Forced Evictions in India in 2017: An Alarming National Crisis

In the year 2017, data collected by Housing and Land Rights Network India (HLRN) reveals that government authorities, at both the central and state levels, demolished over 53,700 homes, thereby forcefully evicting more than 260,000 (2.6 lakh) people across urban and rural India, including the homeless. It is important to note that these disturbing figures are a conservative estimate, as they only reflect cases known to HLRN. The actual number of people evicted/displaced across India in 2017, therefore, is likely to be much higher.

In the absence of official data on forced evictions, HLRN, through its ‘National Eviction and Displacement Observatory,’ has attempted to document the scale and magnitude of this escalating crisis that has serious short-term and long-term impacts, including on social justice and the nation’s development and prosperity, but continues to be under-reported and ignored by both state and nonstate actors. HLRN’s research indicates that more people were evicted and displaced in 2017 than in 2016. This increase in forced evictions has occurred despite the central government’s Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) or ‘Housing for All–2022’ scheme and increased budgetary allocations for the same.