Visitors will see clean New Delhi streets ornamented with hundreds of thousands flowers. What they will not see are the hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced.

The annual summit of the Group of 20 economies is the largest gathering of world leaders ever in New Delhi, with attendees including President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and others.

They will be greeted by some of the cleanest streets New Delhi has seen, ornamented by hundreds of thousands of lush flowers potted on freshly painted pavements. What they will not see are the hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced, or the slums that have been flattened or obscured by temporary fences bearing the G20 summit’s logo and photos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi’s government hopes the beautification project will help showcase the best of what the world’s most populous country has to offer, further cementing its position on the global stage.

Anything that might disrupt that effort is unwelcome.

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    Amit’s nine children were asleep late last month when their home was suddenly raided by officials who brought four bulldozers with them. They were among almost 125 families whose homes were destroyed in South Delhi’s Subhash camp, 10 miles from the summit’s main venue.

    “They didn’t even let us grab our belongings and started beating us before we could even finish,” the 34-year-old ragman who collects trash and sells it to a recycler said in an interview Wednesday.

    Oh, well as long as they were illegal homes this is okay then!

    Many had spent their entire lives in the area.

    “I was born here, I grew up here, I got married here and had a kid here,” said Gujjar, 21, who like Amit and many other slum residents goes by one name.

    In the US this would be a slam dunk case for adverse possession.