The Right to Be Counted: The Urban Poor and the Politics of Resettlement in Delhi

By Sanjeev Routray

In the last 30 years, Delhi, the capital of India, has displaced over 1.5 million poor people. Resettlement and welfare services are available—but exclusively so, as the city deems much of the population ineligible for civic benefits. The Right to Be Counted examines how Delhi's urban poor, in an effort to gain visibility from the local state, incrementally stake their claims to a house and life in the city. Contributing to debates about the contradictions of state governmentality and the citizenship projects of the poor in Delhi, this book explores social suffering, logistics, and the logic of political mobilizations that emanate from processes of displacement and resettlement. Sanjeev Routray draws upon fieldwork conducted in various low-income neighborhoods throughout the 2010s to describe the process of claims-making as an attempt by the political community of the poor to assert its existence and numerical strength, and demonstrates how this struggle to be counted constitutes the systematic, protracted, and incremental political process by which the poor claim their substantive entitlements and become entrenched in the city. Analyzing various social, political, and economic relationships, as well as kinship networks and solidarity linkages across the political and social spectrum, this book traces the ways the poor work to gain a foothold in Delhi and establish agency for themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781503632141

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THE RIGHT TO BE COUNTED

The Urban Poor and the Politics of Resettlement in Delhi

SANJEEV ROUTRAY

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

© 2022 by Sanjeev Routray. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Routray, Sanjeev, author.

Title: The right to be counted : the urban poor and the politics of resettlement in Delhi / Sanjeev Routray.

Other titles: South Asia in motion.

Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2022. | Series: South Asia in motion | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022005970 (print) | LCCN 2022005971 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503630840 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503632134 (paperback) | ISBN 9781503632141 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Poor—Political activity—India—Delhi. | Poor—Civil rights—India—Delhi. | Citizenship—India—Delhi. | City planning—India—Delhi. | Land settlement—Political aspects—India—Delhi.

Classification: LCC HV4140.D4 S58 2022 (print) | LCC HV4140.D4 (ebook) | DDC 305.5/69095456—dc23/eng/20220228

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005970

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005971

Cover design: Rob Ehle

Cover photo: Alleyway in Dehli. Sanjeev Routray

Typeset by Newgen in Adobe Caslon Pro 10.75/15

SOUTH ASIA IN MOTION

EDITOR

Thomas Blom Hansen

EDITORIAL BOARD

Sanjib Baruah

Anne Blackburn

Satish Deshpande

Faisal Devji

Christophe Jaffrelot

Naveeda Khan

Leigh Pigg

Mrinalini Sinha

Ravi Vasudevan

For

Dharashree Das

Sanoh Aranya

CONTENTS

Tables and Figures

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction: Numerical Citizenship Struggles in Contemporary Delhi

PART I: The Politics of Planning

1. The Political Economy of Urban Planning, Calculative Governmentality, and the Urban Poor

2. The Planning of Demolition and Resettlement: Structural Violence and Social Suffering of the Poor

PART II: The Politics of the Poor

3. Infrastructure and Intermediaries: Mediated Politics of Pradhans, Samaj Sevaks, and Sarkari Karmacharis

4. Documentary Practices and the Counter-tactics of Enumeration

5. The Judiciary, the Middle Class, and the Poor

6. Cultural Idioms and Performances of Resistance

Conclusion: Numerical Citizenship and the Political Agency of the Urban Poor

Glossary of Hindi Terms

Notes

References

Index

TABLES AND FIGURES

TABLES

Table 1.1 Comparison of the Primary Features of Delhi’s Three Master Plans

Table 1.2 Resettlement in Delhi (1990–2009)

Table 1.3 Resettlement in Delhi (2010–2019)

FIGURES

Figure I.1 Gautam Nagar jhuggi jhopri neighborhood

Figure I.2 Sitapuri transit camp

Figure I.3 Laxmi colony

Figure I.4 Azad resettlement colony

Figure 1.1 The refurbished Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium

