NEW DELHI: The national capital, an amalgam of various cultures, ethnicities, and social classes, can be demographically divided into four zones.
One is the posh Lutyens zone, housing the VVIPs. The second is societies where upper and middle-class income group people live, resettlement colonies where migrant workers dwell, and villages falling under the last category.
In the political discourse, the problems of the top three groups get due recognition. Reasons—influence, vote bank and population. However, villagers, arguably the city’s oldest inhabitants, receive cursory attention.
Delhi has more than 360 underdeveloped villages. According to locals, the Lal Dora (Red Line) confines them in cramped and unhealthy pockets. This has reduced them to living in inhuman conditions, lacking basic civic services such as water, power, healthcare, and good education.
What is even more alarming is that these villages are not under any ward or rural panchayat, which leaves the fate of the villagers in a pitiful state.
Notably, on August 23, the Delhi government instructed the officers concerned to expedite the ongoing development work in the city’s villages, stressing the importance of adhering to the set timeframe.
Development Minister Gopal Rai assessed the progress of the work and asked the officers to present detailed reports of all the schemes approved by the Delhi Gram Vikas Board during the next meeting on September 10. He said the government had allocated Rs 900 crore for village development work.
Ranveer Singh, a local from Deoli village, says that the roads of his village are so narrow that even a bus cannot navigate them. “When there is no basic facility, why should we even pay the property tax?” he questioned.
While speaking to this newspaper, Delhi’s Palam Khap chief Surender Solanki said that last year, the Mayor and Deputy Mayor announced that the government would no longer collect property tax from rural residential areas, but it is still being collected.
“We met with tax officers. A notification on tax exemption was never issued. The government says the issue stalled as there was no standing committee in the MCD,” Solanki said.
Among other plights, Ramesh Kumar of the Alipur village said, “Even if there is a fire incident, the fire brigade takes a long time to reach the destination. Roads are bad in shape, full of potholes and dotted with parked vehicles.”
He highlighted the small-scale illegal factories in the area, which lead to congestion and safety issues. Several incidents of fire in these illegal factories.