I: Introduction and Background to Citizenship

Traditional approaches to citizenship are highly politicized despite their tendency to be understood as universalized across nation-states. A rich field of literature has emerged to critique common understandings of citizenship, rather interpreting citizenship as an intersection of market forces, state action, and civil society.[1] To the individual, citizenship authorizes “a public identity and a range of social rights.”[2] However, due to market forces and increased transnational capital flows, challenging the conventional norms of citizenship, being a citizen in contemporary culture is more concerned with contributions to the marketplace rather than civic involvement.[3] It is no accident that hundreds of thousands are found in the periphery, relying on tenuous land agreements and precarious employment arrangements.[4] Urban design does not account for the fact that citizenship is not experienced equally. For example, scholar Saskia Sassen and her co-authors reveal how restricted mobility for urban women as manifested in gendered safety concerns limit the experience of women in cities.[5] An equivalent argument can be applied to the context of slums: the removal of encroachments has a highly politicized purpose that does not regard all citizens with equal care. Therefore, this paper will investigate how the periphery is further marginalized in Delhi. Namely, state policy and middle-class advocacy efforts – specifically environmentally-focused “clean up” projects and land relocation negotiations – threaten slum dwellers’ access to fundamental components of citizenship by eroding their intrinsic right to land.

II: Encroachment on Land and its Intrinsic Connection to Citizenship

In the 1985 Supreme Court decision Olga Tellis and Others v. Bombay Municipal Corporation and Others, the court emphasized that living space is fundamentally linked to a “right to life” and livelihood.[6] Later, the Supreme Court rejected the claim of slum dwellers to living on parts of sidewalk claimed by the private ownership of Bombay Municipal Corporation.[7] Despite dwellers’ pleas that removing their settlements was a denial of their constitutional right to livelihood, the court decreed that dwellers were outside of zone of considered ‘legality,’ and therefore viewed as ‘trespassers’ as opposed to citizens deserving of a right.[8]

This Supreme Court case reveals a fundamental disassociation between rhetorical pomp and actual enforcement. The presence of empty promises from the legal system may provide slum dwellers with a false sense of security regarding their legal standing. This contributes to the securitization of dwellers’ disenfranchisement in Delhi in favor of prioritizing the citizenship rights of others. The displacement of civilians from slums fundamentally erodes one’s right to dwelling in an explicit denial and erosion of citizenship. This phenomenon is propagated by government policy, as seen during the emergency of the mid-1970s, where many civil liberties were curbed and slums in Delhi were demolished.

The government’s mandate to remove encroachments during the mid-1970s resulted in many “liv[ing] under a perpetual state of undeclared Emergency” to this day.[9] One rhetorical justification for this displacement frames jhuggis (slums) as free land that can be attractive for individuals to take advantage of, often at the expense of the state and the ‘law abiding’ taxpayer.[10] This discourse creates a definitive schism between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ inhabitants of Delhi, in which a divide of who is more deserving and privileged in relation to the state is made emphatically clear by the court’s ruling. Framing land ownership in this manner is intensely politically charged, and this system treats the presence of slums as the products of slum dwellers, instead of investigating the institutional factors that enable the existence of slums. Further, middle class advocacy groups often frame slum dwellers as the antithesis of the ‘ideal’ and ‘clean’ middle class citizen. For these groups to retain the privilege currently afforded to them behind their gated communities, many members of the middle class continue to push for the removal of encroaching slums.[11]

However, beyond seeing slum dwellers as deserving of fundamental social rights, one can also see them as necessary actors in Delhi’s economy. Specifically, slum dwellers perform a multitude of informal roles that are indispensable and rejected by the middle class. These roles include delivering milk, selling newspapers, driving a rickshaw and more.[12] Ranjana Padhi provides a succinct analysis of this inter-class dynamic: “the same society that throws up its vast array of needs to be catered to by this unorganized workforce does not deem it fit for the same workforce to cohabit with them in the city.”[13] In other words, slum dwellers serve incredibly important functions in the informal economy, constituting the backbone of global cities like Delhi. The global city is not detached from the periphery – rather, it relies on and is responsible for the existence of these marginalized communities.[14] This trend is not specific to Delhi, but it is rather noteworthy given that millions have access to virtually no resources with “minimal cash and practically no infrastructure.”[15] Thus, advocacy for the displacement of slums takes on a stance that further exploits the already exploited, while Delhi continues to run on informal sectors filled by politically disadvantaged and marginalized periphery groups.

