Contesting Dispossession: Eviction Surges, Protest Cycles, and Movement Divergence in India’s Housing Justice Politics

Liza Weinstein, Northeastern University
Vivek Mishra, Northeastern University

In the late 1970s, the demolition of low-income, seemingly informal neighborhoods became more widespread and more severe in many Indian cities. While “slum clearance” had long been official municipal policy in India, a favored way to address a range of planning and public health challenges, these actions took on a more punitive character during the Emergency era (1975-1977). In response, a robust cross-city network of anti-eviction groups came together late-1970s and 1980s and grew active in many Indian cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. In the nearly 50 years since, these politics have shifted and while many cities continue to have robust (if embattled) groups working to expand urbanites’ right to shelter, they have become more diffuse and disconnected. While the differentiation of India’s local housing and urban justice movements is not in itself a problem, activists today cite this fragmentation as a barrier to coalition building and contesting larger cross-city demolition campaigns. Tracing the divergence of urban India’s housing justice movements, this paper locates their common origins in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru in the post-Emergency era of civil liberty and democratic rights organizing. Highlighting periods of heightened movement activity and eviction surges across subsequent protest cycles in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, the analysis attributes the localization of India’s housing justice movements to two of the most significant political developments of this period: the rise of Hindutva and other ethno-nationalist movements, and the neoliberalization urban politics, which has made private developers and often distant real estate investors, rather than state actors and democratic institutions the target of movement activity. Citing these broader national and global shifts to explain local movement convergence and divergence, these findings and the historical and comparative approaches from which they were derived can be helpful for developing deeper understandings of local politics and movement activism.

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 Presented in Session 67. Knowledge Production, Social Movements and Power in Cities from Asia to Argentina