Figure 1.2 Posters of Commonwealth Games

Figure 2.1 The construction of a luxury hotel

Figure 2.2 A makeshift hut

Figure 2.3 The Nehru Place metro station

Figure 2.4 Hand pumps

Figure 3.1 Water tanker

Figure 3.2 A water tank

Figure 4.1 Delhi State Legal Services Authority’s meeting

Figure 4.2 Residents addressing the kami (errors) in their documents

Figure 5.1 Breached gate

Figure 5.2 Right of Way versus Right of Shelter 1

Figure 5.3 Right of Way versus Right of Shelter 2

Figure 5.4 Right of Way versus Right of Shelter 3

Figure 6.1 Felicitation ceremony

Figure 6.2 Stone unveiling

Figure 6.3 Symbolic funeral procession

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book attempts to document the experience of poor migrants in their quest for citizenship entitlements in Delhi. Each page written in this book reflects the generous sharing of knowledge and the magnanimity of my research collaborators in the field. Over more than a decade, my collaborators have taught me about the tenacity, imagination, and vision needed to fight for social justice, especially in their struggles to claim a home and life in the city. I hope that I have done justice in interpreting and translating their life stories herein.

Jennifer Chun, John Harriss, Tom Kemple, and Renisa Mawani have continuously motivated and supported me in writing and revising this book. Tom Kemple has shown unparalleled dedication and has commented on multiple drafts of various portions of this book. John Harriss introduced me to a vast body of Indian scholarship and has always encouraged me to write sharply. I have also learned a great deal from my friends, colleagues, and mentors at the University of British Columbia (UBC; some of whom have already moved on from the university), especially Bonar Buffam, Dawn Currie, Sherrie Dilley, Junrong Du, the late John Friedmann, Gaston Gordillo, Amy Hanser, Abidin Kusno, Nathan Lauster, Rohit Mujumdar, Anand Pandian, Becki Ross, David Ryniker, Leonie Sandercock, Sumayya Syed, Ana Vivaldi, Rafa Wainer, Rima Wilkes, and Sophia Woodman. Whenever I hit rock bottom, Jennifer Chun and Renisa Mawani lifted my spirits. Benita Bunjun, Geraldina Polanco, and Fang Xu have remained steadfast friends and have always inquired after my well-being. In Vancouver over the span of many years, my friends Mandeep Basi, Jayasree Basivireddy, Ajay Bhardwaj, Mary Ann Chacko, Marian Gracias, Neelu Kang, Raksha Karki, Raj Khadka, Mosarrap Khan, Prajna Rao, Naresh Reddy, and Tanvi Sirari have provided formidable companionship in studying, hiking, movie-watching, karaoke singing, and partaking in the simple pleasures of life on an everyday basis. The late Chinmoy Banerjee, Patricia Gruben, and many comrades of the Hari Sharma Foundation and the South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD) have offered me kind words and succor during this long journey.

Gavin Shatkin hosted me at Northeastern University, Boston, when I received an Urban Studies Foundation postdoctoral fellowship. He showed an admirable openness and provided encouragement during our weekly meetings when I rehearsed many of the ideas discussed in this book. Parts of the manuscript were discussed in two different workshops at Northeastern University and Harvard University. I thank Jonathan Anjaria, Doreen Lee, Gavin Shatkin, and Liza Weinstein for their comments regarding revisions for the manuscript in the workshop at Northeastern University. The comments of participants at the Political Anthropology and Political Ecology Working Group workshop at Harvard University—especially those provided by Namita Dharia, Sahana Ghosh, and Ajantha Subramanian—have helped me in revising the Introduction of the manuscript. Additionally, my Boston days would have been lonely without the friendship of Haytham Khalil, Jaspreet Mahal, Pradeep Mahale, Vivek Mishra, Dadasaheb Tandale, Alice Verticelli, and Suraj Yengde. I am indebted to Suraj Yengde for introducing me to the Boston Study Group and to Dadasaheb Tandale for routinely singing to me: "Apna time ayega" (My time shall come!).

