Anneli Xie
Prof. Nikhil Rao
HIST 276: The City in Modern South Asia
2019/05/21
Prof. Nikhil Rao
HIST 276: The City in Modern South Asia
2019/05/21
Understanding Slums and Urban Citizenship:
Infrastructural Entanglements within the Political Society of an Indian City
Infrastructural Entanglements within the Political Society of an Indian City
In the neoliberal
rise of urbanization, the city can be imagined as a utopia of resources. Since
the days of industrialization, the city’s reputation has been one of economic
gain, and as cities have continued to advance both technologically and economically,
they have become highly desirable places to live. Today, cities are seen as
hubs of commercial activity, with more than 50% of the world population seeking
to reside within cities to partake in the gains of urbanization. (United Nations 2018) In order for cities to host all of these new residents, new speculations of
what a city ought to look like have arisen. It is not hard to make a list of
the must-haves: electricity and access to water, good air quality, schools and
health facilities, plenty of road space for pedestrians and public transport,
parks and public spaces… The city should function like a well-oiled machine,
and this should be enabled in its foundation. The infrastructure of a modern
city should allow the economy to move smoothly by providing connections from one
end of the city to the other, bringing the city into further growth and
success.
In South Asia, per contra, rapid urbanization has not generated these utopian longings of well-functioning infrastructure. Rather, these have failed in the context of the urban poor and the rise of the slum. Defined by the United Nations as “informal settlements,” slums form where formal infrastructure fails; (Bhan 2017, 464) and engrained in their definition is that they “lack one or more of […] access to clean water, access to improved sanitation, sufficient living area that is not overcrowded, durable housing, and secure tenure.” (UN Habitat 2006) Contradictory then, the condition for slum classification is lacking many of the resources a city ought to provide – yet slums are an urban phenomenon that exist only within a city’s limits. A closer look at the nature of slums provides a partial answer to this by revealing a limited access of citizenship to slum dwellers; if these are not considered part of the city, it makes sense that they would not maintain the right to access resources. Investigating the proliferation of slums, however, reveals that slums have formed networks of infrastructure by measures of “self-help,” or taking matters into their own hands. (Nijman 2008, 73) In the absence of good infrastructure, slum dwellers have found ways to take on the role of public resourcing themselves. The slum is thus a highly organized structure that, despite popular opinion, has become a popular option for rural villagers in order to partake in a city’s economic growth and commercial success. In this way, slums are important because they are entry points for the poor into havens of opportunity.
Contrasting each other, however, the vision of the commercially successful city makes slums a viscerally despicable concept. Often regarded as intruders of the city, slum dwellers are seen as parasites dirtying a city’s reputation while exploiting its resources. (Anjaria 2009, 394) This traditional way of viewing slums has led to countless attempts to remove them, moving through approaches of clearance, improvement, and re-development, and has made the quest for urban citizenship ever the more challenging as slum dwellers face the constant fear of being disposed of. Found in a dialectic between politics and collective engagement, slum dwellers are often excluded from urban citizenship and generally reside without civic amenities due to their illegal status. Instead, slum dwellers stake their claim by collecting paper trails and by navigating the complex arithmetic of spatial politics within the city. (Rao 2013, 770) However, the attempts of removal have rarely been successful due to the ever-changing spatial politics surrounding Indian cities and the failure of viewing and understanding the slum as a viable and defining piece of South Asian city infrastructure. Despite the informal qualities of the slum, slum dwellings have become so intertwined with the formal aspects of the organized city that they have become hard to get by without. Slum removal thus ought to be seen as potentially damaging to the city in its reach for both economic growth and commercial success, as well as for the quest of democracy in the light of the civil, civic, and political society that ought to exist in the global modern city today.
