 Hello, welcome to NewsClick. Recently, the Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board came up with a draft policy for resettlement and rehabilitation, according to which the urban poor can be evicted from their places of dwelling and moved to a different site. Chennai has been witnessing a lot of evictions, especially over the past 15, 20 years. And in the recent past, NewsClick has been reporting all the evictions that were forcefully done within the Chennai city, whether it is the Arumbakkam eviction or the recent pavement evictions from Edmonds. So what does the draft resettlement policy hold for these people for the urban poor? To speak about the matter, we have with us Kishore Kumar, who is a resource scholar in economics from the University of Massachusetts. Hello, Kishore. Thanks a lot for joining us. Could you please tell us, because housing question is not something new, right? So there was even with respect to Chennai, there was only the slum clearance board. And the name of the board has recently been changed and new policy is brought up. Why is this happening? What is the context of this? See, to start with housing issues, not something that is particular to Chennai. If you look at all over India, there are thousands of homeless people. And it's been like since 1960s and 1970s, the urban crisis can be called as a housing crisis in India. A lot of people migrate to urban areas and did not have money or any kind of resources to rent or buy a house in the urban center. Therefore, we can see that there's an increase of squatter settlements all around India's urban centers, particularly the metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and now Bangalore and Hyderabad. So therefore, since, at least since 1980s, there's been a series of evictions that has happened in the metropolitan cities, particularly in cities like Delhi, Chennai, and Mumbai. And in that, if you look at in that scenario, Chennai is different compared to any other cities in India. Because of the kind of government that we had, there's a change of government from Congress to DMK. In 1970s, Tamil Nadu government comes up with this Tamil Nadu slum clearance board, which is in my opinion, it is revolutionary and it is very different from the rest of the country because there are three main policy to that, three main objective to that TNSEB, Tamil Nadu slum clearance board. The first objective is that slum dwellers should not be evicted from the place where they are living. That's the first objective. And the second objective is to construct good and livable tenements for the slum dwellers in the same place where they are living. That is called the same city development. And the third objective of that policy is that in case if the government is not able to build them this quality tenement, at least build them temporary tenements which would not catch fire. If you see in Chennai in those times, during the summer season, the squatter settlements because they're mostly made of some stakes and easily flammable materials, therefore the government came up with this objective that they should build at least temporary tenements which the houses will not get burnt during the summer season. But this policy has quickly changed within a span of, let's say 15 to 20 years. This policy coming up in 1972, if I'm not wrong, during the Chief Minister Karnanadeep period, DMK's period. But the experience is that once the World Bank started intervening in the housing projects, not just in Chennai, but all over the world, particularly in the developing countries, World Bank and IMF started intervening in the housing policies of cities. And this is something particular to note that Chennai was taken as a model project for World Bank. So they wanted to get experience from Chennai and develop this in other areas. And they changed everything. So they changed it from institute development to sites and settlements. And they also changed the political nature of Tamil Nadu slum clearance board. So Tamil Nadu slum clearance board at one level was also the political vehicles for DMK at that time to mobilize the urban masses. So the chairman of the Tamil Nadu slum clearance board was a political appointee. Therefore the chairman is accountable to the people and also accountable to the party. But the first condition of the World Bank, they came up with something around 300 million dollars or something, just a huge money, which also influenced the change. The first condition for them was to replace the political appointee by the bureaucrat that they wanted the IAS officer to be the chairperson of TNSEB that itself was changing the nature of the Tamil Nadu slum clearance board. See, an IAS officer is not really accountable to the people. He's accountable to the government in some sense because the government can transfer them, the government can take action. Whereas he's not really accountable to the people, there's a political appointee. It's accountable to the people because every five years, once the people own. So once this has happened, we can see that since 1990s, there have been numerous evictions in Chennai, in particular, we can particularly talk about Chennai. Almost in the last 30 years or so, around 70,000 households has been evicted from the Chennai city. And they've been kicked out of the city to peripheral regions like Taneginagar, Parambakkam, Kodungayur, like that. These are like 20, 30 kilometers away from the city. It will take a huge ordeal for these people to come from those peripheral regions to the place of work which is within the city, right? So this policy, this policy of evicting people has been happening without government having any concrete policy. There is nothing in paper that talks about how these evictions should happen, who should be evicted, where they should be replaced. Nothing is written. So this is all with some understanding. Therefore now the government has come up with this draft policy, resettlement and rehabilitation policy, which in my opinion is a welcome move. What is a welcome move is that coming up with a draft policy like this is a welcome move. I'm not saying that the policy itself is very good and it's rosy for the poor people. I'm not saying that. But the idea of coming up with the policy is important because for the past 30 years, people have been kicked out of the city without any government documents which provides guidelines for how this eviction should happen. So there is very little the civil society and the political parties and the activists can do because there is no government policy in place. The only thing that you're left with is gone protest and there is no government document that you can cite and say that, see, this is not something the government should do. So basically what was already in practice is now going to be done with certain guidelines and in a legislative manner. So but why is resettlement, then resettlement becomes inevitable also, right? The policy itself is named resettlement and rehabilitation and if that is the case then why is that problematic? See if you see the policy, it says resettlement and rehabilitation policy. In my opinion, in this policy, the primary objective of this policy is resettlement. I think we should say it in other words actually, the primary objective of this policy is eviction and the rehabilitation becomes the secondary objective of this policy because if you look at the document, the document is very clear. It says people who are living in objectionable land, people who are encroachers, people who are non-title holders, these people have to be evicted. So this policy is written with some kind of a preconceived notion. They've already decided that eviction is inevitable. Now that should be questioned first. Why is eviction inevitable? See, so they say that they're like, they cite three reasons and I had accepted over there why people can be evicted from the place that they are living. One is development project. Two is natural calamities. Three is court orders and et cetera. See, let's take development projects. The question is when a development project or any infrastructure project that comes in a city would benefit for whom it is constructed? That