TOLERATED ENCROACHMENT: Resettlement Policies and the Negotiation of the Licit/Illicit Divide in an Indian Metropolis

Inclusive growth is the new popular slogan animating development initiatives across the globe. Embracing the common rhetoric of rights discourses, the Indian government is investing heavily in novel welfare schemes for empowering poor people on the assumption that granting them access to the officia...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Cultural anthropology 2013-11, Vol.28 (4), p.760-779
Main Author:	RAO, URSULA
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Asia Bureaucracy Case studies Cities Citizenship Commodities developmentalism Discourse Discourse analysis Economic development Economic Policy Economics Ethnology Habitat, housing, architecture Housing Implementation India informal economy Low Income Groups Markets Metropolis Mobility Morphological source materials Negotiation Poor Public Officials Relocation Resettlement Rhetoric Rights Rules and Practice slum rehabilitation Slums Social relations. Intercultural and interethnic relations. Collective identity Social structure and social relations state‐citizen relation Suburbs Technology Urban Areas urban citizenship urban governance Welfare
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	Inclusive growth is the new popular slogan animating development initiatives across the globe. Embracing the common rhetoric of rights discourses, the Indian government is investing heavily in novel welfare schemes for empowering poor people on the assumption that granting them access to the official market will put them on track for upward mobility and economic progress. In this article I use a case study of a massive slum relocation in the Indian capital of Delhi to challenge this presumption. Resettlement is promoted as a way to accommodate the poor in the legal city. While it makes available desired commodities, its implementation is a complex process of renegotiating the divide between licit /illicit forms of urban habitation. Importantly, the bureaucratic procedures that create legal entitlements depend on the illicit, informal, and illegal domain that they aim to supplant. Thus, the new official suburbs emerge through the activity of people who flout the rules to meet the government target. Rather than a categorical shift from illegal to legal inhabitants of the city, resettlement re-creates urban citizenship as a form of tolerated encroachment.
ISSN:	0886-7356 1548-1360