Author: cprindia

NEW BOOK BY SRINATH RAGHAVAN
SOUTH ASIA SECURITY

Srinath Raghavan’s new book India’s War: The Making of Modern South Asia, 1939-1945 will be launched on 29 April, 2016. In the run-up, read the interview (below) with Raghavan about his book, which has been replicated from The Hindu:

The book is called India’s war. Yet, not one Indian was consulted before Viceroy Linlithgow’s decision to enlist the Indian Army.
Even if India was an unwilling participant in the conflict, the conflict had huge implications for India. So, even if we were dragged into it kicking and screaming, those years turned out to be foundational for India in the Independence movement.

But still not India’s war. The Army was treated like bonded labourers, bundled off to fight without any say…
That’s not entirely the case. The Congress certainly opposed India’s participation because it wasn’t consulted, but others saw it as an opportunity. You had people like Ambedkar, who realised that for the Dalits, this was an opportunity for social mobility, to have their voices out. You also had Savarkar who said that this was a great opportunity for the Hindu community to get into the Army, which was dominated by the Sikhs and the Muslims.

Are you saying it was the war that gave these leaders and their ideologies their original prominence?
I think many of the ideological fault lines that we associate with 1947, in some sense, came to the fore during the war years, and that’s why we need to study them more closely. Because of what happens in the period 1935-1939 — you have the first elections under the Government of India Act, and Congress ministries are formed. It seemed as if the Congress was the most dominant force, and only Congress versus the British Raj played out. But then you had the war; the Congress was sidelined, and that cracked open the scenario for others who wanted their voices heard. So you had Jinnah coming into prominence with his demand, you had Ambedkar, you had Savarkar, and a number of others.

If you look at the books about India’s participation in World War II, especially Northeast India and the Malacca frontlines, they are titled the ‘forgotten war’ or the ‘forgotten Army’. Why is it important that they are not forgotten?
If you look at much of the way our history is taught, and the way the public imagines the 1940s, it is basically about the Congress party resigning, the Cripps Mission failing, and then you talk about post-war developments leading up to Independence. So the 1940s are remembered for this march to Independence and Partition that came as a cost of it. The war never really comes into focus. What I wanted to do was say, if you put the war in the front and at the centre and study its impact, then much of the 1940s becomes much clearer and explains why we ended up with what happened on August 15, 1947. Without the war, it is unlikely that the Muslim League would have gained prominence vis-a-vis the Congress in order to push through their demand for a separate country.

You don’t often refer to yourself in your books, but here you speak of your own regiment and how it fought. Do you think there is a bigger need to acknowledge this part of World War II as India’s war, for the Army’s sake?
To begin with, it is important from a military history point of view. This period marked the biggest expansion the Indian Army saw. For a generation of people, now forgotten, the war was foundational for their lives. They travelled abroad for the first time, served in very difficult conditions. I don’t think I would have even got into the subject but for my own military background; I may not have written it but for the fact that I served in the Rajputana Rifles regiment that features prominently in the book. When you have two and a half million Indians in uniform and many more millions recruited for war-related activity, how can we just forget that story? The Indian Army has got caught in the middle of this. If you are a ‘nationalist’, you will see the Army as an instrument of British control; a force of collaborators. But most of the Army was deeply nationalist. Others want to portray the anti-British movement as a subaltern revolution led by the peasantry, yet what was the Indian Army if not made up of the peasants and poorer classes? So, why ignore this side? Finally, let’s remember that along with Partition, the Indian Army was partitioned as well. Companies that fought together in those wars were subsequently made to fight each other, beginning with the first Kashmir war. As a result, World War II dropped out of the picture. Because now both the Indian and Pakistani armies wanted to play up the stories of their valour against each other, to suit their independent national interests, and not some war that was a collaborative effort. One of the things I mention in the book is that there is a 25-volume official history of the war, and it had to be compiled by a combined inter-services effort from both India and Pakistan, right? But acknowledging this joint history has become very difficult, and very inconvenient, to both countries.

In his memoirs, President Pranab Mukherjee writes that he was against attending commemorations for World War II because it was an insult to the Independence movement, and particularly to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, whose Indian National Army fought against British forces.
I very strongly disagree with that view. Netaji and the INA’s effort were quite important, no doubt. I do bring out in the book that the INA’s importance was not really about military contribution, but political impact. It had about 25,000 soldiers, prisoners of war captured by the Japanese, who went over to form Netaji’s Army. The Indian Army was about a hundred times larger, 2.5 million Indians. So why should we only valorise 25,000 people and try to say that recognising the others is somehow a denigration of national history? That’s the lens I am trying to move beyond. Just because some people were in the Army doesn’t mean they wanted British rule. Many fought simply because it was a job; others needed access to food.