The rise of the slum has followed as a consequence of the lack of housing options for the urban poor. Examining housing options in Indian cities from colonial times into present day reveals huge changes in the formal qualities of the built environment that the urban poor has been presented. Most notably, housing options for the urban poor have moved from pucca structures to those with kuccha characteristics – or, for example, from chawls to slums. (Bhan 2017, 463) The building of chawls peaked in Bombay in the city’s industrializing days during the cotton boom in the late 1800s. (Hazareesingh 2007, 20) Built by the Bombay Development Department (B.D.D), chawls were designed to be pucca housing, built in reinforced concrete to be solid and permanent. However, although the B.D.D chawls were developed to accommodate the urban poor, they ended up representing only a colonial vision of what the working class needed and failed to understand measures of traditional Indian living. (Hazareesingh 2000, 815) Furthermore, the newly built chawls were simply too expensive to be housed by the lower-class due to the lack of government subsidies provided. (Rao 2012, 102) The failure of the colonial state in recognizing and accommodating for the urban poor led to the rise of kuccha slums, which began spreading as more and more migrants came to the city for work and the solution to the housing shortage provided by the state was simply unaffordable. Excluded from formal and organized pucca housing, laborers instead constructed their own dwellings near places of work, forming networks of kuccha structures – such as sheds and huts – without any civic amenities. At the end of the 1890s, an estimated number of one million people slept along roads or other public spaces – and since then, the number has only increased. In 2007, an estimated 55% of Bombay’s 12 million inhabitants resided in slums. (Nijman 2008, 76)
The rapid growth in formation and popularity of kuccha slums in India suggest that they must hold some sort of infrastructural quality that is necessary for the people who reside there. Slums are often seen as the definition of urban squalor, yet it makes a good option as people often choose to live there despite all its presumed failings. The main function of the slum is, of course, to provide housing for the working classes in Indian cities – but slums also function to distinguish the social lives of their residents. It is not uncommon, for example, for slums to be highly gated communities, specific to a certain group of people by social markers such as caste, religion, or nationality.Similarly, it is not uncommon for slum neighborhoods to organize into housing co-operatives, or to house high concentrations of commercial activity. Dharavi, “Asia’s biggest slum,” (Nijman 2008, 4) is home to several co-operatives, as well as many artisanal manufacturers, including pottery and leatherworking workshops. Additionally, for those not working in the slum, work for slum dwellers lies within a walking distance, with 66% of men and 90% of women being independent of formal infrastructural resources such as public transportation. (Nijman 2008, 76) Furthermore, considering that slums are highly dense and congested places of living, they often also make up most of the slum dwellers’ social network. (Rao 2013, 771) Without feasible housing options for the urban poor, they have traditionally been forced to slums. Rather than suffering in urban squalor, however, slums have become organized by self-help and strong social ties, forming complex ecological and economical structures despite their informal and illegal qualities. (Nijman 2008, 74-75, 83)
In Indian cities, a variety of factors have prevented the rise of legal housing options for the urban poor. One of these is the Rent Control Act of 1948, which froze rental rates in Mumbai to those of 1940. (Björkman 2014, 54) Whereas the act of rent control was meant to provide low-income housing in periods of high-demand, it restricted the growth rate of rents. This made landlords disincentivized to both undertake repairs and improvements in their properties, as well as to expand their rental housing. Furthermore, in 1973, the rent control act was modified to provide protection to tenants after 12 months of residence, making the rental business even more rigid. As a result, the rent control act ironically enough put an end to legal rental housing in Mumbai. Instead, the slum became the only option for free market rental housing for those unable to afford the much more expensive apartments. (Mukhija 2006, 2167) The rent control act also promoted an intense growth of ownership-based housing as renting was no longer a feasible option, and many communities came together to form co-ops in order to partake in the new ownership market. (Nijman 2008, 83) However, contrary to popular belief, living in the slum is not cheap either. A plot of land to house a tent costs about US$10,000, which is more than double the average Mumbaikar’s annual income. (Mukhija 2006, 2157) With no other affordable options, however, owning a plot of land in a slum is a great alternative as it provides a certain stability of ownership and tenurial status.
