Mohammed Ibrahim woke to Delhi's sun and waited for his life to collapse. He had known it was inevitable from the blaring megaphone driven past his door the day before. By 6am three generations of the rickshaw driver's family had ferried their possessions into the open.
Just after 9am, six bulldozers crushed to rubble the two-room home he had built.
With the machines, Ibrahim says, came more than 1,000 police officers carrying tear gas and batons. They destroyed his neighbors' houses too. Up to a third of a million people living in Delhi's biggest slum are being evicted under a government plan to transform the banks of the city's Yamuna river into a tourist and leisure center.
"Without my home, I feel like a dead man," Ibrahim said.
Most of the 150,000 people whose homes have been destroyed in the past two weeks earn around 2,000 rupees (US$45) a month as servants, rag pickers, construction workers and rickshaw drivers. They have no option but to live among clumps of rubble, facing police intimidation when they try to erect makeshift shelters.
Slum clearances are central to the government's plan to make over the capital. Delhi is India's richest city, with a burgeoning and vocal middle class impatient for the trappings of a 21st century consumer lifestyle. Road building and the construction of a metro have all swept away slums.
"The guilt about inequity and poverty of 10 years ago has vanished with the triumph of the middle class," said Ravi Agarwal, director of the environmental group Toxics Link.
"Now discrimination against landless, lower-caste people is dressed up in language about a "clean future,'" Agarwal said.
Neighboring the slum is one of the world's great Islamic imperial sites -- the 17th century city of Old Delhi. There is the sprawling heritage site of the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid -- the nation's biggest mosque -- and the renowned market Chandi Chowk.
Slum clearances have proved problematic for administrations trying to reconcile development with the interests of poor people.
Tourism and Cultural Minister Jagmohan is spearheading the Yamuna evictions and talks of reviving the area. He gained notoriety in the 1970s for taking charge of slum-clearance programs during then prime minister Indira Gandhi's "Emergency," when India's democracy was suspended. The exercise then, as now, was to reclaim the city from the "illegal encroachments" that had enveloped many of Delhi's monuments.
Dunu Roy, director of the Hazards Center, a charity that supports community groups, said of the present clearances: "All citizenship rights have been snatched away. It's ruthless and inhuman."
In the midst of India's general election, activists argue that Jagmohan, a member of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), will benefit from the timing. Delhi goes to the polls this week and the majority of the slum dwellers are Muslims who traditionally support the opposition. Although contingencies for relocating evicted families were promised by the government, relief agencies estimate that only a quarter have been moved.
For a plot the size of a garden shed on Delhi's limits some 35km away from the slum, they must pay the equivalent of three months' wages. Unable to afford to travel such a long journey, many have lost their jobs.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in