Individuals on the fringes of legality – that is, people with incredibly limited recognition from and involvement with the state – already possess so little. In the context of Delhi, at the turn of the century, less than two percent of urban land was occupied by slum dwellers despite their increasing numbers.[16] Not only does this vulnerable population lack space in the political world, it also lacks spatial access. Home ownership is seen as a mechanism intrinsically tied to social mobility and citizenship. Owning a house means that one is recognized as occupying ‘legal’ space, enabling one to feel a sense of citizenship and more fundamentally, a sense of belonging to the nation.[17] To maintain a stronghold in this imbalanced power relation, most living space occupied by slum dwellers is deemed illegal. This declared illegality is a method by which Nehruvian developmental urban planning “forged a gap between the official map and the lived space,” in order to establish an exclusionary boundary in which marginalized individuals’ rights to dwelling land outside the legal scope of citizenship.[18] Therefore, the struggle for the occupation of land and the right to housing can be observed equally as resistance to the state and the state’s attempt to exclude slum dwellers from the occupation of public and private space.

Illegal residence is not a function of the “disengagement of citizens from official procedures nor state toleration of disorder.” Rather, illegal residence “demonstrates that investment in the illicit is a function of the formalizing and stabilizing processes.”[19] Thus, the ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ cannot be viewed as inherently separate, but rather objects that directly impact each other. However, the space of the ‘illegal’ manifests in delegitimization and the devaluing of citizenship, specifically to prioritize the demands of others who preside over ‘legal’ spaces.

It is important to not view Delhi slum dwellers as completely helpless and marginalized with no established forms of resistance. For example, in a Delhi satellite city, the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (NOIDA), slum dwellers were quick to mobilize and submit documentation to assert their rights over places of residence and negotiate with state decision-makers to prevent demolition and relocation.[20] Thus, law and its subsequent enforcement are not as stringent and inflexible as commonly believed. Slum dwellers often have negotiating power even in their marginalized positions, accessed by innovating solutions to demand fuller citizenship right and assert physical and political space. Of course, institutional barriers make this process significantly more challenging for the periphery to accomplish, if they are able to do so at all.

 

III: “Bourgeois Environmentalism” and Rhetoric that Diminishes Citizenship

What are the mechanisms by which demolition and displacement projects of slums are justified by the middle class and the state? A significant component of justification stems from arguments rooted in “environmental bourgeois” activism (Baviskar 2003, 90). Much of the everyday abrasive and divisive rhetoric outlined above is derived from government and news campaigns that reinforce the view of slums as a nuisance.[21] This rhetoric dehumanizes the individual by removing slum dwellers from their place of residence, functionally stripping them of a fundamental component of citizenship as laid out by Supreme Court decisions. In Delhi, the government promoted a campaign with the slogan “Clean Delhi, Green Delhi,” in which it promoted civic engagement aimed at the beautification of the city, “primarily through aesthetic projects.” However, this campaign had little to do with “address[ing] underlying sources of environmental stress.”[22] In practice, the project was aimed at eliminating spaces for the informal economy. For example, before the 2010 Commonwealth Games, 300,000 food vendors and beggars were ordered to dissipate from the streets.[23] This directive reified middle class advocacy efforts and government rhetoric through decisive and tangible action. In this regard, the citizenship of slum dwellers and their right to occupy public spaces was unquestionably denied.

Government discourse matters. Framing slum dwellers as the nuisance and origin of “urban decay,” as opposed to products of urbanization within global cities, is a scapegoat for the discourse of upper classes.[24] For example, a government advertisement discouraging almsgiving in Delhi read that alms encourage “illicit conduct and inhibit urban progress.”[25] In this advertisement, the urban poor are viewed as second-class citizens that ought to be left behind, ignored, and unincorporated into Delhi’s ‘progressive’ urban environment. The judicial system, state decision-makers, and news outlets directly contribute to this rhetoric that encourages the marginalization of the urban poor, even with regards to the electoral system. Without a place of residence or a place of dwelling that is legally recognized, voting is nearly impossible.[26] The government’s environmental clean-up campaign was an active decision to prioritize the “green agenda” over the “brown agenda,” as city clean-up became associated and intertwined with the removal of slums and slum dwellers.[27]

Rhetoric to blame the slum dweller is also evident in middle class activist efforts. Ghertner describes an interview he had with a member of a Resident Welfare Association (RWA) in Delhi, in which the interviewee describes a scorpion crawling out of his sink and endangering his wife in the kitchen. In the interview, the RWA member describes how his sewer waste mixes with sewage from slum dwellers, and attributes this ‘contamination’ to slums.[28] Despite the fact that the RWA member started off the conversation under the pretense that slum dwellers were not the source of their desolate living conditions, he easily slipped into seeing the slum in its “natural” and “animal essence.”[29] This is an embodied example of what Sassen, Pieterse, et al. explain. Most peripheral communities are seen as living between victimization and recognition. In this case, the slum dweller has been demoted to second-class status and is being used as a scapegoat for issues facing the middle class.[30] In other words, the middle class believes that the presence of the periphery, both spatially and socially, threatens their citizenship by changing the political landscape in which they live.