There’s an interesting point in the book when Chiang Kai-shek comes to meet the Indian leadership and asks them to support the war because the soldiers won’t be able to fight if they feel they do not have the country’s backing. Why was that significant?
One of the other forgotten parts of our history is that one of the biggest alliances was that of the Indian and Chinese armies during the war. Once the Japanese captured Burma, the land routes were cut off, much of the Indian Army’s mandate was to enable the nationalist Chinese Army to be supplied to fight. Much of the aerodrome-building across Northeast India was to supply the nationalist Chinese. Given the turn we took later, we must realise there is a pre-history too. India and China both emerged from the crucible of World War II. The idea that Asian nations which have come out of colonialism will have a shared future goes back to then. Of course, things didn’t work out that way, and we tend to forget this.

Most wars end the empire of the defeated side. Would you say that World War II was unique because it ended the empire of the winning side, the British?
I think it was clear even at the time that World War II would change the world forever… I think the key point is that the British lost the empire not just because they were weakened by the war, but because they lost the Indian Army’s support by the end of it, which was their instrument of control. That’s what the impact of the INA mutiny was, to show that the British could raise this massive Army, but that it could turn on them too. People like Churchill had even questioned the expansion of the Indian Army and said: “Someday it is going to shoot us in the back”.

You are now seen as a master of the archives through each of your books. What was the biggest challenge during your research for India’s war?
To be honest, I began this book thinking I could do most of my research in India itself. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. I found that the National Archives don’t even have a clear record of the war period. They don’t even have a catalogue for the military department during the war, so a lot of the military details came from the British Library and other archives. But what I feel most satisfied about was my effort to discover the voice of the Indian soldier.

 

Read book reviews, which have appeared thus far:
Independent
The Washington Times
The Diplomat
The Spectator
Open Magazine
Financial Times
The Asian Age
The Wire
The Economist
Open Magazine
Live Mint
Mail Today
The New Indian Express
Wall Street Journal

Additionally, read book excerpts in Scroll and Outlook. 

Outlook also profiled him.

NEW EDITED VOLUME BY SHIBANI GHOSH
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

For more than three decades now, the Indian courts have delivered far-reaching judgments on a range of significant environmental matters. In their effort to adjudicate complex disputes with serious environmental repercussions, involving the interplay of multiple social, economic and political factors, the courts have developed a framework of environmental rights and legal principles, which now forms an integral part of Indian environmental jurisprudence. The judiciary invokes this framework creatively to identify constitutional, statutory and common law obligations of public and private actors to protect the environment, and to enforce the performance of related duties. There is, however, limited in-depth study of these crucial rights and principles in existing legal literature.

Indian Environmental Law: Key Concepts and Principles fills this gap through its critical analysis of the evolution of this environmental legal framework in India. It studies the origins of environmental rights, substantive and procedural, and the four most significant legal principles— principle of sustainable development, polluter pays principle, precautionary principle and the public trust doctrine—and elaborates how Indian courts have defined, interpreted and applied them across a range of contexts.

As environmental litigation and legal adjudication struggle to respond to worsening environmental quality in the country, conceptual clarity about the content, application and limitations of environmental rights and legal principles is crucial for the improvement of environmental governance. With chapters written by Saptarishi Bandopadhyay, Lovleen Bhullar, Shibani Ghosh, Dhvani Mehta and Lavanya Rajamani, this book explores the judicial reasoning and underlying assumptions in landmark judgments of the Supreme Court, the High Courts and the National Green Tribunal, and aims to provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the framework of rights and principles.

Indian Environmental Law: Key Concepts and Principles has been reviewed by The Hindu and Down to Earth. To learn more about this book, read the chapter descriptions below.
Chapter 1: The Judiciary and the Right to Environment in India: Past, Present and Future

By Lovleen Bhullar

Bhullar discusses the evolution of the right to environment as a substantive right in Indian environmental law. Drawing from judgments of different fora, she identifies the linkages made by the Indian judiciary between environmental protection and the Constitution, specifically Articles 21, 47, 48A and 51A(g). She finds the courts to have adopted a predominantly anthropocentric approach to environmental protection, with occasional recognition of the right of the environment. While the path of evolution of the right to environment, and its realization, has been problematic, Bhullar argues that the inherent imprecision of the right, while unfortunate in some cases, allows courts the flexibility to adapt their directions to a given fact situation, often in the interest of the environment.