A myriad of encounters, experiences, and events have shaped me as a person and as an academic over the years. Vinod Jairath, N. Purendra Prasad, and Aparna Rayaprol taught me the essentials of social sciences in my formative days in Hyderabad. Sasheej Hegde, who introduced me to sociology and has mentored me since then, has remained instrumental in shaping my academic career. Imrana Qadeer introduced me to the topic of displacement of the poor, for which I will remain forever grateful, and, along with Ghanshyam Shah, provided a direction for my research in Delhi. Amid the excitement of visiting monuments, parks, and bazaars as a new migrant in the capital city of India, I was fortunate to work with Mary E. John on a research project entitled Gender and Governance in Two Cities, which exposed me to various contrasting neighborhoods in Delhi. In the spring of 2003, she gave me a photocopy of the paper entitled Are Indian Cities Becoming Bourgeois, at Last? that Partha Chatterjee had presented at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, and in early 2004 she advised me to attend the first Winter Institute of Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action, and Research (PUKAR) in Mumbai. I met a dazzling group of young scholars at the PUKAR Winter Institute and returned with multiple notes and names of scholars to look up and read. Subsequently, I was introduced to an extraordinary array of critical literature by teachers and mentors including Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, Partha Chatterjee, Rosinka Chaudhuri, Keya Dasgupta, the late Anjan Ghosh, Janaki Nair, and Manas Ray.

I had the opportunity to present my work and receive deeply engaging comments at seminars and workshops. I thank the following people for inviting me to attend these events: Naveen Bharathi (Center for the Advanced Study of India Seminar at the University of Pennsylvania), Grace Carswell and Geert de Neve (University of Sussex workshop on documents, cards, and paperwork in South Asia), Ratheesh Kumar and Tanweer Fazal (Thursday Colloquium at the Center for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University), Keisha-Khan Y. Perry and Beshara Doumani (Brown International Advanced Research Institute, or BIARI, workshop on Displacements and the Making of the Modern World), and Gavin Shatkin (School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs Seminar at Northeastern University). I am grateful to the following people for commenting on portions of the final drafts of the manuscript: Partha Chatterjee, Ankur Datta, John Harriss, Sasheej Hegde, Tom Kemple, Llerena Searle, and Claire Snell-Rood. I especially thank Karthik RaoCavale for commenting on the entire manuscript, and to Gary Fields (whom I had merely met at the BIARI workshop) for his kind support in commenting on a major part of the manuscript. I also had the privilege of discussing and receiving comments on my work from many generous scholars including Solomon Benjamin, Kushal Deb, Thomas Faist, John Flint, Shubhra Gururani, Patrick Heller, Ravinder Kaur, Roland Lardinois, Peggy Levitt, Jules Naudet, and Stacy Pigg at different times. A fortuitous meeting with Jinee Lokaneeta, who provided important advice on how to turn a PhD thesis into a book manuscript, has proved salient in finalizing the manuscript.

Many friends have sustained me emotionally and intellectually over the years. I extend my gratitude to Rosemary Abraham, Ramesh Bairy, Anita Barik, Omlata Bhagat, Karthikeyan Damodaran, Swati Das, Suneetha Eluri, Hadeel Fawadleh, Dhivya Janarthanan, Madhura Lohokare, Rekha Konsam, Lulufer Korukmez, Leah Koskimaki, Chris Mary Kurian, Nisha Mathew, Byasa Moharana, Camalita Naicker, Nitesh Narnolia, Swapna Nayani, Madhurima Nundy, Sumati Panikkar, Redento Recio, Sadananda Sahoo, Alpen Sheth, Pradeep Shinde, Gurram Srinivas, Shobha Surin, Vikramaditya Thakur, Amit Upadhyay, and Himanshu Upadhyaya for their affection and encouragement. Rakesh Kalshian, a beautiful soul, always had my back in Delhi. Saravana Raja has shared the camaraderie, humor, and tribulations of academic life on an everyday basis.

