G20: Poor People Removed From New Delhi Streets

India is preparing for the G20 summit that will bring the world’s most important leaders (except Xi Jinping and Putin) to New Delhi on September 9 and 10.

India is the largest democracy in the world, with 1.4 billion people and the fifth largest GDP. However, the progress made in recent years in lifting a significant part of the population out of food poverty has not eliminated the inequalities associated with the caste system, as well as some ethnic and religious discrimination.

New Delhi is decorating itself these days, spending on it over $100 million. There was no shortage of radical operations, aimed at improving the access roads and the territories where the G20 will take place, such as the demolition of a few settlements for the homeless: thousands of dilapidated houses were demolished. To welcome the leaders of the world, sidewalks have been created, street lighting systems built, and vases of plants and flowers placed almost everywhere. Installations, exhibitions, art, and technology are reappearing… On the contrary, the garbage which, unfortunately, is usually a feature of a capital with a population of more than 20 million people, was carefully removed.

“Together with the garbage, the poorest were also taken out, destroying the temporary settlements where they lived; they do not allow street vendors to set up stalls, and they have demolished thousands of houses in slums, thereby increasing the number of homeless people,” one activist association raged, quoted by the Italian news agency ANSA. During the summer, 47 facilities were demolished, including the Janta camp, located just 500 meters from the Pragati Maidan Convention Center, where the G20 meeting will take place. Government sources estimate that the number of those with no place to sleep in the city is nearly 50,000, but this figure could be even three times higher.