MR Madhavan on the new Right to Education Bill

The UPA government recently introduced the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2008. The issue of the right to primary education in India, and the way it should be implemented through parliamentary law has been simmering for long, and has attracted commentary on this blog from its inception. Previous posts tracking debates over this issue can be found here, here and here. For a good resource on issues relating to education in general, see this section of the regularly updated website of India Together.

Today’s Indian Express carries an op-ed by MR Madhavan of PRS Legislative Research which seeks to highlight problematic aspects of the Bill. He begins his analysis by noting - as mentioned in the posts referenced above - that the Bill has been delayed since 2005 on the sticky issue of the sharing of costs between the centre and the states, which appears to have now been resolved. Madhavan provides a good summary of the main provisions and aims of the Bill:

The Bill states that all children between the age of six and fourteen years have the right to free and compulsory education. It mandates the government to set up neighbourhood schools within three years. It has provisions to provide out-of-school children to be given special training and then be admitted to the class appropriate for their age. It bans capitation fees and screening tests at the time of admission, failing or expelling any child till the completion of elementary education, and private tuitions by teachers. The Bill has specific provisions for private schools: a certificate of recognition and admitting at least 25 per cent of students belonging to the “weaker section and disadvantaged group in the neighbourhood and provide free and compulsory education till its completion”. For such children, the government will provide reimbursement to the school to the extent of per-child expenditure for government schools.

He goes on to highlight five main points:

First, there appears to be lack of clarity on the delivery mechanism to provide elementary education for all children. … … … [The Bill] permits private schools, [but] places several conditions — on admissions (including the 25 per cent quota for weaker sections), minimum standards and policies on promoting students among others. ... ... ... Second, the focus appears to be on infrastructure and enrolment and not to see that the children who go to school actually learn. ... ... ... Third, the Bill provides for a uniform curriculum and evaluation procedure for elementary education within each state. This would limit the freedom of schools to determining the pedagogical content and methodology. Fourth, this Bill states that “it shall be the duty of every parent to admit his child to a neighbourhood school”. It, however, does not state the consequences of not following this duty. Also, it does not address the issues due to which parents do not admit their children. Fifth, the Bill requires each government and aided school to form a school management committee comprising local elected representatives, parents and teachers. This committee shall monitor the working of the school and the utilisation of grants given to the school. Evidence from Karnataka and several countries in Latin America and Africa on similar committees do not present any conclusive evidence of improvement in quality of schools.

His conclusion:

While the Bill attempts to lay down some guideposts, it remains an open question whether its provisions are sufficient to achieve this goal.

There is near unanimous agreement among policy makers on the crucial importance of primary education in India. To echo the point made by Tarunabh in the previous post, it is imperative that Parliament play its role of a genuine deliberative forum, at least on issues that go to the core of our constitutional democracy.

Update: The discussion in the comments section makes a reference to the text of the Bill necessary. Here is the full text of the Bill, from the PRS Legislative Research website.

Caste and Economic Discrimination: A Few Comments

This is a belated commentary on the series of studies on the relationship between caste and economic discrimination in the Indian urban labor market conducted by Sukhdeo Thorat, Katherine Newman and others that was published last month in a freely available special issue of EPW. The studies are fairly comprehensive and include a number of pieces of evidence, both objective and subjective, that presents a compelling and complex picture of social reality in the marketplace. The first of the five papers presents an overview of the topic, the authors’ findings, their meaning, implications and a very limited discussion of remedies. The second and third papers provide an insight into a variety of perceptions of employers and students at several universities in Delhi regarding questions pertaining to merit assessment, reservation policy, caste discrimination, job prospects, income expectations and other related matters. The fourth paper presents the findings of a study of communal and caste-based discrimination in screening job applicants. The fifth and last publication studies caste discrimination in the urban salaried sector using data from the National Sample Survey. The first three of these largely detail subjective views of participants and are easy on the lay reader; the last two comprise of statistical analyses whose quantified outcomes are more authoritative and constitute the backbone of this entire set of studies. Popular accounts of their findings can also be found in media reports which appeared at the time (a link to a news item in Yahoo!India is here).

The purpose of this post is not to provide an exhaustive account of their findings, reasoning and conclusions – that would be impossible in a short write-up given the numerous observations they make at every stage. Instead, I simply highlight here a few key findings and my own views on them. In a nutshell, these are: (1) Employers universally claim that they do not discriminate on caste grounds, that such discrimination, whether done out of individual prejudice or to comply with a state mandate are undesirable. By non-discrimination, they generally mean a policy that is caste-blind but a few employers instead follow a conscious policy of caste balancing. A variety of stereotyping is also, at the same time, widely prevalent and employers see nothing wrong in holding such views. (2) Reserved (i.e. dalit) and general category (i.e. non-dalit) university students have differing preferences, expectations and understanding of the marketplace. General students prefer private sector jobs, have higher salary expectations, disfavor caste-based quotas, are more willing to employ family-based or other connections, exhibit greater confidence in their own abilities and are less perturbed by unjust hiring practices of employers. Reserved category students prefer public sector jobs, have lower salary expectations, favor quotas, are less likely to employ family-based or other connections and are generally more sensitive both to perceived slights by employers as well as to unjust hiring practices. (3) Amongst young men with stereotypically identifiable caste-specific or distinctive surnames, those from an upper caste are more likely to obtain an interview for an entry-level job than a similarly qualified dalit or Muslim applicant. (4) SC/STs suffer a 15% wage differential as compared to others who are equally qualified; job discrimination occurs in both public and private sectors but reservation policies compensate for it in the public sector to some extent. A large part of the earning differential is attributable to factors other than discrimination collectively called ‘endowment’ such as education attainment, level of occupational skill, etc.

The authors discount employers’ claims of equal treatment in light of all the other evidence and suggest that they probably understate the bias in hiring. They argue that antidiscrimination laws are needed to ensure truly caste-blind policies and a government organization similar to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that monitors caste data routinely is required for this purpose. An interesting theory suggested by one of the managers interviewed is that globalization imposes a pressure that competitively favors companies adopting more ‘broad-minded’ and equitable merit-based selection policies. Hence, he argued, companies that are more globalized are less likely to adopt caste, family or other identity –based hiring practices, the latter being more prevalent in smaller firms catering only to the local market. The authors did not comment on this beyond stating it perhaps because this study presented no evidence in support of such a contention. Rather, stated preferences of employers regarding preferential hiring of people who are ‘cultured’, ‘stylish’, etc. as well as student assessments of employer expectations suggest that globalization, by favoring particular cultural attributes – socio-cultural capital, as the authors call it - more prominently associated with the urban and upper caste segments of society may actually be prejudicial to people coming from a lower caste or rural background.

The disparity between reserved and non-reserved categories of students in terms of expectations and preferences together with evidence of actual wage and job discrimination suggests that a relationship likely exists between these trends. This is one aspect where I found these papers lacking. It is suggested that employer expectations confer a premium on certain extracurricular traits that dalit students lack rendering them less competitive when they graduate and are about to enter the job market. They speculate that awareness of this fact causes a crisis of confidence and leads to pessimism which accounts for their lowered expectations. Yet, this does not address the key question that arises: do differing preferences account for the wage and job discrimination or does it work the other way around? This is particularly important to the conclusions of their last study as there is no real way, applying the methods they use, to distinguish between lowered expectations and discrimination (see paper V by Madheswaran and Attwell for details).

I also found the variety of reasons students cited in support of continuing reservations interesting. Barring one instance, all the others were about everything save caste, the primary basis of state-mandated quotas – poverty, rural background, absence of access to exclusive social networks or other implications of the same such as ‘family background’ suggestive of a lack of affluence.

Their study showing discrimination at the preliminary stage of inviting applicants for interviews is strongly suggestive of caste and communal prejudice in hiring. This is not altogether surprising knowing the opinions expressed in their managers’ survey. In fact, it is likely that a variety of other discriminatory characteristics – regional, linguistic, etc. will also come to the fore if one were to only look for them. On a dissenting note, many of the factors such as stereotyping and discriminatory hiring that they disparage may actually be beneficial to the well-being and growth of businesses, particularly in traditional markets, notwithstanding the arguments of mainstream economic theory – apart from offering cultural cohesion, hiring people of specific caste backgrounds may help smaller businesses better address the requirements of their relatively caste-specific clientele. The authors too note in their introductory article that labor market discrimination can be quite durable. They quite naturally root for non-discriminatory practices, particularly a legal and policy framework to safeguard employment opportunities of marginalized sections of society in the private sector. This might well require a high degree of intrusive regulation to enforce and I am not sure how feasible it would be for small and medium-scale enterprises. From a policy perspective, it would therefore be important to know whether such tendencies are equally common in large industrial houses and medium to small scale family-based ventures – the former appear to be facing the brunt of governmental pressure to introduce affirmative action policies. Future studies may throw more light on this.

