Trigger Warning: sexual assault, rape
“It’s like living in hell and dying everyday. Every night, I sleep fearing for my daughters’ safety and mine, not knowing who will attack or sexually assault us. There is no-one to protect us, not even the government. Sometimes, I fear the policemen more than I fear the common man.”
– Sunita Kumari*
Delhi, or as we like call it: “dil walon ka shehar” (the city of the largehearted), has been merciless when it comes to looking after the people who have been living on its streets. A city, where people from all across the country come seeking jobs and other opportunities, also has an ugly face in the form of exploitation of the homeless women living on the streets.
Cases of brutal rape and murder of women living on the streets, forces me to think twice about the kind of society we live in. It is a society where women are not even safe inside their own homes. Obviously, it is too far-fetched a dream to think of homeless women being safe and protected from the “male gaze” on the streets of Delhi.
Statistics reveal that there are around 1.5 lakh homeless people in Delhi, while shelters in the city can only support a maximum of 9,000. So, around 10,000 homeless women in the country’s capital, have barely five shelters to rely on.
Who Are The Homeless Women Of Delhi?
They are not women who were born homeless, but those who faced multiple circumstances that led them towards a state of homelessness. We can often find them begging near railway stations, dwelling on pavements, sleeping under flyovers, staircases and near drainage pipes.
They include women with disabilities and mental health problems; unmarried, pregnant women; women living with HIV/AIDS; survivors of domestic violence; as well as helpless, divorced women and girl children.
Research says that most homeless women are from historically marginalised groups such as Muslim women, Dalit and Bahujan women, Adivasi women, women with physical and mental disabilities etc. Many of them have been abandoned by violent partners and are forced to live on the streets to survive.
There are also women from other religious minorities, migrant women, sex workers, lesbian and transgender women, and unemployed girls and adolescents, who are subjected to many insecurities and threats on the streets.
Why Are So Many Women Homeless?
A country where deep inequalities exist due to the prevalence of caste system and patriarchy; there are regions where a girlchild is still seen as a burden—is testament to the fact that we still have a long way to go, in terms of providing justice to the women citizens of our country.
Many women are forced to migrate from nearby rural areas due to natural disasters like floods and droughts, or other problems like indebtedness and the agrarian crisis. Also, large-scale infrastructure and industrial projects cause them to leave their households and move to Delhi in search of work.
Forced evictions without rehabilitation, slum demolitions, domestic violence, inequitable planning and land use, are some other causes. Other factors include lack of: information about property rights, affordable social services, access to credit and housing subsidies.
Also, bureaucratic barriers prevent access to housing programmes, while rising poverty, unemployment and discriminatory, cultural as well as traditional practices, only add to women’s woes.
How Women Are Doubly Burdened When Homeless
Nobody wishes to remain homeless by choice. Among homeless women, there are two categories: those who live with their families, and those who don’t have a family.
The homeless women without families are among the most vulnerable. They face everyday threats of physical and verbal abuse, by passersby and the police.
Lack of basic services like access to water and sanitation, makes the condition of Delhi’s homeless women even more deplorable. To the question of why women face an added burden when living on the streets, the answer is their vulnerability to gender-based violence.
This can be in the form of sexual assault, intimate partner violence or financial abuse. Many women living on the streets are forced to live with an abusive or alcoholic partner, thinking it is better to live with them rather than getting assaulted by different men on a daily basis.
Lack Of Basic Services On The Streets
Many homeless women don’t have employable skills and are therefore, financially dependent on men. Their worries get compounded due to a lack of functioning, public washrooms for women, and secure spaces for them to bathe. To add to this, they also have to battle against the extreme weather conditions of Delhi.
The absence of accurate data on the number of homeless women in Delhi, impedes any kind of planning and budget allocation to help them. Apart from the shortage of shelter homes, there is also the issue of subhuman living conditions inside the shelter homes.
There have been reports of girls and women being abused and assaulted in the so-called “shelter” homes. Forget roti, kapda aur makaan (food, clothing and shelter), even the right to live with human dignity enshrined under Article 21 of the Indian constitution, has been snatched from them.
Clearly, Delhi’s homeless women suffer from a lack of access to government schemes and livelihood opportunities. They also have a difficulty in accessing healthcare, reporting police brutality, and fighting back against criminalisation, arbitrary arrests or detentions.
Homeless Women MUST Be Protected
We cannot forget that these are the women are a part of our society. They are the ones who have been tortured, deserted, isolated and abandoned.
The Covid-19 crisis made our society rethink its foundations. We realised how important it is for us to reformulate the terms and conditions of our society, which is now transitioning towards hyper-consumerism on the one hand, and sheer negligence of abject poverty and homelessness on the other.
I feel that homelessness should not be seen as a personal failure on the part of these women, but rather, seen as the failure of society as a whole. We need strong interventions from the state, civil society and NGOs, collectively, to tackle the problems faced by Delhi’s homeless women.
While extreme temperatures in Delhi has made everyone think twice before stepping out of their homes, let us not forget that there is a section of Delhiites who barely have a roof over their heads, to protect themselves from the sun (among other things).
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*Name has been changed to protect identity
Featured image is for representational purposes only. Photo credit: Flickr.
This is the first part of the three-part series on ‘the plight of Delhi’s homeless women’ as a part of the Justicemakers’ Writer’s Training Program, run in partnership with Agami and Ashoka’s Law For All Initiative. The second and third parts can be found here and here.