Does this mean the govt is giving me a house?

In a city where the problem of affordable housing is more acute than anywhere else in India.

In a city where the problem of affordable housing is more acute than anywhere else in India,where the estimated number of homeless outstrips the number in any other metro,Census enumerators found they were met with waves of hope,and subsequently disappointment,at almost all the 700-odd spots they visited on Monday night.

Even in bleary eyed surprise when enumerators woke them up way past midnight and until the early hours of Tuesday,most of Mumbais homeless asked if the officials would eventually give them every Mumbaiites dream: a home in the city of dreams.

While some had been informed beforehand by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation that a midnight census of the homeless would be carried out on February 28,others were surprised when enumerators,armed with the census form,a torch and a pen,asked them about their lifestyle. Many were fearful,with evictions from the pavements and grounds routine.

Rosy Raju,45 and a widow,was about to retire for the day along with her four children on cardboard mattresses outside the heritage Crawford Market building,a stones throw from the police headquarters. She jogged her memory as BMC enumerator Faizan Baig asked what her age was at the time she got married.

Like many homeless migrants from Tamil Nadu and Bihar,Rosy and her children too collect scrap in and around the market during the day and sell it at night. As the form was completed with Rosy putting a thumb impression on the form,she hopefully asked Baig if they would get a house from the government.

An all-male team of 998 ,including enumerators and supervisors,set out to count the citys homeless,estimated at 1.5 to 1.75 lakh,between 10 pm on Monday and 4 am on Tuesday. Despite the stagering estimate,the Census departments target is to count just 30,000 even lower than the 40,000 homeless persons recorded in the 2001 Census. In complete contrast to surveys by organisations working with the homeless in Mumbai,BMC officials claimed that spot visits done between February 9 and 20 indicate a presence of just 30,000 homeless at their regular spots.

After the work was wound up by 4 am in most parts of the city,areas in wards A and B,where close to 190 homeless clusters were identified,work went on till 6 am. An official from the BMCs health department said it is likely that about 80 per cent of the total homeless people in the city were covered during this time.

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Area-wise ward-level teams were out on the streets on foot as they covered the 698 spots identified,mostly spots including beachfronts,car parks and pavements where large numbers gather to spend the night.

BMC employee Harishchandra More,who has been a part of the Census exercises of 1991,2001 and the present one,said it took at least 15 minutes to settle down and convince people in one cluster. Once two or three families get counted,the others follow without resistance. They all want to know whether this is being done so that the government can give them free houses. We have had a tough time explaining to them the purpose of the entire exercise, said More.

Enumerators said the educational qualification of 80 per cent of those counted was Std VII pass or lower. While some enumerators said counting the homeless was easier than counting those from the middle and upper middle classes,others disagreed,having had to deal with drunk and drugged individuals. BMC employee Praveen Parmar had a tough time shaking 54-year-old rag-picker Valmiki Waghaware out of his drunken sleep at Juhu beach. Enumerators at the Reti Bunder area near Mahim Creek too faced this.

Enumerators also enjoyed some light moments. Since these people do not have any documents,we have to write whatever age they say they are. An old man with white hair,sleeping on the footpath at Fashion Street made me enter his age as 25! said one enumerator. Jogendra Shukla was taken aback when migrant Dudnath Yadav,sleeping outside Bandra station,asked him for money in return for answering questions.

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In areas with not too many NGO volunteers,enumerators found it difficult to get the message across. The central suburbs between Mulund to Kurla have very few NGOs working with the homeless. There was also a coordination problem; enumerators skipped some spots due to inability to reach people, said Abhishek Bharadwaj of the NGO Alternative Realities.

Two enumerators reached Bandra Bridge at 2 am and found a gathering of 80 women,mostly in burqas. Some politician had misguided them. They thought details would be collected to help them get houses. Most of them live in shanties and dont qualify as homeless, said volunteer Shwetank Mishra.

1,000
Enumerators,all men
700
Spots covered
30,000
Homeless targeted this year
40,000
Was 2001 count
1.75 lakh
Believed to be actual present count