Eviction and Resettlemnet

An analysis of slum clearance drives and resettlement process

Abstract

The questions of urban space and place have always been a focal point for various contentious issues and especially so in the millennial era. With the process of rapid urbanisation in India, metropolitan cities like Delhi and Mumbai are increasingly heading towards the image of a world-class city with high-tech facilities and infrastructure along with the aspirations of becoming an attractive destination for foreign investors. In the construction of this image, there is no space even to acknowledge the existence of the urban poor who constitute the other reality of cities, that is, the slums and the jhuggi-jhopdi clusters. Forces of urbanisation and the absence of adequate urban planning lead to the steady encroachment of public land by the urban poverty stricken people who do not have access to affordable housing facilities due to their extremely low income, thus giving rise to slums and clusters formed in often unhygienic places with hardly any infrastructure or facility.