Voices of despair rise as Delhi govt gets tough on slum dwellings along Yamuna

Under the soft haze of dawn, the Yamuna flows quietly; the air along its floodplains rancid with the mingling odours of a heavily-polluted river, damp garbage-laden earth, and smoke billowing from wood stoves in makeshift shanties of Delhi’s “urban poor” waking up to another day filled with the threat of eviction.

Since the BJP stormed to power in Delhi last month, displacing the AAP, “cleaning the Yamuna” has been its avowed priority. With the BJP-appointed Delhi Lieutenant Governor and the Delhi government being on the same page for the first time in over a decade, Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta has been repeatedly promising a “visible change for the better” in Yamuna’s consistently-high pollution levels.

Anti-encroachment drive

Whether Gupta is able to deliver on her promise will, of course, be known in time, but her government’s zeal to clean the Yamuna has begun to hit thousands of Delhi’s “urban poor” who, over the past decades, set up shanties and slum clusters across vast stretches along the river. Over the past week, inhabitants of slum clusters in areas like Shastri Park, Okhla, and Kashmere Gate have received notices of eviction. The anti-encroachment drive has already removed dairies and several so-called illegal constructions.

Officials argue that clearing these areas is necessary to restore the Yamuna’s ecological balance.

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“The Yamuna floodplain is not meant for habitation. These settlements are illegal and harm the environment. We are only following court orders,” says a senior official from the DDA, requesting anonymity.

There is no denying that several of these clusters came up as encroachments over the decades, largely due to political patronage by successive governments, including that of the BJP in the mid-1990s, as the inhabitants were either Purvanchalis or from Muslim and Dalit communities – all vote banks of different parties. Yet, while large parts of similar encroachments in other parts of Delhi, many within what was called the Laal Dora, were eventually regularised either under orders of the Supreme Court or the Delhi government, the settlements around the Yamuna remained “illegal”.

Now, with the Yamuna’s alarming pollution levels routinely making national headlines, drawing in harsh criticism of and strictures to the government from the judiciary while also becoming a political issue that the BJP marshalled effectively against the previous AAP regime during the recent assembly polls, the Delhi administration is on an overdrive to “clear up the encroachments”.

Caught in the lurch are the economically and socially-backward inhabitants of these areas, who settled here under political assurances from successive regimes that these clusters would be “regularised” in time. A majority of residents in these “illegal settlements” work as daily wage labourers, street vendors, and sanitation workers – people who keep Delhi running but remain invisible in its development plans and have no financial means to build a home elsewhere in the national capital.

Cycle of displacement

Sadir, a 45-year-old migrant from Bihar, has witnessed the cycle of displacement many times over the last twenty years but hoped his current dwelling in Okhla’s Gaiy Ghat would finally be a place he could call home. Last week, a notice of eviction shattered that hope.

“They gave us notice to leave by March 22, saying it is for Yamuna’s cleaning. Where should we go? The government has only pushed us from one place to another,” said Sadir.

His children stand beside him, clutching their schoolbags, uncertain if they will have a place to return to after class.

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Just a few metres ahead, Rukhsana Bano, a mother of three, echoes the same despair.

“We have lived here for two decades. We have nowhere else to go. Now, they say we are polluting the river. The government should just drown us in the river instead, so our ‘filth’ is gone forever,” she says.

Manisha, from the Khadar settlement, describes a growing sense of fear among the residents but also asserts defiantly, “we are not leaving, the government must build colonies for us before asking us to vacate.”

At Shastri Park, 35-year-old cart-puller Rahul Singh and his wife describe their shattered reality.

“They demolished our house. They promised compensation, but nothing has happened. We are uncertain about our future,” says his wife, standing beside him with a small bundle of their belongings, prepared to leave the makeshift shanty they are now living in if the bulldozers arrive again.

Commercial hubs also affected

The eviction drive isn’t limited to residential settlements alone. Equally affected are commercial hubs like the Yamuna Bazaar face. For decades, the market has been a centre for small traders, providing livelihood to hundreds of families.

“I have been selling clothes here for twenty-five years. This market feeds us. If they remove us, where will we go?” asks Rajesh, a vendor at the Yamuna Bazaar.

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For vendors and traders at this sprawling market, the threat of eviction is not just about losing physical space but about losing generations of hard-earned stability. While the government justifies its actions under the garb of environmental protection, traders argue that no sustainable alternatives have been provided for their resettlement.

The Supreme Court has stated that while citizens do not have the right to occupy public land, authorities must ensure proper rehabilitation procedures. Last month, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) took a sterner view on clearing the illegal encroachments but without offering those living in them the silver lining of compensation and rehabilitation that the Supreme Court had mandated. The NGT has ordered the Delhi Development Authority for immediate measures, including clearing encroachments and illegal settlements, to restore the Yamuna’s ecosystem.

The government maintains that of the 9,700 hectares in Zone O (which includes the Yamuna floodplain), 7,362.6 hectares have been encroached upon, but offers no explanation on how these encroachments first came up and then continued to expand over the decades.

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‘Where do we go now?’

Former IIT Delhi professor AK Gosain, who has advised the NGT on several matters and is an expert on Water Resources Engineering, told The Federal, “Human displacement is a problem, but the bigger problem is the environmental concerns arising out of the present condition of the Yamuna, and it is imperative for it to be cleaned. As far as people living on the banks of the Yamuna are concerned, an alternative will have to be worked out.”

Gosain may have a valid concern, lapped up now by the judiciary and the Delhi government alike. For the thousands of poor residents of these localities along the Yamuna though, the concern is far more personal and one that neither the government nor the judiciary has offered any answer – where do we go now?