Another factor damaging the legal housing market has been the laws regarding land supply and real estate development, such as the policies on floor-area ratios (FAR). In Mumbai, the FAR is kept very low to discourage urbanization and congestion, which has led to inadequate levels of construction. Similarly, the older buildings – exceeding the current FAR – are not being redeveloped as bringing the housing down to the legal limit would mean losing desirable floor space. For slum dwellers, the low FAR incentivizes them to continue residing within the slum in order to stay affordably within the city, close to both social and economic opportunities. (Mukhija 2006, 2162)
In addition to rigid state policies already making it hard for the urban poor to enter into the legal housing market, there has also been several attempts to remove slums. Despite many attempts using different approaches, slums have however proliferated within the city fabric due to their self-organizing qualities and navigation of the spatial politics. While it seems like the state makes little effort to understand the complex politics of a slum, slum dwellers often have some understanding of how to navigate politics by official means. The earliest form of slum removal, starting in colonial day, focused on the clearance of slums by complete eradication. During Indira Gandhi’s rule in 1966-1984, the narrative of slum clearance turned into one of improvement and beautification of the city. The focus during this time was to recognize slums by providing civic amenities – toilets, electricity, water – and to provide a right to stay by bringing regulations. However, during the Emergency in 1975-1977, slum improvement shifted back to clearance, with measures “sought to ‘improve’ the city in a way that would render the poor ‘less visible to the well-to-do.’” (Clibbens 2014, 2) Today, slum removal has taken the shape of redevelopment. Whereas slum clearance and slum ‘improvement’ often paid little regard to the implications of the destruction of entire communities, slum redevelopment often provides replacement housing for those being displaced.(Björkman 2014, 44) What this approach fails to realize, however, is that there are many economic and social consequences that come with being forced to leave one’s home. Even if a new physical structure is provided for slum dwellers who are displaced, slums often make up social networks and provide many resources. These are two of the functions that make slums both functional and livable pieces of infrastructure, but in the case of relocation, none of those are preserved.
In many cases, however, these issues have been resolved by navigating a complex political arithmetic through constant negotiation between occupants and authorities. Since slum dwellers still maintain the political right to vote, many municipal officials actually partake in the role of establishing slums. (Anjaria 2009, 3) It is not uncommon for politicians to invite slums to form in certain areas, using regularization as a pawn to build support. Following this, it is important to realize that because living in a kuccha slum is not cheap, slum dwellers will not settle down on land if they aren’t assured that they can stay. Counterintuitively, all encroachment is by invitation only – but with certain conditions. During times of political pressure from the upper classes, who want slums to be eradicated, the municipal government will clear the slum in order to please them. Covertly, officials also offer a promise to the slum dwellers of their later re-appearance. In this way, politicians can please both the large population of slum dwellers as well as the upper classes who view them with disgust, in order to maximize political support. (Rao 2019) In this way, the growth of slums are not only functional for the survival of the urban poor, but also to the careers of local politicians.
These processes occur not on a basis of shared understanding of legality, but rather as a staged theatrical affair under Partha Chatterjee’s distinction of a political society. (Chatterjee 2004, 179) In this game-like transaction, documents and paper trails are appropriated to be legalities, and the definitions of legality and illegality are constantly being produced and reproduced. An important example of this is the case of water pipe connections in Shivajinagar-Bainganwadi, following the shift in narrative from slum improvement into that of slum rehabilitation. Shivajinagar-Bainganwadi is an interesting case as a connection to municipal water connections was established by local authorities but the neighborhood was later targeted by the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme (SRS) in 1995. The SRS and the liberalization-era policy shifts allowed for redeveloping slum neighborhoods by profiting off their demolition. All slum dwellers that could provide legal documentation of having been on the land prior to January 1, 1995 were eligible for the SRS rehabilitation. In the case of Shivajinagar-Bainganwadi, many residents of the land prior to 1995 did not hold photopasses, “the clearest and most secure form of documentation.” (Björkman 2014, 47) Instead, as the water department engaged in a “ritual cutting” of water pipes following a complaint of the slum, they asked homeowners to assemble documentation of the pipe’s authenticity via water bills and combine them with identity documents of the same name and address in order to claim a legal status. This re-enactment of rights by collecting paper trails of documentation in order to negotiate legal status has thus become another example of the ways in which municipal governments partake in slum formation.
