DID INDIA EVER HAVE A RIGHT TO THE CITY MOVEMENT? Rethinking Housing Justice in Violent Times

Sushmita Pati

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2024, vol. 48, issue 4, 650-664

Abstract: In this article I look into the weakening state of housing justice in India, especially in the context of the Covid‐19 pandemic and increased state violence. I ask how and why housing rights in India have mostly remained limited in their approach without being able to demand broader access to the city through right to the city discourse. In trying to find answers to this question, I examine housing rights activism in India historically. I show how, while some movements and campaigns organically began to make such broader claims without even invoking the term ‘right to the city’, these efforts were short‐lived and those spaces were taken up by policymakers and courts. In this article I trace how a relative absence of a political language and movements’ growing proximity to the policy world has shaped a very particular trajectory of housing rights in India. Within the context of this relative absence of a right to the city discourse even quiet encroachments of the poor have failed to claim their moral right to the city. In this moment, as the Indian state takes a more hostile turn towards the poor and to civil‐society organizations, I argue that it may be time to rethink ways of bringing back housing to the centre of political struggles in India.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.13249

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:48:y:2024:i:4:p:650-664

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0309-1317

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research is currently edited by Alan Harding, Roger Keil and Jeremy Seekings

More articles in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().