How demonetisation has affected the homeless

The Geeta Ghat shelter for homeless men in Old Delhi is unnaturally crowded in the afternoons these days. Usually, during the day, it empties out as men go out in search of work. “These days, as many as 60 men are hanging around here, unemployed, during the day,” says Gufran Alam, a field worker from Centre of Equity Studies that oversees the shelter. “Many of them have not gone for work for as long as a week!” For these migrant rickshaw pullers, labourers and beggars, life is a day-to-day existence in which they have to buy everything they consume. Why, then, are so many of them out of work?

“It’s not that we haven’t been getting any jobs since the government abruptly announced note-bandi this November,” clarifies Ashwini Kumar, an occasional inmate at the shelter. Wedding contractors hire people like him for behind-the-scene odd jobs during large parties. “But contractors are paying us only in old notes,” he says. Since only a small fraction of the men living in the shelter have bank accounts, most resort to commercial moneychangers, who, they allege, are now charging a commission of 50 per cent on old notes. “I last worked for two days last week, when the contractor paid me Rs 1,200 in old currency,” says Kumar. “When I found that I could only exchange it for Rs 600 in new notes in the market, I decided it was just not worth it to seek work right now!” Like Kumar, another inmate Sushil Kumar Chakraborty, an occasional cook who gets part time work with caterers, says he, too, prefers to sit idle rather than work and get paid in old currency. “I don’t know how long can I stay without earning,” he says. “I guess I’ll wait till I become desperate.”

The few among the homeless who are fortunate enough to have bank accounts, have a different story to tell. Sushil Kumar Jha, a tuberculosis patient who is being treated at the Geeta Ghat recovery shelter, works when he can as a waiter in weddings and parties. “The last time I worked and was paid in old notes, I exchanged them for whatever I could get in the market,” he says. He did not even try to deposit the money in the account as he wasn’t up to braving the long queue at the bank. “I haven’t the faintest idea how banks work, and worry what will happen to my hard-earned money once I deposit it,” he says. “I feel more comfortable when I have all my belongings with me.”

Chakraborty, Jha and Kumar echo the sentiments of an estimated 200,000 homeless people in the capital. Illiterate, disempowered and bearing a deep mistrust of the system, few of them possess voter cards, Aadhaar Cards or bank accounts and none can withstand the job/income loss that demonetisation has caused. Fieldworkers estimate that there are about 1,000 men who stay in government shelters along the banks of the Yamuna. “Not even a handful of these have voter ID or Aadhaar cards,” says Alam.

Without these key means of identification, these people find it hard to get employment in the organised sector, and also stand no chance of receiving government social security benefits.

Yet, they are merely symptoms of a larger malaise. “Whether it is the homeless, or the transgender, there is a significant number of people in Delhi who don’t have Aadhaar cards and Jan Dhan accounts and are suffering the ill effects of demonetisation,” says Anjali Bharadwaj of Satark Nagarik Sangathan. Harsh Mandar of Centre for Equity Studies (CES), observes that the plight of destitute women beggars in the Jama Masjid area is pitiable. “Dependent on alms that have virtually dried up because of the cash crunch, many are now in a very bad shape,” he says. “The government has not thought about the people who are the neediest – the country’s millions of informal workers, farmers, migrants, nomads, tribals, single women, disabled, sick and old people, street children – in its sudden decision to demonetise our currency!”

Since the November 8 announcement, CES and several other NGOs have been working overtime to enable more people to obtain Aadhaar cards and bank accounts. Most hit the same old circular roadblock. “To open a bank account, one needs an Aadhaar card. For an Aadhaar card, one needs to show address proof, which these homeless people don’t possess,” says Alam.

While the Election Commission is supposed to periodically set up camps to issue voter ID cards to the homeless, these are few and far between. “And, the last few have been poorly advertised and held in places with hardly any homeless population,” he adds. CES had filed 400 applications for voter ID cards, of which only 65 have been accepted. The rest were rejected because of the lack of photo ID.

“Although the poor and homeless are used to life’s hardships, the uncertainty brought by this new government policy on demonetisation is no less than a calamity,” says Mandar. There are neither any easy solutions nor shortcuts to the problems, big and small that economists and activists are seeing on the ground every day. “We’re going to be seeing the effects of demonetisation on India’s most vulnerable citizens for a long time to come,” says Mandar. History will tell whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies on demonetisation and digitisation will transform the lives of the poor, but one thing is for sure. Winter has come, and it promises to be a bitter one.