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© e Author(s) 2017
G. Erdi, Y. Şentürk (eds.), Identity, Justice and Resistance in the Neoliberal City,
DOI10.1057/978-1-137-58632-2_3
3
Coping withtheThreat ofEvictions:
Commercialisation ofSlum
Development andLocal Power
Play inAhmedabad, India
YutakaSato
Introduction
Since the 2000s, metropolitan cities in India have witnessed massive evic-
tions of slums as part of the local state’s eort to capitalise the urban
space. Ahmedabad, the sixth largest city of India with a population of
5,570,585 as of 2011, which this chapter focuses on, is a case in point.
Whereas the city’s economy achieved a growth rate of 10.7% during the
years 2005/2006–2008/2009 (GOI 2012, A12), some 1,888,300 peo-
ple, comprising 33.8% of the city’s population, live in slums (Annez etal.
2012, 14).1 e persistent poverty in the midst of Ahmedabad’s impressive
Y. Sato (*)
Department of Comparative Study of Cultures, Tsuru University,
Tsuru, Yamanashi, Japan
e eldwork on which this chapter is based was made possible due to the support of the Japan
Society for the Promotion of Science under its Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (Type B,
FY2010–2012, ref. 22730386). I am also grateful to Mr Mihir R.Bhatt at the Foundation for
Public Interest (FPI) as well as Professor Darshini Mahadevia and Ms Tejal Patel at the Centre for
Urban Equity, CEPT University, for their support in organising my eldwork during 2003–2005
and 2010–2012, respectively.
38
economic growth has attracted criticism from both activists and academ-
ics. ey have documented the socio-economic marginalisation of slum
dwellers (Mahadevia 2010, 2011), their spatial exclusion and deprivation
as a result of evictions (Mathur 2012), and the political infrastructure
that fuels Ahmedabad’s neoliberal drive in urban planning (Desai 2012,
2014; Spodek 2011).
eir comprehensive documentation of slum dwellers’ exclusion has,
however, paid little attention to their resilience amidst adversity (Srivastava
2014; Weinstein 2014). To ll this lacuna, this chapter focuses on the
strategies that those who are facing threats of eviction adopted to mini-
mise their potential loss of livelihood. eir action tends to be sporadic
and does not evoke collective consciousness that underlines slum dwellers’
demand for more just urban space (ibid., 15). e slum dwellers’ action
survival strategies include some ‘illegal’ practices such as reporting fake
gures on the number of households to the local government for greater
compensation when their slum is likely to be relocated. eir practice has
resonance with what Indian political theorist Partha Chatterjee (2004)
terms ‘political society’ where, in the context of slums and/or squatter
settlements, poor people seek to have their voices heard. It is a ‘site of
negotiation and contestation opened up by the activities of governmental
agencies aimed at population groups’ (ibid., 74). Too often, the urban
poor depend on the altruism of the state that protects vested interests,
while simultaneously they are subject to predatory practices of the state
such as the eviction of slums. For Chatterjee, ‘civil society’ is not always
accessible for the urban poor because it is a ‘closed association of modern
elite groups, sequestered from the wider popular life of communities,
walled up within enclaves of civic freedom and rational law’ (ibid., 4).
In democracies like India, urban slums are often considered as vote
banks for political parties (de Wit and Berner 2009). Grassroots NGOs
have made some impressive achievements in the domain of poverty
alleviation but their action tends to be conned to the legal means of
action and organisational management (Desai 2008). Moreover, they are
unable to tap into resources that may involve networking with petty
bureaucrats and maas who can directly give material benet to the urban
poor (Appadurai 2001). Unlike the heyday of import-substitute industri-
alisation when nationalised companies bestowed the working class with
Y. Sato
39
welfare, unionisation of the poor has increasingly become dicult. is
is particularly the case in Ahmedabad and Mumbai where the closure of
textile mills, which had led their growth, resulted in the sacking of work-
ers and the deterioration of their housing in the 1980s–1990s (Breman
2004). It is against this background that political society in Ahmedabad
has become an important site of marginalising the poor; whilst govern-
ment agencies evict them on grounds of their ‘illegality’, political parties
and leaders competitively mobilise them through provision of welfare.
e kind of political society that Chatterjee observed in Calcutta
(Kolkata) ruled by the Communist Party of India is signicantly eroded
in the wake of the middle-class’s inuence over politics. e rise of what
Indian sociologist Amita Baviskar (2003, 90) calls ‘bourgeois2 environ-
mentalism’ is one such example. It pursues the creation of an ordered
space that is beautiful and gracious, which fulls the middle-class desire
for a privileged lifestyle, where nature is controlled and made available for
recreation. is is the background of today’s slum evictions in urban
India. Our Inclusive Ahmedabad (2010), a coalition of citizens’ initiatives
formed in 2009, maintains that eviction drives began in 2002in the city.
is is the period marked by the initiation of various infrastructural
development schemes, which include road-widening, the construction of
Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) corridors and implementation of the
Sabarmati Riverfront Development (SRFD) Project and the Kankaria
Lakefront Development Project. As a result, over 28,000 houses were
evicted or relocated from their original settlements by December 2009
(Mathur 2012, 65). Moreover, the rule over Ahmedabad by a Hindu-
nationalist party has reduced the space for NGOs to claim the right to
housing for poor people, comprised mostly Muslims and lower- and out-
caste Hindus, through negotiation or direct confrontation with the
government.
ese trends raise several questions: in a situation where NGOs have
become ineective, can the urban poor organise themselves in defence of
their residential rights and livelihoods in a series of evictions engineered
by the growing coalition of the local government and the private sector?