is the first question that should be asked. So in that process, the other question that should also be asked is that, can this infrastructure project not be constructed in any other area other than where these slum dwellers are living? See, that is the question that needs to be asked. And there is no such thing in the policy that talks about alternative measures that the government have taken. So again, it's natural calamities. The question here is that now the first the government should explore are there options that we can protect these people from so-and-so natural calamities by constructing a better housing? Like what it was there in the Tamil Nadu slum clearance board objective, at least built temporary housing where the houses will not catch fire, like that. Can we increase the level of the land so that it won't be a flood prone area? Something like that. So has the government thought about it? And finally, court orders. See, the most notorious thing in this policy is court orders. Because if you look at Delhi, there have been numerous public interest litigations which was arguing against the slum dwellers and several small scale industries within Delhi. And every public interest litigation was ruled against the slum dwellers. So the question is when such public interest litigation comes, who is going to go for the public interest litigation? It's going to be the really rich people who are living in Chennai. We want the city to be defined in a particular way, right? Which is generally against the poor and particularly against the slum dwellers. So if that is the case, on whose side the government will stand? Will the government go against such TIL and save the poor people? Or it will just simply not say anything, just evict the people, right? So these are the questions that should be asked. And the primary thing should be is that it should be stated in the policy that eviction will happen if and only if. Eviction is considered as the lost result, right? So the government should come up with, so the good thing about this policy is that it says if you're going to evict people from a particular locality, then you should inform them why they are being evicted. But what I'm saying is that that is not in us. You should come up with a clear plan and show them that, say we are evicting you from this place because we have explored A, B, C and D. We have explored four other options and it is not possible to implement any of those options. Therefore, we are evicting you. So therefore you should come up with that. So in order to do that, you should really explore those options. So that is not there in this policy. The policy is very clear. The policy is this entire policy has been written with the preconception that eviction is inevitable. And that is completely against the slum-dweller. So that is the major flaw in the policy. You said that the whole idea of bringing up policy is a positive thing, it's a good thing. So but are there anything positive for the people in the policy, for the urban dwellers, urban people? Yeah, yeah. I think there are several positive things in this policy. I don't want to completely reject this policy and say that the government has come up with some kind of hidden agenda. I don't want to go on that route. Because the first thing I said, it says the government, the people should be informed of why they are being evicted. I think that is important. People should at least know why they are being evicted because in the past, they just know that, okay, government has asked us to leave this place. We have to go. And in most of the cases, they've been taken out like they've been taken out and been thrown using garbage-carrying vehicles. That bad it has been. So now, the first thing is that they should be informed. And the second thing is that the government has divided this into three stages. One is pre-resettlement, during resettlement and post-resettlement. They've come up with various set of measures for these three stages. The most important thing is that the government says, once the people are being informed that they have to be resettled, they should come up with a resettlement plan, which is valid for three years. If you are not able to execute the resettlement within those three years, then you have to come up with a new resettlement plan. I think the government have really thought through this because once you say this place has to be resettled, then everybody has to be enumerated and we have to tell them that we enumerate and then give them allocation in the place where they are going to be resettled. But more than three years, what happens is that there may be new households that can start growing in those slum region. That's when the government is very clear. If you are not able to do it within three years, then we have to come up with a new plan. We have to draft a new plan. And in that resettlement plan, they also say that there should be a resettlement committee. And in the resettlement committee, people who are being affected should be part of the committee. I think that is a welcome move because the people who are being affected so far, they had no say in how a resettlement colony will look like. They had no say in what are the infrastructure that should be there. So in that sense, that's a welcome move. They say that the affected population should be there, but it's really women should be there. So these people who are being affected, they can go and visit the area where they will be relocated. And they can see the developments like how the schools are being built, how the houses are being built, where the roads are being properly laid. And they can come and have a discussion in the region where they are already living, which from which they will be evicted. They can have a discussion and submit that report to the resettlement committee. I think that's a welcome move. And the last point about the, another positive thing about this policy is that they've listed down several infrastructures which should be already in place before people get evicted. I think that's a good thing. They have schools, they have the in-house toilets, roads, electricity. And they also say that there should be a possibility of access to road, et cetera. I think these things are quite a positive things, but there are things that are a little bit vague over there. For instance, they say schools. I think they should clearly mention it should be higher secondary schools with all the possible groups, like commerce, science, and biophysics. And about the hospital, they say that it will be something like a primary health center. I think that is not enough. If you look at Parimbakkam, it has around like 22,000 households plus, right? And if you see Kandeginagar, they have another 22,000 households. And we have Chamanchiri where I think there will be some 8,000 households. So these are resettlement colonies which are kind of adjacent to each other. So it's almost like 50,000 households, almost like 50 to 50,000 households. And there's not even a single government general hospital. See, if there are 50,000 households, it is quite feasible and economical to build a government general hospital, which can also be used by other people in the locality, not just for the resettlement quality. So when you do not have that, for anything major, they have to travel like a long distance, like 20 to 30 kilometers to come to a government general hospital, which has all the facilities. I think they should be very clear here about hospitals, what kind of facilities will be there. Because anything can be a primary health center. You can just have two beds and few medicines and the doctor for namesake. So that is not clear. And there are certain infrastructure they have kept in the later time. It's not necessary. But one of that is one-stop violence center for one-stop, one center for stopping violence on women. I think that should be part of the primary infrastructure. It should be there even before the people go there. But on the whole, some of these points are quite welcome. And it also allows the civil society to advocate and the affected population to advocate if some of these basic things are not there. I think that will help.