Housing and Politics in Urban India
Opportunities and Contention

A study that maps India's political opportunities and closures for claim making in general and housing grievances in particular.

Swetha Rao Dhananka (Author)

9781108484268, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 December 2020

248 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.46 kg

Providing adequate housing in an increasingly urbanised world is a major challenge of current times. This book puts together a compelling story based on fine-grained analysis of housing processes, as lived by slum-dwellers and their voice-bearers. It situates the lived experience of claiming adequate housing within informal transactions and negotiations of patronage networks vis-à-vis the formal institutional opportunities and closures of Indian democracy. In doing so, this research extends an innovative array of conceptual and methodological tools to grasp the context in which housing claims succeed and fail. This book contributes by responding to critical areas of social movement scholarship and by displaying community engagements and tactical strategies to bring about transformative change to claim adequate housing and resist co-opting forces for socially sustainable housing futures.

Acknowledgements
List of figures
List of tables and box
List of abbreviations
1. Claiming adequate housing in urban India: an introduction
2. Indian democracy: normative prescriptions and everyday practices
3. Governmentality of housing and the politics of access
4. Mobilization on behalf of the urban poor
5. Mobilizations by the urban poor
6. Claiming housing despite Indian politics and governance
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Urban & municipal planning [RPC], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Sociology [JHB], Urban communities [JFSG]