Who in those settlements takes the lead to organise their neighbours? Are
they genuinely interested in defending the rights and livelihoods of the
entire slum, or are they self-motivated to benet from such events by
3 Coping withtheThreat ofEvictions: Commercialisation...
40
exerting their authority in the slum? If so, how are they connected with
established, powerful people and/or organisations such as political
parties?
In order to examine these questions, this chapter rst traces the process
in which the slum policies in Ahmedabad shifted from in-situ upgrading
through public-civic partnerships to middle-class favoured urban rejuve-
nation. Second, it closely looks at the history of community organising
and the role that NGOs played in the local government’s slum renovation
project. ird, it portrays both the poverty and social fragmentation of
the research areas. Fourth, it examines the agency of some slum dwellers
in maximising their benet out of the possible compensation after reloca-
tion. Last, it explores the process by which an opposition party created its
support base whereas the nancial assistance of NGOs fell short of the
expectation from the residents, who were victims of the communal riots
that broke out in the city in 2002.
The Research Areas intheContext
ofNeoliberal Exclusion
e river Sabarmati, which runs through the heart of Ahmedabad, divides
the west and east of the city. e western part is an upper- and middle-
class dominated suburb while the eastern part is an industrial zone where
textile mills, many of which have closed down, are located. is spatial
segregation is an expression of the class divide of Ahmedabad. e urban
decay has driven the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) to
implement infrastructural schemes. e rst is the Slum Networking
Project (SNP), which was implemented from 1996 to 2009 with the aim
of improving the living environment of slums in partnership with NGOs
and community-based organisations (CBOs). e second is a set of urban
rejuvenation projects. ey have aected the research areas in the follow-
ing manners.
is research was carried out in two SNP-implemented slums of
Ahmedabad, that is, Colony A and Colony B, where the ongoing urban
rejuvenation resulted in a collective fear among the residents of an
eviction of their houses. Before examining how the perceived threat of
Y. Sato
41
evictions drove the residents to defend their housing rights, it is necessary
to give an overview of those slums in terms of their social composition
and their history of slum development. Colony A had 12 buildings—all
were grocery stores and warehouses—evicted by the construction of a
yover in 2008. is erstwhile industrial zone in the eastern part of
Ahmedabad now enjoys improved access to a widened, renovated cross-
road and a BRTS station. Colony B, because of its location along the
river Sabarmati, was considered as an additional site for the SRFD.Most
of the other slums had been demolished by the time of this eldwork,
causing the residents to suer the loss of their livelihood (Mathur 2012;
Our Inclusive Ahmedabad 2010), before they were provided with a
dwelling unit at a rehabilitation site on the outskirts of the city.
What characterises the research areas is the heterogeneous social com-
position of the residents in terms of sub-caste, regional origin and lan-
guage (Table3.1). is has encouraged political patronage to prevail in
these areas. In terms of community development, Colony A has enjoyed
no external intervention, whereas Colony B has received support from
the Nationalist Congress Party as well as the Gujarat Mahila Housing
Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) Trust and the SEWA Bank,
both of which are sister organisations of the SEWA.
With regard to migration and labour, Colony A has attracted migrants
from various states in India who are engaged in miscellaneous informal
businesses serving both textile and non-textile factories. Some male resi-
dents in Colony A migrated mainly from the northern Indian state Uttar
Pradesh, leaving their families in their villages. Colony B is inhabited by
some 200 Muslim households and some 20 Hindu households. It has
residents from various caste3 and regional backgrounds. Casual work in
construction sites and street vending are their major occupations.
Almost half of the respondents are illiterate. e majority are ration
card holders, although acquisition of a card is quite often contingent
upon their connection with middlemen and local gangs.
As shown in Table3.1, this study conducted household surveys, along
with focus groups and individual interviews. e research process itself
reveals the micro-politics in these slums that Ahmedabad’s eviction drives
have rendered.4 For example, the research randomly sampled the respon-
dents for the 2003 survey, whereas it relied on purposive sampling for the
3 Coping withtheThreat ofEvictions: Commercialisation...
42
2012 survey. e latter was chosen owing to the non-existence of any
reliable data on the number of households, which was enumerated for
these slums to participate in the SNP.e reason behind this is slum
dwellers’ self-defence from potential evictions. Some residents in both
areas reported an inaccurate and highly inated number of their colony’s
population to the local government so as to maximise the amount of
Table 3.1 Profiles of studied areas and survey respondents
Colony A (n=51) Colony B (n=38)
Total no. of
households
277 (officially registered
figure)
110 (approx.)
No. of
respondents
51 women 38 women
Castes * SC: 56.1 (23), ST: 19.5 (8),
OBC: 9.8 (4), Forward
castes: 14.6 (6)
SC: 33.3 (5), ST: 20.0 (3),
OBC: 46.7 (7)
Regional origins Gujarat (50.0%),
Maharashtra (19.2%),
North Indian states
(26.9%), South Indian
states (3.8%)
Gujarat (64.1%), North
Indian states (18.0%),
Maharashtra (7.7%),
South Indian states (10.3%)
Generations of
domicile in
Ahmedabad
First (51.0%), Second
(25.5%), Third (23.5%)
First (71.8%), Second
(20.5%), Third (7.7%)
Illiterate
respondents
53.8% 48.7%
Status of ration
card
BPL (7.8%), APL (68.6%),
No (23.5%)
BPL (5.3%), APL (81.6%),
No (13.2%)
Year of
upgradation
under SNP
2000 1997
No. of CBO
members
6 (M)/1 (F) 2 (M)/9 (F)
Formal
organisations
None MHT, SEWA Bank,
Nationalist Congress Party
Women’s savings
group
1 endogenous (closed) 1 established by MHT
Note: Scheduled castes (SCs), scheduled tribes (STs) and other backward classes
(OBCs) are constitutional terms for those entitled to positive discrimination
Abbreviations: APL Above the poverty line (for provision of a ration card), BPL
Below the poverty line, CBO, community-based organisation, MHT Gujarat
Mahila Housing SEWA Trust, SEWA Self-Employed Women’s Association, SNP
Slum Networking Project (of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation)
Y. Sato
43
compensation that they might possibly secure from them. is form of
resistance indicates their agency, even if it is unevenly distributed among
the residents, as will be analysed in subsequent sections.