Revisiting issues blogged about earlier, and highlighting a new women's rights issue

The purpose of this brief post is to provide updates or alternative views on issues that were featured in previous blog posts, while pointing to an interesting analysis of a previously unexplored issue.

In two recent articles posted on India Together, Ammu Joseph discusses the salient features of the draft Broadcast Regulation Bill, while also providing a detailed critique of crucial provisions. The two articles, in the order they were published, can be accessed here and here.

Over the last month, we looked at aspects of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. While posts on our blog have generally focused on the positive aspects of the NREGA, here is a recent article in the EPW which highlights some worrying trends in the implementation of the Act in Orissa.

Lastly, here is a piece published once again in India Together that focuses on a governmental decision to ban migration of Indian women below the age of 30. The core argument that Rita Manchanda advances in this piece is as follows:

"The government recently imposed a ban on emigration for women under 30 going abroad to work as domestic help and caregivers. But this move will not stop women who want to migrate. Instead, it will drive them into clandestine migrant mobility regimes, putting them at greater risk to trafficking and exploitative treatment - the very concerns that have driven the ban."

The piece highlights the following statistics:

"Official decadal estimates state that 550,000 Indians migrate for work annually, of which 360,000 head to the Gulf, contributing to a migrant stock of three million there. Statistics of women migrating for work have shown a sharp increase, as evinced in figures from the major migrant producing state of Kerala. ... .... ... The earnings of 40-50,000 Indian nurses in the Gulf, 90 per cent of whom belong to Kerala, has contributed to pushing the state's per capita income from negative to 41 per cent above the national average."

Citing the work of feminist scholars Flavia Agnes and Ratna Kapur, Manchanda argues:

"Behind the ban is a patriarchal State asserting itself to 'protect' its 'helpless' and 'ignorant' young female citizens. Undeniably, the horror stories Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury heard in Kuwait - about confiscated passports, arbitrary changes in terms of contract, physical torture and sexual abuse - has prompted a renewed concern about the vulnerability of women migrants to exploitation. ... ... ...

Legal and administrative restrictions on migration or immigration in destination countries will only foster clandestine migration mobility regimes. Trans-national migration is integral to the global pattern of economics and trade. A UN study (2004) has noted the trend towards feminisation of international migration, with 49 per cent of all migrants being women and girls. Globalisation has fuelled the development of economic sectors with women-specific demands for cheap labour in certain sectors. Moreover, ageing populations in the developed countries are producing an expanding and sustainable demand for cheap domestic workers and care givers.

The emigration ban denies women their agency, equal status as citizens and the opportunity for economic and social empowerment. Moreover, it is too blunt a protective instrument and will further drive women's migration underground."

Some background information and thoughts on angry bar-bench exchanges

In the previous post, V. Venkatesan drew our attention to the exchange between Additional Solicitor General Vikas Singh and a Supreme Court bench hearing the 'Delhi sealing case'. In doing so, he emphasised the unusually aggressive words traded between ASG Vikas Singh and Justice Pasayat. The two people who have commented on this post so far have expressed disapproval of this incident, and appear to place more of the blame on the law officer involved.

As it turns out, the two main protagonists appear to have a history of such aggression. As this piece in the Hindu, dated April 29, 2007 points out, they had clashed earlier, in the longstanding Forest case. There, while objecting to what was perceived as unwarranted judicial interference in the making of policy decisions by the government, ASG Singh is quoted as saying:

"There is no judicial emergency provided under the Constitution to take over the functions of the Government. "

The Hindu piece further describes the ASG's exchange with the bench as follows:

"Seeking to vacate the stay [issued by the Supreme Court upon a notification of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests], Mr. Singh literally questioned the court's role in monitoring the "forest matter" for nearly a decade.

"It is not as if only the Supreme Court can protect the forest cover," he said. He reeled out figures to show that there was no depletion of forests, thanks to the enactment of the Forest Conservation Act and not because of the court's intervention. It should not pass orders on assumptions or be guided by other factors.

The Bench replied, "We have no assumptions, nor we are guided. Many things are said these days. We are not concerned about what they say. We will see to it at the appropriate time and say what action is to be taken."

Referring to the stay on the functioning of the FAC, Mr. Singh asked on what basis the non-official members appointed to the FAC could be removed once they fulfilled the requisite qualifications.

He wondered how a stay could be granted when there was no petition challenging their appointment. The court could not assume the role of the Government when a committee was validly constituted."

