From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

FROM POVERTY TO POWERI OWN, THEREFORE I AMFor millions of Indians, the Ganges is a holy river, but to the people ofthe riverside slum of Sanjay Nagar in the pilgrim city of Allahabad,this means the annual threat of eviction, as their shacks are bulldozedto make way for celebrants coming to bathe. The shacks are mudwalled,with plastic roofs held down by ropes; the mud path is carpetedwith discarded sandals, and pigs root among piles of rubbish; the air isrank. But at least Sanjay Nagar offers shelter; the fear of eviction is anagging insecurity in the hearts of the residents. ‘When we’re evicted,’says one, ‘we have to lie low, sleep rough, and then come back, butwe never know if we’ll be able to rebuild.’ Now the area is slated for‘beautification’, and this time the eviction may be final.One of the most agonising aspects of living in poverty is not havingsecure rights to your own house or land, something often taken forgranted in the North. In India, Ghana, Cambodia, and Bolivia, morethan 50 per cent of all urban residents live in informal settlements, andthe United Nations expects the number of people living in urban areaswithout secure property rights to reach 1.5 billion by 2020. 81 Morethan 6.7 million people worldwide were evicted from their homes in2001–02, according to the Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions,most of them in urban areas. 82Eviction comes at the hands of powerful landlords or the authoritiesand is often brutal. In Zimbabwe in 2005, Operation Murambatsvina,literally meaning ‘drive out the rubbish’, forced an estimated 700,00070