North East district has always been a known area. I have been in its lanes many times looking for stories. It didn't come as a surprise when the census data revealed it has the highest population density in the country. In New Seelampur, it is not difficult to understand it is so. An edited version of the article appeared in The Indian Express on April 1, 2011.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, March 31, 2011
Now when he looks up, the sky comes to him in patches. Obscuring, obliterating the view are the new “highrises” that now dominate much of the landscape in the narrow quarters of New Seelampur, a resettlement colony established in 1965.
As per the 2011 Census provisional report, the north-east district of the national capital has the highest population density – 37,346 per sq km. In its colonies, the evidence is not hard to find. This is where urbanization has peaked. Rents are cheap, and finding accomodation isn't a task giving the lackdaisical police, residents said.
Vinod Kumar relocated to New Seelampur in the north east district in 1962 from Bela Road.
In the ensuing four decades, he has witnessed his block go through a transformation that took away much of the ease of the days gone by.
Seelampur is now in the midst of urbanization and ruralization, a culture cauldron with melting identities, and struggling families. This was one of the first resettlement colonies of Delhi where working class were dumped to make the city glisten and world class.
Across the road, French retailer Carrefour SA has opened its first store housing 30,000 brands. Like the builders, they too preyed on these neighborhoods. It sent its people into slums and unauthorised colonies, looking for kirana store owners to secure a clientele. Its glass building looks an anomaly among the hundreds of thousands of single-brick structures that are littered along the Metro line and along the river.
"There are all these manufacturing units and home-based industries. Every household is a unit where owmen work. In unauthorised colonies, one can buy a 100 square yard plot for Rs. 25 lakhs," local MLA Matin Ahmed said. "If we count all people, include those that no ration card, New Seelampur will have at least two lakh residents. How do we stop this? Census hasnt counted those who work in the factories. This is where employment is. How do we widen the roads? How do we improve basic amenities? Conditions are worse in unauthorised colonies like Jafrabad where almost no roads exist. This attracts a lot of builders. They have constructed 15 square yards flats. We all know how police acts. There is no code, no law."
It's nostalgia and then anger, and eventually frustration that grips him when he talks about his life in what has now become a ghetto with its youth dropping out of its schools, getting into petty crimes, and forcing its girls to remain indoors most of the time for fear of molestation.
North East district is an accident of geography. Iti is bounded by the Yamuna River on the west, Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh to the north and east, East Delhi to the south, and North Delhi to the west across the Yamuna.
Its three important administrative subdivisions Seelampur, Seema Puri and Shahdara. As per the 2001 census, the district's population was 1763712 and the density was 29,397 persons per square kilometer.
Over the last decade, the area absorbed a large number of migrants to the national capital.
Close to the South and Central districts, this is where most migrants came to settle over the years, finding their foot in these clusters where they could find cheap accommodation, and slowly try to integrate with the city.
Population went up as a result. With almost no regulations, and absolutely no planning, the resettlement colonies, mostly the allotments and the unauthorized slums like Sonia Vihar and JJ Colony, developed in a haphazard way.
In plots as small as 12 or 20 square yards, owners have built three-storey and in a few cases, five-storey buildings. The plots that were allotted by the government that resettled thousands of migrants in the 1960s ranged from 80 to 25 square yards were later sold to new settlers in parts.
“Yesterday, I called the police,” Kumar said, pointing to a building across the alley.
The top floor of the building had been dismantled, broken down.
“This is what has happened to this place. No wonder we are the highest in terms of human density. In that 20 square yard plot where this man built this four-storey building, there are 50 people living,” he said.
The one things that hasn't changed over the years is the demographics. The colony has remained poor. Only the working class lives here. A few jeans and shoes manufacturing units are scattered in its lanes, anchoring many of its women and migrant settlers.
“Because it was so close to central Delhi, this became the destination for the poor who could walk or cycle to their work sites,” he said. “Now builders have come to this part in the last three years and buying out these smallish plots and constructing flats and selling them to the poor who also want some ownership in the city.”
When the resettlement colony was planned and large populations, mostly migrants from Rajasthan, were moved to these parts, the plots were provisionally leased out to settlers and further sale was not allowed.
The area had been a farmland. But as the city expanded eastwards, and beyond the Yamuna, Seelampur found itself in the middle of rising land prices and overshooting demand and access to infrastructure.
In time, it transformed to a bustling region that specializes in the manufacture of jeans, leather shoes, jackets, incense, lathes, iron and timber goods, providing employment to workers in these home-based workshops.
Decades ago, when he had just moved to the plot allotted to his family, there used to be an open ground and houses looked different.
“We actually had a proper roof and these were single storey houses,” Kumar said.
The first wave of migrants to claim the colony were from Barielly in Uttar Pradesh and then Biharis followed in the 1970s.
Before then, Kumar recalled how they put their charpais in front of the houses and slept. Now, because crime has risen and there's fear that pervades the locality, they are confined to their small tenements.
Just down the lane, the cramped, colorful blue and green walls of the JJ Cluster are visible.
“That's the problem,” Kumar said. “Crime comes from there, and claims our neighborhood as well.”
Only a narrow drain divides the unauthorized from the allotments.
Then there was a wave of unplanned, illegal construction to absorb this new population.
Mohd. Sharif Ali, 22, built two extra floors of one-room each on his plot to rent those out. The family relocated to New Seelampur in 1965.
Rent is a survival factor in this colony. With inflation and given its social and economic indicators, informal sector workers and high dropout rates, it is a livelihood option.
“We get Rs. 2,000 as rent for the second floor. It helps,” he said. “But I remember the colony was not so crowded in the beginning. We had open grounds.”
Now, the children in the neighborhood play cricket in its narrow lanes.
The lanes are too narrow for four-wheelers to navigate them so even with their new money, those who can afford it, are hesitant to buy cars.
Those who bought now park them in the Metro parking lot across the road.
“What can they do? There is no space for humans here. Forget the cars,” Ali said.
A child sat defecating in the open drain. The lanes that lead into the labyrinths of this slum cluster are narrow. Lives spill over from the temporary structures on to the gullies. The lanes pervade the inner sanctums.
In one such establishment, a one-room tenement covered with an asbestos sheet, Phoolwati was cooking. Around 20 years ago, her husband bought the jhuggi. In this 12 square yard space, five people live. Outside, there is the border, the drain.
But the worlds it divide are strikingly similar to each other. Space is a non-entity here.
Spread over 60 kilometers, the north east district of Delhi has also been identified as Minority concentration district by Ministry of Minority Affairs. The basic parameters are minority population, illiteracy, work participation, health indicators etc. and given its lopsided development, it has remained one of the tragedies of the metropolis that has failed its inhabitants.
Now, the tags that sort of define this sprawling landscape of hutments and single-brick structures sans any aesthetics or planning, are violence, crime, poverty, and prejudice.
The north east district is a platter of resettlement colonies that were set on the vast farmlands in the city. In Jafrabad and Welcome and several other colonies, the victims of the 1984 Sikh riots were resettled.
Stories that come out of these human clusters are those of illegal embroidery units employing young children and anti-social elements that disturb the calm of the gentrified South Delhi and return to its maze of quarters where collective identity rules and the individual fades.
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