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Legal Reform

Legal Reform

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. 

This Working Area topic was posted in A Human Rights Approach to Housing and Homelessness in India: A Note on Recommendations by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing

Topics posted in Legal Reform:

Research & Reports

Begging: A Preferred Way of Living or Sheer Necessity to Survive

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

Articles

Consumed by Collective Apathy

Author: Harsh Mander

Research & Reports

The Trajectory of a Struggle

Author: Jaishree Suryanarayan

Research & Reports

Tolerated Encroachment: Resettlement Policies and the Negotiion of the Licit/Illicit Divide in an Indian

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

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Research & Reports

Which Place for the Homeless in Delhi

Author: Veronique Dupont

Research & Reports

Rural Homelessness in India

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

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Articles

India's War on Its Poor

Author: Tarique Mohammad

Research & Reports

Beyond the Workhouse: Regulating Vagrancy in India

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

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Research & Reports

Regulating Social Space: Begging in Two South Asian Cities

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.

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Research & Reports

The Courts and the Squatter Settlements in Delhi

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:

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Research & Reports

Living Rough: Surviving the City Streets

Author: Harsh Mander

Research & Reports

Ostensible Poverty, Beggary and the Law

Author: Usha Ramanathan

Research & Reports

Illegality and the Urban Poor

Author: Usha Ramanathan

Research & Reports

Better to Have Died than to Live Like This

Author: Kalyani Menon-Sen