Daily wage workers, destitute will endure yet another winter without a roof

Nearly two months past the Supreme Court deadline, Bangalore is nowhere close to complying with the decree on night shelters for the urban poor. Not only does the city lag abysmally behind the targeted one shelter per lakh population — only four temporary and permanent shelters are operational today — but the roadmap for implementation is also sketchy and insufficient. And thousands of daily wage workers and destitute people will have to endure yet another winter without as much as a roof, leave alone safety and basic amenities.

Pulled up

The Supreme Court, on December 12, pulled up the Karnataka among other States for failing to meet the deadline it had set in its 2010 order and for not even filing the affidavits or reports on status of its implementation. It has now given the State Government time till January 6 to file its detailed status report.

Officials of the Department of Municipal Administration, which is monitoring the night shelters in eight city municipal corporations in the State, admitted that the scheme was “very much in an amorphous stage”. Although the department is meeting local municipal bodies this week to prepare a status report, officials told The Hindu that the number of constructed shelters is far from promising.

Apart from Mysore and Belgaum, where some centres have been up and running for a few months now, none of the other cities have met the deadline.

Only four shelters

The BBMP, by its own admission, has been able to set up only four shelters in three zones — two in Bommanahalli, and one each in Yelahanka and Rajarajeswarinagar. Ironically, each one of these zones happens to be in the farthest reaches of the city where concentrations of both workers and homeless are arguably much lower than in the city centre.

When contacted, many zonal representatives said that they had drawn up proposals to build night shelters and have even identified possible locations. But the authorities are planning no more than two or three centres, even in larger and more populated zones.

For instance, in the Bangalore East zone, which is among the largest zones in the city, authorities have planned just two centres. This is barely adequate for an area that includes commercial centres and major transit points such as the K.R. Market and Shivajinagar, where every day, thousands of migrant and informal workers spend their nights under the sky.

Unreliable surveys

These glaring lacunae in planning owes partly to the “entirely unreliable” surveys the BBMP conducted in 2010, says Clifton Rozario, advisor from Karnataka to the Commissioners of the Supreme Court, on this case.

Following the Supreme Court order, the State Government conducted a survey in November 2010 through urban local bodies and, in Bangalore, the number of homeless was pegged at 2,858. This is at enormous variance with a survey conducted the same year by a consortium of 29 NGOs, which found at least 17,141 homeless persons in the city.

More startlingly, the 2001 Census recorded that over 5,020 households live on the street, translating to 1,6187 individual “urban houseless” a decade ago.

The government survey has failed to honestly map any record of the numbers, their areas of concentration, livelihood patterns and other demographic details, says Mr. Rozario. He adds that the State has been unresponsive to requests for joint inspections on this as mandated by the Supreme Court.

“Basically, the local bodies are not concerned about people, and there is no political will to implement this programme. Supreme Court directives are being flouted here,” he says.

Lack of will, hostility

Harsh Mander, Special Commissioner appointed by the Supreme Court in this case, concurs that Karnataka is lagging behind. “There is a lack of will and capacity to have sensitively designed shelters in the right location. Some States have come forward but others such as Maharashtra, Bihar and Gujarat are hostile to the idea that destitute people should be given access to shelter and a life of dignity.”