Another example of agent-authority negotiation is street hawking, which also features as one of the most notable examples of how slums support a city’s economic infrastructure. Although most hawkers practice their occupation illegally, they have become essential features of the Indian city as many middle-class neighborhoods rely on their street vending in order to buy cheap groceries and other goods. However, because of their status as slum dwellers – as most hawkers are – they have to constantly deal with an “antihawker civic activism” promoted by a complacent middle class that want to see their disappearance. Yet, despite many attempts to clear the streets of hawkers, they have become so intertwined with the city’s economic infrastructure that their removal also brings complaints from the middle class – such as no longer being able to buy “the best fruit.” (Anjaria 2009, 398) In order to solve this paradox – of hawking being seen as an extension of the encroachment associated with slums, but being an essential feature of the Indian city – a negotiation between agents and authorities is once again undergoing. An example of this is the several meetings held at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) including civic activists, hawker union leaders, and municipal officials. In these meetings, it was revealed that it was not the act of street vending that aggregated the middle-class activists, but rather their illegal status in public spaces and the authorities’ willingness in compromising the law. (Anjaria 2009, 398) The issue that becomes disturbing is thus one of morality rather than practicality – and one highly concerned with urban citizenship and what it should entail. Whereas the middle-class view of a normative civil society excludes hawkers, they have become an integral part in making civil society function, despite making claims to their space outside of it. Following Chatterjee’s claim of negotiations between agents and authorities belonging not within the sphere of civil society, but rather that of political society, urban citizenship becomes an entanglement of conflicts when understanding citizenship in itself. For the civic middle-class activists, abiding the rule of law is the precondition for citizenship, but the state continues to recognize claims of a big illegal population. The moral claims exercised by citizens following political society, constantly perpetuated in daily re-enactments, represents how slum dwellers and their residence and occupancy are tolerated, accommodated, and recognized – but never legalized – by the state. With this conclusion, it becomes clear that the negotiation of urban citizenship has no clear solution, other than revealing that there is really no apparent distinction between the formal and informal nor the legal and illegal.
As the rapid growth of urbanization and globalization continues to undergo, cities become all the more desirable entities as they start to look at each other for inspiration. As Indian cities continue to enter the global economy, the growth of slums will do nothing but continue. In a neoliberal society, people need money to look after themselves, and the city is where money can be found. As slums continue to grow, their proliferation will continue to entail a constant political restructuring and re-enactment of what urban citizenship is and who should have the right of entering the city. In the era of globalization, it is perhaps time to start recognizing both the beneficial infrastructural aspects of the slum, as well as its importance in the social mobility of Indian cities. As we look towards their future, the demand for infrastructural reforms ought to be continued – but this time, they should include the slum. Indian cities need better roads, electricity, air quality, and facilities – but they also need to provide an entry point into the city and the global market – and to this function, slums have historically been the best solution. As India looks into the future, suggestions of social welfare programs ought to be examined and evaluated; but the narrative of the good and useful slum needs to be continued to be kept in consideration.
Anjaria, Jonathan Shapiro. “Guardians of the Bourgeois City: Citizenship, Public Space, and Middle-Class Activism in Mumbai.” City & Community 8, no. 11 (December 2009): 391- 406.
Bhan, Gautam. “Where is Citizenship?: Thoughts from the Basti.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 37, no. 3 (December 2017): 463-469.
Björkman, Lisa. “Becoming a slum in liberalization-era Mumbai.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38, no. 1 (January 2014): 36-59.
