Papers

Land and property have been governed by the Indian state in rather conflicting ways in the past. While the first amendments to the Indian Constitution were purported to enable the State to redistribute land more equitably, this was followed by a land acquisition that displaced Adivasis, Dalits and other vulnerable groups for developmental projects. This paper by the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) examines these two sets of evidence available in the vast literature on property rights, acquisition and urban planning, to decrypt the stance of the Indian State vis-a-vis land and property within its territory.

This working paper published by the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) examines the legal issues that may arise in implementing the Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas (SVAMITVA), a Central Government scheme, and the social consequences this would likely have on the ground.

Literature examining Indian housing policy broadly focuses on the shifting role of the state from a
provider of housing to a facilitator of housing markets. Using frame analysis method, this article explores the underlying policy frames responsible for this shift and the factors influencing the homeownership bias in Indian housing policy.

Drawing on a mixed-method comparative study of experiences of families moving to five peripheral settlements in Ahmedabad, Chennai and Johannesburg, the paper indicates two linked challenges to the social and economic mobility of the peripheralised urban poor: first, their immediate and individual ability to be mobile within the city and second, the longer-term social mobility of their households.

The paper uses a boundaries lens to investigate the role of finance and networks of credit in autoconstruction, with a focus on the work of market actors in navigating market–citizen and market–state boundaries, foregrounded against the relatively well-studied politics of state–citizen relations, in Delhi’s unathorised colonies

A significant proportion of the working poor in Asian cities live in slums as renters. An estimated 60–90 per cent of low-income rentals in Asia are in the informal sector; 25 per cent of India’s housing stock comprises informal rentals. Yet informal rentals remain an understudied area.

This paper analyses the weight of overlapping burdens of precarity on the urban poor through the story of the demolition of an informal settlement and homeless shelter in Delhi.

In this paper, the authors bring a challenging perspective to slum studies in Delhi, India, by contrasting
the attempts at ‘slum-free city planning’ (referring to housing programmes for the urban poor) with the ‘durability’ of certain slum settlements. They examine national and local factors that temper the impact of macro-forces of neoliberalism and globalisation on slum clearance in Delhi, including institutional fragmentation, political networks, and social mobilisation. Based on two settlements selected by the Delhi Development Authority to implement its strategy of slum redevelopment under public-private partnership, we show how space-specific configurations and the interplay of actors may contribute instead to the entrenchment of slums. At the settlement level however, ‘durable’ does not mean permanent. Yet, at the city level, slum rehabilitation in partnership with private developers presents serious limits, questioning the emphasis put on this strategy to provide sustainable housing for the urban poor.

This paper is a response to and a commentary on Vanessa Watson’s paper on “African urban fantasies” in this issue of the Journal, which analyzes new urban master plans developed by international architectural firms and property development companies for many cities in sub-Saharan Africa. Taking Watson’s argument as an opportunity to think about current urban fantasies in Indian cities, this response offers three reflections.

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.