The Changing Slum Policies inAhmedabad
Slum Renovation TowardsGrowth: Antecedents
oftheSNP
e SNP was launched by the AMC in August 1996. Funded by the
World Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the
Housing and Urban Development Corporation of the central govern-
ment, and private companies, it provided facilities to each slum, notably
paved lanes, water supply and underground sewerage to individual house-
holds, streetlights, trees for landscaping and communal and individual
latrines. It also emphasised people’s participation and the role of NGOs;
hence it had some elements of poverty alleviation (Mahadevia 2010).
However, its rationale is not necessarily ‘pro-poor’ but rather reects
utilitarian ideas of economic growth. Moreover, the SNP was a response
to the plague that broke out in Surat in 1994, the second largest city of
Gujarat. e lthy slum environment and lack of solid waste manage-
ment were the principal causes of the plague outbreak. e plague ulti-
mately reached Ahmedabad which is located about 220kilometres north
of Surat. It forced the central and state governments to give priority to
slum improvement.
e slums continue to be a serious threat to the health and sanitation of the
city besides the people living in the slums face serious health problems
besides human degradation. e environment in and around the slums is
far from satisfactory and needs urgent attention. (AMC, n.d.)
It was not only the AMC that promulgated the need for urban sanita-
tion. Middle-class citizens were very aware of the threat. e former
Commissioner of the AMC, Keshav Varma, noted that ‘[w]hen plague
broke out in the city, the people were so angry that it was impossible for
3 Coping withtheThreat ofEvictions: Commercialisation...
44
the Chief Minister to even enter the city without being threatened’
(Hamid and Martin 1999, 9; Shah 1997, 239).
Varma, later the Manager of the Urban Development Sector Unit, East
Asia and Pacic Region at the World Bank, was appointed to the AMC
in 1994. He introduced the SNP in the belief that cities are the engine of
growth, for which good governance in urban management must be
ensured and was concerned that Ahmedabad had ‘almost lost the race’
with the economic liberalisation of India (Hamid and Martin 1999,
8–9). In particular, the slums were considered as a barrier to attracting
both foreign and domestic capital. Varma oversaw a one-billion-rupee
bond issued in 1997 to help raise the necessary nancial investment for
slum improvement, attempting to transform the AMC into a solvent
corporation with surplus funds (Spodek 2011, 240).
In this vein, the AMC and its industrial partners considered the SNP
to have the potential to promote economic development at the city level.
On the other hand, NGOs advocated the establishment of collective ini-
tiatives of the people towards improved access to public services. It was
Himansh H.Parikh, a structural engineer, who developed the concept of
‘slum networking’ in order to achieve these twin aims. He had previously
designed similar projects in other cities in India. Parikh’s approach was
based on the belief that ‘slums are not the causes of urban degradation
but the consequences of distorted development’. He rejected the popular
notion that simply providing better quality housing to the inhabitants
could eliminate slums. Instead, he sought to integrate the slums into the
urban infrastructure of the city (Tripathi and Jumani 2001, 1). e SNP
thus applied a ‘networking strategy’ that would establish close links with
public agencies, involve slums by forming CBOs, and create medical,
educational and recreational facilities (Tripathi 1998, 22).
Roles ofNGOs andCBOs
By 2009, around 60 slums have been renovated, beneting about 130,000
households under the SNP (Mahadevia etal. 2014, 25). For the SNP to be
implemented, each slum must meet the following requirements. First, every
household must show its willingness to make a nancial contribution,
Y. Sato
45
which amounts to Rs 2,1005 out of every Rs 10,000 spent per household.
Second, the socio-economic conditions of the slum should be ‘signicantly
poor’. is would include, for example, where the slum is densely popu-
lated and there is total dearth or limited availability of basic services.
ird, the land must be owned by the AMC.If the land is not owned by
the AMC, the slum must liaise with government or semi- governmental
authorities to obtain a no-objection certicate. e land occupancy
would then be guaranteed for 10years. e AMC reserves the right to
relocate the slum dwellers to another site if the area is found to be useful
for commercial purposes after this period.6 Fourth, the slum must have
established a CBO with several leaders elected by the residents—who are
then to be registered with the AMC—before the installation of basic
amenities comes into eect. A CBO is deemed necessary to manage the
maintenance of the infrastructure installed and the collection of nancial
contributions from each household, which is to be transacted at the
SEWA Bank.
