There are 1.77 million homeless in India, but the State is blind to them

Source – hindustantimes.com

They can be found everywhere but somehow the Indian State fails to notice them. They are the homeless people of India. According to the government’s definition, homeless or houseless are those who live in “the open or roadside, pavements, in hume-pipes, under flyovers and staircases, or in the open in places of worship, mandaps, railway platforms etc.” Yet when it comes to providing them the basic needs, governments have been failing to spend even their allocated funds. There are 1.77 million homeless people in India.

Last week, the Supreme Court took the Centre and states to task, saying that there should be an audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of the money disbursed by the Centre to the states for a scheme under the National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM), and observed that these funds, which are meant for a specific purpose, should not be diverted.

This is not the first time the SC has rapped the Centre. In 2016, the apex court slammed the Centre and states for their lackadaisical approach in providing shelters to the poverty-stricken in urban areas despite availability of sufficient funds.

It had also observed that the mission of the NULM scheme “remains a distant dream even after lapse of a long period.”