Satish Deshpande facilitated my affiliation with the Department of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics during my fieldwork. Ranjana Padhi offered constant insights, encouragement, and affection, and introduced me to many grassroots activists in Delhi. Among them, Birju Nayak was instrumental in helping me decide on my field sites and providing me with an understanding of the local dynamics of different neighborhoods. The activists of Jagori, Jan Chetna Manch, Lok Raj Sangathan, and Delhi Shramik Sangathan and the planners at different state institutions contributed to my knowledge of governance and politics in Delhi. Lalit Batra, Anita Juneja, and Ramendra Kumar offered important perspectives on the issues of displacement and politics in Delhi. Deeba Moin and Abdur Rahoof provided valuable research assistance during my fieldwork. Sanghmitra Acharya’s warmth and generosity is legendary. Without her support, it would have been difficult to establish key connections with various state officials in different institutions during my fieldwork.

My research and writing were made possible by the grants and fellowships I received from the University of British Columbia in Canada, the Paul Foundation Scholarships in India, the Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies in the UK, ZEIT-Stiftung in Germany, the International Development Research Center in Canada, Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation in Canada, and the Urban Studies Foundation in the UK. I am indebted to the selection committees and administrators for showing faith and offering me these grants at various stages of my project. As part of the Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius PhD Scholarship program, I had the unique experience of meeting and traveling with fellow researchers across different parts of the world. This opportunity was invaluable in teaching me about the complexities of migration issues across the globe and in giving me some terrific friends, especially Anna Boucher, Anne Koch, Onur Komurcu, Noora Lori, Muhammad Arafat bin Mohamad, Leonie Newhouse, and Luna Vives. Thank you, Muhammad Arafat bin Mohamad, for your graciousness and investment to see me succeed in life.

Thomas Blom Hansen and Marcela Maxfield immediately took interest in the manuscript when I submitted it to Stanford University Press in August 2020 and shepherded the entire process in the most understated manner. And then after a year, I realized that the book was really happening! In the summer of 2021, Dylan Kyung-Lim White took the reins from Marcela Maxfield and guided the process with the help of Sunna Juhn. Thank you very much to everyone at the press. I have been lucky to receive generous and deeply thorough comments from two anonymous referees. I offer my sincere gratitude to them for helping me to sharpen my arguments in the book. The manuscript has benefited from the copy-editing of Julie Jenkins, Aiden Tait, and Anita Hueftle at various stages of writing.

My brother Diptendu Routray, sister-in-law Mausumee Bal, and cousin sister Snigdha Behera have offered their help as my unofficial research assistants for quite some time. They have transcribed and photocopied field notes, scanned documents, and mailed materials across the globe without ever doubting the importance of my work as I have tried to gain a foothold in academia. My parents, Mahesh Chandra Routray and Sumitra Routray, have often worried about my lack of social mobility despite living in Canada for all these years. They have expressed concerns about the constraints of making it in academia for people from my social background. Nonetheless, of late my mother has vicariously enjoyed my progress and self-indulgence in academia. It has been a long, arduous, exhilarating, and (at times) brutal journey from the early days of my education in Kainthipokhari village school in Jajpur district, Odisha, to my navigation of the world of elite academia. For a major part of this journey and since I met her, Dharashree Das has provided rock-solid support, encouragement, and unconditional love. Sanoh Aranya, our little daughter—a powerhouse—has already taught me a thing or two about resilience and determination. Thank you for teaching me the fundamentals of life and everything!

Some of the ideas discussed in this book have also appeared in my article The Postcolonial City and Its Displaced Poor: Rethinking ‘Political Society’ in Delhi, published in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION

NUMERICAL CITIZENSHIP STRUGGLES IN CONTEMPORARY DELHI

THE URBAN POOR WORK against difficult odds to incrementally stake their claims to a home and a life in the city. Across the globe, rural-urban migrants, refugees, and other communities of poor and marginalized people are exercising political agency¹ in pursuit of entitlements associated with citizenship. Among the poorest residents of Delhi, the recognition of citizenship claims by the Indian state is increasingly contingent on their struggles for visibility and entrenchment in urban living spaces. These citizenship projects are highly contested and take place incrementally over time through the deployment of a remarkable variety of rann-nitis (tactics and counter-tactics). Approximately 76 percent of Delhi’s population lives in unplanned, illegal, and informal settlements (Bhan 2016: 19). Over 1.5 million people have been displaced in the last three decades in the city. Despite these alarming figures, the poor have incrementally advanced their citizenship projects and political claims in the city, gained a foothold, and managed to attain a precarious stability (Weinstein 2014). In this context, The Right to Be Counted² contributes to scholarly and public debates on the contradictions between state governmentality³ and the citizenship projects of the poor themselves. The book explores how the planning process contributes to social suffering, but also the logic of negotiations and the cultural idioms of political mobilization that emanate from the processes of displacement and resettlement in Delhi.

