The Politics of Urban Space in Mumbai: ‘Citizens’ versus the Urban Poor

By Sharit K. Bhowmik on January 01, 2006

This paper examines urban poverty in the context of the changing position of labour in the city. It will cover mainly the changing employment patterns in the city and its effect on housing. A more important issue is of the position the marginalised hold in the city. Slum dwellers comprise a majority of the city’s population and they contribute to its economy in a number of ways. However in a city where land is available at a high premium it is these people who are targeted as the villains responsible for the growing urban crises. Slums are projected as the causes of most, if not all, urban problems. They generate filth, they breed criminals, and they usurp facilities that should have rightfully gone to the ‘tax paying’ citizens. Whether slum dwellers are really responsible for such problems is never investigated but these views become a convenient handle for demolishing slums to make way for ‘cleaner’ & better housing for the better off.

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