India is Abusing Human Rights to 'Clean Up' Delhi in the Runup to the Commonwealth Games

[JCMach1]

Plans to remove all working donkeys from India’s capital in a bid to clean-up the streets ahead of next year’s Commonwealth Games have left hundreds of families fearing for their livelihoods.

Across Old Delhi there are an estimated 2,500 donkeys and mules usually carrying bricks to construction sites or removing concrete rubble from demolished buildings. They are led by their owners or labourers employed for the day to tend to the animals.

In October, officials from the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and local police officers visited the owners of Delhi’s working donkeys and warned them their animals would have to be removed from the city soon. The move is part of a campaign by Delhi to gloss over its filthy streets and present itself as a “world class city” during the games next October by removing beggars, vagrants, rubbish and anything else that spoils this image – including the city’s working animals.

In parts of the old city nearly 1,500 mostly poor and illiterate Muslim families are directly dependant on donkeys and mules for their livelihood, estimated Yusuf Mohammed, a leader of Delhi’s horse, donkey and mule owners union. They are now waiting to see if the city’s authorities will take them away.

“We have been told, our animals will be impounded and we shall be thrown out of the city if we don’t leave Delhi on our own.” said Sheruddin, as he fed and watered his two donkeys at their makeshift stable on the pavement after a day’s work clearing a demolition site in Old Delhi’s Turkman Gate area.

“For generations we have been doing this job in this city, along with these animals,” he said. “We cannot understand how our animals and us have suddenly turned into a nuisance for them now.”

Sheruddin, a 45-year-old who lives in a nearby slum with his wife and three children, said he was not sure what he would do if the plan to remove the animals goes ahead.

“We have nowhere to go. The government is not doing the right thing by being so cruel to us,” he said... http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091223/FOREIGN/712229862/1002


Screened off: Nehru Camp, behind trees
commonwealth games
See No Squalor
Delhi draws a curtain on slums and beggars
Debarshi Dasgupta , Shruti Ravindran

Put Them Away

* In preparation for the Commonwealth Games, the Delhi government is hiding slums behind tree covers. Eyesores like drains are also being covered.
* It is also rounding up beggars and putting them in beggar homes
* The plan was to build walls around slums etc; the government later opted for a green cover

***

"Garibi Hatao" was Indira Gandhi's rallying cry in 1971. But as the Commonwealth Games grow menacingly closer, the government would rather cry out "Garib Hatao, Gandagi Chhipao". Lest shanties and dirt get in the way of a picturesque setting, the Delhi government is on an overdrive to hide the dirt and chase out the poor. The Public Works Department has begun the task of planting bamboo and other fast-growing trees to cover up unpleasant sights across the city. One of the first such locations to be hidden away from a highway that will be used by visitors for the Commonwealth Games is Nehru Camp, a 20-year-old slum that is home to a few thousand people.

The government is also hiding an enormous drain along the road to the Yamuna Sports Complex, one of the games venues, with a tree cover. "We have to upgrade the city for the games but with limited time and resources there is not much we can do. A green cover unlike a wall, on the other hand, benefits everybody," says Kewal Sharma, principal secretary with the PWD...

n January earlier this year, the Delhi government’s department of social welfare prepared a time-bound action plan with “physical targets” – in other words, number of beggars to be caught. An RTI application filed by the Housing and Land Rights Network found out that the government had devised a three-pronged approach: a media campaign cautioning citizens not to patronise beggars, putting mobile courts on patrol at tourist spots and intersections that traffic police had identified as beggars’ haunts, and beefing up these ‘anti-begging squads’ with police protection... http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?262987