Chapter 2: Procedural Environmental Rights in Indian Law

By Shibani Ghosh

Ghosh examines three procedural environmental rights – the right to information, the right to public participation, and the right to access to justice – in detail, and identifies loopholes and limitations in the adjudication of each right. In particular, the chapter refers to relevant provisions of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986, the EIA Notification 2006, the Right to Information Act 2005, the Forest Rights Act 2006, and the National Green Tribunal Act 2010. Ghosh concludes that despite statutory expression of procedural environmental rights, there is no room for complacency as these three rights are routinely curtailed and denied.

Chapter 3: Sustainable Development and Indian Environmental Jurisprudence

By Saptarishi Bandhopadhyay

Bandhopadhyay critically analyses the principle of sustainable development, as interpreted and applied by the Indian judiciary. The chapter provides a succinct description of the historical evolution of the principle internationally. It analyses the Vellore judgement to distill the Indian Supreme Court’s definition of the principle, and examines the Narmada judgement to reveal how the Supreme Court has ‘instrumentally harnessed the vagueness inherent in sustainable development’. Bandopadhyay concludes that while the interpretive flexibility of the principle diminishes the extent to which litigants and lawyers can expect the Court to justify its determinations, this flexibility is not necessarily undesirable, as it leaves the field of legal argumentation and political struggle relatively open.

Chapter 4: The Polluter Pays Principle: Scope and Limits of Judicial Decisions

By Lovleen Bhullar

Bhullar discusses the origin of the polluter pays principle in Indian judicial decisions, and poses five questions to understand how the Indian courts have operationalised it – who is the polluter; how and when is the application of the principle triggered; how is the loss assessed and compensation determined; what does the polluter pay; and finally, what are the limits of the principle. She concludes that while the flexible way in which the Indian judiciary has operationalised the principle has allowed different aspects of the principle to be fleshed out in each case, it has also led to courts speaking in contradictory voices.

Chapter 5: The Precautionary Principle

By Lavanya Rajamani

Rajamani explores the conceptual underpinnings of the precautionary principle, tracing its definition, interpretation and legal status in international law, before turning to Indian law. She argues that the application of the principle in the Vellore judgement is at odds with the Supreme Court’s own definition of the principle. The chapter discusses this lack of clarity in the Court’s engagement with the principle, and the blurring of lines between two distinct legal principles – precaution and prevention. Rajamani concludes that the invocation of the indigenous version of the precautionary principle may be instrumentally useful in arriving at environmentally favourable judicial outcomes, but it does not bode well for the development of a clear line of jurisprudence.

Chapter 6: Public Trust Doctrine in Indian Environmental Law

By Shibani Ghosh

Ghosh traces the growth and application of the public trust doctrine, and explains why it is difficult to identify how the doctrine could lend predictability to decision-making regarding public trust properties. She explains the contours of the doctrine as inferred from Indian judicial pronouncements – the source of the doctrine, properties that are held in public trust, and principles that are applied by courts while implementing the doctrine. Rather than insisting on its redundancy, she argues that it is desirable to make the doctrine more relevant, and proposes ways in which it may afford greater protection to natural resources held in trust.

Chapter 7: The Judicial Implementation of Environmental Law in India

By Dhvani Mehta

Mehta provides an overview of the compliance and enforcement mechanisms available to environmental regulatory authorities in India, and then, with references to case law (many of which rely on the four legal principles in this book), illustrates the implementation mechanisms developed by the Indian courts. She concludes that judicial implementation mechanisms have had mixed success. Apart from external factors, there are certain internal weaknesses that impact the implementation process: courts have been inconsistent while deploying implementation mechanisms, their orders require more robust legal reasoning and they need to integrate better with the existing regulatory framework.

FULL VIDEO OF LECTURE
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS ECONOMY

Watch the full video (above) of the talk by Jahangir Aziz, where he analyses the changes in global economy precipitated by the post-2008 recovery and their effect on emerging markets.

With a focus on the prospects of growth for the Indian economy, Aziz discusses the ‘new characteristics’ assumed by the recovering global trade in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Jahangir Aziz is the Head of EM Asia Economic Research at J.P. Morgan.

