The making of a peripheral town in Delhi Metropolis through the displacement of Basti dwellers

Abstract

This paper reflects upon the aftermath of the eviction of working-class communities from the core locations of Delhi to Narela, over 42 kilometres from Delhi’s centre. The evictees were previously residing in ‘informal settlements’, which are colloquially known as bastis or labelled as ‘slums’ in policy documents. Drawing on interviews and focused group discussions, the paper examines the impact of displacement as experienced by the basti residents. I highlight the struggles that residents faced while making ‘home’ in their new area. Familiarity, repetition, networks, and safety are the few aspects I engage with to explain the process of placemaking in the city. I argue that displacement should be understood beyond the idea of physical dislocation. It should be seen through the lens of ‘place’ and how a place is constructed over a period of time against the larger spatial order that is produced in the cities. The paper contributes to academic understanding of the varying experiences of displacement within the affected communities and the contestations which produce spaces on the margins of cities in the Global South.

Keywords:

• Basti
• displacement
• Delhi
• resettlement
• place

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Prof. Paul Watts and Prof. Alan Morris, who have given their valuable comments at every stage of revision and had patiently helped in improving the presentation and structure of the paper. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and editors of CITY for seeing potential in my work and communicating patiently throughout the process of review.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence “occurs gradually and out of sight, [it is] a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all” (Nixon 2011, 2).

2 Pockets of settlement are recognised by the local authority as slum, which is often termed notified slum; they are eligible for availing municipal services. Bhan and Shivanand (2013) writes “These areas—often called ‘notified slums’—have a quasi-legal recognition and protection though being declared as slums under the Slum Areas Act 1956 that protects their property rights to an extent”.

3 Places such as Laxmi Nagar, Safdarjung, ITO, Nehru Stadium, Rajinder Nagar, Minto Road, and AIIMS had also seen large-scale basti demolitions.

4 Colloquially used term of ‘receipt’ or ‘slip’, which was given to evicted residents who were eligible for resettlement, in exchange of ₹7,000.

5 As per an FGD, arranged in January 2018, with a few old men of Pocket 13 who have been a part of the legal fights against the eviction and an interview with the ex-official of the Delhi Urban Improvement and Shelter Improvement Board (DUISIB).

6 Plots were provided to the resettlers with no rights of sale and purchase. However, the sale and purchase of plots were ongoing and contributed to generation of “illegality”. See Bose (2016).

7 In the pockets of resettlement colonies that were visited, the concept of pradhan was redundant/irrelevant. Pradhans or community representatives were active leaders in the bastis or JJ clusters. They usually took the responsibility of representing the community’s needs to political leaders or bureaucrats. A pradhan played a major role in getting access to services of water, electricity, fuel, and others. After resettlement, since the communities from different bastis were intermixed, choosing a representative seemed a futile task.

8 And so we have a situation wherein women are expected to be highly flexible, mobile workers at the factories, but rooted and ‘respectable’ housewives in the home. These two conflicting positions—what Cowan (2021) calls ‘rooted flexibility’—then set the terms for how many women navigate life and work in the city.

9 In an FGD with the local residents, the resettled basti dwellers were referred to as “jhuggi wale”, and references were made to their everyday practices such as drinking, women going to work, eating non-vegetarian food, and non-sanitary habits of living.

10 Through the process of land acquisition under “Planned Development of Narela”, the local residents were given low rates to which they had also filed an objection, but it was declined.

11 They interestingly were also enlisted as a criminal tribe by the British because they did not cooperate with the British during colonial rule.

12 I was doing fieldwork when the incident took place and hence, I was able to get a firsthand account of the story. See https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/woman-beaten-up-by-locals-in-narela/article21293128.ece for a detailed media report.

13 A community building/space dedicated for social occasions such as marriage. People who come from the groom’s side (hosted by bride’s side) stay in that Baarat Ghar overnight. In bastis, such community spaces were important because they enabled such social reproductive activities in a dignified way after resettlement.

14 The residents did not have access to gas connection, many of them used stoves, and the oil had to be bought from areas far away. A few families had their relatives bring them food, drinking water, stove, fuel, and groceries for cooking (information from interviews with resettlement residents).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tanya Chaudhary

Tanya Chaudhary, Assistant Professor, School of Global Affairs (Urban Studies), Ambedkar University Delhi. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]