New Delhi got a makeover for the G20 summit. The city's poor say they were simply erased
New Delhi got a makeover for the G20 summit. The city's poor say they were simply erased
New Delhi has gotten a makeover ahead of this week’s summit of the Group of 20 nations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government hopes the effort, with a $120 million price tag, will help showcase the world’s most populous nation’s cultural prowess and strengthen its position on the global stage.
The city will also be put in lockdown for the 3 days of the summit. Schools, colleges, govt and private offices will be shut. Daily-wage labourers, vegetable vendors, and street hawkers will have to go hungry because Modi wants to present a Delhi that doesn't exist. What will happen to anyone needing urgent medical care or an ambulance in the city is anyone's guess.
G20 world leaders travelling to Delhi will be supporting this charade, this curtailing of people's rights, to pander to the Hindu supremacist dictator.
3 Day shutdown is mostly for security reasons and to avoid discomfort to the public as there are certain routes that are blocked for VVIP movement. As for the urgent Medical Care, alternative routes provided and 4x emergency vehicles are on standby if there is any need. You always try and present your house in a good way whenever a guest visits. Stop with this blind hatred.
Empathy is not hatred. Lacking empathy is apathy. Why are you apathetic to the have-nots whose lives have been shattered just to paint a pretty picture for a 3-day event?
At least 25 shantytowns and multiple night shelters for the homeless were razed to the ground and turned into parks, the report said, adding that the government failed to provide alternative shelters or places for the newly homeless.
This is a failure of the govt and the admin to follow the law and provide alternative shelters for the people made homeless.
Do you prettify your house for guests by kicking out family members and stopping daily-wage family members from earning their living?
Some routes being blocked is not the same as shutting down the capital city of a country. Shutting down the city genuinely distresses people.
Devi, whose home was demolished in one of the drives, said authorities refused to consider documents she showed as proof that her family had lived in the same house for nearly 100 years.
“Everyone is behaving as if they are blind,” Devi said. “In the name of the G20 event, the farmers, workers and the poor are suffering.”
Neither Modi nor his bhakts care a jot for the people of India.
Wait did you say a fucking lock down is to prevent the discomfort of having a few roads blocked?
“Oh I know it’s annoying you can’t go on this certain path, so to make it better for you we’ve decided you can’t go anywhere at all!”
Also pretty sure the house is the people that live in it, not some arsehole politicians.
Eh, there’s blind hatred, and then there’s sweeping the unsightlies under the rug.
They’re taking away rights from people who aren’t “sightly” to make the neighborhoods and country seem better.
Other countries have done the same, doesn’t make it right in the slightest.
If anything those other country leaders should know what the country they are visiting is going through, thick and thin. Everything can’t be all Sunshine and roses, fuck whatever positive posture they’re trying to put on whatever trade system.
There is a real cost to this system and these people they’re trying to sweep under the rug are that cost. They should see that. No matter how “unsightly” that is.
Let’s stop pretending we live in some magically world where we can ignore the things we don’t like. They still exist.
What's the point, isn't the G summits like capitalist pals summits? Capitalists already know they cause misery, they don't care so why hide it.
Don't want anyone getting feelings for the poors.
They don't like to see the poor suffer. So they prefer they suffer far away from them and out of sight.
This is a very hard topic to take a side on.
The razing of these shantytowns has been happening for quite a few years now and has mostly become a part of daily life. In preparation for G20 they have only speed up this in some places.
The reason for razing these places has been simply because of them being built on Unauthorised land and people encroaching on government land.It is also true that the people were being provided basic necessities like electricity and water even when living illegally, with bills in their names address to the unauthorised building.(It is important to note electricity and water bills are controlled by the gov in Delhi)
The Government is correct in their try to reclaim stolen land from illegal occupiers. But it is also true that the residents were promised permanent legal housing right where their houses stood.
The residents were wrong to occupy government land illegally, but it is also morally wrong to remove thousands of people suddenly.
The residents were wrong to occupy government land illegally
Govt land is public land. These people are the homeless public. They have no place to live, so they live in slums. Should they just die?
Most of the posh housing societies in Dwarka are also on encroached land. But even their paintwork doesn't get scratched. here homes and livelihoods of the have-nots are destroyed.
Uhm, what? Dwarka's societies don't really have a land encroachment issue. Most of them were built by DDA and other cooperative housing societies. There are other posh areas where land encroachment is an issue but Dwarka's societies aren't one of them.
Government land doesn't mean, you can just show up and build your house there .For example there has been land which was under ASI, which is land under various monuments. There are many monuments whose land is encroached by both the poor and rich. Both are wrong, be they rich/poor, when removing such encroachment it has been fair for the most part (The only really bad cases which come to my mind are, high level government officials just having big mansions built there). This is the case for forest land as well as land coming under various departments of the government.
Many a times the land has been left there for a reason, for future development, parks, forest land, etc. Land encroachment causes a lot of issues. Also being homeless doesn't mean they can just build a house wherever they please. You would not be okay if someone one day just shows up and builds a house on the road right in front of your house.
It is known to the people who are building their homes and livelihoods that what they are doing is illegal and there way of life can be destroyed any day, because what they are doing is illegal. The Government for a really long time had been understanding of their situation and just let them be, providing them with basic services on the encroached land. This doesn't mean that they are right, it just means that they have their house another day.
Also, it isn't technically correct to call these people homeless, most of them are migrant workers that came here to find better work opportunities. they found work and decided it was better to stay on unauthorized land nearby than to find legal housing which may be further away from their work. Rent in these shanties is pretty similar to legally available housing.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Many of the city’s poor say they were simply erased, much like the stray dogs and monkeys that have been removed from some neighborhoods, as India’s capital got its makeover ahead of this week’s summit of the Group of 20 nations.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government hopes the elaborate effort to make New Delhi sparkle — a “beautification project” with a price tag of $120 million — will help showcase the world’s most populous nation’s cultural prowess and strengthen its position on the global stage.
But for many street vendors and those crammed into New Delhi’s shantytowns, the makeover has meant displacement and loss of livelihood, raising questions about the government’s policies on dealing with poverty.
The two-day global summit will take place at the newly constructed Bharat Mandapam building, a sprawling exhibition center in the heart of New Delhi near the landmark India Gate monument — and scores of world leaders are expected to attend.
In July, a report by the Concerned Citizens Collective, a rights activist group, found that the preparations for the G20 summit resulted in the displacement of nearly 300,000 people, particularly from the neighborhoods that foreign leaders and diplomats will visit during various meetings.
In 2020, the government hastily erected a half-kilometer (1,640-foot) brick wall in the state of Gujarat ahead of a visit by then-President Donald Trump, with critics saying it was built to block the view of a slum area inhabited by more than 2,000 people.
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