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Paper short abstract:

The research foregrounds both urban peripheries and peripheral groups within academic accounts. It examines the impact of the local institutions and culture on the state-sponsored slum redevelopment scheme.

Paper long abstract:

The day-to-day processes of (informal) governance in the urban context in India has been widely documented and debated (c.f. Chatterjee, 2004; Benjamin, 2008; Roy, 2009). However, the penetration of 'informality' within formal housing policies has not been fully explored. Taking an ethnographic approach, the research investigates how various 'social identity groups' deal with the implementation of the state-sponsored slum housing scheme. The study was conducted across two slums - one Dalit and one non-Dalit - that are located in the periphery of the city of Mumbai. Dalits, which are the ex-untouchables in India, are historically marginalised communities that were considered socially outcast from the four-fold Hindu caste classification. The research brings out that the slum housing policy that works on a standardised set of objectives and guidelines, faces different forms of confrontations during the implementation stage. The varied confrontations that emerge at the two chosen slums, result from differentiated experiences of the social identity groups that inhabit those slums. The study also highlights the limits of such diverse confrontations (agencies) and their potentials in further deepening the existing inequalities. The research, therefore, emphasises upon what Iris Marion Young (1990, 2011) propagates as the most important yet neglected element in the prevailing distributive paradigm, that is, 'the politics of identity'. Housing policies, if divorced from the diverse aspirations of various social identity groups, can potentially deepen the existing inequalities. Urban futures, therefore, demand an understanding of 'the politics of difference' and requires its incorporation within policy planning and its implementation.