Delhi’s poor remain embedded in various social, political, and economic relationships even as they forge and build kinship networks and develop alliances of solidarity across a political and social spectrum in their struggles to gain a foothold in the city. Their overlapping struggles to build jhuggis (hutments—that is, a group of huts), to obtain access to welfare and to provide for basic needs, but also to stop displacements, gain eligibility for resettlement, and secure proof documents, constitute a distinctive mode of advancing material claims and political belonging in the city. At the core of these struggles lie incremental efforts to become visible to the local state. The Right to Be Counted describes this process of claims-making as the struggle for numerical citizenship, or the struggle to be counted in order for a political community of the poor to assert its numerical strength. Struggles over numerical citizenship constitute the systematic, protracted, and incremental political process by which the poor become entrenched in the city. It is not merely a politics of presence (Bayat 2010: 128), or the assertion of a right to exist, but also a struggle to be visible, to be identified, and to be recognized, and to be made eligible for food, shelter, and basic amenities and infrastructure in the city (see also Anand 2017: 16; Routray 2014: 2299–300).

This book provides a contemporary history of urban citizenship as seen from the vantage point of some of Delhi’s poorest residents. Many of Delhi’s poor transition from being migrants in the city, to residents in unidentified jhuggi jhopri settlements (that is, precarious and improvised hutments), to residents in state-recognized jhuggi jhopri settlements or resettlement neighborhoods.⁴ Once they settle in a state-recognized jhuggi, they come under the purview of state calculative governmentality—state regulations and calculations. Their struggles then shape the degree to which they may gain access to sets of entitlements, especially the provision of housing, rudimentary infrastructure, and basic amenities, which constitute citizenship in Delhi. In analyzing citizenship, the political theorist Niraja Jayal provides a succinct analysis of how the three dimensions of citizenship—citizenship as legal status, citizenship as a bundle of rights and entitlements, and citizenship as a sense of identity and belonging—are imagined and practiced in India (Jayal 2013: 2; see Jayal 2019). In this book, I primarily focus on one aspect of citizenship by examining the complex rann-nitis of the poor in obtaining a range of social rights and entitlements in the city.

In order to compare and contrast the modalities of state calculative governmentality enshrined in the urban restructuring processes and to trace the logics of political mobilization among the urban poor, I have chosen three sites: a jhuggi jhopri settlement (Gautam Nagar jhuggi jhopri settlement), a transit camp (Sitapuri transit camp), and a new resettlement colony (Azad resettlement colony) for ethnographic study. (I use pseudonyms for these neighborhoods throughout the book.) The three neighborhoods are all state-recognized settlements in that the residents all possess documents proving residence. In other words, they are relatively well entrenched in the political landscape of the city compared to the poor in other types of social spaces such as pavements or unrecognized jhuggi jhopri settlements, who are considerably less able to claim housing rights in the city. (The planning and political dynamics of the most vulnerable and excluded populations are briefly discussed in Chapter 2 by way of comparison.) I make my arguments about numerical citizenship based on twenty-five months of ethnographic research—twenty-two months from November 2009 through August 2011 and three months from June through September 2017—in these three neighborhoods.⁵ Throughout the book, I use vignettes from these three field sites to advance the empirical and theoretical arguments I make.

FIGURE INTRO.1: Gautam Nagar jhuggi jhopri neighborhood. A cement road bisects two rows of hutments in the neighborhood.

