Sushma remembers that May morning when the bulldozers They demolished his shack of tin because it was 400 meters from the venue where this weekend the G20 summit. She wasn’t the only one who was left homeless. The Janta Camp slum, where she lived, was demolished as part of a campaign face wash that the New Delhi authorities have been carrying out for months. They intend for this chaotic and polluted mega city, home to almost 30 million people, to project, at least around the summit, an image of modernity to receive world leaders.
The esplanade where Janta Camp was located is now a empty plot full of artificial plants and rows. There is no trace of the 600 personas who lived here. Some families went to the High Court to try to stop the eviction, but the court ruled that the settlement was illegal, that it was built on government land and that its occupants had to make a living elsewhere. So they did. Dozens of families like that of Sushma, mother of two daughters, ended up in improvised camps far from the center.
Many of these evicted people, who made a living from street vending, have also suddenly lost their jobs and only means of subsistence because the police have swept away part of the street stalls of the areas closest to Bharat Mandapam, a renovated conference center that is the venue for the summit and is close to a 16th-century Mughal fort and a monument to Mahatma Gandhi that world leaders will visit to lay wreaths.
For impress to heads of state, senior diplomats, leaders of international organizations and foreign journalists, the image of India that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to sell at the G20 is that of a modern superpower; that of an economy that grows more than any other; that of the giant who has been able to achieve a successful moon landing at the south pole of the moon. But to show this friendly and developmental face, they have tried to hide poverty and inequality that is too deeply rooted in a capital.
“We have all learned that the leaders of other countries are coming because they have put up posters announcing it all over the streets,” says a merchant from Paharganj, the traditional backpacker neighborhood of Delhi that is also bathed, like the entire central area, by huge photographs of Narendra Modi welcoming the G20. “They have put many flowers and cleaned some streets, but no matter how many decorations they invent, they cannot hide the absolute misery where a lot of people live,” comments the driver of one of the motorized rickshawwhich tries to take us to the demolished areas, but it cannot be accessed now because the entire area is fence facing the summit that starts on Saturday.