More details about the case can be found in the rest of the Hindu piece. Though the description of the case is not clearly set out, the piece seems to indicate that the bench comprising Chief Justice Balakrishnan and Justices Pasayat and Kapadia took the ASG's submissions seriously and moderated the earlier order. However, this story in the Indian Express dated July 2007 suggests that ASG Singh was subsequently taken off the case as a direct result of his having adopted such an aggressive tone in the hearing.

The common judicial personage in both these exchanges is Justice Pasayat who, as we have noted earlier on this blog, has a strong claim to being the most activist judge on the present Court. It is not clear whether ASG Singh is following instructions in taking such a hard line stance against judicial interference in policy matters, though the presumption would be that he is. His strong assertions may well be a reflection of the government's view that for the reasons that V. Venkatesan has identified in his post, the Court should not press on with this issue right now. There seems to be more to this issue than meets the eye, and the coming days will probably reveal more about this issue.

On the subject of bar-bench exchanges, I am all for civility and agree that the bar bears a higher burden to ensure that the two groups treat each other with respect. One is reminded of the V. C. Mishra episode, and lawyers certainly should not get away with trying to browbeat judges. However, focusing on the two cases where ASG Singh has taken such an aggressive stance, and bearing in mind the fact that Justice Pasayat does not appear to the meekest of judges himself, I cannot help wondering about the merits of the issues advanced by ASG Singh. I leave aside for now the tone he adopted, of which I do not approve, and which may have a personal edge given his run-ins with Justice Pasayat. Yet, the two cases seem to reflect clear instances where the Court had no real, legal basis for the judicial actions it proposed to undertake. Should we also not be focusing on the substantive issues at stake in these cases?

Legal commentators have for long acknowledged that the Indian Supreme Court has adopted an extremely cavalier approach towards grounding its decisions (particularly those in PIL cases) in hard law (whether statutory, administrative or derived from precedents). In most such cases however, the Court has been given a pass since it was perceived to be acting in the larger public interest. These two cases involving ASG Singh do not, however, fit squarely within the paradigm of clearly justifiable cases where the legal basis of the Supreme Court's adventurism can be treated casually. Especially in the ongoing sealing case, there are serious questions of law involved, especially those affecting the rights of underprivileged sections of Indian society. Perhaps it is time to focus on the merits of ASG Singh's claims, beyond the tone adopted by him to espouse them.

Important Achievements of the RTI and the NREGA Acts for rural Indians

Today's Indian Express features an op-ed by Sandeep Pandey who explains the significant practical achievements of the Right to Information Act and the National Rural Employment Generation Act for rural India in particular:

"Take the RTI Act. Meant to create more transparency and accountability in governance, it has for the first time provided an opportunity to ordinary people to intervene in political and administrative decision-making. Politicians and bureaucrats have, thus far, considered it their prerogative to keep information secret. What is not widely recognised is that this mindset characterises not just secretaries and under-secretaries but those who man the lowest tier of government. For instance, in January 2003, the gram pradhans of Ambedkar villages and two MLAs (including a minister in the then Mayawati government) unanimously passed a resolution calling for the jailing of anyone demanding income-expenditure details from the Gram Panchayat Bharawan of Hardoi district, Uttar Pradesh, or for holding dharna to push for their claims. As people’s representatives, they argued, they enjoyed a privileged position and were above providing a statement of accounts for public funds.

Before the RTI Act came into force, officials would humiliate citizens who asked for information and sometimes even threatened them. In their arrogance they did not even bother to do basic book-keeping. The first statement of accounts for the Bharawan Gram Panchayat, which was given to the people by the block development officer (BDO), did not carry any entries under expenditure. When asked about it, the officer explained that that was how accounts have been kept all those years. This was confirmed by the District Rural Development Agency, where employees confessed that once funds left their office, they did not bother to follow up on any details of how they were spent — the assumption was that the funds disbursed were spent for the intended purpose. In a detail of accounts the Bharawan Block Panchayat obtained using the RTI Act, it was discovered that the desilting of a canal was shown to have been performed for more than Rs 3 lakh when no work was done at all.

The RTI Act has made a difference to this situation of complete unaccountability. Today, if an ordinary villager goes to an office with an application seeking information under the RTI Act, she would be treated with respect, offered tea and asked about her problem. Officials would promise to address her problem in a bid to convince her to withdraw her application. Although officials try their best to evade accountability, there is a realisation that they cannot continue to function like they used to. This is good news for democracy. The BDO of Behender block in Hardoi recently confessed that it is only since people have started asking for information that the office has been compelled to keep books.

