The resettlement packages offered to slum dwellers in Mumbai not only violate their right to shelter but also lead to deterioration in their quality of life. There is an urgent need to calculate the cost of repeated demolitions that push slum dwellers to the city’s outer limits against that of acknowledging their right to housing.

Starvation deaths are headline grabbers. But when an entire community lives on the brink of starvation through out the year it rarely merits a mention. One such group, the Musahars in Uttar Pradesh light their chula once a day, in the evening, and live on one meal. Dec 2007