THE first set of reports by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in 2014 have exposed the state and local government’s negligence towards the urban poor in the National Capital Region. Though the corporate media has largely highlighted the failures of the previous state government, it must be noted that the BJP run municipal corporations have also been indicted by the CAG. The report shows that the spending of these public bodies on programmes and schemes of urban development did not yield the desired results and in fact shortchanged the urban poor in terms of basic facilities and infrastructure. NO BASIC AMENITIES As per the report, the Delhi has 728 jhuggi jhopari settlements on public lands with about 21.48 lakh people. The status of basic amenities in these settlements is very poor. If we look at the conditions of the Delhi slums and compare it with the basic amenities all over the state we find that the gap between the slums and other localities is very high. For example 93.3 percent of the people living outside the slums live in ‘good (63.4 percent)’ or ‘livable (29.9 percent)’ houses. As compared to this only 31.7 slum dwellers live in what the census defines as ‘good houses’ where as 58.4 percent live in livable houses. Further only fifty percent of the slum dwellers have drinking water facilities within their houses, where as 78.4 percent of the people living outside slums have drinking water within their premises. About 10 percent of the slum dwellers have to go outside their slum for filling water. In another indicator of the abysmal state of affairs, only 28 percent of the slum dwellers have latrines inside their houses as compared to almost 90 percent of the people living outside the slum areas. About half of the slum dwellers have no latrines inside their houses and about 37.4 percent are dependent on public latrines while 12 percent defecate in the open. There is only 41 percent of the households in slums who have closed drainage system, where as about 50 percent are dependent on the open drainage system. Outside the slums only one third of the households had to depend on open drainage systems. PERFORMANCE OF IMPROVEMENT SCHEMES Given this situation, it is incumbent upon the state and local governments to implement programmes for the redevelopment and improvement of the JJ colonies and slum areas. The Delhi government transferred the task of slum and JJ colony improvement to the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, which was formed in 2010 but only operationalised in January 2014. The main task of this Board was to facilitate relocation of formally unauthorised but recognised JJ colonies, do in situ upgradation of their infrastructure and provide them basic amenities. In the three years between 2010-12 the government allocated Rs 68.87 crore for these tasks but used only Rs 48.08 or about 71 percent of these funds and even their utilisation was highly unsatisfactory. Of the 685 JJ bastis visited by the CAG audit team, only 158 had piped water. Even here there was only one public water source for every 250-300 people as against the official norm of 150 people. This means that the waiting time for those accessing public water facilities was 25-30 minutes. Apart from this, only 72 JJ colonies had a sewage system with drainage systems and roads being dilapidated. Another important scheme for these bastis is that of the Jan Suvidha Kendra, a scheme meant to provide community toilets and mobile toilet vans. As per the scheme there should be at least one water closet toilet for every 20 to 25 people. By this norm, 83687 water closets were needed for 21 lakh people in 685 JJ bastis. But in actuality there were only 17626 toilets in 605 JJ bastis. Given this requirement, the government planned to set up 900 water closet toilets and 10 mobile toilet vans between 2010-2013. However in the last three years it was only able to provide 294 water closet toilets and no mobile toilet vans despite using 84.9 percent of the funds. It must be borne in mind that before the operationalisation of the Delhi Urban Slum Improvement Board, the toilets under the Jan Suvidha Scheme, found to be in a very abysmal state on audit inspections, have been under the control of the Municipal Corporation before 2014. The CAG audit process made similar observations about barat ghars, shishu vatikas and other such infrastructure under the control of the MCD. CONDITIONS IN UNAUTHORISED COLONIES Left and democratic forces have been fighting for regularisation of ‘unauthorised colonies’ for many years. Just before the declaration of the elections of 2013, the Shiela Dixit government announced that it would be regularising 895 ‘unauthorised colonies’. The CAG has reviewed this process of legalisation. The report shows that proper procedures were not followed in regularising these colonies and 312 colonies on private lands were regularised after making unjustified amendments to the government of India guidelines of 2008. According to the guidelines, approvals in change in land use are to be accompanied by planning for the infrastructural and redevelopment of the colony. The state government amended the guidelines to exclude the mandatory provisions of planning for infrastructural and redevelopment of the colonies as a pre-requisite for regularisation. Instead it treated regularisation as only a ‘land use’ problem, thus ignoring the needs of these habitations. As the audit report observes the government released Rs 3666.81 crore for providing basic services to these colonies between 2007-13, of which Rs 3029.21 crore or 82.6 percent was spent. However the scrutiny of developmental works stated that road and drainage works in 416 or the 895 colonies notified for regularisation was not completed. The Delhi Jal Board failed to provide sewer lines in 797 colonies and water lines in 197 colonies as on March 31, 2013. The approval for fixation of boundaries with provisioning for basic amenities deprived the residents of these services. This showed that the state government, which had wasted four years of its term without any serious effort, was only using regularisation as a populist measure to muster last minute support for elections. It is clear from the CAG report that the needs of the urban poor have been ignored by the ruling classes in the processes and implementation of urban planning. The new vision of urban development under the Modi government is only likely to widen this divide. Hence the democratic movement needs to increase its presence amongst the urban poor in order to intensify the fight for their rights.