The 2010 Supreme Court Orders on homeless shelters and the 2013 Mental Health Care Bill, which explictly acknowledges homeless peoples' rights to needed care, is evidence of the government's committment to reversing official hostility to people on the streets.
Yet, policies that cause homelessness continue to be implemented– from 2010 to 2015, according to Housing and Land Rights Network, over 48,700 families were evicted from their homes due to demolition drives in urban India. Many of these were facilitated by Supreme Court rulings.
Beggary laws from the 1960s are also still used by police officers to detain homeless people in remand homes.
An accurate understanding of government responses to homelessness requires keeping two facts in mind: policies on shelter, livelihood and health have enforced positive duties on the state to address poverty on the streets while certain laws and policies that create or criminalize homelessness are routinely impemented to the disadvantage and harm of homeless people. Research on legal reform and national shelter policy explores this tension.
Author: Harsh Mander
Author: Nyaaya.in, IndiaSpend
Author: Shalini Nair
Author: Tarique Mohammad
Title: Begging: A Preferred Way of Living or Sheer Necessity to Survive
Publication: Koshish-Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Publication date: June 2016
Author: Ursula Rao
Title: Tolerated Encroachment - Resettlement Policies and the Negotiation of the Licit/Illicit Divide in an Indian metropolis
Publication: Cultural Anthropology
Date of Publication: November 2013
Citation: Rao, U. 'Tolerated Encroachment. Resettlement policies and the
Author: Julia Wardaugh
Title: Rural Homelessness in India
Publication: International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home
Publication Date: 2012
Citation: Wardaugh, J. ‘Rural homelessness in India.’ (2012) Susaj J. Smith (ed) International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home
Author’s
Author: Julia Wardaugh
Title: Beyond the Workhouse: Regulating Vagrancyin India
Publication: Asian Journal of Criminology
Date of Publication: March2011
Citation: Wardaugh, J. 'Beyond the workhouse: regulating vagrancy in Goa, India.' Asian Journal of Criminology, Online First March
Author: Julia Wardaugh
Title: Regulating Social Space: Begging in Two South Asian Cities
Publication: Crime, Media, Culture
Date of Publication: December 2009
Official citation: Wardaugh, J. 'Reglating Social Space: Begging in two South Asian Cities, Crime, Media, Culture, December 2009 5:333-341.
Author(s): Veronique Dupont and Usha Ramanathan
Title: The Courts and the Squatter Settlements Delhi - Or the Invervention of the Judiciary in Urban "Governance"
Publication: New Forms of Urban Governance in India. Shifts, Models, Networks and Contestations (Eds. I.S.A. Baud & Joop de Wit)
Date of Publication: 2008
Citation: