How slums are made and razed in Bengaluru
How do slums mushroom? In Bengaluru, this question is usually asked only after bulldozers arrive — once homes are razed, livelihoods disrupted, and families pushed
How do slums mushroom? In Bengaluru, this question is usually asked only after bulldozers arrive — once homes are razed, livelihoods disrupted, and families pushed out overnight. Delhi: Demolition drive near PM's residence removes three slum clusters after High Court order On December 20, the Bangalore Solid Waste Management Limited (BSWML), acting with the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA), demolished over 160 houses in Kogilu, north Bengaluru. Multiple surveys followed — by government agencies, the Housing Department, and NGOs, but nearly a month later, no rehabilitation or interim housing has been provided. Families remain displaced, living with relatives or on the margins of nearby neighbourhoods. How informal settlements emerge Unlike cities such as Delhi or Mumbai, where nearly half the population lives in informal settlements, Bengaluru has seen a sharp rise in such habitations in recent decades. This, Clifton D’Rozario, advocate and general secretary of the All India Lawyers’ Association for Justice,explained, is directly linked to the failure of successive Union and State governments to provide public housing. Despite repeated promises of “housing for all” and affordable housing policies, the State has consistently failed to ensure dignified housing for the urban poor. With rural distress, agrarian crisis, caste-based exclusion, and lack of livelihood opportunities pushing people out of villages, and cities pulling them in for labour, informal settlements become inevitable, he said. “Nobody wants to live next to a drain, under a tin roof or a tarpaulin sheet. People, their families, are forced into such conditions only when every option is closed off,” he says, stressing that demolitions without addressing public housing and agrarian distress will only perpetuate the cycle. Infrastructure projects require labour over several years. In Bengaluru, where projects are known to miss deadlines, work does not end, but only shifts, overlaps, and expands. Labour stays because work stays. A slum typically begins as a temporary shelter near a worksite. Gangaraju M., a resident of Vinayaka Layout, said his grandparents had migrated to the settlement from Narayanpet in Telangana around 35 years ago, when a tech park was coming up in K.R. Puram. He recalled that a contractor involved in the project had allowed families working under him to stay there. However, he said repeated representations to the Slum Board seeking official recognition of the area had yielded no result. “The government says the land is privately owned and asks us to approach the contractor, but the contractor says he has no control and is only letting us stay.” Over time, families such as that of Gangaraju settle, and what remains “temporary” in law becomes permanent in practice, said Nandini B.K., associated with the Dhudiyuva Janara Vedike, an activist group that advocates for the rights of marginalised and poor communities. These settlements grow not because people choose informality, but because the city externalises the cost of housing the workforce it depends on. Why people do not leave? This makes the persistent question — why don’t people leave once the work is over — deeply flawed. Work is rarely “over” in the way the question assumes. Construction labourers, domestic workers, drivers, sanitation workers, and scrap collectors move from one project to another, often within the same parts of the city. Returning to villages left years ago, frequently without land or livelihood, is not a reset but a regression. Staying close to work is not defiance, but the only rational response to a city that demands labour continuously but refuses to house it, experts say.
The BriefWire