| Title: | Living rough: surviving city streets, a study of homeless populations in Delhi, Chennai, Patna, and Madurai |
| Authors: | Mander, Harsh Rai, Archana Kumaran, R. Manikandan, V. Tulsyan, Arpan |
| Keywords: | Homelessness; Urban Poverty; Urban Poverty -- India; Homelessness -- India; Homeless Shelters; Planning Commission -- India; Delhi -- India; Chennai -- India; Patna -- India; Madurai -- India |
| Issue Date: | 2009 |
| Publisher: | Centre for Equity Studies |
| Citation: | http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/sereport/ser/ser_rough.pdf |
| Description: | "It is remarkable that so little is known about the lived experience of homelessness in town and cities in India: of how urban homeless men, women and children survive and cope; how they sleep, bathe and eat; why do they live on the streets and the work they do; their denials and access to public services and food schemes; and how they organise and plan their personal and social lives and their relationships. This neglect is not just of official studies, but even by economists, sociologists, anthropologists, nutritionists and development students. This paper records the findings of a small investigation into a fragment of this lived experience, and into the social, economic, nutritional situation of urban homeless men, women, boys and girls in four cities: the metropolises of Delhi and Chennai, and the cities of Madurai and Patna. The study finds that the lived experience of urban poverty, and even more so of urban homelessness, differs in many significant ways from that of rural poverty: it may ensure better prospects of livelihoods and earnings (although our study indicates that for urban homeless people work still tends to remain casual, exploited and without dignity and security). Life on the streets usually involves surviving in a physically brutalised and challenging environment, with denial of even elementary public services and assured healthy food; and illegalisation and even criminalisation by a hostile State of all self help efforts for shelter and livelihoods by urban poor residents. There are both grave ruptures - but also continuities - of bonds with their families and communities. These together pose important and mostly unmet challenges for public policy and academic research, in measuring and estimating urban poverty, and in acknowledging and realizing a vast range of social, economic and cultural rights of urban poor residents." |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2451/42247 |
| Rights: | NYU Libraries is providing access to these materials as a service to our scholarly community. We do not claim the copyright in these materials, nor can we give permission for their re-use. If you would like to request that we take down any of this material, please write to archive.help@nyu.edu with the following information: Provide the URL of the material that is the basis of your inquiry; Identify the material you have rights to; Provide your contact information, including name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address; Provide a statement of your good-faith belief that the material you identified is infringing of the material you have rights to. |
| Appears in Collections: | South Asian Born-Digital NGO Reports Collection Project |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Study of Homeless Populations in Delhi, Chennai, Patna, and Madurai.pdf | 1.52 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
Items in FDA are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.