The Durable Slum: Dharavi and the Right to Stay Put in Globalizing Mumbai

236 Pages·2014·1.93 MB·English

by  Liza Weinstein

The Durable Slum
Globalization and Community
Susan E. Clarke, Series Editor
Dennis R. Judd, Founding Editor
23 The Durable Slum: Dharavi and the Right to Stay Put in
Globalizing Mumbai
Liza Weinstein
22 The Fragmented Politics of Urban Preservation: Beijing, Chicago,
and Paris
Yue Zhang
21 Turkish Berlin: Integration Policy and Urban Space
Annika Marlen Hinze
20 Struggling Giants: City-R egion Governance in London, New York,
Paris, and Tokyo
Paul Kantor, Christian Lefèvre, Asato Saito, H. V. Savitch, and
Andy Thornley
19 Does Local Government Matter? How Urban Policies Shape
Civic Engagement
Elaine B. Sharp
18 Justice and the American Metropolis
Clarissa Rile Hayward and Todd Swanstrom, Editors
17 Mobile Urbanism: Cities and Policymaking in the Global Age
Eugene McCann and Kevin Ward, Editors
16 Seeking Spatial Justice
Edward W. Soja
15 Shanghai Rising: State Power and Local Transformations in a
Global Megacity
Xiangming Chen, Editor
14 A World of Gangs: Armed Young Men and Gangsta Culture
John M. Hagedorn
13 El Paso: Local Frontiers at a Global Crossroads
Victor M. Ortíz-G onzález
(continued on page 217)
The Durable Slum
Dharavi anD the right to Stay Put
in globalizing MuMbai
Liza Weinstein
Globalization and Community, Volume 23
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Portions of this book were previously published in Liza Weinstein and Xuefei
Ren, “The Changing Right to the City: Urban Renewal and Housing Rights in
Globalizing Shanghai and Mumbai,” City and Community, Symposium on India
and China 8 (2009): 407–3 2; copyright 2009 John Wiley and Sons; and in Liza
Weinstein, “Mumbai’s Development Mafias: Organized Crime, Land Develop-
ment, and Globalization,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
32 (2008): 22– 39; copyright 2008 John Wiley and Sons. Portions of chapter 4
were published in Liza Weinstein, “‘One-M an Handled’: Fragmented Power and
Political Entrepreneurship in Globalizing Mumbai,” International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research, special issue on the Contested Indian City (forth-
coming); copyright 2014 John Wiley and Sons. Portions of chapter 5 were pub-
lished in LizaWeinstein, “Democracy in the Globalizing Indian City: Engagements
of Political Society and the State in Globalizing Mumbai,” Politics and Society 37
(2009): 397–4 27; copyright 2009 SAGE Publications, Ltd./SAGE Publications,
Inc.; all rights reserved.
Copyright 2014 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechan-
ical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission
of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401–2 520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weinstein, Liza.
The durable slum : Dharavi and the right to stay put in globalizing
Mumbai / Liza Weinstein. (Globalization and community ; volume 23) Includes
bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-8309-3 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-8166-8310-9 (pb)
1. Dharavi (Mumbai, India)—Social conditions. 2. Dharavi (Mumbai, India)—
Economic conditions. 3. Slums—India—Mumbai. I. Title.
HN690.D454W45 2014
307.3'3640954792—dc23
2014001741
Printed in the United States of America on acid-f ree paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-o pportunity educator and employer.
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my mother
This page intentionally left blank
ConTenTS
Preface ix
Abbreviations xv
Introduction 1
1 Becoming Asia’s Largest Slum 25
2 State Interventions and Fragmented Sovereignties 55
3 From Labor to Land: An Emerging Political Economy 85
4 Political Entrepreneurship and Enduring Fragmentations 115
5 The Right to Stay Put 141
Conclusion: Precarious Stability 167
Acknowledgments 177
Notes 181
Bibliography 195
Index 211
This page intentionally left blank
PrefaCe
I came to Mumbai expecting to document a great transformation, but
I ended up writing about the contentious politics of stability.1 When I
began conducting the research that became this book, almost a decade
ago, I was basically convinced of the overwhelming power of global
capital— and the neoliberal policies that direct it— to destroy communi-
ties and oversee mass displacements. With markets having largely recov-
ered from the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, global investors
were clamoring for the next big opportunity and looking for the newest
emerging markets. The Indian government seemed eager to give them a
map. In early 2005, as I was preparing for fieldwork in Mumbai, India
was further relaxing its restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI) in
property development. Two of the slowest sectors of the Indian economy
to liberalize, the real estate and construction industries, were tenuously
opened first to nonresident Indians (NRIs) and persons of Indian ori-
gin (PIOs) before they were thrown open to global developers and real
estate investors at large. Residuals of a nationalist spirit of self- rule, or
swadeshi, the globalization of property and land— literally, of Indian
soil— seemed, for many, to veer too closely back to colonialism. But
the nationalist dams could hold back what was certain to be a flood of
global capital for only so long: in March 2005 India’s Ministry of Com-
merce and Industry took steps to allow non- NRI foreign investors access
to India’s increasingly lucrative real estate markets, particularly in the
country’s newly created Special Economic Zones. Maharashtra’s govern-
ment—ruled by an outwardly looking Congress- led coalition bent on
(in their words) “transforming Mumbai into Shanghai”—was eager to
capture its share of the spoils.2
ix