NEW DELHI: Standing barely five feet (1.5 metres), Bhim argues loudly with a much taller man in a tent packed with homeless men sleeping on tables, their thin bodies covered in thin, dirty blankets.

“What do you have against me? Why aren’t you letting me sleep here?” he demands, in dirty white pants and an oversized sweater, waving his arms.

Bhim, who could be anywhere from 12 to 20, is trying to convince the man running the adult shelter he is over 18. Like many in India, where records are vague, he has no idea how old he really is, but thinks he’s about 20.

After a long row, he is allowed in.

The young toy seller, a torn blanket around his bony shoulders, is one of India’s official two million homeless. Most aid agencies regard that as a dramatic underestimate and in the cruel winter of the north, many are desperate to get into the few shelters there are.

Winter temperatures in northern India are nowhere near as bad as in North America or Europe, but thousands die every year for lack of warm clothes or decent shelter. More than 100 have died in the past six weeks.

India’s economy is booming, forecast to grow more than seven per cent in the year to March. But a quarter of its more than one billion people — about 260 million — live below the poverty line, unable to afford 2,400 calories a day.

These include tens of thousands of homeless in Delhi, mainly men from rural areas who come to work in a city where the average income is 28,000 rupees ($630), compared with a national average of 11,000 rupees ($250).

“The homeless are largely people escaping desperate poverty. Nobody would choose such brutalized conditions,” says Harsh Mander, director of the Centre for Equity Studies.

Winters are harsh. And there are nowhere near enough shelters for the more than 100,000 estimated homeless in the city according to a study by Aashray Adhikar Abhiyan, a group that works with New Delhi’s homeless.

Stunned Delhi-ites have seen frost on their lawns for the first time in years. The temperature in the capital hit 0.2 Celsius (32 Fahrenheit) one day this month, the coldest since 1935.

Across the country, millions of homeless poor huddle on footpaths, in rickshaws, on dirt and under bridges, some lighting huge bonfires to stay warm.

“Yesterday, an old man came to this shelter. He was wearing only a thin shirt and could not stop shivering,” says Yasmin, a 27-year-old woman staying in the shelter.

“He was crying a lot because he had nowhere to sleep,” the gaunt woman said, adding that the man was not allowed into the women’s shelter, itself just a tent and a naked bulb for light.

Yasmin lost her own four-month-old baby to the winter.

Outside the tent, temperatures are near freezing.

“The homeless are not beautiful, their structures are not beautiful,” says Indu P. Singh, a senior manager with ActionAid-India International.

And they face far more problems than just the weather. Most are labourers, working by the day, or handcart or rickshaw pullers. As such, they have no identity cards and no way of proving they are employed and not beggars. Begging is a criminal offence.

“I had many dreams — that I would study and do well, but I am here now,” says 24-year-old Lisee, an orphan with breast cancer who has been living in a shelter for four years. From the south, she stayed in New Delhi after her parents died in a car accident.

“All I want now is ... the right to live.”—Reuters