DOCUMENTING RESIDENCE: GAUTAM NAGAR JHUGGI JHOPRI CAMP

In the early 1970s, a few residents took over an inhospitable patch of land near an industrial area to build jhuggis. They cleared part of a jungle near their workplaces to build shacks made of gunny bags, plastic sheets, straw, bamboo, and other materials. Their numbers grew gradually after more people started building huts, clearing and refilling the land as necessary. The settlement then expanded further into an industrial area, which in turn adjoined several urban villages. Soon, police started intervening by either tearing apart these partly built structures or by demanding payments to leave the residents alone. Self-styled strongmen eventually emerged from the neighborhood to negotiate with the police for protection against demolition in exchange for money. The strongmen even enclosed a portion of the land and distributed land parcels within it for a price while building more jhuggis to rent out or sell to newer residents. In addition to harassment from the police, the residents encountered hostility from people in the already established villages. The strongmen negotiated with these residents, especially regarding issues related to thefts and property damages. Gradually, the settlement gained leverage through its increased numbers, and as residents asserted themselves at key events, including elections, to demand infrastructure and recognition of their neighborhood. Once the residents got into the electoral database of the state, the settlement became enmeshed in vote-bank politics, that is, patron-client politics, wherein the clients vote for particular parties in exchange for recognition and extension of services. Thus, the migrants became jhuggi residents or owners over the years and the unrecognized jhuggi settlement became a state-recognized jhuggi jhopri colony, the Gautam Nagar camp.

When a part of Gautam Nagar was demolished in 2009 for a road-widening project, the residents fought a protracted battle with courts and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD). On August 22, 2017, the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) decided to resettle the residents of Gautam Nagar. Aware that the board could reject their claim to resettlement on the slightest pretext, the residents decided to meet their member of the legislative assembly (MLA) to seek guidance and support in fixing any minor errors in their documents. The MLA, P,⁶ had served as an elected councilor from Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in 2009–2011 (during my first round of fieldwork). In 2017 (during the second round of my fieldwork), he served as an MLA from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Although from a Gujjar community from a nearby village, he spent considerable time socializing with the residents even before he entered politics. The residents claim that he was mentored and encouraged to join politics by one of their local leaders, a pradhan (chief) who was familiar with the political processes and landscape of Delhi. P was immensely popular in the neighborhood, but the residents distanced themselves from him after the demolitions in 2009 because he was not very helpful in their resettlement battles. By 2017, he was not only an MLA from the ruling party in Delhi but also an elected board member of DUSIB. Understandably, the residents recalled their past closeness with the MLA to me with some ambivalence, if not bitterness.

As we walked toward P’s office, the local pradhan reminisced how "he gives us respect, acknowledges our presence, and even shares our bidi [a cigarette filled with tobacco and wrapped in a leaf] if we smoke one. We feel good that he is our own." The MLA’s office sat nestled between a newly built community toilet and a well-maintained park. As we entered his office, he arranged chairs for us to sit while simultaneously watching a professional league kabaddi match broadcast on TV. The office had a makeshift gym, chairs for visitors, a TV, and a pair of millstones for grinding cattle feed. As more people streamed into his office, the pradhan bantered, See, MLA sahib is very fond of building his body. He also raises cattle as a hobby. Look at those millstones; he grinds cattle feed every day. At this moment, the MLA instructed a caretaker to provide cattle-feed and medicines to the cattle in a shed at one corner of the park. The residents were in good spirits thanks to the informal atmosphere, the news of the board’s decision to resettle, and the prospect of rectifying the kami (gaps or errors) in their documents with the help of the MLA. After all, their own P-ji (the suffix ji is uttered as a mark of respect), who had learned politics playing and socializing in the neighborhood, was at the helm of political affairs that directly affected them. He narrated what occurred during the board meeting, answered their questions, and later invited everyone to a meeting to scrutinize the documents regarding their resettlement.

The meeting was called for the following Sunday to address the alarming documentary challenges that beset them. The documents, which are referred to as proof documents by both residents and various state officials, provide knowledge about the numerical presence of the residents from a particular year and are necessary for them to be eligible for resettlement and basic amenities. The intermediaries (neighborhood chiefs, social workers, and government workers who mediate issues with state and various non-state agencies) claimed that perhaps only 40–50 residents might possess error-free documents. Hence, they called for a meeting of all 223 eligible residents listed in the High Court case. In early September, the residents gathered in the park again. A resident asked me to read out the names of the people, their father’s name, their jhuggi number, and their ID numbers, mainly from ration cards or voter IDs. I read out the names and details of the 223 residents listed. Many residents were conspicuously absent and untraceable. I tried contacting a few of the absentees but was unsuccessful. Their old phone numbers did not work and their neighbors had no knowledge about them.