SEWA is a membership-based organisation that was established in
1972. Its goal is to organise women in the informal sector for self-reliance
through four organisational pillars: trade unions, co-operatives, the bank
and social services. Inspired by the Gandhian ideals of non-violence,
truth, encouragement of local employment and industries, frugality and
self-reliance, SEWA aims to promote poor women’s full decision-making
and control over their assets and resources at home and at work (SEWA
1988, 13). It believes that through collective action, women in the infor-
mal sector become strong and visible, and their contributions to the
urban economy become recognised once they initiate action as leaders
(SEWA 2003, 5). One of the impressive achievements of SEWA in the
context of urban protest is the organising of street vendors—who are
often deemed ‘encroachers’ in the public space and thus subject to evic-
tion—towards their right to stay put.
Under the SNP, the SEWA Bank, as a micro-nance organisation, pro-
vided loans to the beneting households on condition that female resi-
dents would open accounts with the Bank. It oered a short-term loan up
to a maximum of Rs 1,500. It also encouraged women in the SNP slums
to continue their membership for purposes that would enhance their
productive works.
3 Coping withtheThreat ofEvictions: Commercialisation...
46
Whereas the SEWA Bank played a part as a nancial intermediary, the
Gujarat Mahila Housing SEWA Trust (MHT), another sister organisa-
tion of SEWA, worked for the capacity-building of female CBO leaders.
MHT has striven to create improved access for poor women to services
such as shelter nance, legal advice on the housing market and job oppor-
tunities (MHT 1997, 2001). e SNP thus oered MHT an opportu-
nity to bring the benets of urban development policies within the reach
of poor women by promoting their own institutions such as CBOs
(SEWA Academy 2002, 9–10). In the SNP, the MHT identied new
possible slums for implementation of the physical renewal through a
socio-economic survey and community meetings. By 2009, the MHT
helped 115 slums establish their own CBO.Each MHT-mediated CBO
was represented by several female leaders who would not only ensure the
nancial contribution being made by every household in their slum, but
also negotiate with the AMC for repair when something went wrong
with their installed facilities. In this way, the MHT intended to help slum
women build skills for collective negotiation with external agencies.
Slum Policies after2005: Infrastructural
Development andRehabilitation
Urban renewal nanced by international nancial institutions has shifted
its focus from the renovation of slums and livelihood generation towards
the building of consumption and transport infrastructure. In order to be
globally attractive for investment capital, cities must be seen as engines of
economic growth to which infrastructure development becomes central
(Harvey 1985).
It is in this context that the construction of yovers, road-widening
and the lakefront and riverfront development projects came into being in
Ahmedabad. Among these, the highest prole urban revitalisation proj-
ect is the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project (SRDP). is is
administered by Sabarmati River Front Development Corporation
Limited (SRFDCL), an agency established in May 1997 by the AMC
with specic aims.7 e AMC partnership with quasi-governmental cor-
porations like the SRDC denotes its neoliberal strategy in recreating a
Y. Sato
47
decaying urban landscape. It now qualies as an ally of the capitalist
classes for growth-driven development rather than as a redistributive
agent (Molotch 1976). e AMC used to advocate pro-poor agendas
such as the role of NGOs in community development as part of the SNP
(Mahadevia 2010).
ese infrastructure schemes were agship projects of Gujarat State,
which during 2001–2014 was headed by Narendra Modi, now the Prime
Minister of India. e Modi administration had gained legitimacy owing
to his impressive performance in promoting the growth of Gujarat under
the banners of ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ and ‘Gujarat shining’.8 In this regard,
Indian political scientist Neera Chandhoke (2009) criticises the Modi
administration for masking the damaged image of Gujarat by attracting
investment from within and outside India as well as beautifying the
decaying urban landscape.
e impact of the spatial reconguration produced by the SRDP and
other projects on livelihoods and habitat for the urban poor has been
immense. For instance, most of the SNP-implemented slums are now
subject to land redevelopment since their 10-year guarantee of land ten-
ure has expired.
The Rise andFall ofCommunity Organising
intheSlums
e local government’s drive towards infrastructural development that
gentries the poor neighbourhoods has invited some unanticipated con-
sequences. is section will illustrate the experience of the two slums by
looking closely at the internal dynamics of neighbourhood relationships
as well as their negotiation with NGOs and petty bureaucrats.
Neighbourhood Social Fragmentation and
Local PowerPlay
What characterises Colony A is the fragmentation of its neighbourhood
relationship. is explains how the leaders of this area have exercised
3 Coping withtheThreat ofEvictions: Commercialisation...
48
their power in the course of the SNP and the ongoing threat of
relocation.
Colony A was formed in 1981. e SNP was implemented from 1997
to 2001. Because the CBO was formed in the absence of any NGOs, the
male residents overrepresented it (Table3.1).
A thumbnail sketch of a CBO leader, Mukesh, demonstrates the power
structure of Colony A from the beginning of the SNP.ere are seven
members who are registered with the CBO of Colony A, but with the
exception of Mukesh, all of them are illiterate.9 According to Mukesh,
owing to their illiteracy, he has alone been concerned with matters of the
CBO.
e exception is two other CBO leaders, Mirai and her husband
Shakti. Mirai is a vocal woman, who is proud of her second husband,
whom she married for love. Mirai was selected as a CBO leader since the
neighbours regarded her as capable of solving the problems of female resi-
dents. When the election for CBO leaders took place, as per the require-
ment from the AMC, all the women present unanimously voted for her.
ey visited the Foundation for Public Interest (FPI), an NGO which
closely worked with MHT,10 to ask for computer classes to be provided
for the children of Colony A.However, their attempt did not bear fruit
due to Mukesh’s opposition.11 Indeed, male residents’ opposition to
women’s leadership for fear of losing their vested interest in the context of
the SNP has been well documented (Bhatt and Shah 2010).
