slum


How to challenge eviction orders from the highest court?

By on December 7th 2020

This post features highlights from a conversation between Gautam Bhan and Arkaja Singh at the 128th CPR-CSH monthly talk series, on September 29th, 2020. The discussion was held in the backdrop of a Supreme Court order directing the eviction of bastis adjoining railway tracks in Delhi. The discussion centred around how government policy around ‘slums,’ both at central and Delhi state level was changed, and how these changes came about, considering local and national, bureaucratic and political dimensions of these changes.

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Saving Bastis

By and on November 3rd 2020

Why the Delhi government must not squander the chance to overturn an anti-poor housing policy

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Home ‘ownership’ is not enough: Documenting spatial variations in how slum households in India access basic amenities

By and on October 8th 2020

By examining access to a bundle of basic amenities – electricity, piped water and in-house latrines – by homeowners in slum (and non-slum) households and documenting how this varies across states and cities in India, the authors of this data-centric piece offer insights into how the quality of housing structures need to urgently be seen alongside access and quality of basic amenities to ensure improved quality of life in Indian cities. In a post-CoVID moment, these data points urge us to reflect on how inflexible land regulations and services delivery mechanisms have historically disadvantaged slum households in terms of public provision of, as well as private investment in, basic amenities.

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Standard Operating Procedure for Slum Upgradation and Delisting in Odisha

By on September 28th 2020

In continuation to the Government of Odisha’s landmark initiative of the Odisha Liveable Habitat Mission, also known as the JAGA Mission, launched in 2018, and the successful implementation of the Odisha Land Rights to Slum Dwellers Act 2017, basic infrastructure upgradation and delisting of slums emerge as the next critical steps. Towards this end the Scaling City Institutions for India (SCI-FI) initiative at the Centre for Policy Research as knowledge partner supported Housing and Urban Development Department, Government of Odisha, to prepare a ‘Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for Participatory Slum Upgradation and Delisting’. The SOP intends to benefit the key stakeholders by laying down the procedure and benchmarks for undertaking participatory integrated slum level infrastructure upgradation and establishing procedure and documentation for delisting of the slum, to integrate it to the rest of the urban area.

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The unfairness of the Supreme Court order on slum evictions along railway tracks in Delhi: an explainer

By on September 9th 2020

The Supreme Court of India on 31.08.2020 passed an order, in a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) relating to pollution and waste management in Delhi, directing the eviction of “encroachments” – primarily jhuggi-jhopri (JJ) bastis, or slums – on Railway land in the capital. Coming in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the order has been subject to legal criticism and has received wide coverage in the media. In this series of Q&A, we deconstruct what exactly the order says, the extent of the displacement it is likely to cause, the legally prescribed procedure for eviction and relocation, and what would be a fair approach going forward.

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Hand washing to stop coronavirus — 78% of toilets in Mumbai slums lack reliable water supply

By , and on April 16th 2020

Water and sanitation concerns of Indian slums need to be addressed in the fight against coronavirus, otherwise it can have a nationwide impact.

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Slipping Through the Cracks: The Demolition of a Government Homeless Shelter in an Informal Settlement

By , and on December 12th 2019

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.

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Slum-free city planning versus durable slums: Insights from Delhi

By and on September 26th 2019

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.

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Placing The Poor In The Flood Path

By on January 1st 2016

The creation of mass ghettos of urban poverty in the middle of ecologically fragile lands exposes the fraudulence of both the environmental and the socio-legal rationale of resettlement in Chennai.

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Rental Housing in Informal Settlements – A Case-Study of Rajkot

By and on September 28th 2011

Studies across the world have shown the presence of rental housing in almost all informal and slum settlements. This research is an attempt to understand rental housing within the informal housing and discerning its characteristics in comparison to the informal sector owner-occupied housing in the city of Rajkot in Gujarat.

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