Viewing Slums as “Illegal Encroachment” on Public Spaces
In August 2020, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India ordered the removal of about 48,000 slums located along the 140 km length of the railway tracks in Delhi. This order brings back the discourse of “illegal encroachment” concerning slums in Indian cities. This position is in conflict with the poor, their livelihoods, and rights to have adequate housing. The current order seems to be based on an understanding of slum settlements as informal places (and hence illegal and liable to be removed) differentiated from the so-called formal places where the urban elites live. This is even though informal urbanization is as much practised by wealthy urbanites and suburbanites as it is by slum dwellers. This narrative also finds a place in the Delhi Slum & JJ Rehabilitation and Relocation Policy 2015 which categorically calls slums dwellers as “encroachers” upon the land on which they live. The urgent question then becomes how and why elite informalities are regularized while subaltern informalities are criminalized? Is it that slum settlements are considered as “spaces” (and not places) devoid of any social life or a sense of attachment or identity of their own? Though there has been stay on the demolition orders by the Supreme Court, there is a need to understand such hasty orders in the wider context of urban informality.
The distinction between formality and informality is the most discussed topic in urban and planning theory. McFarlane in his paper “Rethinking Informality: Politics, Crisis, and the City” has talked extensively on informality. He provides an alternative conceptualisation of the distinction between formality and informality, exploring both as particular forms of practice other than the traditional view as territoriality where informality is supposed to be territorialised within slum settlements. This view does away with both the idea that informality belongs to the poor and formality to the better off, and that informality and formality are part of different urban spaces. This is also echoed by Ananya Roy in her paper “Urban Informality: The Production and Regulation of Space”, 2015, where she suggests that “informality must be understood as a mode of producing and regulating space”.
Asher Ghertner (2008) has shown that the “illegal encroachment” debate surrounding slums in Indian cities is closely linked to a change in court rulings that place slums as “nuisances” that pollute public spaces rather than as communities where adequate facilities (such as water, sanitation, drainage, and rubbish collection) have not been provided by the state. To allow for a specific type of elite urban development, the state can use informality as an instrument of accumulation and authority. The structured support here is provided by-laws or policies) which are open-ended and subject to different interpretations and interests. Crucially, it is the combination of informal practices and formal revanchism (political policy of attempting to regain lost territory) through law, policy and regulation that makes this sort of urban development possible.
It is pertinent to quote the example of the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games Village here, which was built upon land that the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) had shown to be ecologically sensitive floodplains for the Yamuna River. This informal practice required formal mediation which was provided by the 2004 judgement of Supreme Court of India, where it issued an order to demolish the homes of more than 150,000 slum residents (Pushta) who were occupying the land for the Games Village.
The current order of the Supreme Court for a blanket removal of slum settlements even though there were residential buildings too within two metres from the railway tracks throwing waste on such tracks, seems to be motivated by what Kant calls “aesthetic judgment” i.e., a judgment based on a feeling. As discussed above the portrayal of slums as “nuisance” and “illegal encroachment” by courts presents an “elite discourse” (both in law and policymaking) which is more concerned with making Delhi a “world-class city” where physical appearance (aesthetics, cleanliness, greenery) matter more than the psychological connection of the slum dwellers with the city, which more than the physical appearance seems to be holding the city and its residents together.
Conclusion
The goal of this article has been to critically analyse the order of the Supreme Court for the removal of about 48,000 slum clusters that too without delineating any plan of action for rehabilitation in the wider context of urban informality. In Ajay Maken v. Union of India, 2019, Justice S. Muralidhar quoted Nelson Mandela:
“A simple vote, without food, shelter and health care is to use first-generation rights as a smokescreen to obscure the deep underlying forces which dehumanise people. It is to create an appearance of equality and justice, while by implication socio-economic inequality is entrenched. We do not want freedom without bread, nor do we want bread without freedom. We must provide for all the fundamental rights and freedoms associated with a democratic society”.
The Court further recognized the ‘Right To The City” (RTTC) of the slum dwellers and stated that RTTC acknowledges that those living in JJ clusters in jhuggis/slums continue to contribute to the social and economic life of a city and comprises a wide range of service providers including sanitation workers, garbage collectors, domestic help, rickshaw pullers, labourers who are indispensable to a healthy urban life. Prioritising the housing needs of such population should be imperative for a state committed to social welfare and its obligations flowing from Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international conventions and agreements and the Indian Constitution.