 The many evictions of the slum dwelling population from Chennai have not been carried out in a humane manner. In the large resettled colonies, the evicted population continues to suffer from lack of employment, from lack of proper transportation facilities and even from limited infrastructure. The draft policy on resettlement and rehabilitation little addresses these concerns and has many flaws. That is going to provide relief to the urban poor. That is not the objective of this policy and as well as this is not about the lower middle class people who are already suffering because of huge rising rent issues. Those people are not covered. So this is not a housing policy. This is very clear that this is a policy for evicting people. About the forceful eviction, this policy is only talking about involuntary resettlement. People would not want to leave from the place so they are going forcefully evict them. In that this policy starts with in a good note that people should be resettled in a fair and humane manner in a dignified way. That is what the policy says and the policy also mentions that quite ironically that the police force will be used during the resettlement process. If you actually look at in the past how the resettlement has happened, even the very recent resettlement that happened in Indra Nagar which is next to the place it is called Thivithudal in Chennai which is closer to the Mount Road region. They were resettled because it is claimed that they are living within the Kuvam river. They said that they have encroached the Kuvam river so the CR of the Kuvam River Restoration Department has implemented this resettlement. If you actually look at that there are photos and videos, there is a huge force of police. It is like an army. People are forcefully evicted and they are like manhandled and they are thrown in a truck and this is how resettlement happens. So the first thing that we have to say is that in this policy it has to be clearly mentioned there won't be any use of violence. There is a distinction between using police force and using violence through a police. So it should be clearly mentioned there will not be any kind of violence that will be used. Why do we say that? We say that because as we have already mentioned they have three years time. You come up with the resettlement plan. You include the people who are being affected in the resettlement committee and hear their queries and then implement the resettlement. So you have three years time to convince the people that this is not a process of resettlement. This is not just the process of evicting you from the place where you are living. This is more of a process of rehabilitation. This is going to increase your standard of living. You have to provide the confidence to people. In order to provide that confidence you have to have all the measures that will actually increase the standard of living. And it will be truly a rehabilitation policy. But such things are not part of this policy. Therefore the first thing you have to say is that clearly mentioned violence will not be part of this resettlement process. So that's not there. And if there is going to be violence then there is nothing fair. There is nothing human and there is nothing dignified about this process. So that is the major problem with this policy. And there are several other issues which does not really cover the well-being of the people. And there are several loopholes in the policy that really does not provide any kind of rehabilitation to these people. This draft policy was released within six months since the new government took over. It is a small 17 page document and only three weeks were given to provide feedback on it. The entire process of formulating and implementing the policy is done in a hasty manner. And the livelihood of the resettled population is not being prioritized. How could the policy be more friendly towards the urban poor? The place where the people will be evicted. That's the place where the resettlement is going to happen. From that place, urban areas should not be more than 30 minutes of travel. That's what the draft policy says. So from the place where the people are being resettled, they should be able to reach the nearest urban area within 30 minutes via bus or train. See, this is completely ambiguous. What is the urban area? What do you mean by urban area? As I said, some alert is one of the highly urbanized states in India. Almost 60% is urbanized. So what is the urban area? Do you mean urban area is a municipality or a greater municipality like Chennai? Or is it there are several smart cities that are coming up and nobody knows what a smart city is? So what is an urban area? So be clear about that. Second, do not mention time. See, time is variable. See, what might take 30 minutes today may take only 20 minutes tomorrow because of some infrastructural developments. So do not mention time. For example, we have Parimbakkam today. This goes with the urban area. Parimbakkam Resettlement Colony. For many people think Parimbakkam is part of the city, but Parimbakkam in Chennai is not part of the Chennai Corporation. It is a village panchayat. So from Parimbakkam, you can come to the Sholingan Allure, which is the last boundary of Chennai in that region. You can come to Parimbakkam if you can come to Sholingan Allure in 20 minutes. But from where the people were evicted, if they have to travel that distance, it will take at least 1 hour 40 minutes. Now, it is very much possible in the next few years, Parimbakkam may be included in the Chennai Corporation region because the city is also continuously expanding. The city is not a static thing. And the city's governance boundary is not a static thing. See, we had a Chennai Corporation. Now we have a greater Chennai Corporation. Now they are going to