The NREGA goes a step further and secures the legal right of the people of a gram sabha to conduct social audits of work being performed under the NREGA. This is the first acknowledgement by the government that it requires people’s help in tackling an imperfect system. Earlier, one could only complain if one suspected a misappropriation of funds and then it was up to the authorities to institute an inquiry. Now ordinary citizens have the right to all data pertaining to the workings of the NREGA and must receive it within 15 days of their application. They can then place the records before the villagers for physical verification. The social audits conducted at various places in the country under the NREGA have uncovered numerous discrepancies, ranging from fake names in muster rolls to the fact that facilities for workers are not provided for. Labourers are at last getting their dues in most places where the NREGA is in force."

Further details about the implementation of the NREGA

Following up on his recent piece in the Hindu on the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (see this earlier post for a link and some basic facts about the NREGA), Jean Dreze has a more elaborate piece on the issue in the latest issue of Frontline. Written with a different co-author, Drez's Frontline piece has an interesting opening statement:

"THE National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been a subject of lively debate in the past two years or so. Unfortunately, the factual basis of this debate has been, so far, rather thin. This has made it possible for extremist positions to flourish without being put to the test of careful evidence. While the Act is regularly pilloried in the corporate-sponsored media as an "expensive gravy train" (as a former Chief Economic Adviser described it), the government gets away with extravagant claims of success.

Fortunately, the scope for informed analysis is rapidly growing as reports are beginning to pour in from various parts of the country. "

The rest of the piece consists of fairly close analysis of the statistics available on the NREGA website maintained by the Ministry of Rural Development. The authors note that the website and the data it provides have problematic aspects, but parse it nevertheless to come to interesting conclusions about the relative progress achieved in different states. Some of these would appear to go against conventional wisdom, such as the following bit:

"Is NREGA doing better in States ruled by particular political parties? No obvious pattern emerges in this respect. Nevertheless there is a hint that, if any national political party is taking the NREGA seriously, it is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Indeed, among the major States, the four best performers in terms of employment generation under NREGA are Rajasthan, Assam, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, all of which, except Assam, had BJP governments in 2006-07. As it happens, Assembly elections are due relatively soon in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. One wonders whether active implementation of the NREGA in these States is part of a deliberate electoral strategy of the BJP. It would be a cruel irony if the BJP were to reap the political benefits of a programme initially championed by the Congress and the Left parties."

This is how the authors conclude:

"It would be naive to think that the long history of fraud in public works programmes has already come to an end. But recent experience shows that it is possible to remove mass corruption from NREGA. This calls for strict implementation of the transparency safeguards, as well as firm action whenever corruption is exposed. In these simple steps lies the future of the Act, and of all those for whom it is a new ray of hope."

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More on the Maintenance of Parents Bill 2007

In May 2007, we looked at a short critique of the Maintenance of Parents and Welfare of Senior Citizens Bill which was introduced in Parliament in March 2007. The Bill is interesting because it seeks to highlight an issue that is going to be increasingly important in India as its population ages. Also, the debate over the Bill focuses on the weak provision of vital social services by the Indian State. The Bill has attracted criticism because of perceived flaws both in the policy, and the way in which it is proposed to be implemented.

The July issue of the excellent India Together has an article by Priya Narayan Parker which provides more detailed analysis of the provisions of the Bill. Parker also looks at an existing statute on the issue enacted by the Himachal Pradesh legislature in 2001. In addition, she provides snapshot views of how other countries have sought to address the issue of elder care.

Assessing the implementation of The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act:

Today's Hindu carries a piece by Jean Dreze and Siddhartha Lal where they narrate their field experiences in Rajasthan on a trip that was undertaken to assess the implementation of the NREGA. While there was a lot of debate about the policy behind the Act when it was introduced, not much attention has been focused on the implementation of the law - a trend that is sadly quite common in India. While the Dreze-Lal piece is not a systematic empirical study, and only describes the result of a two day stint in one district in Rajasthan, their mixed findings do give some sense of the problems being faced in implementing the law, while also focusing on its positive aspects.

For those interested in some more details about the issue, here is the Wikipedia entry on the NREGA; here is the link to the official website of the Union Ministry of Rural Development which provides details about the implementation of the NREGA; and here is a set of basic FAQs compiled by rediff.com.

