Sanitation in Mumbai's Informal Settlements: State, ‘Slum’, and Infrastructure
Top Cited Papers
- 1 January 2008
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space
- Vol. 40 (1), 88-107
- https://doi.org/10.1068/a39221
Abstract
This paper examines an ongoing intervention in sanitation in informal settlements in Mumbai, India. The Slum Sanitation Programme (SSP) is premised upon ‘partnership’, ‘participation’, and ‘cost recovery’ in the delivery of large toilet blocks as a practical solution to the stark lack and inadequacy of sanitation, and offers an opportunity to interrogate a growing consensus on sanitation provision among mainstream development agencies. In the paper, I argue for a more flexible approach to policy infrastructure, technical infrastructure, and cost recovery in urban sanitation interventions. I also consider whether the SSP, as the largest city project of its nature in Indian history, marks a shift in the relationship between the state and the ‘slum’ in Mumbai. I suggest that, despite constituting a change from ad hoc sanitation provision to a more sustained and universal policy, informal settlements in the SSP remain populations outside the sphere of citizenship and notions of the clean, ordered modern city.Keywords
This publication has 15 references indexed in Scilit:
- Slum as theory: the South/Asian city and globalizationInternational Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2006
- Planet of SlumsNew Perspectives Quarterly, 2006
- Sounds of Freedom: Music, Taxis, and Racial Imagination in Urban South AfricaPublic Culture, 2006
- THE RE‐SCALING OF UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT IN GHANA AND INDIATijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie, 2004
- Geographical Imaginations and Spaces of Political Engagement: Examples from the Indian AllianceAntipode, 2004
- Our needs, our priorities; women and men from the slums in Mumbai and Pune talk about their needs for water and sanitationEnvironment and Urbanization, 2003
- Community-designed, built and managed toilet blocks in Indian citiesEnvironment and Urbanization, 2003
- Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing: Notes on Millennial MumbaiPublic Culture, 2000
- Participatory development and empowerment: The dangers of localismThird World Quarterly, 2000
- Cities, sewers and poverty: India's politics of sanitationEnvironment and Urbanization, 1999