Mukesh claimed that the lack of development in Colony A was what
had driven him to take action for this neighbourhood during the SNP.
When I passed Year 10, I thought of doing something new in my life. With
this dream, I moved in a village [in Uttar Pradesh] for administrative work.
I did this job with farmers. I took up this job on contract … But some
familial problems arose and I returned to Ahmedabad. I started to live in
Colony A.is area was devoid of any amenities. I visited the AMC once
and the person who I spoke to told me about the SNP.After that, I applied
for the SNP.Having had responsibility for the SNP, I decided to stay here
for good. I have completed my entire responsibility here.
Mukesh’s commitment appears to derive more from his personal ethos
and desires rather than from a genuine wish to improve the area. He
Y. Sato
49
maintains a close relationship with two AMC ocials who are from
lower-caste backgrounds. ey have invited him for dinner, about which
he feels very proud. His leadership has imbued him with skills and con-
dence through his rich personal networks. e following dialogue proves
his prestige:
YS (author): Are you friendly with any AMC ocers? How have you
become closer to them?
MS (Mukesh): I had a good relationship with AMC ocers during the
SNP.I’ve had a very good relationship with Raju
because he started working with the SNP in our ward,
which successfully nished. Because of this success, he
got a promotion in his job. Now he is an additional
city engineer. At every festival, he visits my home and I
visit his home too.
YS: How have you organised the CBO alone?
MS: Before the SNP, nobody of the area knew me. I pro-
vided all the residents with the information by making
door-to-door visits. It was dicult for me to convince
them about this scheme but somehow I made it possi-
ble. Because of this, I’ve been maintaining a good rela-
tionship with the ocers.
YS: What and how have you beneted from AMC ocers?
MS: I came to know about the SNP from Mani. After that
I met Raju and requested him to initiate this work.
ere wasn’t any ocial who wanted to work in this
department. But Raju accepted this challenge and
started to work for it. He made a success with my sup-
port. ough he was new to this ward oce, his suc-
cess got him a promotion.
His strong leadership does not make Mukesh supportive of any NGOs
striving to improve the well-being of the area. He refused the proposals
from NGOs such as the FPI and SEWA to work for women and children
of the area. Meanwhile, a Hindu religious charity, Jai Mata Di, provided
sewing machines to female residents. Simultaneously, an endogenous
3 Coping withtheThreat ofEvictions: Commercialisation...
50
self-help group was formed by some residents. It provided loans to female
residents in Colony A without any written proof, but with a daily mem-
bership fee of Rs 20.
Mukesh enjoyed respect from his neighbours hailing from Uttar
Pradesh as well as the same sub-caste group but not from others. is
indicates the social divide within the slum with respect to caste, regional
origin and language, and has prevented communal interaction across the
neighbourhood in Colony A from emerging.
Mukesh left the area in 2008 and went rst to his village in Uttar
Pradesh and then to Surat in search of a better job. Some residents alleged
that Mukesh left Colony A, depleting the money that he had collected
from each household during the SNP.Simultaneously, one informant
called Sita corrected this information, saying Mukesh’s alleged misappro-
priation of the money is just a rumour, although his somewhat peculiar
trait was quite unpopular among the residents. However, it is true that
whereas the CBO in each SNP slum was responsible for transferring the
community’s contribution to the SEWA Bank, Mukesh refused to let any
NGO work in Colony A and chose to transfer the money directly to the
AMC.Indeed, the fact that the MHT had to pull out from Colony A due
to the vested interests that were established between the leaders and the
politicians was documented (Acharya and Parikh 2002, 327).
Rebuilding Life afterthe Communal Violence,
andUnmet Expectation fromNGOs
e Colony B experience demonstrates the loss of livelihood that many
residents experienced and their unmet satisfaction with the partial sup-
port that they received from SEWA.During the SNP in 1997, MHT
helped the female residents to form their own CBO.Not only did the
CBO help women from each household open an account in the SEWA
Bank, but it also motivated them to save their money in the Bank.
Nevertheless, not all the members were women. e CBO had two male
residents who took the lead in executing their actions. ey trained the
women as to how to talk to people from outside the slum and take neces-
sary administrative steps in forming their CBO.Out of the 11 CBO
members, 4 were Hindus and 7 were Muslims.
Y. Sato
51
Along with the CBO, the MHT helped the women to set up a crèche
in 1997. e school initially began with 20 children aged 1–5: 10 boys
and 10 girls. It opens from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. In this way, working-women
in Colony B who have small children are able to work freely outside the
neighbourhood after leaving their children in the crèche. e teachers are
female residents of Colony B.ey feed, teach and clean the children
whenever required. During the time of the eldwork, there were 40chil-
dren in this crèche. However, the fee recently rose from Rs 10 to Rs50per
child, which has reduced the number of students. One woman said: ‘I
have four children. How should I feed and educate them?’ Another
woman said: ‘If we take a loan from SEWA [Bank], they’ll keep giving us
the pressure to pay the interest on time’.12
To be fair, as the SEWA Bank is not a charity but a banking institution
for micro-nance of poor women, its interest rate is meant to help ‘disci-
pline’ women and support their enterprise in the informal sector.
However, this ‘capitalist’ discipline does not always eradicate the struc-
tural causes of chronic poverty and insecurity that loom large in the neo-
liberal regime (Rankin 2004).
