Policy Briefs & Reports

Planning the Slum: JJC Resettlement in Delhi and the Case of Savda Ghevra

Shahana Sheikh, Subhadra Banda
Ben Mandelkern

Cities of Delhi, Centre for Policy Research

August 14, 2014

Delhi’s decades of policies designed to remove jhuggi jhopri clusters (JJCs) from the city centre and relocate their residents to the city’s periphery have resulted in 55 ‘Jhuggi Jhopri Resettlement Colonies’. In Savda Ghevra JJ Resettlement Colony, one of the city’s most recently established resettlement colonies, residents were relocated from JJCs across the city, breaking community ties and removing residents from their sites of employment. This disruption was not balanced by improved services or security of tenure: even as these residents are explicitly shifted out of ‘encroachments’, they maintain similar, poor access to basic services, their property rights remain severely limited, and they are not legally guaranteed protection from another eviction.

A report of the Cities of Delhi project.