Many residents whose names did not appear in the court case vehemently contested the list. A few of them verbally slandered the intermediaries who made the list for the court. SD exclaimed: "There were many Rajasthani residents [residents who originated from the western state of Rajasthan], but I do not see any of them here. I do not see many from the Kabadda camp [a part of the neighborhood known for recycling of Kabadda, or scrap materials] either. I see the names of many whose jhuggis have not been demolished yet. PB [one of the samaj sevaks, or social workers] must have included their names after taking money. All this happened because the sarkar [government] did not carry out any survey prior to the demolitions. The government people thought they would get away without resettling us. This is sheer injustice." To this accusation a samaj sevak argued: These things happen. I was one of the five petitioners, but my name was deleted from the list because I could not go to the court to sign the petition. Those of you whose names did not appear must not have turned up that day. We will ask MLA sahib to add your name during the survey and verification process. We will request the government officials to verify only one document instead of a slew of documents.

Many documents consisting of photocopies were illegible. The residents had surrendered their old ration cards but were required to produce photocopies of the old ration cards. A few residents produced photocopies that were too light or too dark and at times had portions missing around the edges. Eight years had passed since the neighborhood was demolished, and thus the documents and their photocopies had been subjected to rain, rats, and the ravages of time. The government staff had also made errors. For instance, in one document the staff had written over the misspelled name of a resident but had forgotten to sign and authenticate the document. An eligible resident’s son appeared with his mother’s document displaying her misspelled name. In his claim for authenticity, the son reminded the MLA about the school bag he had received from him as a gift when he joined grade five almost twenty years ago. Other residents debated the sequence of the arrival of residents, the involvement of particular residents in major events, and the details about individual biographies and the life history of the communities. They were concerned that some residents could be excluded from receiving flats if they had any kami in their documents.

FIGURE INTRO.2: Sitapuri transit camp. Residents have built additional floors on the houses to accommodate their increasing family size.

FIGURE INTRO.3: Laxmi colony—a middle-class planned neighborhood as seen from Sitapuri transit camp. A lush green park separates Sitapuri transit camp and Laxmi colony.

RENAMING THE NEIGHBORHOOD: SITAPURI TRANSIT CAMP

In 2010, the residents of the Sitapuri transit camp attempted to reclassify themselves as regular, resettled, and legal. Sitapuri transit camp was developed as a temporary measure to resettle residents from jhuggi settlements on so-called prime land in the mid-1980s. Between 2003 and 2010, the residents had successfully fought court battles against impending displacement after the Resident Welfare Association (RWA) of Lakshmi colony (a middle-class neighborhood) petitioned the court for the demolition of the transit camp. Since 2006, the primary political effort of the residents has been to contest the temporary status of their resettlement. The state enunciation or sanctioning of categories like transit, temporary, illegal, and encroacher not only invested various populations of Sitapuri with contradictory meanings but also determined the legal status of their neighborhood. It then became incumbent on the residents to challenge these categories through renaming and reclassification. The categories of transit and temporary implied their lack of numerical entrenchment in the city. Here, the legality of their neighborhood depended on the number of years they had lived in the neighborhood. In this case, the documentation of their presence in the neighborhood since the 1980s bolstered their claims for permanent resettlement. The residents attempted to rename their locality for one of the former prime ministers of India who ruled during their temporary resettlement. The effort signaled the mutual endorsement of residents and the Congress party. The removal of transit and camp from the neighborhood’s name and its replacement with the former Congress party prime minister’s name and colony (colony is a commonly used term for planned, legal neighborhoods in Delhi) were seen as legitimate efforts toward regularization and permanence.

