DELHI: Shahjeem Ali*, a Class 3 student with heavy eyes, stands with a group of children at the edge of the tracks. Behind them is the settlement they call home. Houses are pressed against each other like books on a shelf. The entire neighbourhood sits inside a triangle of railway lines.
The train in front of us is not stopping here. It slows, then halts a hundred metres up the track. Between that two-minute window – it could, sometimes, be ten - children move. They duck beneath the couplings between freight cars. On the other side is what they call the normal world, their school part of it. Between that world and their lives lies thousands of tonnes of steel that can move at any moment.
“Every time I am under the train, I feel really scared,” Shahjeem says, his voice mixing with the metallic screech of brakes. “Sometimes I don’t want to go to school.” For Shahjeem and hundreds of children in Daya Basti, this life-threatening routine is ordinary.
About a 30-minute drive from the Parliament towards Pitampura, Daya Basti is an informal settlement adjacent to the Daya Basti railway station and encircled by three active railway lines. Around 15,000 people live on this patch of land no larger than a square kilometer.
Labeled ‘Encroachers’
On paper, Daya Basti stands on railway land. Its residents are officially classified as “encroachers.” Yet the settlement is more than half a century old. Thousands have lived here their entire lives. Pinky Kumari is one of them.
She stands at her doorway with her younger child playing beside her. Her older son has already crossed the tracks to reach school.
“What can I say?” she asks. “AAP, Congress, BJP - everyone comes here and shouts lies. Life still goes on.”
Pinky is in her late twenties and has lived in Daya Basti since birth. She was married here five years ago. Her family originally migrated from Darbhanga in Bihar. Her father came to Delhi in search of work and settled here while employed at a rubber factory in Inderlok.
She pulls out plastic cards from her purse and spells out a paradox. She holds an Aadhaar card, a ration card, and a voter ID, each listing Daya Basti as her address. The address officially affirms her residence. Yet, she’s an “illegal” resident.
This legal limbo brings constant anxiety. “News channels call all informal settlements Bangladeshis,” she says. “I hear the police are deporting people. One day it might be my family. Everything we have is here.”
Pinky wakes up at five every morning. Before her family rises, she has already walked to the community toilets outside the settlement to bathe. Every day, she watches her son cross the same tracks that one resident says, “takes a life at least every month.” He also guides us to derailed railway wagons, and adds, “Just this month these wagons derailed and severely injured 12 people.”
Her husband works at the same rubber factory as her father, earning slightly above minimum wage - around Rs 24,000 a month. Pinky assembles plastic flower pots for fifty paise each. Her work involves the tedious task of snipping extra plastic hanging on the seams of the pots, assembling them with fresh clay in a pot to create synthetic flowers and plants. It doesn’t fetch her more than Rs 2,000 a month. A family income of Rs 26,000 is hardly enough for the six of them.
“All these MLAs promise flats in Narela,” she says. Even if the flats are handed to them, Pinky doesn’t find it something to look forward to. Narela is about a two-hour bus ride from Daya Basti. She lays down a simple fact of life: “We have work nearby, but none there. How will we eat there? There will be no work.”
Architecture of Ignorance
By 10 A.M., the morning rush subsides, leaving behind diesel fumes and the hum of electric locomotives. Trains continue to thunder past.
Residents return from the community toilets, a 600-metre walk each way. A basic act of hygiene requires a daily journey of over a kilometre.
The gullies (narroq lanes) of Daya Basti form a maze. Sandbags line the paths to prevent sewage from entering homes. The density is so overwhelming that even long-term residents lose their way.
With a local guide, we move deeper into the settlement. The only paved stretch not flooded with filth is the central meat market. Beyond it lies a forgotten pocket beneath a flyover. Sunlight never reaches this space. Thousands live in permanent twilight; in a settlement the city literally drives over every day without seeing.
Glued to a Posion
Nearby, a boy barely ten years old staggers across the platform, visibly intoxicated. When asked where he goes to school, he laughs and replies, “Main toh nasha karta hoon, aur tum batao,” struggling to stay upright.
Residents blame “solution,” a local term for industrial glue.
“This solution is everywhere,” one resident says. “Adults or children, almost everyone is under its influence.”