Chatterjee, Partha. “Are Indian Cities Becoming Bourgeois At Last?” In Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Clibbens, Patrick. “’The destiny of this city is to be the spiritual workshop of the nation’: clearing cities and making citizens during the Indian Emergency 1975-1977.” Contemporary South Asia 24, no. 1 (January 2014): 1-16.
Hazareesingh, Sandip. “The Colonial City and the Challenge of Modernity: Urban Hegemonies and Civic Contestations in Bombay 1900-1925.” In New Perspectives in South Asian History 18, edited by Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Peter Cain, Mark Harrison, and Michael Worboys, 12-70. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007.
Hazareesingh, Sandip. “The Quest for Urban Citizenship: Civic Rights, Public Opinion, and Colonial Resistance in Early Twentieth-Century Bombay.” Modern Asian Studies 34, no. 4 (October 2000): 797-829.
Mukhija, Vinit. “Property readjustment and a tenants’ cooperative in Mumbai: some lessons and questions.” Environment and Planning A 38, no. 11 (Fall 2006): 2157-2171.
Nijman, Jan. “Against the Odds: Slum Rehabilitation in Neoliberal Mumbai.” Cities 25, no. 2 (April 2008): 73-85.
Rao, Nikhil. House but No Garden: Apartment Living in Bombay’s Suburbs, 1898-1964. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Rao, Nikhil. “HIST 276: The City in Modern South Asia.” Class lecture. Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, April 25, 2019.
Rao, Nikhil. “HIST 276: The City in Modern South Asia.” Class lecture. Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, April 29, 2019.
Rao, Ursula. “Tolerated Encroachment: Resettlement Policies and Negotiation of the Licit/Illicit Divide in an Indian Metropolis.” Cultural Anthropology 28, no. 4 (October 2013): 760-779.
United Nations. “68% of the world population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, say UN.” Last modified May 16, 2018. Accessed May 14, 2019. https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html.
In South Asia, per contra, rapid urbanization has not generated these utopian longings of well-functioning infrastructure. Rather, these have failed in the context of the urban poor and the rise of the slum. Defined by the United Nations as “informal settlements,” slums form where formal infrastructure fails; (Bhan 2017, 464) and engrained in their definition is that they “lack one or more of […] access to clean water, access to improved sanitation, sufficient living area that is not overcrowded, durable housing, and secure tenure.” (UN Habitat 2006) Contradictory then, the condition for slum classification is lacking many of the resources a city ought to provide – yet slums are an urban phenomenon that exist only within a city’s limits. A closer look at the nature of slums provides a partial answer to this by revealing a limited access of citizenship to slum dwellers; if these are not considered part of the city, it makes sense that they would not maintain the right to access resources. Investigating the proliferation of slums, however, reveals that slums have formed networks of infrastructure by measures of “self-help,” or taking matters into their own hands. (Nijman 2008, 73) In the absence of good infrastructure, slum dwellers have found ways to take on the role of public resourcing themselves. The slum is thus a highly organized structure that, despite popular opinion, has become a popular option for rural villagers in order to partake in a city’s economic growth and commercial success. In this way, slums are important because they are entry points for the poor into havens of opportunity.
Contrasting each other, however, the vision of the commercially successful city makes slums a viscerally despicable concept. Often regarded as intruders of the city, slum dwellers are seen as parasites dirtying a city’s reputation while exploiting its resources. (Anjaria 2009, 394) This traditional way of viewing slums has led to countless attempts to remove them, moving through approaches of clearance, improvement, and re-development, and has made the quest for urban citizenship ever the more challenging as slum dwellers face the constant fear of being disposed of. Found in a dialectic between politics and collective engagement, slum dwellers are often excluded from urban citizenship and generally reside without civic amenities due to their illegal status. Instead, slum dwellers stake their claim by collecting paper trails and by navigating the complex arithmetic of spatial politics within the city. (Rao 2013, 770) However, the attempts of removal have rarely been successful due to the ever-changing spatial politics surrounding Indian cities and the failure of viewing and understanding the slum as a viable and defining piece of South Asian city infrastructure. Despite the informal qualities of the slum, slum dwellings have become so intertwined with the formal aspects of the organized city that they have become hard to get by without. Slum removal thus ought to be seen as potentially damaging to the city in its reach for both economic growth and commercial success, as well as for the quest of democracy in the light of the civil, civic, and political society that ought to exist in the global modern city today.