Further, the impact of government and middle-class rhetoric goes beyond manifesting social divides. The displacement of slum dwellers can also be understood as ‘necessary’ violence for state development. Beyond endorsing social marginalization, bourgeois environmental rhetoric also manifests in ‘positive violence,’ in which public spaces become privatized and demolitions of slums within public spaces is justified for the greater ‘common good.’[31] An example related to government efforts can be observed in state messages indicating that the contamination of the Yamuna River could be attributed to the scattered slums by the water.[32]  This tool was used to justify the further displacement of slum dwellers in the region. However, such messaging neglects the fact that almost two dozen sewers from middle class neighborhoods were funneling untreated waste into the Yamuna River.[33] Subsequently, the middle class pushed the government to remove ‘illicit’ settlements due to their ‘illegality,’ blaming such settlements for deteriorating the quality of life in the city.

In fact, slum dwellers should be seen as the groups most negatively impacted by the more privileged positioning of wealthier neighborhoods. Contrary to the aforementioned government propaganda, the Central Pollution Control Board spoke out against the sentiments of the Chief Minister when it disclosed that the removal of 40,000 jhuggis along the water did not ameliorate the issue of water quality, despite the displacement of 200,000 people from their homes.[34] In this regard, citizenship appears to be a negotiated right rather than a guarantee. Therefore, the government’s framing of the relationships between slum dwellers and water contamination is disconnected from the actual environmental impact of these populations. Nonetheless, the propaganda works to justify eroding rights to dwelling for the most marginalized and vulnerable.

IV: Conclusion

Understandings of access to space are highly politicized. Marginalized communities are fighting not only for land rights but also for full citizenship, and many individuals possess privilege on the basis of the marginalization of others. In the case of slum dwellers in Delhi, the periphery is exploited, stripped of agency and true pushback power against the government and middle-class advocacy efforts. Rather than seeing slums as separate from the slum dweller, they are one and the same. This totalization of identity re-entrenches community division and understandings of ‘legality’ versus ‘illegality’ without investigating the circumstances that make the periphery peripheral. In this regard, one can see the importance of rhetoric in manifesting and reinforcing stereotypes of slum dwellers. Even when those from more privileged backgrounds try to challenge dominant perceptions of slum dwellers, it is easy to slip into a default mentality that sees the informal as illegal, viewing slum dwellers as automatically at fault for their positionality in the illegal realm. However, what is deemed ‘illegal’ versus ‘legal’ is fundamentally an asymmetrical power game dictated by those with greater access to resources and rights as ‘citizens.’ The privileged strata of society determine the rules by which to maintain boundaries of exclusion. Therefore, environmentally focused rhetoric and land claims by the middle class seek to reify the unequal understanding of citizenship in Delhi.

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Mariah Stewart is currently a third-year student at the University of Toronto.

Bibliography

 

Baviskar, Amita. 2003. “Between Violence and Desire: Space, Power, and Identity in the Making of Metropolitan Delhi.” International Social Science Journal 55 (175): 89-98.

 

Chang, Kyŏng-sŏp, and Bryan S. Turner. 2012. “Wither East Asian Citizenship?” In Contested Citizenship in East Asia, by Kyŏng-sŏp Chang and Bryan S. Turner, 243-255. New York: Routledge.

 

Dupont, Véronique. 2008. “Slum Demolitions in Delhi since the 1990s: An Appraisal.” Economic and Political Weekly 43 (28): 79-87.

 

Ghertner, D. Asher. 2012. “Nuisance Talk and the Propriety of Property: Middle Class Discourses of a Slum-Free Delhi.” Antipode 44 (4): 1161-1187.

 

Padhi, Ranjana. 2007. “Forced Evictions and Factory Closures: Rethinking Citizenship and Rights of Working Class Women in Delhi.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 14 (1): 73-92.

 

Rao, Ursula. 2010. “Making the Global City: Urban Citizenship at the Margins of Delhi.” Ethnos 75 (4): 402-424.

