Abstract: 

Ayesha and her family live in a Delhi basti (informal settlement). She wants nothing more than to have security of tenure of her tiny house at the precarious edges of Delhi. There are always rumours of demolition as the land is classified as ‘illegally occupied’.

For basti residents, tenure security and access to legal title to land depends on inclusion in multiple government surveys that promise these. These promises most frequently arrive at election time.

This film explores aspects of fear, anxieties, hope and confusion that surround survey and documentation processes. The film focuses on the discovery of a set of survey-related document that was intended to provided security of tenure but was declared ‘lost’.

Between the lost documents and their eventual discovery in a government office, lies the story of a locality, its people and mysterious relationships between government records and citizens. This is the story of Delhi’s Border basti.