FULL VIDEO OF THE LECTURE
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

Watch the full video (above) of the lecture by Prof. Sunil Amrith where he shows how multiple Indian diasporas have been a cultural, economic, and political force in the making of the modern world. Over the last 200 years, tens of millions of people have left India’s shores to make their living on every continent. Until recently, their experiences have been missing from the accounts of both Indian history and global history.

Prof. Amrith is the Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies at Harvard University. His research focuses on trans-regional movement of people, ideas, and institutions. He was awarded the Infosys Prize, 2016, in Humanities.

FULL VIDEO OF TALK
URBAN SERVICES

Watch the full video (above) of the talk by Amita Baviskar on the role of processed foods in the cultural imagination of Indians across regions, classes, and the rural-urban continuum.

Baviskar argues that the consumption practices industrial foods engender are productive sites for imagining citizenship cutting across social hierarchies, creating new identities, and diluting stigmatised ones.

Amita Baviskar is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi.

MANJU MENON AND KANCHI KOHLI COMMENT ON THE ENVIRONMENT MINISTRY’S NEW NOTIFICATION
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Violating units to be put through a simplified EC process, no public hearings, and EIAs (Environmental Impact Assessment) only to determine conditions of clearance.

This piece can also be accessed in: हिंदी | ગુજરાતી | ಕನ್ನಡ | ନୀୟ

On March 14, 2017, the Environment Ministry issued a notification providing a chance to all projects operating without Environmental Clearances (EC) to apply for ECs. Basically, the government has offered a scheme to turn illegal projects into legal units just as tax defaulters are offered a one-time reprieve. However, this notification will have any effect only if violators take up this offer.

Last year in May, the Ministry had issued a draft notification, which proposed that projects/activities that have violated the EIA notification be allowed to continue their activities by agreeing to an Environment Supplemental Plan (ESP). After having received criticism for this draft (see submission by CPR-Namati EJ program, policy brief by Shibani Ghosh of CPR, and Ritwick Dutta’s article in the Deccan Herald), the Ministry has now issued a revised final notification. In this version, the government has put in place a process by which the Expert Appraisal Committee at the Central level will determine the conditions for their continued operations. The Ministry has so far not put out any list of violating projects that could apply under this scheme.

Projects that could benefit from this scheme that invites them to apply for EC within six months may have grabbed land illegally, by coercion or deceit, set up their units and operated without any environmental regulations or social safeguards in place. Past cases and studies on illegal operations by projects have shown that those who flout environmental norms are the ones with deep pockets and close ties to those in power. The lack of effective monitoring by regulatory agencies such as the Pollution Control Boards and the regional offices of the Environment Ministry has caused these violations to take place with impunity. Project violations continue unchecked for years, and despite complaints from neighbourhoods, panchayats and local authorities.

The CPR-Namati EJ Program sought information regarding the process and materials that were being considered by the Ministry to finalise this notification. An RTI application was filed on 31.10.2016 with the Ministry’s Public Information Officer (PIO) seeking details of the discussions, revision and finalisation of draft notification S.O. 1705(E), dated 10.05.2016, regarding the use of Environmental Supplemental Plan. However, the Ministry ignored the application and no information was provided. The first appeal was filed on 16.01.2017. This appeal, too, was completely disregarded. Now the Ministry has gone ahead and issued the new notification S.O. 804(E) on 14.03.2017. Yet again, the Ministry is in violation of the judgement of the Central Information Commission in CIC/SA/A/2016/000209, ordering the Ministry to provide information regarding the process of finalisation of policies in the interest of the public. This notification, which deals with the important issue of non-compliance by projects and what actions are to be taken in this regard, is of significant relevance to the lives of many people suffering the impacts of these illegal projects, and affects the environment as well. By denying access to information regarding the process by which this notification was finalised, the government has denied citizens and experts the opportunity to participate in such decision-making.

Thus, this notification shows the government’s support for industrial and corporate corruption and illegality despite all the talk about rooting out corruption.

Main issues with the Notification:

Besides the issue of regularising projects that have violated laws and that operate without environmental safeguards, the process of regularisation laid out in the notification shows how governments favour these projects. The process shields them from public consultation procedures and denies a hearing to those who have suffered public harms on account of these violating units.

