Varkey Parakkal, Kriti Roy
The question of student housing in India has been one that has remained only partially addressed by the country’s organised student movement for the longest time. The part that was addressed was when Left students’ organisations and movements led difficult yet protracted struggles demanding affordable hostels for all across India. While this is undoubtedly the only permanent solution to the question of student accommodation, it is still a long haul. A more nuanced and practical short term solution has to be figured out in the meantime.
In Delhi University for example, with over 130,000 regular students and over 260,000 enrolled in non-formal education programs, it is one of the biggest universities in the country. With a chronic shortage in hostels provided by the university administration, this leaves tens of thousands of students in search of and living in rented apartments and privately owned hostels (or ‘PG’s as they are usually called) outside campus. Over the decades, this acute lack of university or college hostels has resulted in the creation of a thriving housing sector specifically catering to students on the outskirts of the campus. These areas, which now house the vast majority of the students, raise their own set of problems and challenges. The antagonism stemming from the mismatch of interests of the tenants and their landlords, and the power hierarchy that exists between the two don’t need an elaborate explanation. The same stands true for Jamia Millia Islamia as well. The problem of housing is not as acute in the case of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) or Ambedkar University. This is mainly because, in case of the former, most students are provided with hostels or dormitories owing to a strong Left-led student movement for construction of hostels in the past, and in the latter, the majority of the students happen to be residents of Delhi who do not require separate accommodation. However, these universities aren’t devoid of such problems either, even though the magnitude of the problem is much lesser. In the recent past, JNU has witnessed a huge movement led by the students’ union against arbitrary increase in hostel fees, as a result of which, the administration had to bow down to the demands of the students and revise the circular. In the absence of such a movement, many students would have had to seek for alternative cheaper accommodation outside the campus, which would have in turn given rise to the same problems that are being faced by students of the Delhi University and Jamia today.
While the government undertaking the construction of hostels that can accommodate this large student community is the only solution in the long run, this is a process that can be glacially slow, depending on a lot of factors not in favour of the students. Three of the most important of these factors are – One, the general disregard of the government and the university administrations towards student welfare and accessibility to education, fuelled by increasing privatisation of education and government fund cuts in the education sector over decades. Two, the lack of a sizeable student movement particularly focused on the question of student accommodation. Three, the increase in settlement which has resulted in the scarcity of land to construct hostels on. Given that this is the daunting reality of students here, and that the possibility of some radical change happening to this any time soon is unlikely, we are faced with a second set of problems. These are the problems that arise as a direct result of the shortage of university or college hostels and the subsequent creation of private student housing, and the hostel economy that has sprung up beyond the borders of university campuses. While most of these problems are common to all tenants anywhere in the country, some are specific to students as tenants.
What are these problems?
First, the rampant discrimination of students based on religion, caste, region, gender, and language severely limit the options of available housing and make life difficult for a large sections of students from certain communities that the landlords in any given area find ‘not preferable’. Second, private housing and hostels charge exorbitant rent from students that take up a sizeable chunk of the money a student spends annually for their education. This further acts as another layer in the long list of filters that limit the access to education for the economically and socially weaker sections of the population. This problem is made worse by the disorganised nature of student tenants and the organised nexus of landlords and brokers that fix and fluctuate rent according to their liking. Third is the problem of moral policing and the infantilization of students through arbitrary and gender specific curfew timings. Restricting freedom of movement and association of student tenants with someone from a different gender is very common. Such treatment that violates the rights of students as an adult citizen has become the norm and seldom faces any organised resistance from students due to the limited scope of student movements in this regard. Students that fail to meet these absurd standards that the house owners and landlords have set for them and student tenants have no say in setting, are faced with harassment of different sorts. Students are also often forced to live in degrading and dangerously constructed housing. The lack of proper maintenance of houses by landlords, despite legal obligations, coupled with improper electrical wiring and so on, also put student lives on the line.
When we begin to take a closer look into the legal aspects of tenancy in India in general and specifically in the case of Delhi, we realise how tenant rights are violated day in and day out. To begin with, a lot of tenant-landlord agreements in Delhi, especially those of students and workers in particular, are only verbal and not in written. A lot of students in Delhi staying in rented apartments do not have a proper rent agreement, unless they need such a document to claim housing allowance as part of a scholarship. Since verbal contracts have no legal validity, a good chunk of tenants are naturally excluded from the scope of any legal protection whatsoever. Even in cases where rent agreements are in place, several tenancy rules are not followed in practice. Let’s take the case of the landlord’s entry for instance. The Model Tenancy Act, 2019 mentions it clearly that landlords cannot enter the tenant’s premises without a prior notice, or between 8pm to 7am. But we know of multiple cases where the right to privacy of the tenants, especially that of student tenants, is not taken seriously. Landlords often walk into private spaces of students without prior notice and at odd hours. Again, the Delhi Rent Control Act prohibits landlords from charging more than one month’s rent as advance for tenants living in Delhi, but it isn’t uncommon where landlords ask for more than a month’s rent as security deposit. As per the same Act, for water and electricity, the landlord cannot legally charge any amount exceeding the amount that he pays for those services, but landlords often violate this rule and charge extra amounts from students for water and electricity.
