The Notion of Homelessness

Abstract

The complexity of functioning of the contemporary city does leaves behind certain aspects unregistered in the network of urban life. Millions of Indians are unemployed or underemployed. Ingenuity and tenacity are the hallmarks of urban workers, who carry out a remarkable multitude of tasks and sell an incredible variety of foods, trinkets, and services, all under difficult conditions. Many of the urban poor are migrant laborers carrying head loads of bricks and earth up rickety bamboo scaffolding at construction sites, while their small children play about at the edge of excavations or huddle on mounds of gravel in the blazing sun. There are people who are free from the bondages of religion, caste, sect etc. of the urban society not because they do not believe in them but because they are the affected, the dejected or the distressed category that are many a times confronted and sometimes averted. The fine homes, often a walled compound with a garden, servants' quarters, and garage and glimmering automobiles of the wealthy stand in stark contrast to the burlap-covered huts of the barefoot poor. Shops filled with elegant silk saris and air-conditioned restaurants cater to the privileged, while ragged dust-covered children with outstretched hands wait outside in hopes of receiving a few coins. But as it is said that life finds its own way, the urban environment too offers somewhat favourable and sustainable conditions to these people at some nook or corner. The concern for the 'urban' here is not how to displace them from the so called high-born areas but how these people can be equipped with employment which in turn will form a useful link in this network of management of the city life.