Delhi's street artists fight ejection from their ghetto

India’s Kathputli Colony, which houses the biggest single concentration of traditional street artists in the world, may well have to make way for redevelopment.

THE police are bored. They doze on steps near the fruit juice stand, or on plastic chairs opposite the Ramdev tea stall. When ordered to protect an employee of the local authorities as he sets out to walk through the narrow lanes of Kathputli Colony, they stand, stretch, pick up their bamboo staves and set off.