They lost their homes as Delhi developed. A pavement became a shelter for disabled like them

For close to a decade, Shehnaz Khanum lived in a slum in Central Delhi.

There was comfort in numbers – the settlement was home to 50 other disabled people like her. They called it “Viklang Basti”, a colony for the disabled.

But in 2009, a year before Delhi hosted the Commonwealth Games, the slum near Sewa Nagar railway station was marked out for demolition.

On a morning in January, around 22 bulldozers arrived at the slum and razed it. A parking lot took its place within a year to serve visitors to the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, one of the venues for the Commonwealth Games.

The Delhi government carried out a spate of evictions in the run-up to the games – which left nearly two lakh persons homeless, according to the Housing and Land Rights Network.

After the demolition, Khanum and her family of five moved to another slum cluster about 8 km away in the Nizamuddin area. There, they had to rent a room.

“My husband’s income as an auto driver was sufficient to support the family but the rent added to our burden,” said Khanum. “Our children were of school-going age then. They could not contribute to the family financially.”

As a last resort, she started seeking alms to survive.

“With no...

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