After negotiations with various politicians and government officials, the residents were successful in renaming their neighborhood. On August 20, 2010, the residents decided to celebrate the occasion by organizing a ceremony for the unveiling of a stone sign, which also coincided with the birthday of the former prime minister. The residents had cleaned up the area and erected a makeshift stage. The floor of the stage was composed of a carpeted wooden plank, and the ceiling was a white cloth that rested on steel poles and was adorned with marigold flowers. Since there was a drizzle, the residents sat in chairs facing the stage with umbrellas in their hands. Revolutionary and nationalistic Hindi film songs extolling the contributions of soldiers and farmers blared from loudspeakers. The residents patiently waited and occasionally asked the intermediaries about the arrival time of their leaders. The councilor arrived at 10:00 a.m. to oversee the arrangements and quickly left in his car. Finally, the member of Parliament (MP), the MLA, and the councilor arrived at 11:30 a.m. and walked toward the stone sign. The unveiling of the stone sign was followed by the felicitation ceremony, during which the politicians were garlanded and extolled in generous terms by key members of the neighborhood. However, a sudden downpour truncated the celebration, and the politicians and residents rushed back to their homes. Despite being cut short, the renaming ceremony contributed to a semblance of regularization in the neighborhood, which in turn created optimism for the poor. After all, the Congress party MP, the MLA, and the councilor were the ones to officially rename and unveil the stone sign bearing the new name. I was asked to take pictures of the event and circulate them to two or three key members of the locality. When I went to meet some residents with printed copies of the pictures, a pradhan noted: The day they [the members of the government] come to demolish again, I will show these pictures to the MLA and ask him why he had to carry out this drama of renaming before. As this remark illustrates, the practice of auto-archiving of the events by collecting and storing pictures, newspaper clippings, and other artifacts steadily propelled the claims of the residents for more visibility and a secure foothold in the city.

FIGURE INTRO.4: Azad resettlement colony. Residents have built precarious additional floors on homes on their tiny plots of land.

DEMANDING SERVICES: AZAD RESETTLEMENT COLONY

The residents of the Azad resettlement colony, who are considered displaced, eligible residents of jhuggi jhopri settlements across the city, have held countless dharnas (peaceful gatherings) in front of the chief minister’s house since they were resettled in 2000, demanding various basic amenities including water, bus services, and garbage disposal. The residents note that the gradual provisioning of various facilities in the neighborhood was made possible only after a protracted period of struggle.

On March 17, 2011, I joined a few residents who had congregated at a halwai shop (an Indian confectionary) in the evening to debate the dismal state of infrastructure in their neighborhood. The halwai shop owner, BC, squatted on the verandah and fried samosas in a deep and circular cooking pot. A portable TV rested on a glass-door fridge that stored soft drinks behind him. The residents watched the proceedings of the Lower House of the Parliament and debated the state of affairs in the country. The halwai shop faced a road that connected the neighborhood to the main square. Street vendors and myriad grocery shops and businesses plied their trade beside the road. The hustle and bustle of the neighborhood was evident as many residents descended from the main square and lanes and by-lanes of the neighborhoods to shop or make their way home. A garbage dump in an enclosed concrete structure stood across a park, which was barely 100 meters from the halwai shop. The residents covered their faces to avoid the putrid smell and flies from entering into their nostrils and mouths while crossing the garbage dump. Dogs and pigs rummaged through the garbage strewn across the park. Young men ferried cycle trollies with plastic containers to sell potable water in the neighborhood.

The halwai shop owner was visibly upset and expressed his anger to other residents. He had returned from the Delhi Development Authority office without being able to meet with officials to speak about the problems that beset the neighborhood. Despite incremental provisioning of services in their neighborhood over the years, the residents were appalled by what they perceived as the treatment of their neighborhood like a stepchild. As resident SS remarked, The water line runs close to our neighborhood, but it supplies water to the distant Sarita Vihar [a middle-class neighborhood]. However, our neighborhood has not received potable water yet.

At dharnas in 2010 and 2011, residents warned that the politicians could lose as many as 36,000 votes, the number of voters in the Azad resettlement colony, if the politicians were to ignore their demands. As the halwai shop owner argued, "We invited the member of the Parliament of the area to the neighborhood to discuss our