All of this, together with the fact that students as tenants remain an unorganised community, means that the exploitation of student tenants by landlords are amplified. This keeps the students from knowing their rights as tenants, and prevents them from collectively bargaining for it.
The Lockdown and the Student Tenants Union
Following the lockdown that was implemented in India in an attempt to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, the antagonistic contradictions between student tenants (also tenants in general) and landlords have bubbled up to the surface. The lockdown, due to its stifling of most economic activity, has cut the sources of regular income for the vast majority of the people in the country. This has made it difficult or rather impossible for tenants to pay rent. For students in Delhi coming from all over the country, this has been especially true for those belonging to economically and socially marginalised backgrounds – the daughters and sons of daily wage workers who have had to struggle more than the rest to reach Delhi for their higher education, for whom accessibility of education was severely limited in the first place. The uncertainty of income for this population during the lockdown leading to their inability to pay rent has resulted in a sharp increase in the number of cases of eviction threats, psychological, and sometimes physical harassment of tenants by landlords. What requires to be understood here is that these are not problems that originated because of the lockdown, but problems that were inherent to the present, unequal relation of power between the tenant and the landlord, that has been aggravated by the lockdown. What is being faced by the students pursuing higher education outside their hometowns today, drastically increases the chances of dropouts for students, especially for women students and students belonging to marginalised communities.
So now, what is the solution to the problem that has come up so chronically at such a large scale? It was mentioned earlier that the only long-term solution to the crisis is the state providing affordable hostels to all the students in any public educational institution, but since that is a struggle for the long run, what immediately requires attention is dealing with the problems that students face as tenants. This requires an active raising of consciousness among students of their aspect as tenants. To then organise student tenants around this consciousness, fight against harassment of all sorts and bargain for their collective rights that are long due. And if one were to look to history for a method and direction for this struggle, the most effective way of making it happen is by the formation of tenants’ unions, and implementing rent strikes.
Tenants’ unions, although a concept alien to India, is something that is more than a century old, and has successfully demonstrated its effectiveness in fighting for and winning the collective interest of tenants. Rent strikes is one of the more effective methods of struggle employed by the union, which is a mode of protest where tenants in an area refuse to pay rent until their demands are met. Some of the first tenants’ unions were formed in Europe and the Americas in the early part of the 20th century, with some of the rent strikes led by these organisations resulting in nationwide policy change in the favour of tenants. A notable example of this is the 1915 Glasgow Rent Strike which resulted in the implementation of the first rent control laws in the history of the United Kingdom. One notable example of a successful rent strike organised by student tenants happened in the University of Sussex in 1972. 77% of the student population of campus participated in the rent strike against the hiking of rent, among other issues. The strike succeeded and the demands of the students were partially met. The present lockdown and the stress it has caused on the working class globally has resulted in rent strikes across the world. Workers are refusing to pay rent, and are demanding that the governments freeze rent for the duration of the lockdown, in several parts of the USA and the UK.
It is with all this context at hand that students in Delhi have decided to form what is arguably the first student tenants’ union, if not the first tenants’ union in Indian history. The Student Tenants’ Union Delhi (STUD) is currently fighting individual cases of harassment of tenants by landlords across Delhi, while also demanding that the government acts to implement its own orders and bring in new ones in favour of the tenants. The Student Tenants’ Union Delhi has taken up initiatives to raise awareness on the two government orders, one from the Ministry of Home Affairs, and another from the Delhi Disaster Management Authority, both of which explicitly state that it is illegal for landlords to harass, or evict tenants during the period of the lockdown. The union is also demanding that the government comes out with a new order to waive off rents for students due from the lockdown period and that the government compensates the landlords instead. The trajectory of expansion of the union over the first two weeks of its formation has only reinstated the belief that this was an initiative only waiting to materialise for a long time now. The confidence and strength that the students draw from the union, which enables them to assert their rights and fight back on the face of oppression by landlords, has been evident in the way in which in such a short span of time, more and more students have actively become part of the union, a vast majority of whom have stayed away from any political movement in the past. The scope of formation of similar unions must be explored in other states of the country as well, particularly in areas that house students pursuing education away from their hometowns. The purpose of the Student Tenants’ Union Delhi in the long run will be to organise the thousands of student tenants scattered across Delhi and through relentless struggle strive for a society where housing and education are affordable to all.
Varkey Parakkal is an Masters’ student of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics in the University of Delhi. He is a State Committee Member at SFI Delhi.
Kriti Roy is an MPhil candidate at the Centre for Economics Studies and Planning of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
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