&w=3840&q=100)
Delhi slums razed, employers ask domestic help: 'Why didn't you show up?'
A demolition drive was carried out on Sunday at Madrasi Camp, a six-decade-old settlement in South Delhi's Jangpura, as part of the Delhi High Court's directive under the Barapullah Drain Decongestion Project. The civic initiative seeks to mitigate flooding and waterlogging in South and Central Delhi during the monsoon. The Jhuggi cluster housed more than 400 working-class families. Several dwellers of the unauthorised colony, inhabited mostly by people from Tamil Nadu, had opposed the demolition.
Over 150 families left without rehabilitation
The demolition razed 370 homes. While 215 families were allotted rehabilitation flats in Narela's Pocket 4 and 5—over 35 kilometres away on Delhi's northern edge—155 families were declared ineligible for resettlement.
'Why didn't you come to work?'
Among those affected is 38-year-old Pushpa, a domestic worker who lived in Madrasi Camp. As the razing began, she scrambled to save her belongings while fielding repeated calls from her employer in Jangpura asking, 'Why didn't you come to work?'
Pushpa told India Today that she avoided taking any leave for a month and a half, anticipating trouble due to the ongoing court case and wanting to save her leave for later. Despite this, she continued receiving calls from the households she worked for.
Encroachment on Barapullah drain
The Barapullah drain, a crucial stormwater channel stretching from Lajpat Nagar to Sarai Kale Khan and into the Yamuna, has long suffered from reduced flow due to encroachment. The Delhi High Court had noted that Madrasi Camp was an 'unauthorised construction/ encroachment' that had led to the obstruction and blockage of the Barapullah drain, 'causing significant waterlogging in the surrounding areas, especially during the monsoon'.
People's livelihoods in jeopardy
Relocation to Narela has created serious concern for residents, especially women who rely on domestic work in South Delhi. The move threatens their primary means of income. Around 200 children from the camp attend a Tamil government-aided school near Barapullah, and their school admissions are now uncertain.
Following demolition notices, residents had approached the Delhi High Court seeking relief. On May 9, all the pleas filed by the residents were disposed of by the Delhi High Court, which ordered the commencement of demolition at Madrasi Camp from June 1.
The Tamil Nadu government announced that it would assist affected residents wishing to return to their home districts if they chose to do so. State officials promised support through local district Collectors, including help with resettlement and livelihoods. The Tamil Nadu House in New Delhi has been tasked with outreach.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Indian Express
6 hours ago
- New Indian Express
Learning three languages essential for cognitive growth
Languages are the lens through which we look at the world and navigate our lives. Without them, it is impossible for a child to cross the river of education. And with the increasing porosity of borders—both within nations and beyond— global citizenship is not just a distant vision, but a reality. It may not be possible to make good of it without multilingualism. The National Education Policy 2020 made a bold and futuristic statement when it provided for multilingual education through a variety of interventions. They include learning in Indian languages from K12 to PhD, learning more than one language in school, bilingual textbooks, setting up a National Institute of Translation and Interpretation, having departments of translation and interpretation in higher education, promotion of classical languages including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, and the use of technology for learning and translating. The NEP's provisions for language study in schools are further detailed in the National Curriculum Framework 2023 (NCF), which gives a roadmap for implementation. Note that the NCF uses the short forms R1, R2 and R3 to indicate the hierarchy of language learning. At the foundational stage (three years of pre-school and grades 1-2), only one language, R1 or the language used as the medium of instruction, is to be taught. This language is the choice of the state, but preferably should be the language the child is most familiar with. The child is learning to read at this stage, to be able to read to learn by the preparatory stage. In the preparatory stage (grades 3-5), a second language is introduced—R2, which can be any other language including English. Most schools in most states and Union territories are already following this.
The Hindu
10 hours ago
- The Hindu
Delhi refuses relief to student late by 6 minutes for CUET exam
The Delhi High Court has refused grant relief to a student who missed the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) by six minutes outlining the 'sanctity and discipline' of examinations. The 18-year-old candidate claimed on May 13 she reached the exam center at around 8.36 am - six minutes beyond the scheduled time of the test – due to which she was denied entry. The court observed that the information bulletin of the National Testing Authority and the admit card gave very specific instructions on reaching the centre at around 7 am, two hours prior to the commencement of the examination, as gates would shut at around 8.30 am. It said leniency in the conduct of such a large-scale examination would lead to chaos and 'discipline of the examination ought to be maintained'. 'The CUET is an important entrance examination and the discipline in arriving at the examination hall in time, taking the seat in time and being at the center before the gate closing time, are all part of the discipline and ethos of the examination ecosystem which ought not to be relaxed, inasmuch as, the same may lead to huge inequities between similarly placed students,' the court held on May 31. The court dismissing her appeal said, 'One might feel that it was only a matter of six minutes, but the authorities could not be blamed for enforcing the rule of gate closing timings strictly and discrimination was not a valid ground to interfere.' 'The CUET UG examination is an exam where more than 13.54 lacs students from across the country appear. If exceptions are made, and discipline is not followed in such an exam, the timely conduct of the exam, the timely announcement of results and timely admission to colleges and Universities is all likely to be jeopardised and there would be a cascading effect,' the court said.
