more than 600 families for decades.
‘Now buses and cars are staying where my home was for more than 30 years. I feel as if some earthquake came and my whole family perished,’ says Mantu Chand, a fruit seller just outside the stadium. He’s been forced to move his family to rented accommodation in Khajuri, some 40 kilometres away in the north-east of the city, where he says he visits them once a week.
Indeed, as I travel around the city, it seems every venue I visit seems to have a story of displacement or destruction attached to it.
‘The Delhi government isn’t removing poverty, it’s removing poor people,’ says Sarita Devi, who saw the Madrasi jhuggi (slum) she lived in near Barapullah Nallah Bridge demolished to make way for a flyover connecting the Games village in the east to venues in Central Delhi.
Photo Credit: Uniphoto Press
View as Single Page
Reddit
Digg
StumbleUpon
Delicious
Technorati
Yahoo
Google
Plurk
shaelja
Your point is right but what else are you going to do except writing here?? You are mixing two point displacements of Poor’s & CWG corruption both needs different debates. Practically you cannot eradicate poverty from any society and if you think that this kind of society exists then it’s called Utopian society.
Because of CWG more than 5 Lakhs jobs has been created, so this is not right to say that only displacement and demolishment is been done.
Also where everybody was when India bid for the CWG 7 years back, why at that time nobody shouted that govt should spend this money on well being of poor.
Well at last want to close by saying …….What is the use of repenting now when the bird has eaten the harvest…
But for future of course one must be cautious
Tony Price
Very wise words. I am a visitor to India for the first time and one thing is obvious – the shanty town people are smiling and laughing and the people on the street look stressed and unhappy.
I gave a mother/child rs100 and she didn’t even smile. the human spirit is strong, but this one was well and truly broken.
I didn’t see this in Goa or Shimla, somehow the Delhi administration should build enough temp/shanty town accomodation to house them. It can’t cost more than a few ounds to build a wooden hut (not high rise concrete rubbish).
As for begging being illegal, only a rich person could criminalise being poor – someone rich with complaint!
Mable
Of course to plan and build up something is not really bad but there should also be a focus over whether there are side effects of it or not!! it is not that urgent or important to build buildings for commonwealth games than the basic needs of those poor people to live!!This is so cruel!! and i must say it is an injustice done to them!! risking and putting them in the mess of their life just for the sake of games!!!??. “foolish!!” on their part.Love the country!!, love the people of the country!! and not the wealth for few rich peoples sake.As I strongly agree with the author and Sarita Devi’s view. “who’s wealth and who’s common?” it seem to be selfish desire of few people dicing the lives of poor people, at the same time Delhi govt is not wiping out poverty but but the poor!!. matter to think!!
If the steps are being taken for the welfare of the country then should be well planned and considering welfare of all.