LNJP is an old settlement at the edge of old Delhi, opposite Turkhman Gate, beside the LNJP hospital, from which it gets its name. It began to be settled in the late '60s, and is now home to about 12000 people. With the planned changes in the city ahead of the Commonwealth Games, LNJP, one of the oldest and last surviving settlements, has also now been earmarked for eviction and demolition.
The survey that precedes demolition has begun in LNJP. A survey is conducted by representatives from the Slum Department of the Municipal Corporation, to produce knowledge about the settlement to be demolished, in order to ascertain how many of its residents are eligible for resettlement. According to a Central Government order of 2000, all those who have lived in a settlement since before 1998 are eligible for resettlement; those who have lived there since before 1990 will be allotted plots of 18 sq m, and those who settled there between 1990 and 1998 will be alloted 12.5 sq m.
How long someone has lived in a settlement is determined in the survey on the basis of documents - ration cards and election I cards, with the year in which they have been issued being the critical marker. In LNJP, the earliest stable document is from the mid-1980s: a card with an attested photograph, name and, most importantly, address of the resident, called the "VP Singh token". Here, the token is also being admitted in the survey as proof of how long a resident has lived at that address, because ration cards issued prior to this token did not state the house number in the address. Ration cards have been reissued a number of times from the 1980s to the present date. The format and the card number have changed with each re-issue.
The survey is critical for the residents of a settlement - it determines what ones life in the city will be after the demolition, depending on whether or not the survey registers if their documents prove they make it to the cut-off date of 1998. In Nangla Maanchi, a settlement of 30,000 people at the banks of Yamuna, demolished in 2006, a very large proportion of the residents eligible for resettlement in Ghevra are still fighting a court case to be resettled. The survey marked them P-98 (post 1998), even though most of them have older documents.
As the survey teams move through a settlement, which documents should be produced gets blurred for the residents. In some houses in LNJP, the team has asked for old documents, but in most houses, it asked for the latest documents. This blurring produces rumours about the nature of the survey. Simultaneously, what information is being put down in the survey ledger is not clear and not known to any resident.
The survey in LNJP began on Thursday, 26 February 2009. Approximately 120 houses are known to have been covered by the survey teams in the two days that the survey has been conducted till now. Of every 10 houses, 8 have old ration cards (early '80s), token (early '80s) and election I-cards (early '90s). But of every ten houses, only two have been asked to show their old documents by the survey teams. Considering the density of LNJP, the survey will take about one month to be completed. During this month, the fate of many will be decided - how they will live, where they will live and with what degree of uncertainty.
In the years it has been in the city, LNJP has held within itself a huge diversity of people - the old, the infirm, the familied, the single woman, the transgendered, the new migrant, and of late, those evicted from other settlements in the city. That many will lose out in this survey, depending on the documents they have, but also depending on the documents they are asked to show and what entries are made about them in the ledger by the survey teams, is clear. If there is a pressure from inside the settlement, and from outside, on how the survey is being conducted, the margin of those who lose everything may get significantly reduced.
