Ishita Chauhan, 25, wakes up at 7 am. It’s the height of summer in June, but the morning sun barely filters through the narrow lanes of Katwaria Sarai, where five- and six-storey buildings rise side by side. The balconies here are so close together that they only offer views of the interior of the other houses. The neighborhood is already awake – shops on the ground floor are preparing for the day, and rickshaws and motorbikes zip through the lane.
Chauhan, an MBA student from Madhya Pradesh, stays in bed for a few minutes, scrolling through her phone in a feeble attempt to delay the start of another busy day. She shares her apartment with two women. The thin, single-brick walls of her room — decorated with postcard photos of trips with friends and family, woven together with fairy lights — barely drown out the sounds of the neighborhood. The opposite wall is more serious, bearing study deadlines, charts, and timetables. She has no time to waste.
Cook – hired to $5,000 jointly by the three apartment residents in an attempt to maximize their study time – The doorbell rings at 7:30 am. Groceries and vegetables are available downstairs in the market. Ten-minute delivery apps, which are still not available back home, are also coming in handy. The next two hours go by in a whirlwind. Her roommates woke up. The apartment has one laundry room shared by three students who generally have a tight schedule – so things get hectic.
By 8:30 a.m., breakfast is ready, chores are done, and you leave for classes that start at 9 a.m. It cuts through a park that has been turned into a parking lot. They rush through overflowing drains, under fallen air conditioning units, and through hallways where a mesh of wires hangs above them. “We mostly walk to the institute,” she says. “Even walking at night does not pose a danger to women.” For longer distances, there is a bus stop nearby and Hauz Khas Metro station is not too far away.
For millions of students, and those starting their careers in Delhi, spaces like Katwaria Sarai, Hauz Rani and Saeedulagab offer a rare resource: affordable housing. Accommodation, shops and even reading rooms in the basement, the ecosystem caters to a rental-based economy.
These areas act as way stations – people live here for a few years before moving to planned neighborhoods. Government departments turn a blind eye to these unplanned enclaves and their significant lack of public amenities and basic safety. Realistic residents, who have no other options, tolerate them. Until something happens – like the building collapse in Saidulagab on May 30, and the fire in Hauz Rani on June 3, which killed at least 29 people.
It is an urban reality evident in a bird’s-eye view of the city-state that represents India’s capital, or, more contemporary, a drone photo of it. More concretely, this is also evident in the numbers: according to the 2011 census, the population density in the New Delhi area, or Lutyens’ Delhi, the capital’s centre, was just over 4,000 people per square kilometre. In northeast Delhi, the number was 36,155. In east Delhi, 17,913. Even in south Delhi, where Hauz Rani is located, it was 11,060. The latest census has just begun, but it is very likely that the numbers in New Delhi have not changed much (there is mostly no housing for anyone outside the government) – and it is also likely that the numbers in other areas have increased by about a third.
The crisis has been decades in the making, dating back to the Partition of India, when Delhi saw a wave of people crossing the newly drawn border. It has overwhelmed civil services and led to haphazard and disorganized development. It is against this background that the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) was established in 1957 under the Delhi Development Act to manage rapid urbanization and acute housing shortage. Its charter states: “To promote and secure the development of Delhi in accordance with the plan, and for this purpose, the Authority shall have power to acquire, hold, manage and dispose of lands and other property…. and generally to do anything necessary or expedient for the purposes of and incidental to such development.”
Working directly under the Delhi CM or Lieutenant Governor, the powerful DDA is tasked with master planning, affordable housing, slum rehabilitation and land management. New Delhi had had a complete monopoly on the land, development, zoning laws, and even commercialization of Delhi since 1957. Its influence was such that even the emergence of satellite cities Noida and Gurugram can be attributed to it – because if the DDA had performed the role for which it was created, neither might have existed.
In 1957, Delhi’s population was estimated at 1.96 million. Delhi, with an area of about 1,484 square kilometres, now has a population of 25 million, but the majority live in unplanned enclaves, 675 slum clusters and 1,799 unauthorized colonies. Experts argue that by creating massive land monopolies, strict zoning laws and banning private development, the DDA has indirectly caused a severe housing shortage, led to rampant unauthorized colonies, and left millions in informal settlements.
The DDA did not respond to requests for comment.
“Artificially rationed” housing.
Chauhan and her roommates pay $1,000 a month in rent $23000 with extra $1000 maintenance fees. To make it affordable, they split the rent 3:3:4, with Chauhan paying the larger share. It occupies one room while the other two rooms share the second room.
She knows the neighborhood isn’t an approved project, and she’s pretty sure the submeter outside her apartment is fake. The area does not have proper sanitation. When it rains, the walkways are flooded, and the dangling wires pose a threat. The proximity to the institute and access to the metro and wider city makes the settlement a slightly better deal. This is all you can afford. She has no choice because Delhi did not plan for people like her. It never happened.
