DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Winter Deaths Climb, but Gov’t Indifferent

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Dec 23 2003 (IPS) - Winter in the Indian capital brings with it a Christmas charm that is great for fashionable bonfire parties and chic clothes, but a look into the thick fog reveals nameless, shapeless forms huddled on the cold pavements for want of shelter.

As temperatures dip below five degrees Celsius at night, thousand are dying on the city’s pavements from a combination of hypothermia and malnutrition, a fate that voluntary agencies are struggling to prevent by getting them into schoolbuildings and whatever shelter is available.

Last winter, which was particularly severe, police counted 3,040 bodies of people who simply did not survive the night. The figure for 2001 was 2,670 deaths and 2,200 for 2000.

This season, according to Indu Prakash Singh, coordinator for the voluntary group Action Aid India, 2,977 unclaimed bodies have already been found on the pavements even before the coldest part of winter, around Christmas and New Year, had set in.

”We are not interested in government-bashing, but we want to see some official response to the situation and save the homeless from death and extreme misery caused by sleeping in the open in the cold wave conditions,” said Singh.

”We all need to do our bit and prevent these deaths,” said the well-known actress and social activist Nandita Das, who is helping Action Aid’s campaign to rouse the conscience of better-off people in an effort to find shelter for the homeless during the cold nights.

Northern Indian winters are not as severe as in the temperate zone further up. But people tend to be unprepared for them because of a lack of heating arrangements. Those who have no homes are left completely exposed to temperatures ranging between a minimum of five degrees at night to 15 degrees Celsius during the day.

Also unlike in most temperate zones, northern India is subject to high summer temperatures that soar above 45 degrees Celsius when, again, thousands of mostly poor people die from heat strokes.

The monsoon rains do not bring any cheer for pavement dwellers either.

Das said that while it is the state’s responsibility to find shelter for those who do not have, there are just too many deaths occurring for ordinary citizens to go on remaining indifferent.

Action Aid’s strategy this winter is to encourage people who have control over large public buildings, including schools, religious institutions and government departments, to take in the homeless during the cold nights.

”These places stay closed during the night and can easily shelter large numbers of people,” said Action Aid’s country director Harsh Mander, a former career bureaucrat who resigned from the government last year as a conscientious objector to the callous ways of officialdom.

Delhi does run about a dozen night shelters that can accommodate about 2,500 people, but they are woefully inadequate for the estimated 100,000 people who are forced to live on pavements and consider themselves lucky to able to rig up a plastic sheet and burn scraps of cardboard or anything combustible to ward off the chill.

According to Mander, the situation is particularly bad for women and children who cannot use the shelters for fear of being exploited sexually. Making idle facilities in public buildings available would help them immensely and cause no damage, he added.

”We have no policy on providing night shelters for women and we hope some of the NGOs who are working with us will come with a plan to address the problem,” said Rakesh Mehta, a senior official with the Delhi Municipality.

Many officials take the attitude that providing shelters as a policy would attract even more people, looking desperately for opportunities to make a living, to come to the cities from the impoverished rural hinterland.

Existing night shelters charge about a cent for a night’s stay. But many of the homeless find even that unaffordable and are forced to rough it out as best they can on the pavements, braving not only the cold but beatings and abuse by police, said Mander.

One menace that pavement dwellers have to contend with are rich inebriated people in speeding cars and even buses that careen off the road and which seem to find frequent mention in the newspapers, especially when they involve celebrities or the offspring of influential people.

With all that, it is not uncommon to see groups of people huddling into top-open garbage dumps which have four walls that afford some safety, protection from icy winds and free combustible matter – even if it is smoky scraps of plastic.

Amod Kanth, who ranks as additional commissioner of police and prefers to stay on in government service and work for the marginalised, is supportive of Action Aid’s idea of allowing the homeless to use public buildings such as schools for the night.

Kanth, who is an advisor to Action Aid and devotes much of his time to ‘Prayas’, a voluntary agency he runs for destitute children, points to how schools that did let in the homeless during the night last year found them left spick and span the next morning by the grateful occupants.

Kanth said that the government had begun increasing the capacity of night shelters this winter, but called on wealthy corporations and concerned citizens to come forward and help materially.

Visitors to the Indian capital are unfailingly struck by the contrasts between great wealth and wrenching poverty, as well as magnificent buildings set amidst the most abject slums – sure signs of poor wealth distribution and poorer civic sense.

Apart from mobilising public opinion in favour of the homeless, Action Aid has filed a public interest suit asking the Supreme Court to get the government to take greater responsibility in providing shelter and coming up with the estimated 20 million dollars that might accommodate at least 50,000 people.

Said Das: ”This is not really about money but about political will and public attitude.”