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158Security of tenureHousing rights inIndia are an extraordinaryexample ofpractice departingsharply from the lawBox 6.28 Security of tenure case law: India’s Supreme CourtIn 1978, the Supreme Court first found in the case of ManekaGandhi versus Union of India that the right to life provisions in theIndian Constitution (Article 21) must be taken to mean ‘the rightto live with dignity’.Building on this conclusion, in the 1981 case of FrancisCoralie Mullin versus Union Territory of Delhi, the Supreme Courtasserted that:‘We think that the right to life includes the right tolive with human dignity and all that goes along with it, namely thebare necessities of life such as adequate nutrition, clothing, andshelter over the head.’In what has become clearly the most celebrated Indian casein this regard, known colloquially as the Bombay PavementDwellers Case, the Supreme Court expanded further on the rightto life provisions in the constitution, even while the decisionultimately allowed the eventual eviction of the pavement dwellersconcerned. In the 1985 case of Olga Tellis versus Bombay MunicipalCorporation, a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court declaredthat ‘Eviction of petitioners from their dwellings would result in thedeprivation of their livelihood… The right under Article 21 is theright to livelihood because no person can live without the means ofliving’.Reaching a similar conclusion, in the case of Ram Prasadversus Chairman, Bombay Port Trust, the Supreme Court directed therelevant public authorities not to evict 50 slum dweller familiesunless alternative sites were provided for them.In the case of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation versusNawab Khan Gulab Khan and Ors, in 1997, the Supreme Courtstated that it:is the duty of the State to construct houses at reasonablerates and make them easily accessible to the poor.The State has the constitutional duty to provide shelterto make the right to life meaningful … the mere factthat encroachers have approached this court would beno ground to dismiss their cases.Where the poor haveresided in an area for a long time, the State ought toframe schemes and allocate land and resources forrehabilitating the urban poor.For decades, thequest for security oftenure has … beenan illusive onethe clearance of sites which take priority in terms of publicinterest’. Work has been ongoing for the development of anational slum policy. 61 Added to these favourable policies, aseries of judicial decisions in India has also been supportiveof housing rights and tenure claims. For more than twodecades, the Indian Supreme Court has issued a range of farreachingdecisions relying both on the right to life provisionsfound in the constitution, as well as other norms to protectthe housing rights of dwellers (see Box 6.28). 62Law, policy and jurisprudence do not always meshwith reality. One third of Mumbai’s slum dwellers areevictees, 63 and, clearly India’s recent economic boom hasnot distributed the benefits equally. Housing rights in Indiaare an extraordinary example of practice departing sharplyfrom the law. India has ratified the ICESCR without anyreservation, and the ICESCR has been referred to in scoresof judgements of India’s Supreme Court. Furthermore, thereis no doubt whatsoever that it is enforceable in Indiancourts. Nevertheless, wave after wave of brutal demolitionshave taken place, without notice or justifiable reason, ininclement weather, and without compensation or rehabilitation.The Commonwealth Games proposed to be held atDelhi in 2010 initiated the largest ever displacement fromDelhi in the year 2000. There are no records available of thenumber of homes demolished; but NGOs estimate that over200,000 people have been evicted. From the Yamuna Pushtaarea alone, 150,000 people were brutally evicted in order tocreate parks and fountains. 64With a population of about 15 million people,Mumbai has half of its population living in slums. Theyoccupy only 8 per cent of the city’s land. Formally, thosewho were listed in the 1976 census of slums were eligible tobe covered by slum improvement schemes and also eligiblefor an alternative plot in case of evictions. This introducedthe concept of a cut-off date. Later, the electoral rolls of1980 were adopted as the cut-off. This was then shifted to1985, to 1990 and later to 1995. In 2003, 86,000 familiesin and around the Sanjay Gandhi National Park were evicteddespite being covered by the cut-off dates under the ordersof the High Court, which took the extreme step of usinghelicopters and deploying retired military officers to evictthe poor inhabitants. 65 Along these lines several massivedemolitions took place in Mumbai. Between November2004 and February 2005 alone, more than 300,000 peoplewere rendered homeless when over 80,000 homes weresmashed.CONCLUDING REMARKSThis chapter has provided a brief overview of some of themost prevalent types of policy responses that have beenemployed towards the objective of enhancing security oftenure. The overview yields a range of conclusions. One isperhaps more notable than the others: in spite of all thevarious approaches taken over the past decades, there canbe no doubt that failure, rather than success, has been thenorm with respect to addressing the goal of security oftenure for all. Were it otherwise, the world would not face asecurity of tenure crisis where hundreds of millions ofpeople live without any form of officially recognized orlegally secure tenure.For decades, the quest for security of tenure has, inmany respects, been an illusive one. Though all politicalcreeds adhere to views supporting the opinion that securityof tenure must lie at the centre of any realistic efforts toimprove the lives of the world’s 1 billion slum dwellers, thepolicies that intend to achieve this aim vary widely. Viewsfocusing on titling propose that formalizing slums throughthe provision of individual land titles will be the most effectiveway of raising standards of living, of creating assets andof improving housing conditions. Another view is that title-