25 year old Ishita Chauhan wakes up at 7 in the morning. The heat of June is at its peak, but the morning sun barely penetrates the narrow streets of Katwaria Sarai, where five and six-storey buildings stand one after the other. The balconies here are so close that one can only see the inside of other houses. The neighborhood is already waking up – shops on the ground floor are preparing for the day, rickshaws and two-wheelers are passing through the street.
An MBA student from Madhya PradeshChauhan lies in bed for a few minutes, scrolling on her phone in a weak attempt to push back the start of another busy day. She shares her flat with two women. The thin, one-brick walls of her room – decorated with postcard images of visits with friends and family, woven with fairy lights – barely dampen the sounds of the neighborhood. The opposite wall holds a more serious tone – it holds her study deadlines, charts and timetables. He doesn’t have time to waste.
Cook – hired for ₹5,000 – The doorbell rings at 7:30 am, jointly by the three residents of the flat in an effort to maximize their study time. Groceries and vegetables are available in the market below. The ten-minute delivery app, which is still not available at home, also comes in handy. The next two hours passed in confusion. His roommates woke up. The flat has a single washroom and houses three students, who usually have very tight schedules – so things get hectic.
By 8:30 am, breakfast is ready, chores are over and she leaves for classes that start at 9 am. She passes a park that has been converted into a parking lot for cars. She walks through overflowing drains, under dripping AC units and through streets where nets of wires hang above her. “We mostly walk to the institute,” she says. “Even walking at night does not seem unsafe for women.” There is a bus stop nearby for longer distances and Hauz Khas Metro Station is also not far away.
For millions of students and those starting their professional life DelhiPlaces like Katwaria Sarai, Hauz RaniAnd Saidulajaab Provide a scarce resource: affordable housing. Housing, shops, even basement reading rooms, the ecosystem caters to the rent-based economy.
These areas they serve as way stations – people live here for a few years before moving to planned neighborhoods. Government departments turn a blind eye to these unplanned settlements and their severe lack of public facilities and basic security. Residents, practically feeling that they have no other choice, tolerate them. Unless something happens – like the building collapse in Saidulazab on May 30, and the fire in Hauz Rani on June 3, which in total took at least 29 lives.
This is an urban reality evident in a bird’s-eye view of the city-state that is India’s capital, or, more contemporaneously, a drone photo of it. More practically, this is also evident in the numbers: according to the 2011 census, New Delhi district, or Lutyens’ Delhi, the center of the capital, had a population density of just over 4,000 per square km. In North East Delhi it was 36,155. In East Delhi, 17,913. And even in South Delhi, where Hauz Rani is located, 11,060. The latest census has just begun, but it’s quite possible that New Delhi’s numbers haven’t changed much (mostly there’s no housing for anyone outside the government) – and it’s equally likely that the numbers for other districts have increased by about a third.
The crisis has been decades in the making, and began with the partition of India, when Delhi saw a surge in the number of people crossing the newly demarcated border. This hampered civil services and led to irregular, haphazard development. It is against this background that the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) was established in 1957 under the Delhi Development Act to manage the rapid urban expansion and severe housing shortage. Its charter says, “For the purpose of promoting and securing the development of Delhi in accordance with the plan and for that purpose the Authority shall have power to acquire, hold, manage and dispose of land and other property… and generally to do anything necessary or expedient for the purposes of such development and for incidental purposes connected therewith.”
Working directly under the Delhi Administrator or Lieutenant Governor, the all-powerful DDA was tasked with master planning, providing affordable housing, rehabilitating slums and managing land. It has had a complete monopoly over land and its development, zoning laws, even commercialization in Delhi since 1957. And such has been its impact that the emergence of the satellite cities Noida and Gurugram can also be attributed to it – had the DDA played the role it was created for, neither of them would have existed.
In 1957, the population of Delhi was estimated at 1.96 million. Now, Delhi, which has an area of about 1,484 sq km, has an estimated population of 25 million, but most live in unplanned enclaves, 675 slums and 1,799 unauthorized colonies. Experts argue that by imposing large-scale land monopolies, stringent zoning laws and restrictions on private development, the DDA indirectly created a severe housing shortage, creating large-scale unauthorized colonies and abandoning millions of people in informal settlements.
The DDA did not respond to requests for comments.
‘Artificially rationed’ housing
Chauhan and his flatmate pay monthly rent ₹with 23,000 extra ₹1,000 as maintenance charges. To make it economical, they divided the rent in the ratio of 3:3:4, with Chauhan paying the larger share. She lives in one room while the other two live in another room.
She knows that the neighborhood is not an approved development, and she is sure that the sub-meter outside her flat is rigged. There is no proper drainage system in the area. When it rains, the streets get filled with water and hanging wires pose a danger. Proximity to the institute, access to metro and wider city make this deal a slightly better deal. This is all she can afford. They have no option because Delhi has not planned for people like them. This never happened.
