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From `Possessory Politics’ to the Politics of Placemaking: The Urbanization of an Agrarian-Urban Frontier and the Differentiated Governance of an Informal Property Market in Delhi

Bose, Debangana
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1563447869643631

Abstract Details

2019, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Geography.
This dissertation offers new insights about a high-profile policy relevant to urban research and planning worldwide: how does a policy applicable to central-city gentrification affect land use and socio-economic inequality among urban poor in the city’s periphery? Specifically, this research examines a process of commodification of land through informal means in Delhi’s periphery prompted by a resettlement policy. Aimed at creating a slum-free `world-class’ city, city-government-planning complexes (CGPC) across India displace slum dwellers from the central and newly emerging investment zones of the city to its periphery. However, most displaced slum dwellers in Delhi’s periphery practice informal land use and sales in planned resettlement colonies, contradicting resettlement program goals that prohibit land ownership, sale and renting. Creation of an informal property market by the slum dwellers through commodification of land has transformed Delhi’s periphery into bustling settlements that attract nearby residents and rural migrants. I identify this transformation as an unrecognized process of frontier urbanization or peripheral urbanization that is driven by slum dwellers as opposed to large real estate agents, as generally perceived. However, the CGPC treats different kinds of informal use of land differently. For example, the CGPC cancels resettlement plots of those who leave the plots empty whereas ignores and mostly endorses unauthorized occupation and construction of canceled and vacant plots as well as informal transactions of plots. Existing literature on urban displacement, urbanization, and slum-free world-class city making critically engages with evictions and displacement lacking attention to the impacts of resettlement on the spaces and people in the city’s frontiers. Shifting the focus from spectacular events of evictions and displacement in the urban core to the gradually urbanizing frontiers, this dissertation sheds light on the experiences after displacement and governance of everyday practices of the displaced slum dwellers in the peripheral resettlement colonies. Based on thirteen months of ethnographic field research in and around Delhi, this dissertation interrogates how the resettlement process transforms Delhi’s periphery and how displaced slum dwellers become entrepreneurial subjects who urbanize the frontiers contributing to the visions of a world-class city. I coined and introduce the concept 'autogenic displacement’, which recognizes that displacement goes beyond a spectacular moment of accumulation by the state in the central and newly emerging investment zones of a city and occurs through `ordinary’ accumulation in the periphery by the less poor displaced slum dwellers. As slum dwellers experience emotional and often spatial displacement after they are forcefully resettled in the city’s periphery, I show how and why their politics change from efforts to claim rights to the city to efforts to use land as a resource to accumulate wealth. Commodification of land through informal land sales by displaced slum dwellers reproduces the regime of accumulation in the central city and constructs a dynamic class-based politics in the periphery. My research identifies types of informal land use as a criterion for redefining citizenship. Delhi’s city-government planning-complex (CGPC) punishes slum dwellers practicing `unproductive’ use of land such as leaving the plots empty by confiscating or cancelling their plots deeming them `improper citizens’, while, however, endorsing `productive’ use that mimics regimes of central city accumulation of land through informal land transactions. This research contributes to the scholarship and debates on redefining urban displacement and accumulation, rights to the city, new frontiers of citizenship formation, and governance over informality.
Nancy Ettlinger (Advisor)
Becky Mansfield (Committee Member)
Max Woodworth (Committee Member)
Madhumita Dutta (Committee Member)
Ursula Rao (Committee Member)
147 p.
Geography
Displacement, Resettlement, Urban, Informal, Land, Periphery, Frontier, Governance, Right to the City, Informal Property, India, Delhi

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Bose, D. (2019). From `Possessory Politics’ to the Politics of Placemaking: The Urbanization of an Agrarian-Urban Frontier and the Differentiated Governance of an Informal Property Market in Delhi [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1563447869643631

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Bose, Debangana. From `Possessory Politics’ to the Politics of Placemaking: The Urbanization of an Agrarian-Urban Frontier and the Differentiated Governance of an Informal Property Market in Delhi . 2019. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1563447869643631.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Bose, Debangana. "From `Possessory Politics’ to the Politics of Placemaking: The Urbanization of an Agrarian-Urban Frontier and the Differentiated Governance of an Informal Property Market in Delhi ." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1563447869643631

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.