Notification: The cases of violating units will be brought to the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) at the central level (irrespective of whether the project is Category A or B). The EAC will check if the project violates any legal siting norms (like forest areas and CRZ – Coastal Regulation Zone) or if the expansion can run sustainably with compliance of environmental conditions and safeguards. If the EAC finds these two aspects to be negative, then they can recommend closure.
Comment: This principle goes against the rule of law because violating units are given a chance for a back door entry. At this stage the EAC does not have enough information about the project expansion to decide whether it can run sustainably or if the siting is without ecological and social impacts as it has no studies or information related to impacts to go by. Such information will only be provided after the decision on the project is taken by the EAC. Also, it is highly unlikely that projects that are up and running will be closed down under this process. In fact, it is because the government does not want to close illegal projects that this scheme is being provided.

Notification: If the EAC decides that the project can be allowed to continue, then the project needs to undertake an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) based on a Terms of Reference and Environment Management Plan (EMP), and conduct an assessment of ecological damage; prepare a remediation plan; and a natural and community resource augumentation plan as an independent chapter of the EIA report. This is to be done by a National Accreditation Board for Education and Training (NABET)–Quality Council of India (QCI) certified consultant and a lab authorized by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
Comment: As per the process set up in the Notification, this EIA and EMP related steps will not have any influence on the decision of the project as the decision to legalise the project would be taken by the EAC before the EIA is drafted, as mentioned in the previous point. In this Notification, the EIA is only to determine mitigation and compensatory measures. There is no scope of a public hearing either after the EIA report is drafted as is the usual norm in the process of grant of environment clearance. So the government is offering a ‘simplified’ EIA process to the violator.

Notification: The EAC has to determine that these plans take into account the damage to the environment and the economic benefits gained by violating the law. This is to be done by adding conditions in the Environment Clearance (EC) letter issued to the project.
Comment: This is a form of regularising the violation as the shortened EIA process comes after the decision to regularise the project and the EIA’s only function is to provide knowledge about what kinds of conditions and safeguards need to be added to the project’s EC letter. In effect, thiw would only offset the damage caused by the violation as opposed to putting a stop to it. Going by the track record of compliance to conditions, these new sets of conditions may also end up being only on paper. Even though there is a mention that the natural and community resource augmentation plan will be prepared, there is no process in this to speak to affected people and find out what impacts they have faced, which need remedies (please see recent report on effectiveness of environment regulation).

Notification: The violator has to submit a bank guarantee to the State Pollution Control Board (SPCB). The amount should be equal to the amount of the cost of the various plans (management, remediation and augmentation). The costing will be determined by the EAC. The Bank guarantee should be deposited before the EC is granted and returned after the successful implementation of the plans.
Comment: The government cannot singly determine what ‘successful implementation’ is. The Vapi case is a good example, where even though pollution on the ground has not reduced, and the Vapi Action Plan has not been fully implemented, the government has removed its ‘critically polluted’ tag, allowing for more projects to be set up there. There is no mechanism here which indicates how the SPCB and EAC will coordinate to supervise this.

Notification: The SPCB will not grant Consent to Operate or occupancy to these violating projects until the EC process is completed.
Comment: The notification says that once the violating project is identified, the state/SPCB will take action under Section 19 of the Environment (Protection) Act. This section bars the courts from taking notice of the violation until it is brought to them by the central government or a designated authority or by any person (who has given a 60 day notice to the government or designated authority).

This one-time amnesty through the latest notification has been offered by the government for units that have violated the EIA notification and set up operations without ECs until the date of this notification. Units have to apply for ECs within six months from the date of this notification. The notification does not state what will be done to violating units that do not apply for EC within this period. It also does not state if this is only a one-time amnesty or whether there will be more such opportunities and also about what will be done with units that violate EIA norms after this notification date. Finally, there are several other environmental norms that are violated as much as the EIA notification. Will this be the treatment for those cases too?

CPR CO-ORGANISES WORKSHOP AT HK-SHENZHEN BIENNALE
URBAN SERVICES

The Government of India’s premier think tank NITI Aayog, in its three-year action agenda, has called for India to replicate the success of Shenzhen in China, not just as a successful Special Economic Zone but also as a shining example of organized urbanisation and modernization. Worldwide, Shenzhen has been upheld as a model for its rapid growth, for the boomtown phenomenon it spearheaded nicknamed ‘Shenzhen Speed’, earning it the moniker ‘Instant City’. But there’s more to Shenzhen than meets the eye. Can its success really be replicated? Can we really learn from Shenzhen, and if yes, how?

