"My father had spent his entire life there, and died there, so we did not want to leave that place and move anywhere else."

What also angers Bawana's new residents is that their new living conditions are as equally as appalling as before.

The government gave them land to build houses. They can stay here for only five years and none of these houses have toilets.

There are some temporary toilets but they are often unaffordable for people living on less than a dollar a day.

Khanna says there was no other option for Bawana residents as authorities do not have substantial housing to provide.

"What you've done is that you have removed a slum and created another slum at a different location. So you have displaced a problem, rather than solving a problem," Jha says.

Authorities claim they are under no legal obligation to re-house residents but critics argue they have no real choice in the matter.

"Right to resettlement doesn't exist," Harish Salve, a lawyer with the Supreme Court of India, says.

"But yes, as good government, as a welfare state which we are as far as possible, if driven by poverty people have come and settled in inhospitable surrounding you must resettle them."

'Race against time'
Meanwhile, the government is busy building the Commonwealth Games village on the bed of river Yamuna, a construction that Jha says is highly hypocritical.

"We've seen lot of illegal constructions; lot of slums have been removed, vacated from the river bed, saying that 'oh well, they pollute the river', and that any form of encroachment is bad for the river system and the eco-system of the river," he says.

"How about the Commonwealth Games? Where did the government think that it was suddenly eco-friendly to have big construction and it was eco-unfriendly when there were slums that were supposed to be there?"

The authorities however insist they have all the necessary permits to build on the riverbed and the Indian Olympic Committee says it is too late to switch the project to another site.

Some analysts say that setting up facilities for the games is proving to be a race against time for the government and in order to meet deadlines they are taking quick decisions that sometimes result in irreparable damage.

Local residents say that trees in the Siri forest have been cut down to make way for the Commonwealth stadium and have been done so from the centre, in order to disguise the cutting for as long as possible.

"If 1,000 trees are cut anywhere - I mean, that we are very particular, at least 10,000 more trees must be grown elsewhere. So all those factors have been looked into," Suresh Kalmadi of the Olympic committee says.

Salve says this attitude is a case of literally not seeing the forest for the trees.

"A forest which is a few hundred years old, as this Siri Fort forest is, is an eco-system. You can plant trees - you can't plant an eco system," he says.

"It is this attitude, and its this complete lack of awareness and planning, which is at the heart of the Indian problem."

Planning problems
Lack of planning is hindering Delhi from becoming the "world class" city it aspires to be.

The Road Research Institute has been monitoring the infrastructure in Delhi and says that basic facilities like pedestrian signals and zebra crossings are sorely lacking - meaning walking on Delhi roads has never needed more maneouvring.

"Just for the sake of widening the roads we are just cutting down the size of the footpaths. And whatever footpaths are available they are not at all pedestrian friendly," Nishi Mittal from the institute says.

The games' organising authorities suggest such hindrances are merely teething problems and that a fluid transportation system will be in place by 2010.

"There's going to be a lovely transportation system coming in," Kalmadi says.

"All these stadiums are also being connected by the Metro. So, lot of things happening for the common man."

However, despite the millions of dollars already invested in the infrastructure of the Games, many believe that millions of people may not benefit from it.

"Whatever Games we're talking about, it doesn't really help the common man. It comes and goes," Vimlendu Jha says

"But in the process of coming and going, you don't lose so much. You don't put everything at stake."