Plans, habitation and slum redevelopment

Abstract

This article describes the process by which governmental technologies such as mapping and enumeration constitute new types of community by looking at housing practices in a slum, Dharavi, in Mumbai. The article is divided into three sections. In the first section present a review of the slum development policies, focusing specifically on the shifting relations between the government and the slum population. It is through this interface that the first attempts at forming collective identities take place in Dharavi. I discuss this in the second section, with special reference to a people's organisation (PROUD) and its constitution of a public voice. The third section returns to the theme of governmental policy from the perspective of politics and I show the relation between different kinds of community through which citizenship may be understood in the volatile aftermath of the riots in Dharavi in 1992–93.