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THE FATE OF DELHI'S "MAGICIANS' GHETTO"

Bulldozers are soon expected to raze Delhi's Kathputli slum, home to the city's circus performers. Simon Wroe talks to locals who may soon be left homeless ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE On an unlovely stretch of road running west out of New Delhi, one of the Indian government’s more famous embarrassments is stirring to life. It is a Sunday morning in Kathputli Colony, a higgledy sprawl of slum dwellings that house thousands of the city’s circus families. Colourfully dressed residents navigate streams of sewage on their way to bookings at embassy functions and lavish weddings. Children play hopscotch in the narrow streets. The insistent beat of a dholak drum rises above the corrugated iron roofs. In "Midnight’s Children", Salman Rushie wrote of the “Magicians’ Ghetto” in Delhi, home to jugglers, fakirs and sweetmeat stalls, of “vendors of notions and itr-essences” and the “caterwauls of shoe-shine boys”. Kathputli is a real-life incarnation of Rushdie’s world. But while these slums offer a fine literary backdrop, they are a problem for both residents and the government. The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has talked of wanting to clear the city's slums, known as “jhuggi jhopri clusters”, before it hosts the 2010 Commonwealth Games in October. This is grossly unrealistic: the 860 officially recognised clusters in the city hold an estimated 4m inhabitants. Officials now plan to hide the most deprived areas behind bamboo screens when the television crews arrive and deal with them later. All eyes are on India’s shantytowns after the runaway success of “Slumdog Millionaire” in cinemas last year. Although the film, set in the vast Mumbai slum of Dharavi, is less interested in social issues than in plucking heart strings, it still captures the country’s dual concerns of grinding poverty and pell-mell economic advancement: what Rushdie has identified as “Businessism... India’s other true faith”. Kathputli remains a government priority, owing to its central location and its fame as a colony for performers and artists. An Indian real-estate company called Raheja won the tender to develop the site last October for nearly £900,000; the bulldozers are expected this month. For the first time in the slum’s 50-year history, real and inexorable change is in the air. The rest of Delhi’s poor are watching closely: they may be next. Raheja plans to replace the colony’s tumbledown houses and congested snickelways with a complex of high-rise apartments, offices, a shopping centre, school, medical clinic, police station and even a milk booth (ie, a social cafe). In return, the government has granted Raheja 10% of the land for commercial use and high-end residential units. All but 200 of the 3,000 new homes have been earmarked for the current residents. Happy times, one might think. But on the streets of Kathputli enthusiasm for the project is in short supply. In the main thoroughfare, a group of men squat on their hams and draw worry lines in the dust. “They been showing us dreams for 25 years,” says Jagdish Bhatt, a 43-year-old puppeteer, wiping the rheum from his eyes between puffs on a pungent bidi cigarette. “The Delhi government promise us nice house here, but they are just promises. This land is all over expensive. I’m sure they don’t want to build us a proper house for nothing. They are going to break up the colony.” Jagdish is one of the slum’s luckier sons. The seventh generation of his family to make and operate mango wood puppets (“kathputli” is the Hindi word for puppet), he has performed at arts festivals across Europe. At home he sleeps on the floor of a single room he shares with his wife and four children. His shelves are bare except for suitcases of marionettes. Jagdish’s neighbours are acrobats, conjurers, dancers, fire throwers, monkey handlers, musicians, craftsmen and the occasional desperate thief. They are all squeezed into a 5.22-hectare plot of municipal wasteland, living in third-world squalor at the heart of India’s tiger economy. As part of the scheduled two-year redevelopment, Raheja has agreed to move all colony residents to a temporary site. But only those families with valid identification cards will have houses to return to when construction finishes. A door-to-door survey recently conducted by the DDA counts 2,700 families living in Kathputli; unofficial estimates put the number far higher, at around 10,000 families. Many suspect the government is wilfully concealing the number of residents who will be left homeless after the colony is redeveloped. The life of a Kathputli performer is already full of uncertainty. Some weeks there is work and some weeks there is not. No one could tell me exactly what they earned in a month or a year. A good gig might pay around 1,000 rupees (£13) per performer for about five hours work, but that might come along only once a month. Medical aid and schooling is provided by foreign non-profit organisations; electricity and water is stolen, and there is no sanitation. Their current housing is entirely unsubsidised—just scrap bolstered by a few brick walls. “Some people are still hoping for electricity, nice home, running water,” says Krishan, a juggler. “But if you have no ID proof they shift you to another site, not in Delhi." This is a big problem for many of the performers, who rely on the colony's location to lure business. "We go to another site and people do not understand where to go for puppeteers, jugglers or magicians," Krishan continues. "We lose business. Kathputli is same as my house, my office, my computer, my mobile. If government do not give me house, me die.” Krishan’s family of six are among those mysteriously missed by the government headcount. Spend time in the slum and you will meet many more in the same predicament. Anil, a steel-bender and acrobat, tells me neither he nor his four brothers have the right paperwork for their families. Vinod, a fire-breather, says simply: “What our government wants, they will do. We can’t do anything about it.” In a recent e-mail, Vijay Sehgal, the deputy general manager of Raheja, claimed residents were “very positive and upbeat on the whole concept. They are eagerly awaiting the start of construction so they can see their dream turning into reality.” But few of the people I spoke to in Kathputli confirmed this official line. Slums such as Kathputli serve as constant reminders in India that at least a quarter of the country’s population—around 300m people—live below the international poverty line of $1.25 per day. Shopping malls and corporate skyscrapers are on the rise across Delhi’s affluent suburbs, but the Congress-led government remains haunted by Ghandi’s belief that a nation's greatness should be measured by how it treats its weakest members. That is not to say that everyone sympathises with Kathputli’s residents. Some wealthy Delhiites argue that the city’s slum-dwellers are not owed anything as the land is not theirs. Others suggest that Kathputli’s inhabitants are to blame for their current misfortunes. Anju Choubey, a social worker and advocate for the slum performers for more than a decade, told me this was not the first time the government had tried to compromise with the locals. Three previous proposals for rehabilitation were scuttled due to “slum politics”, she said, and a general suspicion of government intervention. This included the community’s refusal of a spot of prime real estate in south Delhi 15 years ago—a decision that many local charities still writhe over. Jagdish, an influential figure within the colony, admits they made a "big mistake" refusing this land. Choubey observed that the government’s latest proposal has provoked similar bouts of paranoia among residents. Rumours and distrust are once again circulating the colony, and many wonder what their neighbours are doing to secure ID cards and future housing. Factions are forming. History is in danger of repeating itself. At any rate, Kathputli’s families are reluctant to leave their central Delhi address for another stretch of brown field outside city limits, even temporarily. They know the story of the Yamuna colony, many of whom lost their homes and livelihoods when they were moved out of the city to make way for the Commonwealth Games Village in 2006. Complicating matters, no one seems to agree on where these thousands of illiterate, uneducated performers should go. In a search of possible sites within 4km of Kathputli, two suggestions have already been withdrawn after objections from local groups. Meanwhile the clock is ticking. “The government are in a hurry but first they must find place for us,” says Jagdish. “If they can’t find anywhere then we’re not going to move. But we cannot fight with the government for long. If we don’t want to move they can bring army in with the gun. What shall we do then?” He watches his eldest daughter Yahvi washing clothes on a stone in the yard of their home and adds quietly: “In India they have no respect for artists. But our tradition is very old. The name Kathputli will survive.” (Simon Wroe is a writer based in London.) Picture credit: Laura Mitchison