 

Rao, Ursula. 2013. “Tolerated Encroachment: Resettlement Policies and the Negotiation of the Licit/Illicit Divide in an Indian Metropolis.” Cultural Anthropology 28 (4): 760-779.

 

Roy, Anupama. 2010. “Cities, Residual Citizens, and Social Citizenship.” In Mapping Citizenship in India, by Anupama Roy, 162-177. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Sassen, Saskia. 2000. “The Global City: Strategic Site/New Frontier.” American Studies 41 (2/3): 79-95.

 

Sassen, Saskia, Edgar Pieterse, Gautam Bhan, Max Hirsh, Ana Falú, Hiroo Ichikawa, Luis Riffo, Pelin Tan, and Doris Tarchopulos. 2018. “Cities and Social Progress.” In Rethinking Society for the 21st Century: Report of the International Panel on Social Progress, by Saskia Sassen, Edgar Pieterse, Gautam Bhan, Max Hirsh, Ana Falú, Hiroo Ichikawa, Luis Riffo, Pelin Tan and Doris Tarchopulos, edited by IPSP, 187–224. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[1] Chang, Kyŏng-sŏp, and Bryan S. Turner. “Wither East Asian Citizenship?” In Contested Citizenship in East Asia, by Kyŏng-sŏp Chang and Bryan S. Turner, 243. New York: Routledge, 2012.

[2] Ibid., 244.

[3] Ibid., 248.

[4]Sassen, Saskia, Edgar Pieterse, Gautam Bhan, Max Hirsh, Ana Falú, Hiroo Ichikawa, Luis Riffo, Pelin Tan, and Doris Tarchopulos. “Cities and Social Progress.” In Rethinking Society for the 21st Century: Report of the International Panel on Social Progress, by Saskia Sassen, Edgar Pieterse, Gautam Bhan, Max Hirsh, Ana Falú, Hiroo Ichikawa, Luis Riffo, Pelin Tan and Doris Tarchopulos, edited by IPSP, 211. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

[5] Ibid., 200.

[6] Roy, Anupama. “Cities, Residual Citizens, and Social Citizenship.” In Mapping Citizenship in India, by Anupama Roy, 164-165. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

[7] Ibid., 164-165.

[8] Ibid., 165.

[9] Padhi, Ranjana. “Forced Evictions and Factory Closures: Rethinking Citizenship and Rights of Working Class Women in Delhi.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 14. 1 (2007): 77.

[10] Ibid., 77.

[11] Ibid., 78.

[12] Ibid., 79.

[13] Ibid., 79.

[14] Sassen, Saskia. “The Global City: Strategic Site/New Frontier.” American Studies, 41. 2/3 (2000): 82.

[15] Rao, Ursula. “Making the Global City: Urban Citizenship at the Margins of Delhi.” Ethnos, 75. 4 (2010): 419.

[16] Padhi, “Forced Evictions and Factory Closures: Rethinking Citizenship and Rights of Working Class Women in Delhi,” 80.

[17] Rao, “Making the Global City: Urban Citizenship at the Margins of Delhi,” 415.

[18] Rao, Ursula. “Tolerated Encroachment: Resettlement Policies and the Negotiation of the Licit/Illicit Divide in an Indian Metropolis.” Cultural Anthropology, 28. 4(2013): 762.

[19] Ibid., 770.

[20] Ibid., 772.

[21] Ghertner, D. Asher. “Nuisance Talk and the Propriety of Property: Middle Class Discourses of a Slum-Free Delhi.” Antipode, 44. 4(2012): 1179.

[22] Ibid., 1179.

[23] Ibid., 1179.

[24] Sassen, “The Global City: Strategic Site/New Frontier,” 82.

[25] Ghetner, “Nuisance Talk and the Propriety of Property: Middle Class Discourses of a Slum-Free Delhi,” 1180.

[26] Padhi, “Forced Evictions and Factory Closures: Rethinking Citizenship and Rights of Working Class Women in Delhi,” 76.

[27] Dupont, Véronique. “Slum Demolitions in Delhi since the 1990s: An Appraisal.” Economic and Political Weekly, 43 28(2008): 81.

[28] Ghetner, “Nuisance Talk and the Propriety of Property: Middle Class Discourses of a Slum-Free Delhi,” 1174.

[29] Ibid., 1174.

[30] Sassen et. al, “Cities and Social Progress,” 211.

[31] Ghetner, “Nuisance Talk and the Propriety of Property: Middle Class Discourses of a Slum-Free Delhi,” 1163.

[32] Ibid., 1180.

[33] Ibid., 1180.

[34] As cited in Ibid., 1180.