The urbanisation team at the Centre for Policy Research has been, since 2016, in a dialogue with scholars working on Shenzhen, to explore some of these questions. On 12-14 January 2018, CPR co-organised a workshop

Titled ‘Informal Plans, Planned Informality: Shenzhen as Model and Field’ at the Hong Kong/Shenzhen Architecture and Urbanism Biennale (UABB) to examine one of Shenzhen’s most prominent but least understood characteristics, the role of informality in the success of the city. The workshop was conceptualized by Mary Ann O’Donnell (Handshake 302, Shenzhen), Jonathan Bach (Associate Professor, Global Studies, The New School, New York) and Mukta Naik (Senior Researcher, CPR, New Delhi) and supported by the India China Institute.

Looking at informality as a necessary element of contemporary urbanisation, the workshop was an empirical exploration of how informality produces, and is produced by, the coevolution of the planned and the unplanned most visibly expressed by the continued relevance of, and changing State attitude to, urban villages. On Day 1, presentations by young scholars Kim Do Dom (PhD candidate in Anthropology at University of Chicago), Cai Yifan (PhD Candidate in Geography at Clark University) and Fu Na (Graduate Student, New School) generated a lively discussion on elements of informality in the realms of citizenship, intellectual property rights and entrepreneurship in Shenzhen. Post-lunch, Shaun Teo’s (PhD Candidate in Geography, University College London) guided exploration of the UABB venue and exhibits offered insights into the salient urban questions being asked by practitioners and researchers in the Pearl River Delta. Inclusion, participation, identity and sustainability were some of the recurring themes, in line with the UABB’s intention of being a space for critical thinking and free expression. Ironically Nantou village, its main site, was both sanitised and under surveillance, raising questions about the impact of large events on city neighborhoods.

On Day 2, Indian scholars took the stage, viewing Shenzhen ‘from’ India. CPR researchers Partha Mukhopadhyay and Mukta Naik reacted to the book ‘Learning from Shenzhen’ edited by Jonathan Bach, Mary Ann O’Donnell and Winnie Wong using examples of four Indian urban projects—Dholera, Sri City, Amravati and Gurgaon. Vamsi Valukabharanam from University of Massachusetts, Amherst, spoke about spatial inequalities in Indian cities, using the example of Hyderabad. Rohit Negi from Ambedkar University, Delhi, used the conversation on air quality in urban locations as a theme to explore the intersections between urban equity and ecology. Du Juan from Hong Kong University presented innovative design work done at her design lab that helped improve the habitat of renters in Hong Kong’s ultra-crowded subdivided apartments. In the afternoon, participants were treated to an exploration of Shennan Boulevard, Shenzhen’s major east-west road, led by anthropologist Zhou Ximin.

The conversations from the morning sessions spilled over onto the delectable lunches on both days, as participants discovered mutual interests, satisfied their curiosity about new cultures and raised provocative questions. It was no surprise that the writing workshop conducted by Mary Ann on Day 3, emerged as both introspection and synthesis, a delightful discovery of the power of written word to merge sentiment with academic insight.

A final visit to the Shekou Museum of Reform and Opening reminded us that as much as Shenzhen was a product of the selective absence of the State, it was also born of innovation and vision in the aftermath of Maoist socialism. In the spirit of comparison, we believe that studying Shenzhen, and perhaps other Chinese citymaking experiments, can reveal alternate possibilities to Indian cities, especially in accommodating informality even as they pursue the dream of modernity and ‘world-class’ urbanity. The workshop, in this sense, was another step in a continuing effort to “track algorithms that constantly produce…borders, which in turn keep re-producing the city”. As Mary Ann asks in her highly nuanced workshop report, “what does it mean…. to document uncertainty?”

TAKEWAYS FROM JOURNAL ARTICLE BY MUKTA NAIK
URBAN ECONOMY URBAN SERVICES

In an article titled, Negotiation, mediation and subjectivities: How migrant renters experience informal rentals in Gurgaon’s urban villages, published in Radical Housing Journal, Mukta Naik explores the experience of low-income migrant renters in the informal rental markets of Gurgaon that are controlled and managed by village landlords. The article builds on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Nathupur village in 2013-14 and Sikanderpur village in 2017, both urban villages bordering Delhi and some of the earliest to experience land acquisition and formal sector private real estate development in Gurgaon, to shed light on living conditions, nature of landlord-tenant relationships and strategies of mediation adopted by migrant renters.

Highlighting takeaways from the article, this blog describes how informal rentals – broadly understood as housing located in settlements without formal tenure and/or without registered lease documentation – are organised in Gurgaon and offers insights into the lived experience of migrant renters in urban villages, which have absorbed the lion’s share of rural-urban migration into the city especially in the 2001-2011 decade.

