Are exemptions, tax holidays, loan waivers not freebies, CCG asks B.R. Gavai

In an open letter to Justice B.R. Gavai of the Supreme Court, over 71 retired IAS and IFS officers have voiced their anguish over the reported observation in court by the judge on 12 February.

Hearing a case related to free housing for the homeless, Justice Gavai had wondered aloud, “…by not making these people part of the mainstream of society, are we not creating a class of parasites? Because of freebies, when elections are declared... people are not willing to work. They are getting free rations without doing any work! Would it not be better to make them part of mainstream society so that they can contribute to the nation...”

The former public servants feel it was unjust to describe the homeless as ‘parasites’. It is because the state has failed in its duties — elaborated in the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution — to secure a life of dignity for all citizens that they have been pushed into destitution. They remind the judge that it is, after all, the state’s duty to ensure affordable housing, decent work, social security, food and nutrition, healthcare and right to education, besides protection from domestic and sexual violence.

The homeless in cities are among the most unprotected of the teeming army of informal workers, who are forced to do hard labour at shamefully low wages, the letter reads. The homeless are not lazy and idle as Justice Gavai may have presumed, they remind him.

The Supreme Court itself has clarified the moral and Constitutional duty of the state to protect the fundamental right of 'a life with dignity' to every homeless person when reports poured in of many able-bodied homeless people dying in the winter cold of 2010-11.

Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Dipak Gupta, in response, passed a series of rulings that are now recognised as trailblazing, globally. In January 2012, they observed, “Nothing is more important for the State than to preserve and protect the lives of the most vulnerable, weak, poor and helpless people. The homeless people are constantly exposed to the risks of life while living on the pavements and the streets… in the severe and biting cold winter, especially in northern India”. They ruled that “the State must discharge its core obligation to comply with article 21 of the Constitution by providing night shelters for the vulnerable and homeless people”.

Even as half-hearted attempts have been made by the State to construct shelters for the homeless, more often that not they are poorly constructed, ill-lit, overcrowded, unsanitary and undignified. Nine homeless shelters were actually demolished on the banks of the Yamuna river in Delhi as the national capital was spruced up to ‘beautify’ the city.

Courts and the state must recognise that their Constitutional duty does not end with directions, or even building shelters. A lot remains to be done to ensure safety, security and dignity for the homeless, and ensure that they do not have to sleep on the streets.   

“The homeless people do not choose the streets of their own volition. The streets choose them, because their needs, as laid down in the Constitution, are not provided by the state,” the letter says in conclusion.