City Building and Regime Creation in the Peripheries for Mumbai
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Case Study City Building and Regime Creation in the Peripheries for Mumbai People, Places and Infrastructure: Countering urban violence and promoting justice in Mumbai, Rio, and Durban Lalitha Kamath Radhika Raj Maps: Nisha Kundar Photographs: Author March 25, 2016 Centre for Urban Policy and Governance School of Habitat Studies Tata Institute of Social Sciences This work was carried out with financial support from the UK Government's Department for International Development and the International Development Research Centre, Canada. The opinions expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect those of DFID or IDRC. iv Acknowledgements This work has been a long engagement with several respondents from, but not limited to, Vasai Virar who have helped us decode this complex field. We greatly benefitted from our discussions with social workers, activists, musicians, politicians, researchers, students, party members, academicians, urban planners, architects, government officials and workers. We would like to acknowledge the time they spent sharing their struggles, strategies and insights on the rapidly transforming periphery. We would also like to thank government officials at the Vasai Virar Municipal Corporation for their support through the project. Several people allowed us access to otherwise difficult-to-reach places and deserve special thanks. Sachin Marti gave us our first introduction to the emerging city. Ramanuj Pathak, our project fellow, opened up a whole new world through his music and performances on the urbanising periphery. Mahendra Jadhav, provided us with great support during fieldwork in an uncertain terrain. We are very grateful to them. Over the course of the project, we have had several interns and research officers who have contributed to building this study. Nirali Joshi’s work in the initial few months of the project set the tone for the research and her encouragement and critical comments of an earlier draft have been invaluable. Supriya Sonar supported us on translating complex legal and other material. Nitin Meshram supported us during field work with his enthusiasm and pertinent questions during interviews. Shrilakshmi Iyer greatly contributed to drawing links between players and projects operating in the peripheries that were not apparent on the surface. The case study has been tremendously enriched by the conceptual frameworks, analysis and questions raised by our colleagues at the Centre for Urban Policy and Governance. Amita Bhide, Himanshu Burte and Ratoola Kundu have helped develop this piece of work through their critique and contribution across three years. Nisha Kundar’s maps added the much needed spatial dimension to the case study. Her perspective as an urban designer and architect also contributed to how we understood the social geography of the emerging city. We would also like to thank Smita Waingankar for her continued guidance, Shruthi Parthasarthy for the photographs and Durgesh Solanki for the administrative support. Finally, the Secretariat of the School of Habitat Studies as well as the Finance and v Accounts Division of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences Administrative deserve our thanks for their support throughout the project duration. This case study would not have seen the light of day without the funding and the support of the International Development Research Centre, Canada. We appreciate the organisation’s commitment to a research-driven approach towards impacting policy and bringing about social change in the Global South. vi Table of contents Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. iv Table of contents ................................................................................................................. vii List of Images and Maps ...................................................................................................... ix 1 Opening Up the Periphery: Understanding Urbanisation in the Metropolitan Region 10 1.1 Methodology ..................................................................................................... 13 1.2 Theoretical framework...................................................................................... 14 2 How Regional Plans and Policies shaped the contours of urbanization of Vasai- Virar 21 2.1 Urbanizing VVSR: The convergence of builder and politician interests locally and regionally ......................................................................................................................... 24 2.2 Building a Regime of Informal Sovereignty in Vasai-Virar Based on Land and Violence ........................................................................................................................... 26 2.3 Resistance from the ‘No Urbanization’ Coalition in the Coastal Belt: Campaigns Around Water and the Environment ................................................................................ 28 3 The Move to Legitimate Sovereignty: Inclusive Politics and Ruling by Numbers 34 3.1 The Formation of the Vasai Virar Municipal Corporation: Resistance, Cooptation and Capitulation ............................................................................................ 39 3.2 The Formation of the Vasai Virar Municipal Corporation: Resistance, Cooptation and Capitulation ............................................................................................ 46 4 Controlling Land-use: Calculated Informality, Differentiated Rule and Splintered Geographies........................................................................................................ 52 4.1 Three Cases of Differentiated Rule .................................................................. 55 Makrand Nagar ................................................................................................................ 55 4.2 Santosh Bhuvan ................................................................................................ 61 vii 4.2.1 The Reign of Ramprasad Gupta ................................................. 67 4.2.2 Young Men’s aspirations and organisations............................... 70 4.3 Sai Welfare Society .......................................................................................... 73 4.3.1 Social Capital and Opportunist Urban Relations........................ 75 4.3.2 The Absent State: Middlemen and the Process of Building Citizenship 77 4.3.3 Migrants as City Builders and Public Servants .......................... 80 5 From Agriculture to Real Estate: Imagining Vasai Virar as a ‘World Class’, Cosmopolitan Destination ................................................................................................... 83 6 Concluding Discussion: The State-market Axis, Violence and Spatial (In)justice 90 6.1 Agency and new modes of inclusive-exclusive politics ................................... 97 References ......................................................................................................................... 102 Mapping References .......................................................................................................... 106 viii List of Images and Maps Maps Figure 1: Location of Vasai Virar Municipal Corporation in Mumbai Metropolitan Region ............................................................................................................................................. 12 Figure 2: An Old Map of Vasai Virar showing different contours of the sub region ......... 22 Figure 3: The first development in Vasai Virar took off around the Western Railway stations ............................................................................................................................................. 30 Figure 4: Map 3: Prominent zones in Vasai-Virar according to the Development Plan of 2007 ..................................................................................................................................... 32 Figure 5: Growth of informal sprawl over the years in Vasai and Nalasopara (East) ......... 38 Figure 6: The ‘no urbanisation’ protest march enters Mumbai and blocks several arterial roads: Source Mumbai Mirror ............................................................................................. 41 Figure 7: The villages in the West have a mix of two to three-storey houses and narrow winding lanes. ...................................................................................................................... 45 Figure 8: Makrand Nagar 2005: The image shows subdivided agricultural plots with no informal settlements ............................................................................................................ 56 Figure 9: Makrand Nagar 2015: The image shows a sudden rise in informal settlements across the industrial area. The yellow structure marked is the Patil’s house ...................... 56 Figure 10: Land use in and around informal sprawl ............................................................ 62 Figure 11: Map showing extent of informal sprawl into Green Zone ................................. 64 Figure 12: Above is an image of unoccupied housing slots built on levelled farm land in Santosh Bhuvan by small-time builders. These blocks with rolling shutters are often used as residence by migrants and are a common typology ............................................................ 68 Figure 13: Cover page of BVA’s election booklet shows Hitendra Thakur with all the 'development' projects