Making the global city : Urban citizenship at the Margins of Delhi

Rao, U. (2011)  "Making the global city : Urban citizenship at the Margins of Delhi" Ethnos, 75:4, 402-424

• Growing interest in spatialisation of class relations in post-industrial cities. Looks at homemaking in new settlements away from hub they struggle for survival. Some try to buy houses under pressure to secure footing in society that "criminalises informality"
• Life inhospitable for the urban poor. Approx 50K households demolished between 2004-2007. Concept of "slum free Delhi" embroiled with ambitions to become global metropolis and Commonwealth games as deadline. Questions right of poor to participate in urban life. Recent studies show growth in segregation and gated communities - racial segregation, gentrification and purification. Some argue that the poor have always been pushed to the margins (Fredrick Engles) . Others focus on effects of neoliberal regimes - cities no longer for collective advancement. Academics focus on two interrelated issues - intersections between global and local and negotiations between legal and illegal. Urban spaces contain cosmipolitan elites, national decision makers, transnational workers, rural migrants, and long term inhabitants - form structure of global withi the nation. Urban social negotiations are shaped by exclusionary impulses and demands for inclusive cities based on human rights.She looks at a program of resettlement that forces poor to invest in new suburb - those that can afford try hoping it will keep them out of the clutches of government. She looks at the governance of these suburbs. She does a literature review of resettlement, and then at reality of life after removal. Highlights clash between naive attemps at creating urban sophistication and practice of survival.
• Cleaning Missions -  Segregation began with white colonial wanting to be away from dirty poor. Indira and Sanjay Gandhi were notorious for it, as was the urban regeneration policy of the millenium - linking infrastructure improvement with removal of the poor. AFter "the emergency" slum upgrading programs soared (in protest to Indira Gandhi dictatorial), and the World Bank supported in situ  upgrading in the 80's. There became a pattern of poor being resettled then batting to upgrade an area, only to then be moved again. Poor are safe as long as their land is not needed. Good growth rates are bad for them - they get moved. Courts back this development through an increasing number of anti-poor judgements (Ramanathan 2005 , 2006 ; Padhi 2007 ). Since 1990's poor have been portrayed as illegal land grabbers. Supreme Court instructed the Delhi government to abstain from allocating alternative living spaces to evicted slum dwellers, because such acts would amount to justifying and promoting the crime of land grabbing. Social workers/NGO's see their power as dwindling.  Bahn (2009) - eviction now an act of governance rather than a violation.  New portrayal of lifestyles of middleclass turn presence of poor into offence.  Also comes in the garb of environmental activism that blames pollution, overcrowding and clogging. The poor are seen as needed for labour but not to dwell. There is a movement of legalism from below - where slum dwellers study law to avoid interference and litigate against corrupt and brutal police. Hawkers also bribe police to survive.
• Many poor take resettlement as a thorny road to legitimacy mimicing a poor version of middle-class. Also a new engagement with power and the city. Legality is established not only through the state but a range of formal and informal dealings.
• Home in the city -  She did a study of Savda Ghevra - by 2010 7251 households recieved plots in this area. Homeowners from various places destroyed in lead up to commonwealth games in 2010. Slum dwellers who could prove residency before 1998 recieved compensation for lost homes, a 10  year lease for 10-12 sqm plot for 7000 Rs. This left 60-75% homeless. Only allotees are allowed to use land - buying and selling illegal. Half of those provided land refused to go to such an isolated spot. The suburb is 48 kms from Delhi through 8 kms of bushland.  Life is harsh due to isolation from casual work, lack of infrastructure and affordable markets.  but many are happy to have a stable home and existance.  Owners in Savda invested heavily in brick houses although the land was technically leased - but building permanent homes seen as a strategy to security.  But 100 houses were demolished in April 2010 - was linked to a land scam. But lots of questions - why unanounced, whos plots, would they come back etc.  The reaction was reversion to mechanisms of the state, to NGO's and media. State is known more for brutality than its underinvestment and is both powerful and danagerous.
• The resettlement schees seem benevolant however she queries whether they will ever lead to transformation. It is minimal state investment denying real investment priorities.  Some new measurs to improve resettlement includes guaranteed 10 year leases and requirement for dweller to occupy within 3 months to avoid reselling of property and then slum dweller to return to city - but these colonies prosper insite of these types of measures not becaus of them.
• Becoming proper citizens - There is a battle between administrators and social workers who see resettlement colonies as living in filth and the people who believer there is no decent infrastructure.  The notion of state as a drive of development is under attack since structural adjustment which envisages the state as the facilitator of the market.  Linked to concept of "responsibilisation" - poor are expected to turn fringe into town.The lack of funding is clear in Savda - no roads, sanitation, no water pipes etc. 30% of daily wages for bus fares to city.  Many lament the lack of co-ordination between departments - the Slum and JJ Department, water, food etc. There is no greenery in parks but they complain that they wont maintain. Not serviced by municiple waste -> garbate collects. To remedy a NGO started a garbage collection service. Participating households pay 10 Rs per month. Social workers were frustrated that the scheme did not work as people felt it should have been a free service. Strategies for survival clash with middle class notions of hygine and environmentalism - they burn plastic bags to clear commons, stack cooking fuel in parks and defacate in public.
• Conclusions -  The formal and informal economies are deeply entangled - those that invest in formality find informality still exists and leads to insecurity and is ultimatel criminalised.