On the road to nowhere: a day with people who don’t exist.
(An edited version of this article was published in The Lucknow Tribune.) On the road towards Muzzafarnagar, my eyes somehow expect to see desolation associated with the name in recent times, but the cheery road flanked by the green sugarcane fields could be straight out of a Karan Johar film. Small shops, dusty roads, the local mithai shop with colorful character next to us eating an entire plateful of ladoos. Finally, we reach our destination… a field in the middle of nowhere. A simple board “rahat shivir-Jolla” takes us into enter the typical IDP (internally displaced people) camp: tents from Oxfam, women sitting outside in the sun, outdoors kitchens. Except it is not a relief camp; it doesn’t exist officially; the state govt claims that there are no refugees and everyone has returned to their homes. So the nearabout 150 families living here don’t exist in official records and the camp is run by charities and NGOs who give them food and shelter. As soon as we enter, we are