In the post-SNP phase, women’s negotiation with SEWA in terms of
housing became more complicated. eir ‘unmet’ expectation of SEWA
was also expressed with respect to their eort to reconstruct their life after
the 2002 communal riots, during which some houses in Colony B were
burnt. e mob consisted of Hindus and all of them were outsiders.
During the riot the victims were compelled to live in a relief camp where
they were given barely enough water and food for survival. e majority
of the residents left Colony B after the communal riots and returned
when the tension abated. ey started building their houses gradually, in
bits and parts. ey raised their houses on a plinth and built stronger
houses. Each aected household received a relief fund—a written-o
‘loan’—of up to Rs 35,000 from the SEWA Bank under the ‘50:50
Scheme’. e idea is that each household would receive another Rs
35,000, for which the SEWA Bank provides a housing loan. rough the
MHT, they also took a loan from the SEWA Bank for restoration work
and repaid it in small instalments.
e achievement is rather disappointing. Out of the 110, only 4 houses
have reinforced concrete roofs and the rest have tin-sheet roofs only. e
3 Coping withtheThreat ofEvictions: Commercialisation...
52
damage caused by the riots on their livelihoods looms so large that most
of them are unable to repay the SEWA Bank. One woman said that she
and her neighbours restored their life by dint of sheer hard work. She
went on to say that there is hardly any role which the government and
NGOs could play. Out of the 12 members in the self-help group, 8 left
due to a variety of reasons. As a result, with only four members they are
not in a position to make any decisions on behalf of the whole
neighbourhood.
e focus groups repeatedly said that they got some food, rations and
clothes from NGOs during and after the communal riots but their help
fell short against their loss of livelihoods. Meanwhile, the relief in the
form of rations and clothes was provided to them by all political parties.
e group interview in September 2010 was attended by the trustee of
Shradha Charitable Trust, a charity aliated to the Congress, the major
opposition party in Ahmedabad, Gujarat and now India. He started a
crèche in this neighbourhood in 2005 with the aim of providing primary
education to residents in all age groups, including working adults.
e experience of Colony B exemplies the shrinking space for NGOs
during the neoliberalisation and communalisation of politics. It was an
opposition party which found niches to mobilise the poor Muslim
minorities as part of its vote bank politics. Yet, its fragile base of political
society is capable of neither representing the plight of residents in urban
planning nor securing their livelihood as well as the NGOs used to do.
Negotiation withPolitical andCivil Societies
Power oftheLeaders inaFragmented Settlement
e ongoing threats of eviction in Colony A have shaped the direction in
which slum dwellers organise themselves or become incorporated into
the interest of the powerful. e previous section described that the for-
mer CBO leader, Mukesh, allegedly depleted the money that he had col-
lected from each household and left Ahmedabad. However, several
informal visits made to Colony A revealed a dierent situation. A female
neighbour called Sita disclosed that it was not Mukesh but Shakti who,
Y. Sato
53
along with his wife Mirai, kept that money.13 ey succeeded Mukesh’s
leadership. ey had the desire to build a temple for their caste group
called Madrasis, which are Gujarati dalits/harijans and hail from a
Dravidian clan in South India.
Sita claimed that everyone was afraid of Mirai and Shakti and believed
that they might take violent action against them had they confronted
them.14 According to her, Shakti sold a plot of the slum for the construc-
tion of a primary school by emptying the houses of the people living in
that corner. Sita continues: ‘People never speak ill of them and their asso-
ciates … if someone discloses any “tyrannical” action that they enforced,
she will be beaten up with a stick and forced to walk naked in front of the
neighbours’.
Opposite to Colony A, across the yover, is a neighbourhood inhab-
ited by middle-class landlords. Some portion of their land was recently
developed for the construction of blocks of ats. eir possible desire to
develop the land of Colony A is something which worries Shakti, Mirai
and their associates. In response to this, they increased the total number
of households in Colony A, that is, 225 as is recorded in the AMC’s list
of SNP slums, to approximately 400. By doing so, they would be able to
maximise the compensation provided by the AMC in case it relocates
them to blocks of ats called the Basic Services to the Urban Poor
(BSUP) Resettlement Sites, which are typically located on the edge of
Ahmedabad.
In order to make this fake data bona de, Shakti and his neighbours
prepared a form with the help of a lawyer and submitted it to the Delhi
High Court through some governmental agency in Gujarat. It was cru-
cial for them to get their manipulated information approved by the land-
lord of Colony A, who currently lives in Hyderabad.15
By the time I interviewed Sita, I had built rapport with Shakti and
Mirai, and I was fortunate enough to photocopy the aforementioned
form for myself. In it, they requested the authority for compensation as
well as the allocation of ats to the Colony A residents should the Colony
be demolished. It accompanies the photographs, signatures and thumb
impressions (if they are illiterate) of 125 residents. According to Sita,
Shakti claimed that his family had four houses—Shakti’s and the rest
owned by his three sons, whereas the entire family owns only one house
3 Coping withtheThreat ofEvictions: Commercialisation...
54
in Colony A.e untruthful information that he reported was intended
to secure more ats for his family after relocation.
is chapter contends that the illegal means by which Shakti and Mirai
took to secure a right to housing indicates the instability of the notion of
citizenship in cities of the global South (Holston 2008, 317). ey are
subject to evictions due to their illegal land ownership but at the same
time they constitute vote banks for which the government takes benevo-
lent action.