The rise of the slum has followed as a consequence of the lack of housing options for the urban poor. Examining housing options in Indian cities from colonial times into present day reveals huge changes in the formal qualities of the built environment that the urban poor has been presented. Most notably, housing options for the urban poor have moved from pucca structures to those with kuccha characteristics – or, for example, from chawls to slums. (Bhan 2017, 463) The building of chawls peaked in Bombay in the city’s industrializing days during the cotton boom in the late 1800s. (Hazareesingh 2007, 20) Built by the Bombay Development Department (B.D.D), chawls were designed to be pucca housing, built in reinforced concrete to be solid and permanent. However, although the B.D.D chawls were developed to accommodate the urban poor, they ended up representing only a colonial vision of what the working class needed and failed to understand measures of traditional Indian living. (Hazareesingh 2000, 815) Furthermore, the newly built chawls were simply too expensive to be housed by the lower-class due to the lack of government subsidies provided. (Rao 2012, 102) The failure of the colonial state in recognizing and accommodating for the urban poor led to the rise of kuccha slums, which began spreading as more and more migrants came to the city for work and the solution to the housing shortage provided by the state was simply unaffordable. Excluded from formal and organized pucca housing, laborers instead constructed their own dwellings near places of work, forming networks of kuccha structures – such as sheds and huts – without any civic amenities. At the end of the 1890s, an estimated number of one million people slept along roads or other public spaces – and since then, the number has only increased. In 2007, an estimated 55% of Bombay’s 12 million inhabitants resided in slums. (Nijman 2008, 76)
The rapid growth in formation and popularity of kuccha slums in India suggest that they must hold some sort of infrastructural quality that is necessary for the people who reside there. Slums are often seen as the definition of urban squalor, yet it makes a good option as people often choose to live there despite all its presumed failings. The main function of the slum is, of course, to provide housing for the working classes in Indian cities – but slums also function to distinguish the social lives of their residents. It is not uncommon, for example, for slums to be highly gated communities, specific to a certain group of people by social markers such as caste, religion, or nationality.Similarly, it is not uncommon for slum neighborhoods to organize into housing co-operatives, or to house high concentrations of commercial activity. Dharavi, “Asia’s biggest slum,” (Nijman 2008, 4) is home to several co-operatives, as well as many artisanal manufacturers, including pottery and leatherworking workshops. Additionally, for those not working in the slum, work for slum dwellers lies within a walking distance, with 66% of men and 90% of women being independent of formal infrastructural resources such as public transportation. (Nijman 2008, 76) Furthermore, considering that slums are highly dense and congested places of living, they often also make up most of the slum dwellers’ social network. (Rao 2013, 771) Without feasible housing options for the urban poor, they have traditionally been forced to slums. Rather than suffering in urban squalor, however, slums have become organized by self-help and strong social ties, forming complex ecological and economical structures despite their informal and illegal qualities. (Nijman 2008, 74-75, 83)
In Indian cities, a variety of factors have prevented the rise of legal housing options for the urban poor. One of these is the Rent Control Act of 1948, which froze rental rates in Mumbai to those of 1940. (Björkman 2014, 54) Whereas the act of rent control was meant to provide low-income housing in periods of high-demand, it restricted the growth rate of rents. This made landlords disincentivized to both undertake repairs and improvements in their properties, as well as to expand their rental housing. Furthermore, in 1973, the rent control act was modified to provide protection to tenants after 12 months of residence, making the rental business even more rigid. As a result, the rent control act ironically enough put an end to legal rental housing in Mumbai. Instead, the slum became the only option for free market rental housing for those unable to afford the much more expensive apartments. (Mukhija 2006, 2167) The rent control act also promoted an intense growth of ownership-based housing as renting was no longer a feasible option, and many communities came together to form co-ops in order to partake in the new ownership market. (Nijman 2008, 83) However, contrary to popular belief, living in the slum is not cheap either. A plot of land to house a tent costs about US$10,000, which is more than double the average Mumbaikar’s annual income. (Mukhija 2006, 2157) With no other affordable options, however, owning a plot of land in a slum is a great alternative as it provides a certain stability of ownership and tenurial status.
