CWG-effect: Living in the city becomes costlier

The plight of Delhi University students who have been evicted from their hostels ahead of the Commonwealth Games is much talked about, but what is even more alarming is that the accommodation crisis is resulting in the city becoming a costlier place to live.

Areas, mostly around the University campus, which were until a few months back considered affordable for those staying on rent, are suddenly going out of reach, and the affected people believe this hike is here to stay.

Hostel and PG accommodation that were last year available for Rs 5,000 now cost anywhere between Rs 8,000 and Rs 9,000, and this steep hike has been most visible in areas around the campus like Mukherjee Nagar, Indra Nagar, Vijay Nagar and Civil Lines. This steep hike is not only affecting students, but is rather having a blanket impact.

"This is not a student-centric issue. It has larger implications as it is affecting the lower middle class and the working class people in several areas of the city," said Priyanshu, who is one of the activists leading a campaign seeking government intervention to regulate rents.

He said the sky high rents are in no circumstances likely to come down post Games, and have effectively made the areas costlier, hence education for students who come from smaller places has also become more expensive.

Students might have been the hardest hit by the inflated rents and limited accommodation but University officials say jumping on the Games bandwagon was a rare opportunity to get much-needed funds to renovate hostels, something the colleges would not have been able to accomplish on their own resources.

Some 3,000 undergraduate students of DU were evicted from their hostels in July when repair and restoration started, and are currently living around the campus. "UGC has disbursed around Rs 58 lakhs for civil work and Rs 20,000 per person for furnishing, and this amount of money was not coming otherwise," said Chandrachur Singh, Warden of the Hindu College Hostel at DU.

"Our hostel was in bad shape, and the funds we get from the government for upgradation are minimal. So we wanted to avail whatever funds were coming our way ahead of the Games. Now when our students return, they will have a 500 lph RO, a much better mess, toilets, beds and linen," he told PTI.

However, his only concern is the maintenance of these renovated hostels and where will the money come from for that purpose once the Games are over. Presently, he acknowledged, the students are facing a lot of problems outside the campus. "We were initially not so perturbed by the eviction, as we were told we will come back to much better hostel facilities, but we had not seen this coming," a final year student of Kirorimal College said.