Calling homeless persons ‘parasites’ unjust: Ex-bureaucrats to Justice Gavai
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New Delhi: A group of retired civil servants and diplomats wrote to Supreme Court Justice BR Gavai saying that it is unjust to stigmatise homeless persons as ‘parasites’.
Their response came after Gavai asked on February 12 ‘are we not creating a class of parasites?’ Justice BR Gavai was responding to petition seeking shelter facilities for homeless persons, Scroll reported.
“Sorry to say, but by not making these people part of mainstream society, are we not creating a class of parasites?” Gavai was quoted as saying.
Calling out freebies, BR Gavai said: ‘Because of freebies, when elections are declared… people are not willing to work. They are getting free rations without doing any work! Would it not be better to make them part of mainstream society so that they can contribute to the nation?’
The group in its letter termed homeless persons as people ‘who have been pushed into destitution because the state has failed in its duties [elaborated in the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution] to secure a life with dignity for every citizen’.
Adding further it said: ‘These duties include affordable housing, decent work, protection from domestic and sexual violence, social security, food and nutrition, health care and, additionally for children, the right to education in safe and happy conditions.’
The group expanded that homeless women and men living in cities remain ‘most unprotected’ among informal workers.
‘They are compelled each day to offer their labour to anyone who is willing to hire them…They do hard labour at shamefully low wages,’ the group reportedly said.
The group pointed out that while loan write-offs and tax holidays to large companies or the income tax exemption to persons are not considered as freebies, public spending on ‘the most dispossessed of our citizens’ on their housing, social security, work protection and health care are termed freebies.
‘The homeless people are constantly exposed to the risk of life while living on the pavements and the streets and the threat to life is particularly imminent in the severe and biting cold winter, especially in northern India,’ they said.