When Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised “Jahaan jhuggi, wahaan makaan” (Where there's a slum, there will be a home), it ignited a flicker of hope for millions living in urban slums. They had dreamt, often for decades, of having a roof over their heads. The pledge was to ensure housing for all by 2022. But 2025 is here, and instead of roofs, bulldozers are rolling in. Not only has the promise been unfulfilled, but many who managed to piece together shelters in city corners after migrating from rural India now find themselves rendered homeless.
From Delhi to Gujarat, Uttarakhand to Uttar Pradesh, bulldozers are flattening entire neighbourhoods. What adds insult to injury is the apparent complicity of the judiciary in legitimizing this displacement. A troubling question arises: Who are these people being evicted? Where did they come from? Why are they being labelled “encroachers”? And when the judiciary itself reduces them to this label instead of recognizing them as citizens with constitutional rights, it signals not just a betrayal of justice, but of democracy itself.
Delhi’s Shrinking Slum Landscape
In Delhi alone, around 25% of its population—roughly 40 lakh people—reside in slums that occupy less than 0.5% of the city's land. In 2013, there were 685 slum clusters covering 700 hectares, housing over 4 lakh jhuggis. By 2022, only 675 clusters remained, and the number of jhuggis fell to 3.06 lakh. In just two months, 2,000 were demolished. These figures, however, barely scratch the surface of the lived realities.
While the cityscape has transformed—with Akshardham Temple and Commonwealth Games Village replacing slum clusters—the displaced are pushed to city margins like Bawana or Narela, away from livelihoods and schools. This isn’t happenstance—it’s policy engineered to serve elite and corporate interests. Even courts have suggested that rehabilitation is not a constitutional right but an administrative decision.
Built, Then Broken
Slums didn’t emerge overnight. Post-1970s, Delhi’s booming industrial and service sectors attracted labour from across India. Camps like Sanjay and Indira Camp near Okhla industrial area were established to house them. These settlements grew organically around work sites—just as Panchsheel and Swami Enclave’s luxury homes rose, so did Jagdamba Camp and Swami Nagar’s jhuggi clusters. Labour built Delhi, quite literally, and now they’re being told they no longer belong.
Industrial automation and displacement from rural India—due to land acquisition, deforestation, and shrinking agriculture—continue to push millions into cities. These migrants find refuge only in slums. They become drivers, domestic workers, factory hands, plumbers, masons—the invisible workforce that keeps the city alive. Yet, their contribution to GDP is conveniently ignored.
A Broken Promise of Shelter
Slum dwellers are more than mere “encroachers.” Many have invested their life savings in these homes. With streets elevated over time, they’ve rebuilt, added floors, and entrenched themselves. Their lives are anchored here. Yet when eviction comes, it is sudden, ruthless, and often without proper rehabilitation.
Take the much-hyped “Swabhimaan Apartments” built for Jailerwala Bagh slum dwellers. Only 1,100 of 1,675 flats have been allocated. Many were denied for being unable to deposit ₹1.76 lakh. Maintenance is poor, sanitation inadequate, lift services unreliable, and water exorbitantly priced. Once cohesive communities are now fractured, alienated, and insecure. In some cases, even basic electricity for toilets was cut off as punishment for resisting forced relocation.
“Where Will We Go?”
Voices from the ground reflect a simple truth: these are not statistics, they are lives. Gulai Prasad, 70, has nowhere to go if the slum is demolished. Raziya, born in the slum, describes the demolition as the end of her world. Seamlessly integrated into the city’s economy, their lives now hang by a bureaucratic thread.
These people are not just losing homes—they are at risk of losing their citizenship itself. With demolished addresses, their names risk being erased from electoral rolls. Many cannot return to their home states like Bihar or UP in time to re-register. The result? Disenfranchisement in both home and host states. No home. No vote. No voice.
Judicial Indifference and Constitutional Betrayal
India’s judiciary has too often failed the urban poor. In multiple cases—such as the 2020 Supreme Court order to demolish 48,000 slums on railway land within three months—even during the COVID pandemic—judgments have prioritised land and environmental “order” over human rights.
In 2021, the Supreme Court referred to slums as an “unfortunate story” continuing since independence and saw rehabilitation as rewarding encroachers. In another blow, the Delhi High Court said that slum dwellers “cannot expect rehabilitation until they are actually relocated.” This is a denial of Article 21 (Right to Life) and Article 19(1)(e) (Right to reside and settle anywhere in India), as well as Delhi’s own 2015 slum rehabilitation policy, which mandates that no slum built before 2006 (and occupied till 2015) can be demolished without rehabilitation.
Political Betrayal and the Erosion of Citizenship
All political parties—BJP, AAP, and Congress—have promised “Jahaan jhuggi, wahaan makaan.” Yet, successive governments have failed to deliver. When BJP came to power at the Centre, demolitions only accelerated. AAP, despite ruling Delhi, has managed to rehabilitate just 1,293 families in five years. A cruel twist now emerges: eviction without relocation is stripping the poor not just of shelter, but of their right to vote.
Thousands of migrant families, especially from UP and Bihar, now find themselves caught in an administrative trap—unable to vote in Delhi due to address loss, and ineligible in Bihar unless they re-register by July 26. Their democratic agency is being erased, and with it, any hope of reclaiming a future.
Final Thought: A War on the Poor Disguised as Urban Renewal
This is not merely a housing crisis—it’s a slow, systemic erasure of India’s working poor from the urban landscape. By treating slum-dwellers as unwanted clutter rather than as essential citizens, the state and judiciary are colluding in an act of constitutional amnesia.
If the promise of “roti, kapda, makaan” has been forgotten, how can we speak of a just democracy?
When the poorest are denied a roof, and then their vote, what remains of citizenship?
And what kind of development demands bulldozers over ballots?
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Sunil Kumar is a social commentator and researcher focusing on urban displacement and democratic rights
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