Another factor damaging the legal housing market has been the laws regarding land supply and real estate development, such as the policies on floor-area ratios (FAR). In Mumbai, the FAR is kept very low to discourage urbanization and congestion, which has led to inadequate levels of construction. Similarly, the older buildings – exceeding the current FAR – are not being redeveloped as bringing the housing down to the legal limit would mean losing desirable floor space. For slum dwellers, the low FAR incentivizes them to continue residing within the slum in order to stay affordably within the city, close to both social and economic opportunities. (Mukhija 2006, 2162)
In addition to rigid state policies already making it hard for the urban poor to enter into the legal housing market, there has also been several attempts to remove slums. Despite many attempts using different approaches, slums have however proliferated within the city fabric due to their self-organizing qualities and navigation of the spatial politics. While it seems like the state makes little effort to understand the complex politics of a slum, slum dwellers often have some understanding of how to navigate politics by official means. The earliest form of slum removal, starting in colonial day, focused on the clearance of slums by complete eradication. During Indira Gandhi’s rule in 1966-1984, the narrative of slum clearance turned into one of improvement and beautification of the city. The focus during this time was to recognize slums by providing civic amenities – toilets, electricity, water – and to provide a right to stay by bringing regulations. However, during the Emergency in 1975-1977, slum improvement shifted back to clearance, with measures “sought to ‘improve’ the city in a way that would render the poor ‘less visible to the well-to-do.’” (Clibbens 2014, 2) Today, slum removal has taken the shape of redevelopment. Whereas slum clearance and slum ‘improvement’ often paid little regard to the implications of the destruction of entire communities, slum redevelopment often provides replacement housing for those being displaced.(Björkman 2014, 44) What this approach fails to realize, however, is that there are many economic and social consequences that come with being forced to leave one’s home. Even if a new physical structure is provided for slum dwellers who are displaced, slums often make up social networks and provide many resources. These are two of the functions that make slums both functional and livable pieces of infrastructure, but in the case of relocation, none of those are preserved.
In many cases, however, these issues have been resolved by navigating a complex political arithmetic through constant negotiation between occupants and authorities. Since slum dwellers still maintain the political right to vote, many municipal officials actually partake in the role of establishing slums. (Anjaria 2009, 3) It is not uncommon for politicians to invite slums to form in certain areas, using regularization as a pawn to build support. Following this, it is important to realize that because living in a kuccha slum is not cheap, slum dwellers will not settle down on land if they aren’t assured that they can stay. Counterintuitively, all encroachment is by invitation only – but with certain conditions. During times of political pressure from the upper classes, who want slums to be eradicated, the municipal government will clear the slum in order to please them. Covertly, officials also offer a promise to the slum dwellers of their later re-appearance. In this way, politicians can please both the large population of slum dwellers as well as the upper classes who view them with disgust, in order to maximize political support. (Rao 2019) In this way, the growth of slums are not only functional for the survival of the urban poor, but also to the careers of local politicians.
