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In a city rising with glass towers and corporate campuses, thousands sleep on its sidewalks, hidden in plain sight. Beneath the shadow of the Majestic flyover lives Sunil*, yearning for a visit from his son. In the chaos of KR Market, Leena*, having fled an abusive marriage, finds a semblance of safety in its hustle. Near the serenity of Jumma Masjid, Raj walks in circles, mourning a love that withered under the weight of money and betrayal.
These stories are not outliers, they are windows into the lives of Bengaluru’s urban homeless, navigating a city that refuses to see them. As part of my curriculum on 'Data, Democracy and Development' at Azim Premji University, we work with organisations working on improving the lives of those on the margins. During this work with Bengaluru's Project Smile and Aaladamara Foundation, I witnessed a machinery of neglect that renders the vulnerable invisible, pushing them to the margins of policy and empathy.
The 2011 Census recorded 6,864 homeless people in Bengaluru Urban. Recent estimates vary widely, with surveys cited by Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and activists placing the number anywhere between 5,000 and 17,000. Even these figures are likely to be significant undercounts, given how many people remain invisible in official records.
The BBMP has around 48 shelters operating under the National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM). They are meant to offer free overnight accommodation with food, sanitation, and healthcare. But they are clustered in Bengaluru South and East, far from hotspots like Anekal, Majestic, and Goods Shed Road, where transit links, informal work, and state neglect intersect. This raises a troubling question: Are the shelters placed more by land value and administrative ease than by human need? Social workers from Project Smile point out that high-value zones often appear insulated from visible poverty, as if to preserve Bengaluru’s clean, investable ‘global city’ image.
Urban homelessness in Bengaluru doesn’t seem like an oversight; it feels like an outcome shaped by systemic design. Poorly maintained and badly located, shelters often see low occupancy. This very lack of use is then cited by the state as evidence that there is little demand for it. These flaws are turned into a justification for inaction and effectively erase both the crisis and its people.
Top-down planning with little community input worsens matters. Our fieldwork showed that NGO staff and residents were rarely consulted on shelter location or function. Many are simply grateful for any space, however inadequate.
Oversight is limited, funding is often erratic, and there is little clarity on the accountability of contractors. With no unified city policy, responsibility is scattered across BBMP, the Karnataka Slum Board, and NGOs, blurring roles and neglecting care. BBMP may provide land and shelter but not upkeep, the Slum Board may handle construction but not staffing, and NGOs may run day-to-day operations without long-term funding. In the gaps between these mandates, shelters often end up neglected.
Exclusion isn’t just physical; it is civic. The access to Aadhaar, rations, or toilets requires a permanent address, locking out those without one. Raju, a man we met near Majestic, told us how he lost his Aadhaar and hospital records when his bag was stolen on the way to get the distributed food. “All my papers were in that bag. Aadhaar, hospital records, everything. After that, the hospital wouldn’t take me; even the shelter turned me away,” he said.
His story echoes that of many others who, without documents, find themselves shut out of shelters, healthcare, and food. Rather than adapt, the system demands they navigate rigid bureaucracies. Addiction or mental illness aren’t treated as conditions needing care but as reasons to push people out. Harassment is routine, unrecorded, and normalised.
Forced to keep moving for safety and survival, the system often offers the homeless static solutions: distant shelters, one-time documentation camps, and one-size-fits-all interventions. This isn’t bureaucratic oversight; it feels more like urban cleansing.
Rani* is a former Bharatanatyam teacher. Her eyes lit up when she spoke of her students. “I brought up my son alone and gave him the best,” she said. “And he left me with the gods,” sitting near the temple where he had abandoned her. Leena showed me scars on her neck and legs, souvenirs of a house she was glad to escape. I met former managers, astrologers, domestic workers, and teachers. Each shared their story, but together they revealed a deeper truth: structural violence—where institutions deny basic needs and rights, exposing deep inequalities.
They seek not pity or charity, but dignity and autonomy. Fathers who visit their children but choose not to stay, preserving their freedom even if it means sleeping on the streets. Mothers who say they raised their children well enough to be abandoned and refuse to return as dependants.
The system shuts them out. Their absence in records often becomes proof that they don’t exist. The shelters, documentation, and law enforcement don’t fail but function as intended to keep the vulnerable invisible. In a consumerist city, visibility is reserved for what can be bought or branded. As Tousif Masood from Project Smile put it, beneath this lies a deeper moral decay, not just in governance, but in a society that has learnt to look away.
But everything isn’t grim. Between the cracks of hardship, they hold on with wit and a flicker of hope. Near Majestic, Ramesh* broke into a grin and shouted, “Inquilab Zindabad!” when I asked if he wanted to go home. “Home?” he laughed, pointing to his friends around him. “Where they are, that’s home.”
So what would it take to build a city that acknowledges its homeless as citizens? It means placing shelters where people live, not where it suits the state. It calls for mobile documentation and on-site health services, not distant outposts. It demands planning rooted in empathy, shaped by listening to the homeless, and respect from fellow citizens. Finland’s ‘Housing First’ model (2007) offers a compelling example, starting with permanent housing, unconditionally provided, to give people the stability to address issues like addiction and mental illness. For Bengaluru and India, this means treating housing as the first step, not the last, and embedding it in local, accessible, sustained care.
Homelessness is about rights, not charity. Until the country sees its homeless not as dependents but as citizens with rights, dignity, and dreams, we will keep building a city above people, not for them.
“Dignity is when someone sees me as an equal, speaks to me with care, and treats me like a human being. If I give respect, I expect respect—that’s how we survive,” Mohan*, a resident of a homeless shelter in Bengaluru.
After all, what is a smart city if it refuses to see?
*Names have been changed to protect their identity.
Michelle Abraham is an undergraduate student at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. Views expressed here are the author’s own.