Hide the Poor: Delhi’s sprint towards “world class” status falls at the first hurdle

Simon Harding

Delhi is hosting the 2010 Commonwealth Games. If you're sitting in front of your PC or laptop back in the UK, then this fact probably escaped you, but here in the Indian capital this upcoming sporting fiesta is big news. “Tiger” the self-explanatory mascot for the games beams gleefully from countless roadside bill boards, accompanied by a colourful seashell-like swirl, which serves as the official logo. Enormous dusty Tata lorries rumble over the flyovers with dirty banners proudly proclaiming “Commonwealth Games 2010. On Duty” draped over their sides. Everyday the papers report new initiatives, policies or projects to clean, reform and generally make Delhi presentable for the athletes and the hoards of foreign visitors expected to flood the city next year.

All this fuss is not unwarranted. The Games do not come cheap and the Delhi Government is splashing out on hundreds of Games related projects. The two main stadiums, J. Nehru and I. Gandhi stadiums are both getting a face-lift; an entire Games Village is being built from scratch on the eastern bank of the Yamuna. Numerous other sporting venues are springing up all over town. There are also many projects which are not directly related to sport, rather to the foreign visitor: the city is in a frenzy of flyover building and swanky areas like Khan Market and the Janpath are in line for refurbishment. The bill for all this is said to be around $2 billion, but in recent months this figure has been inching ever higher. Games Organising Committee chairman, Suresh Kalmadi announced the $2 billion figure only to give a different, substantially higher of Rs.10,505 crore (about $2.28b) a few days later in front of a different audience. Whatever the final cost, Delhi will be spending far more than the Rs.550 crore it shelled out for the 1982 Asia Games (already adjusted for inflation).

So why this bank breaking effort? The answer is that the Delhi Government wants its city to play a bigger part in free market India and it’s prepared to speculate to accumulate. Encouraged by the recent emergence of Mumbai as a financial services centre following efforts by the city fathers to make the place more business friendly – to “Shanghi Mumbai” as their PR campaign put it, Delhi wants its slice of the financial pie. The Delhi Government talks of a “world class city” with good infrastructure, architecture and clean, green streets, or at least creating the image of one for foreign investors. The old pictures of poverty, slums, beggars and smog are to be swept away by extensive building projects, cosmetic adjustments on the streets and a zealous PR campaign to improve the free and easy toilet habits of its citizens and to curb the tobacco spitting epidemic, which leave red blotches all over public spaces. “Delhi should look like a world class city for visitors coming from abroad”, said Kalmadi at a recent press conference. As a thoroughly modern city, the Delhi Government hopes to attract $370 billion in FDI in the coming years, recouping the cost of the games many times over and dwarfing the as yet only guaranteed income of Rs.1,708 crores (around $40 million) from TV rights.

But in its race to present Delhi as a clean, prosperous, developed city, the Delhi Government has ridden roughshod over some of the city's poorest and most vulnerable inhabitants. Cycle rickshaw pullers, construction workers and slum dwellers have all suffered at the hands of  policies designed to “clean up” the capital.

The Games have provided the Delhi Police with an opportunity to speak out against the city's cycle rickshaw pullers. The rickshaw men make the city untidy, claim the law enforcers, by sleeping on their rickshaws and urinating on verges in full public view. Their behaviour, according to police statement, “causes strain on the civic infrastructure of the city but also encourages them to develop unauthorised colonies or jhuggies (slums) giving rise to social problems in the city“. Continuing to allow them to ply arterial roads “comes in the way of efforts to make Delhi a world-class city“. Rickshaw pullers are under fire simply for potentially spoiling the view for western visitors and tarnishing the city’s new image. Put simply, they are being blamed for being poor and living and working in Delhi. Following these criticisms, the rickshaw pullers are now subject to an expensive and invasive biometric ID card scheme. The threats facing the rickshaw men are regulatory and bureaucratic, for the construction workers more is at stake.

Safety is lax on Games construction sites. In July this year a construction worker was crushed to death by a cement mixer at the J. Nehru Stadium site, the fourth serious incident at that particular site in two weeks. Infoexchange India reports 48 deaths and 98 serious injuries at Commonwealth Games construction sites in 2008-9.
There are an estimated 800-900,000 migrant construction workers in Delhi, most from poor areas of Northern India like Bihar and UP, which suffer from chronic unemployment, poor harvests and frequent  devastating floods. Most work under labour contractors and have no proper documentation or contracts, consequently when a fatal accident occurs the body and the evidence quickly disappear. The family receives no explanation or proper burial, just a small pay-off. The death is seldom registered with the authorities and consequently nothing is done to improve site safety. Subhash Bhatnagar, head of the Nirman Mazdoor Panchayat Sangam (NMPS) (a labour union) says that workers on high profile Games-related projects are being made to endure 12 hour shifts and 72 hour weeks. He points out that weary workers are particularly prone to accidents, especially on these dangerous unregulated sites. This is contrary to the Delhi Government's employment laws, which are being openly flouted by contractors in their rush to complete projects on time. The authorities turn a blind eye so long as deadlines are met; no need to slow down progress with proper investigations and safety measures. Workers are also entitled to free medical care for injuries sustained at work, but this entitlement exists on paper only as most labourers work on an informal unregistered basis. 

Whilst cycle-rickshaw pullers and construction workers face threats to their livelihoods, as slum dwellers they all suffer the loss of dignity brought about by a key Public Works Department (PWD) policy. In order to present a modern, wealthy image of Delhi, the PWD is set to erect temporary hedges to block the view of the slums from the main roads between the airport and the main Games site. Residents of Nehru Colony, one of the slums en route, will be the first to be fenced in with bamboo so that their modest dwellings do not spoil the view for the foreign visitors speeding by.

Despite some zealous implementation, the Delhi Government’s policies regarding its ‘world class city’ rhetoric are just a sticking plaster on a bad fracture.

52% of Delhi’s 14 million inhabitants live in areas best described as ‘jhuggies’ or slums (according to a recent study by the Delhi-based NGO, Forces). The PWD cannot fence off half the city with South Asia’s equivalent of the leylandii. Nor can a cycle-rickshaw puller who earns Rs.80 for a gruelling 12 hour day help dropping off on his ride or returning to a basic slum house at the end of his shift. He may well have migrant construction workers for neighbours as they swell the slums of East and North Delhi.

In the scramble to attract FDI the Delhi Government has not only abandoned, but actually begun to oppress half of its constituents by attempting to hide the poor or simply to move them out of the city centre to poorly planned developments on the city‘s distant fringes. Ironically, these are the people on whom the city is relying for construction labour and everyday transport.

Becoming a “world class city” does not take a few years, a couple of cosmetic policies and a PR campaign; it takes decades. A truly ’world class city’ does not have slums and deaths at work, not because it hides them or ignores them, but because decades of sound urban planning, investment in infrastructure and robust labour laws have consigned such things to history. The Delhi Government will only preside over a ’world class city’ when it has eradicated jhuggies and work deaths (to name just two social evils): when it has made them history, rather than continually shifting their geography.

Rather than presenting a shallow image of a “world class city” to the world’s media, the Delhi Government should invest in inclusive urban regeneration. These efforts could be highlighted as proof that the city truly is on the path to “world class” status and has the vision and leadership to get there.