Types of Landlordism

Naik builds on London School of Economics Professor Sunil Kumar’s work to classify landlords in informal rentals into three types: subsistence, petty-bourgeois and petty-capitalist. It is often the landlord household’s caste position within the village and the community that determines the kind of landlordism they exhibit. Closely related is the access to land and capital that they have, the latter a function of how much agricultural land they sold to private developers when this part of Gurgaon city was being developed in the ‘80s.
Rental typologies: Affordability and living conditions

Urban villages in Gurgaon exhibit a range of informal rentals for migrant tenants with different levels of income and varying expectations in terms of amenities, privacy and security. Naik’s earlier work describes the range of informal rental housing available in urban villages in Gurgaon, from shacks with temporary construction to the ubiquitous tenements and increasingly one-room sets for middle-income renters. Rental prices are higher for properties with better quality of construction and migrant renters opt for housing that they can afford and that is near their workplace.

While informal rentals are successful is creating housing supply across price points, the levels of service are generally low because urban villages are under serviced, with severe water shortage issues and inadequate sewer networks. And even though landlords and tenants suffer because of this, additional strictures like rationed water, overpriced electricity, poor construction quality and poor light and ventilation means that renters particularly experience crowding and poor living conditions.

Perception influences contractual arrangements

Despite the unequal power relations, however, Naik finds that landlords depend significantly on rentals for household incomes and migrant tenants share a symbiotic relationship with the landlord, representing them as sometimes benevolent and at other times oppressive in their accounts. Perhaps because of this, the ubiquitous oral form of contract with exclusively cash payments, is not seen as a tool of exploitation by tenants. While landlords can enforce oral contracts through the mere threat of violent repercussions, which acts as a deterrent for rent defaults, tenants leverage informality to move through the city flexibly as they seek work. Emerging forms of documentation like police verifications, employer endorsements and tenant registrations in the wake of growing paranoia around security, terrorism and illegal refugees in India’s national discourse, indicate some start points for thinking about formalisation. Clearly, perception matters in contractual agreements. The wide use of oral contracts and the underlying forms of trusts, as well as contrasting moves towards documentation, complicate the notions of secure occupancy in the context of informal rentals.

Landlord-tenants relations inherently unequal, exploitative

Landlord-tenant relations remain inherently unequal across the board. Migrants cannot contend with the political power that landlords have. They maintain this by colluding to keep migrants off electoral rolls, mostly by refusing them proof of address that would enable migrants to register as local voters.

These unequal power relationships result in certain specific forms of exploitation. Migrants are often considered captive customers and forced to buy rations from the landlord’s grocery store or that landlords impose behavioural norms on tenants. Tenants report particular discomfort with the surveillance that they are subjected to by landlords, who often have a shop on the street level, which can be used to watch the comings and goings of tenants. This surveillance is ostensibly intended to ensure that tenants do not overcrowd or damage their premises and use water responsibly, but also to monitor visitors. Surveillance assumes moralistic overtones, seeking to ensure that tenants of opposite genders do not mix, outside of marriage. Tenants also face discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and gender in informal rental housing. In Gurgaon, surveillance is particularly harsh for unmarried women and young girls.

Despite the inequality, Naik finds points of connect between landlords and tenants. Subsistence and petty-bourgeois landlords often have close and long-term relationships with their renters, often going out of their way to help them; not hiking rents, permitting time extensions on rent payments, helping them start small businesses. Tenants in larger rental clusters often did not know their landlord directly, but in several cases trusted caretakers acted as intermediaries, smoothening daily functioning of tenements.

Experiences of discrimination and exploitation notwithstanding, tenants commonly characterise the landlord as ‘good’ or ‘helpful’. Landlords see themselves as protectors of tenants, with nearly every landlord in the sample mentioning their role in resolving disputes amongst tenants. The tenant’s status in the urban village appears to be affiliated with that of the landlords, for instance, tenants of politically powerful, rich or upper caste landlords enjoyed an implicit protection from harassment.

