She gave Delhi her life. Now she can't afford to live here: Demolition of Madrasi camp leaves Tamil migrants struggling after relocation

Time of India

a day ago

Madrasi Camp gave Tamil migrants a chance to build their lives, but a court order left hundreds displaced
Veerasamy had decided to abandon the comfortable familiarity of home. His family worked on farms and got by - just. He thought he could do better. So, he got married and left his village at Tirunelveli in
Tamil Nadu
to build a life 2,000km away in Delhi.
It was the 1970s, when a little under one-third of migrants across the country were leaving villages for cities. Tamil Nadu was among the four states with larger migrant outflows than inflows. And a big chunk of Delhi's population was made up of migrants.
Veerasamy arrived in Delhi, built a home in a settlement where other Tamil migrants like him lived - it would come to be known as the Madrasi Camp - and started working informally as a labourer on local municipal projects.
It was not much, but he was the first in his family to move out and find a footing in the big, impassive city.
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One summer, his 16-year-old niece, Meenakshi, came visiting from Tirunelveli. Delhi grew on her, and she stayed. "Madrasi Camp was about half the size at the time," she said.
Like most slums in larger Indian cities, Madrasi Camp was located on the edge of affluent areas that had a steady demand for informal service.
The people of Madrasi Camp would fill in - cleaning homes, cleaning cars, cooking. Meenakshi had studied up to Class 8 at her village. Here, she took on housework at bungalows around Madrasi Camp and started earning.
But there was a problem. "I couldn't understand what people said. They couldn't understand what I said." It took her two years, but she did pick up Hindi well enough to not feel impeded.
Then, she met Senthil.
"He used to live with his elder sister," she said. "Also at Madrasi Camp." They started talking, she liked him, he liked her, and they told their families they wanted to get married. They got married in Tamil Nadu - their villages back home are not too far apart - and headed back to Madrasi Camp after the wedding to start a life of their own. In a house with a small room, a kitchen and a bathroom. "But we had everything we needed," Meenakshi said.
This was the 1990s, when a newly liberalised economy was creating more opportunities but also concentrating them in urban pockets. So, if there was a better life to be found, it was to be found here.
For most low-income migrant families, anywhere in the world, progress is measured in generations. The first generation lays the ground, the second generation finds its footing, and the third generation breaks into institutions that would have once kept them out.
Veerasamy was the first generation, and Meenakshi, now 47, was the second generation - of hard workers with unassailable hope for their children. And Meenakshi and Senthil had three - two daughters and a son.
Their daughters studied at a seven-decade-old school run by the Delhi Tamil Education Association, 8km from the camp. The tuition was largely govt-aided and, Meenakshi said, she ended up spending no more than Rs 20,000 in a year.
She admitted her son into a private school, however, which charged way more. Some Rs 4,000-5,000 a month.
"But the children are smart," Meenakshi said. They did well in school, and now both her daughters - in their 20s now - are getting MBA degrees in finance. She is now looking for a college for her son, who has a BCom degree, so he can get an MBA degree as well. "Even MBAs are more expensive now. Rs 1 lakh, Rs 2 lakh. It was cheaper when my daughters enrolled," Meenakshi said.
"We'll have to get him in wherever it costs a little less.
"
It would still stretch their combined resources. Meenakshi makes about Rs 15,000 a month now, cleaning and cooking at four houses. And Senthil is a temporary worker at nearby shops, and makes Rs 10,000 a month. But she's determined to set her children on a path that's nothing like her own.
"I spent more than 30 years here. It's all gone," she said, standing next to a mound of rubble that used to be her home.
On June 1, hundreds of homes belonging to migrant Tamil families, like that of Meenakshi, were torn down as part of a court-ordered demolition in southern Delhi. The land where their settlement stood belongs to the railways and the settlement itself, informally called Madrasi Camp, was blocking a drain which flows into the Yamuna. So, Madrasi Camp - which had stood for close to six decades, as its residents said - was flattened.
Officially, the number of homes brought down that day was 370. Only the settlement's temple, dedicated to the Tamil deity Murugan, was spared.
Of the 370 families identified by the Delhi administration as residents of Madrasi Camp, 189 got new apartments as part of Delhi's relocation programme. Another 26 were told they would get them soon. And 155 families were told they could not qualify for these homes.
But most of the 189 families who got their keys are stuck.
"Just a few families, couples without children, moved right away," Meenakshi said. Because the place where they have been given these apartments, on the northwestern edge of the city called Narela, is not exactly a bustling economic zone. It's an enclave of people resettled from Delhi's slums - with bumpy roads, sparse surroundings, and a high crime rate. The kind of work they used to get at Madrasi Camp would be difficult to find here.
And travelling to south Delhi for work would take up to four hours each day - it's 50km from where Madrasi Camp used to be.
It's a "humanitarian crisis", Tamil Nadu's chief minister MK Stalin wrote in a letter to Delhi's chief minister Rekha Gupta days after the demolition. Gupta had earlier said that "if the court had ordered something, neither the govt nor the administration can do anything."
But while fighting their displacement in court, the people of Madrasi Camp had said that "in principle, they do not have (the) right to reside in the encroached area".
All they wanted was "proper rehabilitation". Their requests for resettlement in two other areas - one well inside central Delhi, and another well-embedded in the Delhi economy - were turned down because, they were told, there wasn't enough space there.
Narela would have to do.
And those given houses here as part of the relocation programme have to pay Rs 1,12,000 up front, and then Rs 30,000 a year for five years as maintenance costs.
Each house is a leasehold property for 10 years, meaning those living there can't sublet, transfer or sell it. After that, the house will be a freehold property, which means it can be transferred.
Walking up to Meenakshi's fourth-floor apartment, this correspondent asked if there was at least sunlight and air. Meenakshi laughed as she opened the door to her apartment. "Yes, too much of it," she said. She pointed to the reason for her answer - a square cut into the wall where a window should be, without an actual window.
It was a small house with the bare minimum - a kitchenette, a bathing area, a toilet, a bedroom, a living room and a tiny balcony. The paint job was rushed. The door frames were rusting. The plaster was peeling. And the tiles were misaligned.
And yet, these houses were handed over as ready-to-move.
Was she ready to move? She didn't say anything that conveyed certainty. Her planning showed she was prepared either way. But it would be hard.
(Some names have been changed)