Costing just Rs 30, the substance is easily available - at puncture shops, hardware stores and automotive mechanics. The glue is a chemical vulcanizing fluid meant strictly for rubber and plastic work. Since it contains volatile organic solvents like Toluene, Benzene and Trichloroethylene, it can cause developmental disorders like Parkinsonism and can lead to permanent cognitive loss, liver necrosis, coma and various forms of cancers.
Since chemical vulcanizing liquids are not classified as narcotics in India and are not brought under the NDPS Act, it's completely legal to possess and sell this ‘solution’ to adults, but not minors.
However, minors can be easily spotted at the shops purchasing industrial glue. Nearby, on the railway platform, the police is constantly present and there is a permanent police booth set up. Yet, within its vicinity, children queue up outside shops to purchase the substance.
“They’re here to collect bribes,” one man says. “They listen to passengers, not us. We are like pigs to them.”
An RPF officer standing nearby overhears the conversation. Asked for comment, he responds without hesitation: “These people live off free things. They all have flats in places like Vasant Kunj. They lie to gain sympathy and then blame us.”
Then, in the next breath, and in a bid to sound convincing, he adds, “This place is so confusing; how are we supposed to catch anyone?”
In a moment, he rattles off about drug abuse, burglaries and vandalism in the area. But, he says, “We are also humans. We don't have a magic wand that will instantly make all crimes disappear.”
The Fracture Within
The divide between residents and authorities is expected. But fault lines also run within the community.
Gaurav, a daily wage labourer in his early twenties, echoes the officer almost word for word. “Everyone here is rich,” he says, pointing toward the platforms where residents gather. “They all have flats in Vasant Kunj or Rohini. They stay here for free electricity and water.”
Gaurav considers himself politically aware, claiming to vote based on representation rather than party loyalty. Yet his language reflects the same national rhetoric.
When the conversation turns to overpopulation, his tone hardens. “It’s all about population,” he says. “Ye mulle hain jo itne bacche kar rahe hain.”
Pressed further, he backtracks, citing lack of education and lack of women’s agency. The shift exposes how deeply sensational narratives have permeated even those who believe themselves informed.
Although a granular census for this settlement does not exist, the population is way more diverse in the basti than the rest of the north-west and west districts of Delhi, which have around 82-87% Hindus and 7% Muslims. A high density of mosques, madrassas, and Islamic religious flags reveals that the locality is home to a sizeable population of Muslims.
There appears to be no physical segregation, but Gaurav’s remarks that resonate with the Hindu right-wing’s whipped-up anxieties about a demographic shift demonstrate that the psychological barriers exist.
The Train Departs
By 4:30 PM, Shahjeem is back from school. Pinky’s son and husband have returned as well. Most trains have passed. Only unplanned halts remain. The basti begins to settle. Children spill onto the tracks to play.
Many gather around us, eager to talk about school, their favourite subjects, the parts of Delhi they like, and what they want to become.
Raja, studying in Class 4 at the MCD School in Sarai Basti, wants to be an Army officer. “I really like cars and want one of those cars with no roof one day,” he adds.
His friend, Suhail, who studies in the same class, wants to be a pilot. Originally from Dharbhanga in Bihar, Suhail spells out his dream: “I want to fly those really big planes they show in the movies. I will fly them and yell out a ‘hello’ to my mom from the skies when I pass above this place.”
His innocent dreams cannot imagine a better future for her mother. But a shy, young girl’s dreams are more vivid and ambitious.
At first hesitant to talk to us, she opens up and talks in English. “I want to be an English Teacher and teach English to everyone in this basti.” Her wish doesn’t end here. She points to a tall skyscraper visible from the platform and continues, “So that they can leave and live in those tall buildings.”
After all the kids excitedly huddle together for a group photo, we leave them with their dreams amidst whistling and chugging trains, noisy corridors, and congested structures.
(*The story uses pseudonyms instead of real names at the request of residents to protect their privacy. Every photograph and personal testimony featured in this report was obtained with full and informed consent. In cases involving children, consent was obtained from their legal guardians.)
(This report includes few inputs from Ayyan Arora)
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