Mediation and negotiation helps migrants gain footholds

Within this context, Naik finds that migrant tenants leverage informal rentals in particular ways to secure a small foothold in Gurgaon’s urban economy. The diversity of rental typologies helps migrants find housing of varying quality at price points that suit their income situations. They use the flexibility that oral contracts offer to move ‘through’ the city, as they seek remunerative work. Migrants routinely use praise for their landlords as a way to appease them, while simultaneously being vocal about their negative experiences. Exploiting the economic dependence of landlords on rental incomes, they carefully navigate the good landlord/bad landlord narrative to carve out independent identities over time, to achieve regular employment and local identification papers to enable a long-term stay in the city. In contrast to these subtle negotiations, female renters from northeast India resist the objectification they face from male landlords and village residents in Sikanderpur simply by continuing to wear westernised clothing and claiming the streets as retail customers and pedestrian commuters. By not cooperating with the patriarchal norms that landlords seek to impose, these women exhibit what Scott calls ‘everyday forms of resistance.’

LISTEN TO THE INDIA AND THE PANDEMIC PODCAST SERIES
PODCAST ECONOMY

The slowdown of economic activity experienced due to the lockdowns resulted in a significant impact on the lives of the poorest. In this episode of India Speak, Yamini Aiyar (President and Chief Executive, CPR) speaks to Dr Maitreesh Ghatak (Professor of Economics, London School of Economics) to discuss India’s inequality problem. How unequal is India? Are these inequalities because of COVID or merely economic realities that COVID has now exposed? How do we bring India back on a more equitable growth path?

Dr Ghatak who has written extensively on the inequalities of the Indian economy walks us through the issue of widening inequality in the context of the pandemic, unpacks the growth versus inequality debate, and discusses the long term implications the pandemic has posed. He explains the impact on the informal sector, intergenerational mobility, and discusses the dynamics of potential recovery.

About the Series

The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic poses serious challenges that need immediate attention. The collapse of an already strained health system, vaccine supply shortage, an unprecedented economic crisis and sharpening inequality, are factors that raise crucial concerns. How must India confront this crisis? The Centre for Policy Research (CPR) brings leading experts to discuss what the country’s response should look like in a new podcast series, India and the Pandemic.

Listen to other episodes in this series:

• Impact of the Second Wave on the Economy featuring Pranjul Bhandari
• Impact of the Second Wave on Unemployment and Labour Force Participation featuring Mahesh Vyas
• Impact on Jobs, Incomes, Inequality and Poverty featuring Amit Basole
• Responding to the Spread of COVID-19 in Rural India featuring Abhijit Chowdhury
• Realities of COVID-19 in Rural India featuring Anurag Behar
• Unpacking India’s COVID-19 Vaccination Strategy featuring Partha Mukhopadhyay

LISTEN TO THE INDIA AND THE PANDEMIC PODCAST SERIES
PODCAST ECONOMY

The second wave of COVID-19 left an already-strained health system crumbling. As one of the initial states hit by the surge of cases, Delhi faced many challenges ensuring adequate oxygen supply to patients. In this episode of India Speak, Yamini Aiyar (President and Chief Executive, CPR) speaks to Shailendra Sharma (Education Advisor, Delhi Government) about his experience of working and supporting the oxygen control room that was set up in response to the crisis by the Delhi Government. Why did the oxygen crisis happen and how was it overcome? What was it like to be a Front Line Worker in this crisis? How did the government react? What were the big challenges during that period?

Sharma discusses what it was like to be in the thick of that control room, confronting a crisis of deep distress but also concerns of managing the health system in the midst of constant SOS messages about lack of basic supplies and most importantly, oxygen. He speaks about the role of the courts in fixing responsibility and bringing in some transparency to the process of allocation. Finally, Sharma elaborates on the logistical and technical complexities in ramping up oxygen supply and its distribution across hospitals.

About the Series

The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic poses serious challenges that need immediate attention. The collapse of an already strained health system, vaccine supply shortage, an unprecedented economic crisis and sharpening inequality, are factors that raise crucial concerns. How must India confront this crisis? The Centre for Policy Research (CPR) brings leading experts to discuss what the country’s response should look like in a new podcast series, India and the Pandemic.

Listen to other episodes in this series:

• Impact of the Second Wave on the Economy featuring Pranjul Bhandari
• Impact of the Second Wave on Unemployment and Labour Force Participation featuring Mahesh Vyas
• Impact on Jobs, Incomes, Inequality and Poverty featuring Amit Basole
• Responding to the Spread of COVID-19 in Rural India featuring Abhijit Chowdhury
• Realities of COVID-19 in Rural India featuring Anurag Behar
• Unpacking India’s COVID-19 Vaccination Strategy featuring Partha Mukhopadhyay
• Dissecting India’s Problem of Economic Inequality featuring Maitreesh Ghatak