Searing critique of an ongoing slum clearance drive in Delhi

Yesterday's edition of the Hindustan Times featured a biting indictment of the slum clearance policies of the Delhi government as well as recent orders issued by the Delhi High Court. Authored by Bela Bhatia of CSDS, Delhi and the noted economist and social activist, Jean Dreze , the piece focuses on an ongoing drive in Sanjay Basti, a squatter settlement in Timarpur, North Delhi. As they point out, the irony of the situation is that the residents of Sanjay Basti have a good case in law, but that will not help them avert their impending fate:

"About two weeks ago, a terse notice appeared on a few walls in Sanjay Basti, a squatter settlement in Timarpur, North Delhi. Posted by the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), it directs the residents to vacate by April 27, or face demolition soon after that. The notice does not explain the purpose of this forcible removal, or specify the area to which the order applies, or mention any relocation plan. Nor does it provide a contact number where further details might be sought — so much for the right to information.

... In common parlance, Sanjay Basti is a ‘slum’ or ‘encroachment’, but these pejorative terms fail to convey the real nature of this settlement. Most of the residents have been there for 20 years or more, and they have had time to transform their humble dwellings into real ‘homes’. Without much help or subsidies, they have made thoughtful use of every inch of space to improve their environment, often by recycling middle-class ‘waste’. Their houses are tidy and functional and, what is more, they have character. In this respect, this ‘slum’ compares favourably with the somewhat dull lower-middle-class quarters across the road, built at considerable public expense. As a form of low-cost urban housing, Sanjay Basti is not doing badly.

... ... ... In principle, Sanjay Basti is well protected from arbitrary demolition under existing policies and laws. The Delhi Laws (Special Provisions) Act, 2006, prohibits any slum demolition for the time being unless the land is required for a “specific public project”, which is conspicuous by its absence in this case. Indeed, persistent enquiries from countless offices failed to uncover any specific reason for the demolition of Sanjay Basti.

Further, the Delhi Master Plan 2021, which has statutory force, declares and mandates a policy of in situ upgradation or relocation as per strict specifications (provided for in the Plan itself) of all slums and “jhuggi-jhopri clusters”, and a continuance of these settlements in the interim. The impending demolition of Sanjay Basti violates this Master Plan as well as the Delhi Laws (Special Provisions) Act, 2006. For good measure, it is also contrary to the slum policy of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).

These laws and policies, unfortunately, are being overridden by reckless High Court orders aimed at ‘cleansing’ the city of settlements of this kind. Indeed, Sanjay Basti is only the latest target in a long series of slum demolitions carried out under pressure from the Delhi High Court and its offshoots — notably the commissioners and monitoring committees appointed to oversee the progress of demolition orders.

These orders are based on the notion that slums are parasitical settlements that tarnish the urban environment. They overlook the fact that slums serve an essential economic purpose: they provide low-cost housing to masses of workers who ‘service’ the city, and for whom no provision has been made in urban development planning. For many of them, it would be impractical or expensive to commute long distances from the outskirts of the city. For instance, street vendors and roadside workers (barbers, tea-stall owners, cycle mechanics and so on) need equipment that would be difficult to carry back and forth. Similarly, it is the short distance between work and home that enables many women to work as part-time domestic helpers in the neighbourhood even as they continue to handle child care and other household tasks.

Slum demolition drives also overlook another important fact about squatter settlements in Delhi: they occupy very little space. Indeed, squatter settlements in Delhi cover barely one per cent of the total land area in the city. This point can also be appreciated by examining Google Earth’s high-resolution maps of Delhi. It is a striking fact that slums are virtually invisible on these maps. The reason is that squatter settlements are tucked away in the nooks and crannies of the city, too small to be visible on aerial maps — even detailed maps where single trees can be spotted.

On this one per cent of the total Delhi area live some three million people who keep the informal economy going and for whom no shelter provisions have been made. When the situation is seen in this light, the case for removal looks much weaker than when slums are regarded as an eyesore and a nuisance. Would it really be unwise to allocate one per cent of the land for in situ improvement of existing slums, and spare the trauma of forced eviction to millions of people, except possibly when essential public purposes are at stake?"

Hopefully, the Op-Ed will serve its desired purpose of getting the authorities involved to at least ensure that they comply with the requirements of existing law before proceeding to act. This particular instance also draws attention to the trend of cases highlighted by the recent editorial of the EPW which should lead to a close examination of the changing nature of PIL in India, and a proper assessment of its impact. (click here to link to the post which discusses this issue and also contains the link to the editorial).