This is the report of a research study conducted in Ahmedabad to study the provision of housing and other facilities for the workers who live “on-site”; explore the regulatory framework for this provisioning; try to develop an understanding on how developers and contractors view their workers’ housing question and how it can be improved; and for this purpose, also review interventions for migrant workers’ housing in other countries and other Indian states that could inform these ideas.

This paper examines how existing processes linked to the political economy of land and housing development shape or, in other words, are determinants of rental housing for the urban poor in the city of Guwahati in Assam.