In summary, the social fragmentation of Colony A has encouraged
Mukesh, and later Mirai and Shakti, to monopolise their CBO and access
to petty bureaucrats and policemen. e lack of mutual trust among the
residents was evident during the eldwork. For example, the area has a
corner inhabited by two groups of residents from Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Some of them keep stray dogs as watchdogs. ey stay vigilant to outsid-
ers, and were either reluctant to co-operate with our survey or refused our
request. Access to people who can themselves access resources is the key
to moving out of poverty, but it may also widen the gap between a few
powerful leaders and the rest of the residents in heterogeneous slums like
Colony A.
All these tactics of the leaders clearly show their intention to prot out
of the weaknesses of the housing regime in India. Driven by the desire to
secure government compensation amidst their uncertain status of land
tenure, they abandon their neighbourhood-level collective struggle for
individual gains (Baviskar 2003, 96). e fragmentation of Colony A in
terms of sub-caste and language has encouraged them to adapt to, rather
than resist, the neoliberal system of Ahmedabad’s anti-poverty planning.
Privatisation oftheSlum Land: Whither theResidents
andNGOs?
As in Colony A, there has been a general sense of uncertainty among the
residents in Colony B as to whether they will be relocated to the BSUP
Resettlement Sites on the edge of Ahmedabad. e demolition of neigh-
bouring slums and the construction of an embankment along the
10- kilometre stretch of the river Sabarmati began in 2009 by the
Y. Sato
55
SRDFC.It spread fear among the residents. e focus groups said that,
owing to the low wages of their casual work, they could not aord to
travel from the new place to Colony B where they obtain their casual
work by the day. Because they are Muslims, they are treated as ‘secondary
citizens’ under the Hindu-nationalist Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) rule.
e majority of them obviously have less trust in the local government.
Out of the 39 valid answers, 20 women are in favour of the Congress,
whereas 2 support the BJP, 5 nd favour with both the Congress and the
BJP, and 12 do not support any political parties. A community worker of
MHT is of the view that the women of Colony B are unaware of their
rights as citizens. She says: ‘ey approach neither AMC ocials and
workers nor local leaders even when they need any kind of support’.
Meanwhile, the MHT persuaded the AMC not to relocate the people
of Colony B from their original sites under the SRFDCL.e MHT’s
persuasion bore fruit and the AMC decided not to relocate the people
from the present settlement. Simultaneously, it had a plan to build
three- storeyed BSUP blocks of ats near Colony B, while making arrange-
ments for the protection of people’s livelihood.16
However, changes have taken place since then. Four large builders
(Safal HM, Safal UB, NA Builders and the Gala Group) took an interest
in investing in Colony B.One of them, the Gala Group, persuaded each
household of Colony B with a pamphlet with pictures of beautifully
designed dwelling units. It starts with the banner: ‘As per the Slum
Redevelopment Act, 2010, let’s build a perfect future for our upcoming
generations. It is a future that you build with the Gala Group’. It prom-
ises to provide each household with two rooms, a separate kitchen and a
bathroom at no cost. By the time I interviewed a leader from Colony B
in September 2012, the company had gained consent from 75% of the
slum dwellers. e AMC was in the process of deciding whether to give
this government-owned land to the SRFDCL or the Gala Group. e
residents whom I asked about their proposal appeared sceptical of the
promises that the Gala Group made.
In response to this public-private collaboration, both MHT and the
opposition party started taking action separately towards the redevelop-
ment of Colony B.Badruddin Shaikh, an Opposition (the Congress)
leader in the AMC Electoral Wing, opposed the idea which the Gala
3 Coping withtheThreat ofEvictions: Commercialisation...
56
Group and the AMC proposed, in which the developer constructs blocks
of ats on some plots of the land, resettles the slum dwellers in them, and
then uses the remaining land for commercial development.17 He instead
advocates an in-situ renovation model, like the SNP, for Colony B and
other slums.
e MHT, on the other hand, is not negative about the SRA model
being implemented for the Colony B residents. e director of MHT
endorses the rehousing of slum dwellers in BSUP Resettlement Sites
which are modern in terms of both appearance and function. is does
not mean that MHT supports the practice of the SRFDCL; it is highly
critical of the SRFDCL model of resettlement, which has driven slum
dwellers to the city’s periphery where they are deprived of access to trans-
port networks as well as livelihood opportunities.
To this end, the MHT conducted a ‘biometric survey’ on behalf of the
AMC in 2010, which would then be used as a proof of residence for each
household in Colony B.With this, they will be eligible to move to the
dwelling units built by the Gala Group.18 e MHT has also proposed
that it would ensure the community participation of women once the
resettlement takes shape for Colony B’s residents. Whereas the Congress
leader’s opposition to the resettlement is populist and rooted in the slum
dwellers’ concern, the MHT’s action demonstrates its realpolitik
(McFarlane 2004), which seeks to protect slum women’s livelihoods while
compromising the neoliberal ethos and practice of public-private part-
nerships in urban redevelopment.
Conclusions
e experiences of the two case study areas with the potential threats of
relocation exemplify the importance of examining the complexity of
power relations that come into play between dierent actors: slum dwell-
ers and leaders, NGOs, private developers and petty bureaucrats. e
micro-politics among the slum dwellers in defending their rights to land
and housing is shaped by the agendas and strategies of urban planning
that keep changing over time. is chapter has examined these processes
in the following contexts.
Y. Sato
57
Firstly, investment in, and speculation on, urban slums is increasingly
the norm of urban planning in Ahmedabad where there is a growing
coalition between the local government and private developers. Serving
the interest of the burgeoning middle-class rather than the poor has
become the means for the local government to gain legitimacy. is
explains why the resettlement of slum dwellers is a part of the neoliberal
recreation of urban space and how the notion of redistributive justice has
been replaced by the ideology of economic growth.