Over the past decades, strict zoning has excluded the working class and migrants, leading to the rapid rise of unauthorized colonies on farmland and JJ clusters or shanty towns. As these areas fall outside the DRA-approved zoning map, residents have long been deprived of basic civilian infrastructure and lived under the constant threat of demolitions. When the DDA built housing, it was often moved to the peripheral urban boundaries without adequate connectivity, giving rise to ghost towns like Narela with a stock of over 30,000 unsold apartments.
Paras Tyagi, a lawyer and activist who works on the issues, said: “Delhi’s urban crisis is not an accident. It is the direct result of systematic land policy frauds that have bypassed and misled even the Supreme Court. By hoarding prime land and diverting its use in favor of traders and private entities, the Agricultural Development Department has artificially legalized development. This rigid and outdated zoning has relegated Delhi’s social and affordable housing needs to the shadows, converting village slums and agricultural land into unauthorized structures.” Surrounding villages of Delhi.
Or people are just moving – large corporates and professional classes have mostly moved to Gurugram and Noida.
Delhi has seen three major schemes – 1963, 2001 and 2021. A fourth plan is in preparation. The shelter background report prepared for the Delhi 2041 Master Plan acknowledges the reality for people like Chuh That’s in unusually direct terms. It points out that land and housing development in Delhi has been carried out mainly through the public sector, i.e. the Department of Development Affairs, with a very limited role for the private sector.
“Delhi’s formal housing system has failed to keep pace with the city’s pace of urbanization, leaving the city in a constant state of housing shortage. It failed to provide ‘housing for all’, as housing tenure options were strict (‘own’ only) and prices were unaffordable. This encouraged the informal housing market to flourish further. The most visible manifestation of the housing demand-supply gap in Delhi was the proliferation of slums and unauthorized colonies,” the seminal report prepared by the National Institute of Urban Affairs said. (NIUA) for the 2041 Master Plan.
It is estimated that more than 60% of Delhi’s population today lives in unplanned informal settlements characterized by poor living conditions, poor infrastructure and unsafe housing.
What started as peripheral settlements gradually developed into dense urban neighborhoods housing millions of people. Over time, residential properties were converted into paid guest accommodations, inns, warehouses, banquet facilities, restaurants, clinics, hotels, and commercial establishments. In many areas, roads designed for village settlements have become the only access roads for multi-storey buildings, guest houses and markets serving thousands. Urban villages such as Hauz Rani, Munirka, Kirke Extension, Shahpur Ghat, Saidulagab and others have become major centers of affordable rental housing for students, migrant workers and professionals precisely because the formal housing market has failed to create a sufficient stock of affordable rental.
The disappearance of Chauhan and her ilk was mentioned in the seminal report, which noted that Delhi’s planning framework largely focused on property-based housing, while failing to take into account rented housing, dormitories, student accommodation, co-living spaces, studio apartments and housing for working professionals. He warns that in the absence of appropriate policies, regulations and enforcement mechanisms, “informal settlement is encouraged.”
The report also criticizes the implementation of previous master plans. It states that many recommendations of the 2021 Master Plan remain unimplemented and describes many provisions as fixed and strict recommendations that are not implemented on the ground. Although the lands remained under tight institutional control, market demand found alternative routes, former planning officials say. Farmland was divided. The village areas expanded vertically. Unauthorized colonies spread. Commercial activity spread to residential areas. Each successive government responded with regularization schemes, amnesties and special laws that allowed these settlements to survive while rarely addressing the fundamental lack of planned housing and commercial space. The result was a parallel city growing alongside the planned city.
The scale of growth has been so great that Parliament has had to repeatedly intervene in laws such as the National Capital Territory of Delhi (Special Provisions) Act II (Amendment) Act 2023, which extended the protection afforded to unlicensed premises for three years from January 1, 2024 until December 31, 2026. The initial protection was initially granted in 2006 and has been extended periodically.
“Delhi’s planning model was built on the assumption that a single agency could acquire, develop and release land in a controlled manner. But population growth, migration and market demand move much faster than the planning process. When formal supply lags behind demand by decades, informal supply inevitably fills the gap. The problem is no longer just unauthorized colonies. Entire local economies have developed in areas that were originally planned for something else. Buildings designed as houses have become hostels, guest houses, warehouses and commercial establishments. “It has never adequately adapted to this transformation,” said KT Raveendran, former dean of the School of Planning and Architecture.
“I hope nothing happens”
By 7:30 pm, Chauhan had finished dinner. The three housemates have a rare moment when they’re not in a rush – as they sit with cups of tea in their hands and fill each other in on their days. They decided to go for a short walk and have some ice cream. One of her roommates mentions Ho’s Rani’s fire, and a frightening thought—often pushed to the back of the house’s infrared heads—resurfaces.
“Our apartment is affordable and everything is accessible, but if a fire breaks out in the building, there is no way a firefighter can get into an alley that even a car can’t fit into,” she says.
Then you shine and think about the future with an optimism that only young people possess.
“It’s only for a few years. Hopefully nothing will happen, and we’ll all move to a safer area before then.”