make Tambaram and municipality. Then it becomes urban area. So what is urban area? It's also something that is changing to the rims and fancies of the government. So now you can put them in somewhere near Kailambakkam. From Kailambakkam, possibly you can come to Parimbakkam in 30 minutes. So this can keep on going. So what they are saying is that do not mention time. Instead of that, mention that people will be resettled within 3 or 5 kilometers from the place where they are living right now. From place where they are being evicted. So once you say that these ambiguities will go away. Because if it's going to be 3 or 5 kilometers, then it has to be within the Chennai city or any other city that we are going to talk about. And the possibility of whether it's a municipality, whether it's a smart city, those ambiguities will also go away. So mention the distance. Do not mention the time. That is the first thing. And they also say that we should take into consideration that employment opportunities are there in the place where they are being resettled. So these things are not really clear because if you're going to put 2,000, 3,000 people in a place in one day, how there will be employment opportunities? Do we have the capacity of creating 3,000 employment in no time? No. That's not a possibility. So we have to think through those. That's the problem with this policy. The entire document is just 17 pages. See, can you really come up with the rehabilitation policy document? Which is just 17 pages. It is not possible. So this policy, if you look at it, it just has those points which will help them to evict, rather than something that will help them to rehabilitate the people who are being evicted. See, that is one problem. The second problem with this policy is that about the identification of land. See, what they say is that they have to identify a land which is environment-friendly, where you do not have any other issues and which does not have any possibilities of natural calamities. So such zoning-related issues. The problem is all of these things are in the hands of the government. Tomorrow, the government can rezone an area which was in the past considered to be environmentally hazardous. They can just rezone the area and say that this is environmentally friendly. Something that is considered to be an area which is prone to natural calamity. They can simply rezone and say that this is not a region where the natural calamity happens. See, to give you one simple example is that people were evicted within the Chennai city in 2016 during the December floods, et cetera, during that time. Because they said these regions are prone to floods. So we have to resettle them. So where did they resettle? They resettled them in Perimbakkam. Now if you talk to the residents of Perimbakkam, they will tell even if there is a mildly heavy rain, water will be clogged up to the first floor or second floor of Perimbakkam. It is quite possible. So that is already an area which is prone to natural calamity. And now they have built 6,000 households in Ernau, which is both a flood prone area and also have environmentally hazardous issues over there. So what is that identification of lands with these notions of environmentally hazardous, natural calamity? Then what they say is that the government should come up with a list of lands where people can be evicted. They should release that list prior. A priori is to release that list at least 5 years, once 10 years, once release that list and then do the eviction. Because once you release that list, get the comments from the civil suffix. Get the comments from the academics and other social activists and environmental experts. It should not be just the government agency. It cannot be the environmental agency of the government itself because you cannot audit your own list. There should be a kind of a social audit. So that is not there in this entire draft policy. So there are problems like this and as I already mentioned, the size of the settlement, mentioned the size of the settlement do not come up with 30,000 households and 40,000 households. And the other question is that the maintenance. We have to understand that we are talking about people who do not have the economic capacity to pay any kind of rent. That's why these people are living in the places which are next to a river which is not like a river anymore. It's more like a CVH dump. And in the places which is not something that any human being who want to live a peaceful life would want to live in. The reason that they are living in is not because they are happy to be there because they do not have a choice. Because they don't have the money to pay rent. So you are evicting such people. After evicting such people, in the document if you see, who is responsible for the maintenance of the house? It becomes these people who are responsible for the maintenance of the house. For instance, in Karambakum, they collect around 750 rupees per household for maintenance. But even after that, some of the basic maintenance like water, lift, the people have to spend out of their own pockets. So the maintenance should be done by the government. If not, this becomes a classic case of government withdrawing from providing public services. So these problems needs to be addressed. And I think the government have not really taken the experience from Kanaginagar and Parimbakum regions to come up with a better plan. Kanaginagar, Parimbakum, Chamanjiri, these regions, people have continuously expressed their queries to the government and the problems that are there, like drug abuse and women's safety, children's safety. These are major concerns in both Parimbakum and Kanaginagar. So these questions have not been addressed in this draft policy. Therefore, the past experience is not included in the policy.