Secondly, the concentration of power on slum landlords can sustain
the patron-client relationship which serves their prot maximisation at
the expense of other residents. is vertical relationship among the slum
dwellers and between the slum and the local government is strengthened
in the wake of anti-poverty, neoliberal practices of urban development as
evidenced above. Such inequality is overlooked in the ‘right to the city’
debate, which tries to uncover the agency of collective actors to contest
the élitist creation of urban space (Kudva 2009). is understanding is
problematic in the context of neoliberalising postcolonial cities where
economic growth and the beautication of the city are actually opening
up aspirations among the poor to be part of mainstream politics and
society. ey make it dicult for slum dwellers to forge solidarity based
on shared identity and experience towards social justice in urban
planning.
irdly, the experience of failed negotiation that slum dwellers had
with NGOs and the local government can open up the possibility for
political parties to integrate the poor into their own agendas. Owing to
the political and economic hardship that they had experienced during
and after the communal riots, people in Colony B tended to remain cau-
tious of the AMC and private developers who had joined the bandwagon
of the Modi administration-led infrastructure development. SEWA
oered them some scope for rebuilding the community and livelihood in
the post-resettlement phase.
Briey, the recent restructuring of governance in cities of the global
South has reduced the pro-poor component of urban development and
the ethos of grassroots activism. Whereas poverty alleviation and the
redistribution of scarce resources in favour of the poor was the norm in
urban politics, the recent economic development of Ahmedabad, like
3 Coping withtheThreat ofEvictions: Commercialisation...
58
many other cities in the global South, has reintroduced the interest and
voices of the rich. e political agendas in democratic countries in the
global South now have stronger foundations in the interests of the bur-
geoning middle-class rather than the poor, who nevertheless still consti-
tute a thin layer of urban society.
Notes
1. Slums include chawls, which are dilapidated tenements predominated by
single-room tenements arranged in a row. Chawls were built as employer-
provided housing for textile workers in Ahmedabad and Bombay during
the Second World War.
2. Baviskar (2003, 97) uses the term to refer to the group that is instantly
recognisable by dress, deportment and language. ey are typically the
urban-educated, the propertied, white-collar professionals, and those who
are engaged in business.
3. e social organisation of Muslims in India reects many characteristics
of the Hindu caste system.
4. e initial phase of my eldwork in 2003–2004 focused only on Hindu-
dominated slums that included Colony A.Colony B, which is a Muslim-
dominated slum, was added for eldwork in 2010–2012. e data
presented in this chapter draws on focus groups, individual interviews and
household surveys that I conducted in Colony A (2003–2004 and 2011–
2012) and Colony B (2010–2012). All the names mentioned in the case
study have been changed to protect the condentiality of these
informants.
5. As of December 2015, the Indian currency rupee (Rs) is 66.24 against
US$1.
6. Interview at the SNP Cell, 6 April 2004.
7. However, the idea of the riverfront development as well as the SRDP was
rst suggested in the 1960s by Bernard Kohn, a French American
architect.
8. During my eldwork in 2003–2005, I often received an SMS with these
slogans on my mobile from the Government of Gujarat.
9. e area indeed has a female CBO leader but Mukesh reiterated that all
the CBO members were men.
Y. Sato
59
10. During the SNP, the FPI ran a programme called the Urban Partnerships
to help women in the slums build the capacity to organise their female
neighbours for community action.
11. Interview, 6 February 2003. My later eld visits to Colony A in March
2012, however, revealed that they were seeking to maximise the compen-
sation they might receive from the AMC as a result of a possible eviction
and intimidated those neighbours who questioned their attempt.
12. e annual interest rates of SEWA Bank’s loans vary. e one for hous-
ing loans is 14.5% and the one for enterprise loans is 17.0%. e dif-
ferentiation is due to the fact that housing does not generate an instant
higher income ow. While these rates are slightly higher than those of
nationalised banks, to which many illiterate and semi-illiterate poor
women are deprived of access, my eldwork found out that some of
them were indebted to unscrupulous moneylenders who do not require
any collateral or residential proof but charge a predatory rate of over
10–15% per month.
13. Interview, 14 March 2012. e interview took place in Sita’s one-room
home secretly. In Gujarat, it is a common practice that one takes o his/
her shoes at the entrance when visiting someone’s house. Instead of leav-
ing my sandals outside, I brought them inside Sita’s home so that no one
would nd me listening to her narrative.
14. is came as surprise to me, given that Mirai was an elected leader of the
CBO and once requested the FPI for computer classes for children in
Colony A.Nevertheless, not only did Sita warn me not to rely on Mirai
for eldwork but also one of team members from CEPT University sensed
that Mirai and Shakti were involved in some politics for personal gains.
15. e land is privately owned. e AMC sanctioned the land and gave the
entire Colony A a 10-year land tenure when the SNP was implemented
in 1997.
16. Interview with the sta of the MHT, 20 September 2010.
17. is model is a replication of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA)
Schemes in Mumbai. e SRA model brings prots to private developers as
the land prices in Mumbai are high, as compared with those in Ahmedabad.
18. Earlier, two other criteria were proposed for the would-be resettlers to
meet. First, 10years of stay must be proved by each household with one
of the following: a ration card, a voter ID, an electricity bill issued 8years
ago, and any other relevant proof of residence. Second, 25years of domi-
cile in Gujarat State for non-Gujaratis.
3 Coping withtheThreat ofEvictions: Commercialisation...
60
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