The impact of COVID-19 on petty landlords in Delhi, India: caste, gender and urban villages

Ajay Kumar Gautam

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: COVID-19 presented unparalleled difficulties for financially disadvantaged renters, limiting their ability to pay for housing. The impact of this crisis on petty landlords, who often provide housing to these precarious renters, is unclear and requires investigation. Utilising data from a survey of 300 households, and focus group discussions (FGDs) with 100 petty landlords, primarily first-generation Scheduled Caste (SC) and Other Backward Class (OBC) owners, this case study examines the effects of the pandemic on petty landlords in urban villages in Delhi, India. The findings highlight the sedimentation of caste in informal rental market spaces: Firstly, it highlights the role of caste-based socio-economic factors in the emergence of petty landlords in relation to dominant caste landlords. Secondly, it examines the circumstances that led to financial strain among marginalised caste landlords during the pandemic and explores how their responses to this stress worsened existing housing challenges for vulnerable tenants. Thirdly, the study reveals that gender also played a significant role in shaping the experiences of petty landlords, with women outnumbering men as proxy landlords in this group. Lastly, the paper explores how state imposed eviction interventions brought the complexities of caste, class, gender and urban marginality to the forefront.

Keywords: Covid-19; caste; India; petty landlords; rental economy; urban villages; coronavirus; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R14 R21 R31 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2024-12-31
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 31, December, 2024, 67(4), pp. 1159 – 1175. ISSN: 0971-7927

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/126535/ Open access version. (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Unavailable (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/126535/ [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/126535/)

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:ehl:lserod:126535

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().