These processes occur not on a basis of shared understanding of legality, but rather as a staged theatrical affair under Partha Chatterjee’s distinction of a political society. (Chatterjee 2004, 179) In this game-like transaction, documents and paper trails are appropriated to be legalities, and the definitions of legality and illegality are constantly being produced and reproduced. An important example of this is the case of water pipe connections in Shivajinagar-Bainganwadi, following the shift in narrative from slum improvement into that of slum rehabilitation. Shivajinagar-Bainganwadi is an interesting case as a connection to municipal water connections was established by local authorities but the neighborhood was later targeted by the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme (SRS) in 1995. The SRS and the liberalization-era policy shifts allowed for redeveloping slum neighborhoods by profiting off their demolition. All slum dwellers that could provide legal documentation of having been on the land prior to January 1, 1995 were eligible for the SRS rehabilitation. In the case of Shivajinagar-Bainganwadi, many residents of the land prior to 1995 did not hold photopasses, “the clearest and most secure form of documentation.” (Björkman 2014, 47) Instead, as the water department engaged in a “ritual cutting” of water pipes following a complaint of the slum, they asked homeowners to assemble documentation of the pipe’s authenticity via water bills and combine them with identity documents of the same name and address in order to claim a legal status. This re-enactment of rights by collecting paper trails of documentation in order to negotiate legal status has thus become another example of the ways in which municipal governments partake in slum formation.
Another example of agent-authority negotiation is street hawking, which also features as one of the most notable examples of how slums support a city’s economic infrastructure. Although most hawkers practice their occupation illegally, they have become essential features of the Indian city as many middle-class neighborhoods rely on their street vending in order to buy cheap groceries and other goods. However, because of their status as slum dwellers – as most hawkers are – they have to constantly deal with an “antihawker civic activism” promoted by a complacent middle class that want to see their disappearance. Yet, despite many attempts to clear the streets of hawkers, they have become so intertwined with the city’s economic infrastructure that their removal also brings complaints from the middle class – such as no longer being able to buy “the best fruit.” (Anjaria 2009, 398) In order to solve this paradox – of hawking being seen as an extension of the encroachment associated with slums, but being an essential feature of the Indian city – a negotiation between agents and authorities is once again undergoing. An example of this is the several meetings held at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) including civic activists, hawker union leaders, and municipal officials. In these meetings, it was revealed that it was not the act of street vending that aggregated the middle-class activists, but rather their illegal status in public spaces and the authorities’ willingness in compromising the law. (Anjaria 2009, 398) The issue that becomes disturbing is thus one of morality rather than practicality – and one highly concerned with urban citizenship and what it should entail. Whereas the middle-class view of a normative civil society excludes hawkers, they have become an integral part in making civil society function, despite making claims to their space outside of it. Following Chatterjee’s claim of negotiations between agents and authorities belonging not within the sphere of civil society, but rather that of political society, urban citizenship becomes an entanglement of conflicts when understanding citizenship in itself. For the civic middle-class activists, abiding the rule of law is the precondition for citizenship, but the state continues to recognize claims of a big illegal population. The moral claims exercised by citizens following political society, constantly perpetuated in daily re-enactments, represents how slum dwellers and their residence and occupancy are tolerated, accommodated, and recognized – but never legalized – by the state. With this conclusion, it becomes clear that the negotiation of urban citizenship has no clear solution, other than revealing that there is really no apparent distinction between the formal and informal nor the legal and illegal.
As the rapid growth of urbanization and globalization continues to undergo, cities become all the more desirable entities as they start to look at each other for inspiration. As Indian cities continue to enter the global economy, the growth of slums will do nothing but continue. In a neoliberal society, people need money to look after themselves, and the city is where money can be found. As slums continue to grow, their proliferation will continue to entail a constant political restructuring and re-enactment of what urban citizenship is and who should have the right of entering the city. In the era of globalization, it is perhaps time to start recognizing both the beneficial infrastructural aspects of the slum, as well as its importance in the social mobility of Indian cities. As we look towards their future, the demand for infrastructural reforms ought to be continued – but this time, they should include the slum. Indian cities need better roads, electricity, air quality, and facilities – but they also need to provide an entry point into the city and the global market – and to this function, slums have historically been the best solution. As India looks into the future, suggestions of social welfare programs ought to be examined and evaluated; but the narrative of the good and useful slum needs to be continued to be kept in consideration.
References
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