For decades, rigid zoning excluded the working class and migrants, leading to the rapid growth of unauthorized colonies on agricultural land and JJ clusters or slums. Since these areas fall outside the DDA’s approved zoning map, residents have long been deprived of basic civic infrastructure and live under constant threat of demolition. When the DDA built housing, it was often pushed into peripheral urban limits without adequate connectivity, leading to ghost towns like Narela with an inventory of over 30,000 unsold flats.
“Delhi’s urban crisis is no accident. It is a direct result of systemic land policy fraud, which has consistently sidelined and misled even the Supreme Court. By hoarding prime land and shifting its use to benefit businessmen and private entities, the DDA artificially promoted growth. This rigid and outdated zoning overshadowed Delhi’s social and affordable housing needs, diverted village populations and agricultural land into unauthorized constructions,” says the report in the report, “Delhi’s Urban Development Authority (DDA)” Paras Tyagi, a lawyer and activist working on the issues, said.
Or people simply move away – big businesses and the professional class have mostly moved to Gurugram and Noida.
Delhi has seen three masterplans – 1963, 2001 and 2021. Work on the fourth is in progress. The Shelter Baseline Report prepared for Delhi’s Master Plan-2041 acknowledges the reality of people like Chauhan in unusually straightforward terms. It said that land and housing development in Delhi has mainly taken place through the public sector i.e. DDA, with a very limited role for the private sector.
“Delhi’s formal housing system has failed to match the pace of the city’s urbanization, leaving the city in a state of persistent housing shortage. It has failed to provide ‘housing for all’, as housing tenure options were rigid (only ‘owned’) and their pricing unaffordable. This has encouraged the informal housing market to flourish further. The most obvious manifestation of the gap in demand and supply of housing in Delhi is slums and unauthorized colonies. spread,” the National Institute of Urban Affairs’ baseline report said. (NIUA) Master Plan for 2041.
It is estimated that more than 60% of Delhi’s population today lives in unplanned informal settlements, characterized by compromised living conditions, poor infrastructure and unsafe housing.
What began as peripheral settlements gradually developed into dense urban areas where millions of people lived. Over time, residential properties were converted into paying guest accommodation, hostels, warehouses, banquet facilities, restaurants, clinics, hotels and commercial establishments. In many areas, roads designed for village settlements became the only access roads to multi-storey buildings, guest houses and markets serving thousands of people. Urban villages like Hauz Rani, Munirka, Khirki Extension, Shahpur Jat, Saidulajab and others became major centers of affordable rental housing for students, migrant workers and professionals as the formal housing market failed to create sufficient affordable rental stock.
The invisibility of Chauhan and people like him is mentioned in the Baseline report, which says Delhi’s planning framework largely focuses on ownership-based housing, while failing to adequately account for rental housing, dormitories, student housing, co-living spaces, studio apartments and housing for working professionals. It warns that in the absence of appropriate policies, regulations and implementation mechanisms, “informal settlement is encouraged”.
The report is equally critical of the implementation of the previous master plan. It said several recommendations of the Master Plan 2021 were not implemented and described several provisions as static and rigid recommendations that fail to be implemented on the ground. Former planning officials say the land remained under strict institutional control, but market demand led to alternative routes. Agricultural land was divided. There was vertical expansion of rural areas. Unauthorized colonies spread. Commercial activities spilled over into residential areas. Each successive government responded with regularization schemes, amnesty provisions, and special laws that allowed these settlements to persist while addressing the underlying lack of planned housing and commercial space. The result was that a parallel city was developing along with the planned city.
The scale of the increase is so large that Parliament has had to repeatedly intervene in laws such as the National Capital Territory of Delhi Laws (Special Provisions) Second (Amendment) Act, 2023, which has extended the protection given to unauthorized buildings for a period of three years from January 1, 2024, to December 31, 2026. Initial protection was initially granted in 2006 and has been extended from time to time.
“Delhi’s planning model was built around the assumption that a single agency could acquire, develop and release land in a controlled manner. But population growth, migration and market demand have grown much faster than the planning process. When formal supply falls behind demand by decades, informal supply inevitably fills the gap. The problem is no longer that of unauthorized colonies alone. Entire local economies have developed in areas that were originally planned for something else. Homes are designed as The buildings become hostels, guest houses, warehouses and commercial establishments. The regulatory framework has never been adequately adapted to that change,” said KT Raveendran, former dean, School of Planning and Architecture.
‘Hope nothing happens’
By 7:30 pm, Chauhan finished dinner. The three flatmates get a rare moment where they’re not in a hurry – with cups of tea in hand, they sit comfortably and fill each other in on their days. They decided to take a walk for a while and eat ice cream. One of her flatmates mentions the Hauz Rani fire, and a scary thought – often pushed to the back of their minds – resurfaces.
“Our flat is affordable and everything is accessible, but if there is a fire in the building, there is no way for the fire tender to reach the street where even a car cannot enter,” she says.
Then she brightens up by thinking about the future with the optimism that only youth has.
“It’s just for a few years. Hopefully nothing will happen, and we’ll all move to a safer area before then.”
