Events

Discussants 

• Véronique Dupont, French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD)
• Rohit Chandra, Fellow, Centre for Policy Research (CPR)

The discussion will be moderated by Marie-Hélène Zérah, Senior Visiting Fellow, Centre for Policy Research (CPR).

About the Book

India’s urban slums exhibit dramatic variation in their access to local public goods and services – paved roads, piped water, trash removal, sewers, and streetlights. Drawing on more than two years of fieldwork in the north Indian cities of Bhopal and Jaipur, Demanding Development accounts for the uneven success of India’s slum residents in securing local public goods and services. The book centres on the political organisation of slum settlements and the informal slum leaders who spearhead resident efforts to make claims on the state – in particular, those slum leaders who are party workers. It finds striking variation in the extent to which networks of party workers have spread across slum settlements. It demonstrates how this variation in the density and partisan distribution of party workers across settlements has powerful consequences on the ability of residents to politically mobilise to improve local conditions.

About the Author

Adam Michael Auerbach is an Assistant Professor in the School of International Service at American University, Washington, DC. This book is based on his doctoral dissertation which won several awards from the American Political Science Association (APSA).

Please RSVP at president.cpr@cprindia.org