Time of India
14 hours ago
- Time of India
Pride and prejudice: A Kanyakumari love story:
In 1964, the novel 'Puththam Veedu' sent ripples through Tamil literary circles. First, it was written by a woman; second, it focused on the Nadar community, who were then considered part of the depressed classes; and third, it centred on a love affair that defied social norms. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Written in the distinctive Kanyakumari dialect, a terrain few writers of that time ventured into, the book also questioned patriarchy and raised a voice for women. Those were the times when the Tamil literary world was beginning to draw boundaries between "serious literature" and "commercial writing". While the former found space in niche literary magazines, the latter was nurtured by mainstream publications. Amidst this emerged Hephzibah Jesudasan, an English lecturer at the govt College for Women in Trivandrum. 'Puththam Veedu' was her debut novel, and she wrote it in just 15 days. It was writer Sundara Ramasamy, founder of Kalachuvadu magazine, who recommended the manuscript to Tamil Puthakalayam, which first published it. Since 2009, the book has been published by Nagercoil-based Kalachuvadu Publications. Born on April 9, 1925, at Pulipunam in Kanyakumari district, Hephzibah completed her early education in Burma (now Myanmar). After World War II, her family returned to Tamil Nadu. She began writing poems in English at the age of eight. Later, she married Jesudasan, a Tamil professor who encouraged her to write and translate in Tamil. Though she wrote only four novels in Tamil and 11 books in English, Hephzibah, in her centenary year, is not as recognised as she should be considering her debut book has been in print for more than 70 years. Set in Panaivilai, a fictional village in Nagercoil, Kanyakumari district, the story centres on 'puththam veedu' (new house), once a symbol of wealth and pride. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Over the years, due to poor management of the household, the Nadar Christian family that owned it slipped into poverty. Though no longer affluent, the family still commanded respect in the village because of the palm trees they owned. The head of the household was Kannappachi, an ageing patriarch whose word was law. His elder son was an alcoholic, and the younger one was struggling in business. Despite all the ups and downs, it was Lissy, the only daughter of the elder son, who held everything together. Lissy was not like her grandmother and mother, whose lives were confined to the kitchen, nor was she like her niece Lilly, who completed her SSLC and represented a new generation. She stood between two worlds. When she fell in love with her childhood friend Thangaraj, a Nadar palm climber, it sent shockwaves through the household. The family tried to break the relationship, while Lissy tried to hold on to both her love and her loyalty to family and tradition. Whether she succeeded or failed, and what she gained or lost along the way, forms the heart of the story. 'Puththam Veedu' was, in many ways, a first-of-its-kind Tamil novel. One of its earliest reviews came from C S Chellappa, editor of the literary magazine Ezhuthu and author of the acclaimed novella 'Vadivasal'. Chellappa reviewed the book at the Tamil Writers Association's Novel Festival in Chennai in 1966, and later published his speech in his magazine, calling 'Puththam Veedu' the first Tamil novel to depict the lives of palm climbers, the first to centre on a Christian family and community, and the first to bring the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border region into Tamil literary fiction. The novel also revealed a rarely discussed fault line within the Panayeri Nadar community: while some owned palm trees, others worked as palm climbers. This class divide was the main issue in Lissy and Thangaraj's troubled romance. Peppered with details about the festive Margazhi season (Dec to Jan), which was also the season for toddy-tapping, the prime economic activity here, to how it was often the only time women wore new sarees and cooked kilathi fish (leather jacket fish), the book also highlighted the limited understanding of Christianity among the community, with many churchgoers knowing little beyond the basics — that Christmas marked Christ's birth and Good Friday his death. At a time when Christianity was slowly spreading into southern Tamil Nadu, the novel also served as a social and ethnographic study. "In Kanyakumari district, CSI churches brought women into schools and made education more accessible. It gave them access to jobs, it gave them freedom. The novel details those aspects," says Tamil journalist Arul Ezhilan, who interviewed Hephzibah for a commercial magazine in the 1990s. He just bought his first camera, and Hephzibah was the first person he photographed, one of the few images of her available in Tamil literary circles today. "The novel was published in the 1960s, when education was slowly beginning to reach Nadar Christian women. It captures that shift," says Ezhilan. Hephzibah went on to write two more novels — 'Dr Chellappa' (1967) and 'Anaadhai' (1977). Though these works revisited characters from her debut novel and were also set in the fictional village of Panaivilai, they were not as popular. One reason was that the books were out of print for many years. They were recently republished by Chennai-based 'Her Stories', a publication known for publishing women's writings. Her Stories also organised a centenary celebration for Hephzibah. "Panaivilai was her native place Pulipunam. Another reason her later novels didn't grab attention was perhaps the dialect she used," says Nivedita Louis, publisher, Her Stories. "With her first novel, readers were drawn to the dialect. But when she used the same language in later works, the novelty wore off. Also, it's unclear how well those books were promoted. The later novels explored male psychology, and they were ahead of their time, which could be why she was largely unrecognised. " Hephzibah stopped writing Tamil fiction after four novels and shifted her focus to English non-fiction, believing that writing on history was a divine calling. "She was not just a writer," says Niveditha. "She wore many hats of translator, poet, children's author, publisher (she ran Emerald Press), educationist (she founded Thangakan Memorial Ideal English School) and historian (she authored a four-volume history of Tamil literature with her husband)." Hephzibah remained unknown beyond her debut novel because she didn't write in magazines, says R Prema, researcher and former Tamil professor at Ethiraj College, Chennai. "Back then, writers gained recognition mainly through magazines. They published short stories or serialised their novels. Hephzibah entered the literary space directly, which is why there was little awareness about her," says Prema. 'Puththam Veedu' was translated into Malayalam and later into English as 'Lissy's Legacy'. Now, under a collaboration between the Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation and Rupa Publications, 'Putham House', a new English translation by G Geetha, has been released. Email your feedback with name and address to
