Who let the ‘aam aadmi’ down in Delhi?

When the Aam Aadmi Party came to power in 2013, it made all sorts of promises to transform the national capital — ‘we’ll clean the air, clean the river, make women safer, weed out corruption, appoint a Lokpal...’ No surprises there — all parties make promises to try and seize power.

But public memory is short and when elections come round again, all the media noise is about the new promises rather than a reality check on what we were promised and what we got. Among a myriad other pledges to the people of Delhi, AAP promised to put common folk, the eponymous aam aadmi, at the centre of its policies and governance. But did the aam aadmi get what the ruling party promised them?

AAP made a big song and dance about its mohalla clinics and ‘world class’ government schools, which flattered to deceive. For everything that went wrong or wasn't fixed — the city’s air pollution or the state of the river Yamuna, for example — it blamed everyone else: past governments, neighbouring governments, the bureaucracy, the Centre, the lieutenant-governor... But let’s return to the aam aadmi.

Arguably the most neglected citizens of Delhi live in the city’s slum clusters, the so-called jhuggi-jhopdi colonies, a.k.a. JJ colonies. As per government data, the city has 675 slums and 1,700 jhuggi-jhopdi clusters, home to approximately 1.5 million voters. They are among the poorest in the national capital and include migrant workers, whose services are critical to keep the capital running. In at least 10 assembly segments, these folks are believed to play a big hand in deciding who wins. On voting day, they also tend to show up in larger numbers than others, a fact not lost on political parties, who do their best to woo them.

Unsurprisingly, the BJP too has made tall promises to transform the lives of these people. For example, it promised that everyone would have a pucca house by 2022, while, in fact, several slums have been uprooted over the past several years. AAP won two elections — in 2015 and 2020 — on the basis of its promise to provide free water and electricity to slum dwellers, another promise sadly belied.

Nearly 80 per cent of these voters, mostly Dalits and minorities, supported AAP in 2015 and again in 2020. The party promised them free water and electricity and the overall transformation of their settlements, including a pucca home for every family. A whole decade later, the condition of these settlements is practically unchanged, only worse in some areas.

So, while the BJP is busily promoting its ‘har ghar nal se jal (tap water in every home)' scheme, AAP crows about providing 20,000 litres of free water per family per month. The reality, dear reader, is starkly different. Forget a tap in every home — most of these settlements do not have a single tap connection! Water is still supplied through tankers, and there is a desperate scramble when one arrives on the scene. Each family gets barely two to three buckets, and the water is not safe for drinking.

Likewise, the promise was to build toilets for every household, while, in fact, a few community toilets serve entire neighbourhoods, forcing residents to queue up every morning. Drainage is terrible and overflowing sewage a common sight in the monsoon months, turning these settlements into a living nightmare.

These schemes have existed in Delhi for decades, with the first such initiative dating back to 1960, when slum dwellers were allotted 80 square-yard plots to build their own homes. But as more people migrated to Delhi and settled in slums, their rehabilitation didn’t keep up with the migration, leaving thousands stuck in precarious conditions.

It soon became evident that Delhi’s limited land area made it impossible to provide individual plots to all slum dwellers. This led to a shift in policy, replacing land allotments with flat-based housing schemes. Across the city, several such settlements, commonly known as JJ colonies, have emerged. They are also known as EWS colonies. Initially, these housing projects consisted of three-storey buildings, but due to space constraints, multistoried apartment complexes are the new norm.

Just four days before the announcement of the assembly elections, PM Narendra Modi visited Ashok Vihar in west Delhi to inaugurate Swabhiman Apartments, handing over keys to 1,400 families from the Jailerwala Bagh slum. The timing was no coincidence, and the (election) message quite clear. A similar event took place in November 2022, when he allotted flats to 3,024 families in a newly built apartment complex in Kalkaji; a similar redevelopment project is under way in Kathputli Colony.

The foundation for the Kalkaji project was laid in 2013 under the leadership of then chief minister Sheila Dikshit and PM Manmohan Singh. The Congress has, in fact, accused both the Centre and the state government of failing to allot 46,000 housing units initiated by the Sheila Dikshit government, which were in different stages of construction.

The redevelopment of Kathputli Colony in Delhi’s Shadipur Depot area was handed over to a private builder in public-private partnership mode. The initial agreement was that a third of the land would be given to the builder for commercial use, while the remaining two-thirds would be allocated to housing for slum dwellers.

This ratio was later changed, to give the builder 40 per cent (instead of 33 per cent earlier), and according to a Frontline magazine report, the situation has worsened, with the builder and the DDA now retaining two-thirds of the land for themselves, leaving only a third for slum residents. The project began in 2014, but a decade later, the promised flats have still not materialised.

Meanwhile, residents of the Kalkaji flats built a couple years ago report that the administration still treats them like slum dwellers rather than legitimate home-owners. There is water supply, but it is not fit to drink. After repeated demands, an RO system was installed, but it is located on the ground floor, leading to long queues reminiscent of days when they had to wait for tankers.

Poor construction has led to widespread seepage in the walls. Instead of improving their living conditions, the authorities have merely relocated them from horizontal slums to what are now being called ‘vertical slums’.

The aam aadmi has been abandoned to his sorry fate. Possibly one of the reasons why Rahul Gandhi, Congress MP and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, chose to visit the Valmiki Mandir the other day, in a symbolic expression of solidarity with the city’s dispossessed. The temple is part of the Harijan Basti colony — once New Delhi’s largest slum — in the city’s Gole Market area. It falls under the New Delhi assembly segment, where the Congress’s Sandeep Dikshit is taking on former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.

It has a storied history, too. Mahatma Gandhi once lived and taught children from the Harijan Basti in the Valmiki Mandir, and his belongings have been preserved. Nehru, Patel and other national leaders would frequently visit him here and photographs adorning the walls bear silent witness to that passage of history. Over time, the slum was converted into a planned residential colony, and old families grateful to the Congress government that gave it shape, still live in those flats.