Professor: Dr.

Shivani Kapoor Name: Aditi Agrawal

Roll Number: 18080016

Date: 1st May 2019

Assignment Question- 3

Cities are crucial spatial divisions, because they condense the power relation of the society,

processes of the production and those of the appropriation of space, place and citizens, and

they do so, by creating confined geographical and social boundaries within them. This essay

focuses on the socio-economic and political processes which leads to the construction of

marginality in the city. It is argued that marginalization is increasing in importance due to

industrialisation, the activities of the state and legal codes, and changes in the ideology; these

forces are then being reflected in the formation of indifferent and alienated lives of urban poor,

which arrests the sense of belonging and citizenship. Constraints on the spatial segregation,

legal proceedings and social exclusion are examined by the means of case studies from the

chapter of “The Politics of the Governed” which is “Are Indian Cities becoming Bourgeois at

Last?” by “Partha Chhatterjee”, “What the Eye Does Not See: The Yamuna in the Imagination

of Delhi” by “Amita Baviskar” and “Analysis of the New Legal Discourse Behind Delhi’s

Slum Demolitions” by “Asher Ghertner”.

The most significant symbol of marginalisation is the removal of undesirable urban

appearance. Urban appearances are all urban elements and factors which are observed, can be

seen by an eye, and are formed in the memory and mind of the human. The concept of city

looking desirable and acceptable includes urban infrastructural development, urban renewal,

housing schemes and transport facilities. This process of restructuring in itself is an

accumulation of profited citizens and elimination of living societal forces that is slums- where

working poor (engaged in both formal/informal, organized/ unorganised practices) reside and
are considered as places of filth, unhygienic, and pollution. In the name of increased capital

inflows for infrastructural development for a world class city, appropriation of urban spaces by

governing elite and abandonment of ownership through displacements of the urban poor has

increased. As a result relocation of urban poor in the special housing zones in the peripheral

lands is taking place alongwith the formation of segregated areas exclusively formed to enjoy

different life practices. In the tone of this, the Commonwealth Games, 2010 was an

extraordinary event. The hosting of the event represented Delhi as a super-modern city. Much

attention was being given to improve Delhi’s sports infrastructure, create world class transport

for games, participants and tourists. Relaying of roads, redesigning of bus stops, construction

of hotels, bridges, parks, commercial spaces etc were being carried out to meet the “world-

class” specifications. To facilitate these projects, a massive influx of workers was experienced.

With no legitimate place to reside in, workers with their families started encroaching on public

land, footpaths and parks. The growing concern about Delhi’s external image led to a cleaning

drive in the city. Visual embarrassments like squatter settlements, beggars and slums were

considered out of sight leading to their eviction and formation of resettlement colonies at the

periphery of the city, deprived with their basic rights and amenities. The focus of the whole

event remained on the image of built environment, its aim to achieve world classness and the

removal of the unwanted and undesirable particles, individuals and groups. The policies and

practices practiced in making global city bought with itself the marginalization among certain

sectors of the society, exclusion, large scale spatial transformation and segregation and most

importantly relocated place in return provided them unemployment, social breakdown and loss

of sense of belonging due to lack of collective identity which further questions the concept of

their citizenship in the city.

The idea of marginalisation and segregated spaces interprets the peripheral divisions of places

in the city not in the terms of lack of resources but as an outcome of discriminatory relations.

The point becoming the reason of marginalisation and excluded spaces is not the location, the

connectedness or the resources attached to a particular place or area but the social relations

which segregates powerless and discriminated individuals or groups to the periphery of a city.

It is the presence of undesirable and unwelcoming groups (based on their social and economic

relations) that makes the place a secluded and divided space and hence makes the spatial

inequality as a reaction of societal relations. The homeless, underprivileged and other ‘out of

place’ groups are considered problematic and become more prone to social exclusion as they

own the urban public space for their everyday activities. State-urban poor and privileged-urban

poor encounters are seen from a sense of illegality and therefore the spaces of their participation

disappears. In the context of this, Asher Ghertner while talking about the depiction of slums as

zones of uncivility and “nuisance” by the private owners due to their experiences and formation

of public- private divide among the regions and practices says that- “Nuisance is defined as

conduct that the court determines to be outside the range of what a “reasonable person” would

do. Once a “reasonable person” and “ordinary usage of mankind” are defined in terms of

residents of formal residential colonies, the conduct of slum-dwellers can easily be labelled

deviant and unreasonable, be it even their mere existence” (Ghertner, Pg. 63). Once

reasonability and ordinary practices are established as the basis of social exclusion as such, the

spatial division and inconsideration of the slum-dwellers becomes an important fact. That is to

say, when reasonability is defined as a concept of boundary work, the sense of inclusion and

exclusion, purity and pollution becomes a rendering of falling below/ outside the bar and in

need of improvement or displacement to marginalised areas.

The state as a regulatory authority does also act in the background of the society by providing

a legal framework and expects population to be law abiding and obedient to the state. The

analytics of government process, legitimize the mechanism of domination while focusing on

the part of systemization and practising within the regions characterised by high levels of

poverty, ethnic, social and economic diversity. Equally, it has abandoned the social life of its

citizens by involuntarily creating segregated and marginalized areas, with planned

interventions that are designed for the livelihoods. The conditions, constraints and frameworks

formed by the government puts poor at the state of being ignored and neglected. The urban

poor are mostly in the situation where the process of governance results them in the feeling of

insecurity and deprives them of their basic rights by the notion of illegality. The logic and

legality formed by the government and judicial branch of the government leaves the urban poor

with no choice but to rely on the margins of the city, thereby making them a permanent

vulnerable group. The most logical view can be drawn from the evidence from Asher Ghertner,

which he while talking about the deliberate attempt of the character of the state to create

spatially and social differences between the bourgeois and undesirable others alongwith the

reinterpretation of Article 21 and says that “This marks a change in the interpretation of rights,

away from a framework envisioning the even distribution of rights across a population. It is in

this vein that the judgement defines slum dwellers as a secondary category of citizens whose

“social justice” becomes actionable only after the fulfilment of the rights of residents of formal

colonies” (Ghertner, Pg. 62). The government and private respectively stands at the ability to

exclude others, operates themselves more as a legal domain of rights and exclusions. The

judiciary has elevated their part by their aggressive attitude towards slums of considering them

‘out of place’ and has shaped the public discourse towards propertied citizenship and a vision

in which slums and public places encroachers should not be visible to the eyes and hence,

should occupy the boundaries, margins and exclusive parts of the city.
It is through the creation of marginality in the city that different groups differently experience

the state and open up new sense of belonging and citizenship from the city. However, due to

the shift between the idea of practice, spatial and social exclusion, dominance of power and

globalization, the coherent view of the livelihood of the urban poor is affected, takes away the

concept of belonging, forces them to occupy the isolated and marginalized spaces in the city

and leads in the formation of marginality in the city.