Biting cold

Kalyani, 15, refuses to come out her comforter as she snuggles even deeper when her mother, Saraswati Bai, crouching over a cooking fire, calls out loudly that it is time to eat. It is early morning; the diminutive girl has a flyover over head but no protection against the chilly wind.

She is asleep on one of the many cold and hard walkways of the capital.

Reeling under a cold wave

As wintry nights settle and frosty waves sweep Delhi, there are over 56,000 homeless people who struggle to battle the bone-chilling winter. While cold waves are an annual feature, so are frozen bodies of homeless people.

"This is the third winter Kalyani is spending out in the open. It is a fight to beat the cold. At least she has a quilt now," laments Saraswati Bai.

With north India in the throes of a cold snap, many are struggling to keep warm from the numbing cold. Last year, over 200 people died in northern India because of the cold winter.

"I just want shelter for the night but that is often hard to find. I am even willing to pay a little more but they turn me away," exclaims Sundar Lal, a cart-puller. For the last week, with temperatures falling as low as 5.3 degrees Celsius, the pavement is his dwelling.

Negligence and indifferent attitudes

The city has only 64 permanent and 54 temporary shelters which can accommodate just over 14,000 people. That means there are about 40,000 homeless people on the streets left to fend for themselves every night.

Despite directives from the Supreme Court urging civic authorities to prepare shelters before the mercury plummets to near zero, the municipal bodies have displayed no sense of urgency.　

"This is sheer callousness on the part of the authorities. At the peak of winter, four people on an average die of cold in Delhi every day," remarks Indu Prakash of the Indo-Global Social Services Society, which works with the homeless.

The situation is even worse in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab, where the most deaths have been recorded as authorities offer little or no facilities for the destitute and homeless. Street urchins and daily wage laborers are the most vulnerable.

"In many areas of these three states, authorities have not erected any shelters. Where can the poor go?" exclaims Ranjana Thukral, a civil rights lawyer in Chandigarh.

Preventable deaths

She says many who are out in the cold day and night suffer from fever, pneumonia, asthma and other respiratory infections that are preventable.　

"We don't keep a record of cold-related deaths as they are few in number. We can't keep a track of these deaths," explained away Naresh Kumar, a health official in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh.

Besides the human cost, the cold spell has also brought dense fog, which has reduced visibility to almost zero and thus disrupted train and air services. The Meteorological Department has predicted that the intense cold and foggy conditions will continue until early January.

For India's homeless, many feel lives could easily be saved if the authorities showed a little more warmth.

Author: Murali Krishnan
Editor: Sarah Berning