For the last 40 years, Delhiites would have heard now and then that the tony Sainik Farms with heated swimming pools and mini golf courses—where top politicians, bureaucrats and industrialists spend their weekends—will be razed soon, as they are built on unauthorised land. Not even a boundary wall has been brought down—if anything, more Italian marble and Belgian stained glass have found their way into these farmlands. But every other day there are reports of houses and shops being demolished in Delhi’s Jahangirpuri, Seelampur or Geeta Colony on charges of encroachment. What about the encroachment in posh areas like Vasant Vihar or Defence Colony, where miles and miles of pavements have been taken over by guard rooms or garages by the rich and the mighty? Or in any middle-class DDA colony where every rule has been broken with impunity, where two-room apartments have miraculously become six-rooms with attached baths? Likewise, every Mumbaikar has forever heard about ‘Asia’s largest slum’ Dharavi’s rehabilitation. But all that has happened to the city’s slums, as our report by Haima Deshpande says this week, is that the poor have lost their dwelling.
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Yes, building on land that doesn’t belong to you is illegal. But why are only the poor always punished? No bulldozer ever heads towards Sainik Farms. We look at this, plus the larger issue of displacement due to demolition, from Kashmir to Bastar, in this edition.
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