The government is ‘rescuing’ unwilling homeless people from the streets and packing them off to shelters. Nobody thought of speaking to the homeless first.
Winter is upon us once more. Pollution, smog and plunging temperatures transmute sleeping into a formidable daily challenge for the most dispossessed of city residents – people without homes. The more compassionate among us are stirred briefly each year about the predicament of the homeless forced to sleep in the biting cold. The Delhi government has undertaken a range of steps to aid the homeless in winter months after it was moved to action by years of civic mobilisation, judicial activism and occasional media attention.
The state government has established 218 homeless shelters in Delhi with a capacity of over 17,000 persons. However, it is confronted by a conundrum that it finds difficult to understand. At least half the capacity of the shelters lies unutilised even on the coldest nights, although tens of thousands of homeless people battle the elements without a roof over their heads. For every homeless person who sleeps in a shelter in the city, there are an estimated 15 who still sleep out in the open.
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