Jai Hind Camp, also called Jai Hind Bengali Basti, is a colony of migrant workers only 15 kilometres from the Lutyens bungalows of New Delhi. Yet the basti, with its fetid cesspools and mountains of garbage, seems a universe away from the manicured rose gardens of Lutyensland.
In the basti, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hollow claim of ‘Viksit Bharat’ stands cruelly exposed. Electricity has been cut off. There is no water supply. In the monsoon, rainwater fills the hovel-like rooms, and snakes float in the sludge, sometimes biting the children sleeping in their mothers’ arms. Mosquitoes swarm about like clumps of black dust. The slum lanes are pitted tracks, potholed and precipitous. Walking on the pitch-dark alleyways at night feels like a tryst with death itself.
