Paper short abstract:

This paper uses primary data from two housing projects in Trivandrum, Kerala to explore the difficulties of realising in practice the participatory goals of India's national slum-upgrade policy. It recommends smarter institutional design to strengthen beneficiary voice within housing delivery.

Paper long abstract:

India's recent national urban development policy has aimed to produce 'slum free cities', with significant investment in housing upgrading programmes (BSUP, and RAY) being deliberately linked to a wider urban reform agenda. Although this agenda included neoliberal elements, there was also a growing commitment to addressing the broader needs of slum populations and doing so through participatory design and implementation that increased beneficiaries' 'ownership' of projects. Kerala should be a state in which this participatory and co-productive potential within housing delivery was used to the full: its decisions to manage slum upgrade programmes through its State Poverty Eradication Mission, and well-established processes of participatory governance should have enabled it to take advantage of this aspect of national policy. Using primary data from two housing projects that were intended to demonstrate increasing levels of female-centred community participation in planning and delivery, this paper contrasts the planned physical and governance changes intended by those shaping the scheme at a city level, with beneficiaries' aspirations for and lived experiences of these projects. It highlights the ongoing difficulties in using housing projects to deliver participatory urban change, and the potential for smarter institutional design to ameliorate these.