MENON Gayatri

LIVING CONDITIONS: CITIZENS, ‘SQUATTERS,’ AND THE POLITICS OF ACCOMMODATION IN MUMBAI A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Gayatri A. Menon May 2009 © 2009 Gayatri A. Menon LIVING CONDITIONS: CITIZENS, ‘SQUATTERS,’ AND THE POLITICS OF ACCOMMODATION IN MUMBAI Gayatri A. Menon, Ph.D. Cornell University 2009 This dissertation provides a historically informed examination of the conditions under which pavement dwellers in contemporary Mumbai are compelled to live in order to survive. Among the most impoverished and politically marginalised populations of Mumbai, pavement dwellers have long been an element of the city’s, and the nation’s, politics of belonging. Their precipitously located dwellings on the city’s pavements, and the frequent evictions that they are subjected to, are indicative of the material and political alienation of pavement dwellers from the body politic. Investigating how these violent conditions of life are produced and legitimised is the task to which this dissertation attends. The investigation is advanced through a relational formulation of the term ‘living conditions,’ a conceptualisation that brings into focus social relations that extend far beyond the sidewalk, in order to apprehend the material and political circumstances under which pavement dwellers are compelled to encroach on the sidewalks of Mumbai in order to live. Through a historicization of the living conditions of pavement dwellers, the ragged encampments that line the streets of Byculla (a locality in Mumbai) are tied to the broader politics of sovereignty in postcolonial India, i.e. the political configuration of land and life, which have rendered pavement dwellers as a population that has run out of place to live. This methodological exegesis of the figure of the pavement dweller utilises the analytical tools of historical sociology and political economy in order to pry open the nation-building project of development and reveal the exclusions through which the space and subject of sovereignty is defined, and the poor become Other. I argue that the suppression of the historical relationships that have produced populations as pavement dwellers has been a crucial element in the construction of the squatting figure of the pavement dweller as the predatory Other against whose encroachments ‘the citizen’ must be secured. Further, in order to understand how the urban poor came to squat on the sidewalks of the city in order to live, I find that it was essential to locate this national theatre of violence and sovereign power within a broader, geopolitical framework. For, it is in the crisis of sovereignty that the newly independent Indian state faced as it struggled with chronic food deficits, and the consequent embrace of agricultural modernization, that the narrative of transforming rural populations into pavement dwellers – alienated from the land - must be located. The argument thus is that the historicised figure of the pavement dweller - and the challenges that the poor face in having their claim for bodily security recognised within the extant social order - provides a critical vantage point from which to trace the particular modernist organization of life and land that is invested in categories of citizenship and sovereignty. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Gayatri A. Menon received her B. A. from Mount Holyoke College in 1992, majoring in Development Studies. She subsequently returned home to India, working first on biodiversity and traditional agriculture in Garhwal with the Research Institute for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in Dehra Dun, before moving to Bombay to work with Swayam Shikshan Prayog. At the latter organisation she worked on issues concerning the livelihoods of the rural poor. During this period she encountered the work of SPARC, and met many of the people who inspired her to write this dissertation. In 1998 Gayatri embarked on her graduate studies at Cornell University’s Department of Development Sociology, receiving her Master’s degree in 2001. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are very many people, without whose support, I would not have been able to complete this dissertation. Foremost among them are the members of my Special Committee. I am particularly grateful for the unwavering support and encouragement I received from the chair of my committee, Philip McMichael, who has borne the vicissitudes of my writing process with astounding good humour. He has been an incredibly tolerant, thoughtful and stimulating reader of the various bits of writing he has managed to coax out of me. He has also provided invaluable lessons in historical sociology, pushing me to see figure when I see ground, and ground when I see figure. Shelley Feldman has been an early and enthusiastic supporter of this project and her theoretical insights on marginality, nation and subjectivity have been critical in shaping the direction of my investigations. Andrew Willford helped expand my understanding of cultural politics and urban India and prompted many a useful foray into contemporary theory. This project first took shape in conversations with David Lelyveld and I am grateful to him for urging me to read contemporary Bombay historically. They have all set inspiring standards of intellectual craftsmanship and mentorship. In Bombay, I was especially fortunate to have been able to work with the alliance of SPARC, Mahila Milan and the National Slum Dwellers’ Federation. I only hope that my dissertation does justice to the fortitude and creativity of the women and men who live on the pavements and slums of Mumbai, who generously and enthusiastically shared with me their experiences and analyses of the struggle to find and make a home for their families in an iv unforgiving and violent urban environment. The reception that I received from them, and the interest that they exhibited to my academic work underscored to me the importance of research that is rooted in the everyday struggles of disenfranchised populations but is not circumscribed by that world, research that can draw on the intellectual resources of academia. I am particularly grateful to the support I received from Sheela Patel. In addition to her, my work with the Alliance would not have been possible without the women of Byculla Mahila Milan, Jockin Arputham of NSDF, and the generosity of the SPARCies - Sundar Burra, Celine D’Cruz, Devika Mahadevan, Aditi Thorat, Aseena Viccajee, and Indu Agrawal. Over the course of my fieldwork they have shared their experiences of fighting to ensure the urban poor’s right to the city, asked provocative questions of me, and provided fried bombil - all of which made my fieldwork an incredibly rich experience. I owe much to my friends and family who have borne with such good cheer the various demands I placed upon them in the course of negotiating the research and writing process. I am especially grateful for the hospitality shown to me by a host of people in Bombay who have provided couches, homes, legal research, and much else besides. The Gupta, Gupta-Advani and Ahmad families, Rajita Bansal, Devika Cariapa and Mrs. Bhatia – thank you! Thanks also to my Bombay peanut gallery - Suranjana, Achal, and Rohini - who have over the years dutifully made their way to Ithaca, if only to confirm their worst suspicions about ‘village life.’ At Cornell, I have been fortunate to have a group of fabulous interlocutors and friends – Anna Zalik, Brent Martin, Chad Futrell, Cindy Caron, Djahane Salehabadi, Emelie Peine, Kelly Dietz, v Mindi Schneider, R. E. Szego, and Tyrell Haberkorn - who have provided the best of times and buoyed me up at the worst of times. Tracy Aagaard has helped me navigate the ins and outs of academic bureaucracy with great patience. Aliya and Hasan Latif, Mark Hauser, Alexandra de Montrichard and Shibani Mookerjee provided much needed escapes to the worlds outside Warren Hall. I wish to acknowledge, with gratitude, the various institutions that provided financial support to this project. Fieldwork was supported by a Junior Research Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies and a grant from the Taraknath Das Foundation. Preliminary fieldwork was made possible through a travel grant from Cornell University’s Einaudi Center for International Studies. Dissertation write-up was supported by grants from the Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies and Cornell University’s Polson Institute for Global Development. Thanks also to Nij Tontisirin, graduate student assistant at Cornell’s Map Collection at Olin Library for help with the map provided in Figure 1-1. Lastly, many thanks to my peripatetic family, who have played no small part in provoking this project and making it possible. Twenty-eight houses, eight cities, two continents and thirteen schools later I was left in no doubt that home, and the ability to feel at home, was a matter of social relations rather than bricks and mortar. My father did not live to see this dissertation completed but his many scathing and witty insights into Indian politics and into the politics of the Green Revolution in particular, have made their way into this project. In the last few months of writing-up Hari fielded several, vi slightly unhinged, phone calls from me with great forbearance. All I know about ‘homeplace,’ bell hooks notwithstanding, I learned from my mother, Ambika. And to Kalyani, to whom I owe so much, but especially for inspiration, detective fiction,

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