Claiming Land: Rights, Contestations and the Urban Poor in Globalized Times

Transcription

1 Claiming Land: Rights, Contestations and the Urban Poor in Globalized Times Solomon Benjamin and Bhuvaneswari Raman A consideration of urban land is central to the 1. Facts and Conceptions: Interpreting the Rights to Land 1.1 Crises in facts and conceptions Globalisation and urban land here to carefully consider the nuanced ways in 63

2 Urban Policies and the Right to the City in India : Rights, Responsibilities and Citizenship and institutional structures for clear titles and become the centre of several new laws and form the basis for central city urban renewal and new land Climate change and competing claims to the urban environment new metro level institutional forms allow for easy discussed below, to the mobilisation of the term Slums as a language of disempowerment times the senior judiciary, and many researchers that slums create deviant behaviour and fuel 64

3 level bureaucracy to claim land and services in circulation of the term slum also facilitates a Poverty alleviation programmes miss out crucial land dimensions street traders and the state in different Indian medium economies in the city 65

4 Urban Policies and the Right to the City in India : Rights, Responsibilities and Citizenship Rehabilitation and Resettlement (R&R) induced displacement sale, are located away from livelihoods and lists as an instrument of social control in a A nuanced understanding of land: interpreting the rights to land From slums to more accurate descriptions of territorializations chawls (in 55 66

5 What binds these various forms is that they that remain common to these settlements in Land regularization as a central progressive intervention middle level bureaucracies, many of whom stay, such terrains across cities and towns coalesces and are accommodated via administrative subversion by the elite who lobby for stricter bureaucrats retain their alliances with decision often turn out to form the basis for evictions and Diversity of land territorialization and tenure forms underpins an economy of the poor 67

6 Urban Policies and the Right to the City in India : Rights, Responsibilities and Citizenship who are connected to varied small economic formations constituted for economic activities Access to productive locations: Areas with to economies of different scales: Similarly, investment in land as a way of Diversity of land tenure forms observed in some localities allows poorer groups, among others, to claim land and consolidate it over time: 68

7 Competing land territorialization between land claims and the issue of access are related different economies differ, and relate to very level bureaucracy and are able to mobilise local remains at crisis level accentuated by the Academic debates the need to consider the social construction of land claims, and in turn, to have institutional view, with an entry into both a construction of land in an incremental way, and also the nuances 69

8 Urban Policies and the Right to the City in India : Rights, Responsibilities and Citizenship consideration of the city economy around land mid 1980s, closely connected with what can be territorial formations into the liberal notions of It was in the late 1990s that a distinct turn away radical transformation via urban renewal and 70

9 recommendations for individual titles, biometric of Indian society and their different avenues 3. Inclusive and Exclusive Practices that the trend of simultaneous, selective a climate of fear of eviction and the trauma of are confronted with what seems to be inevitable At one end, the diversity of forms of tenure and 71

10 Urban Policies and the Right to the City in India : Rights, Responsibilities and Citizenship 57 evidence that such interventions affect adversely Such a view dominates the discussions of the tools, laws, and institutions need to be seen

11 constitute new territories for the new economies diverse small and medium economies are or the local institutional level is viewed as a areas, many of which fall under the rural or bureaucrats of revenue administration had the control of information at the local level small local institutions and to undermine the to control local institutions as well as local there have been mass demolitions since the discourse, actors and institutions associated 73

12 Urban Policies and the Right to the City in India : Rights, Responsibilities and Citizenship senior bureaucrats to control street bureaucrats documents, we see a central issue in the trend freedoms, in fact restructures institutions, which 4. Policy Implications at Different Levels Land regularization as a policy for shelter and pro-poor, job-centric economic development. Political empowerment of local government (municipal/ panchayats). De facto tenure via in-situ upgrading promoted by local government. Job-centred economic development, employment and value addition concentrations of usually small home and Strengthening pro-poor political management of land in contested urban settings The housing fetish 74

13 Local governments as mainly administrative/ maintenance bodies: their role would be Hi-Tech zones such as SEZs, or IT/Bio- Tech corridors, or urban renewal as a prerequisite for economic development : Advocacy politics as the sole political space favourable to poor groups: 75