Module 4.

2: Informal Settlements
Role Name Affiliation

National
Coordinator

Subject Prof Sujata Patel Department of Sociology,

Coordinator
University of Hyderabad

Paper Ashima Sood Woxsen School of Business

Coordinator
Surya Prakash Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi

Content Writer Asmita Bhardwaj

(with Ashima Sood)

Content Ashima Sood

Reviewer

Language Leela Solomon Economic and Political Weekly

Editor

Technical
Conversion

Description of the Module

Items Description of the Module

Subject Name Sociology

Paper Name Urban Transformations

Module Name/Title Informal Settlements

Module Id 4.2

Pre Requisites

Objectives

· Defining informal settlements

· Shortage of housing

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 · Understanding rise of informal settlements

· Policy responses to informal settlements

Key words Informal settlements, slums, unauthorised colonies,

regularisation, evictions
(5-6 words/phrases)

Introduction
When we think of informal settlements, many of us think of jhuggi-jhopdis,
kaccha structures, built with the most basic of materials -- mud or tin walls, a
length of plastic of tin for roof –on public or private lands, outside the town
planning framework. Whether called shanties, bastis, or slums, such informal
settlements are often seen by policymakers and elites as the bane of Indian
urbanization. In this view, the slum subverts land use and planning regulations
and harbours public health hazards, thanks to poor sanitation and public
services besides. Hence the lament, referred to in Module 3.2 on “Paradigms of
Planning”: “if only our cities were better planned!”

Yet, informal settlements encompass tremendous diversity – from temporary

shanties to “notified slums” to “unauthorised settlements” wherehousing is
predominantlypucca. In this module, we aim to ask: what do we mean by
informal settlements? Why do they emerge? Is it really possible to attain a slum-
free India? If so, what policies can help achieve it?

The rest of the module is divided into five sections. Section 3 looks at some of the
data on informal settlements in Indian cities, against the backdrop of severe
shortages in housing availability for specific income groups, and how and why
informal housing emerges. Section 4 analyses policy responses to informal
settlements and assessea the effectiveness of policy initiatives that aim at a Slum-
Free India. The section In Briefconcludes.

Understanding Informal Settlements

First, this section lays out some definitions.Much like the definition of the urban
(Module 2.1), scholarly and policy definitions ofinformal settlement also varies

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widely across countries, as well as states and cities. Therefore, international
definitions by UN agencies may offer a useful starting guide. It is worth quoting
in full a definition offered by an issue paper for the UN Conference on Housing
and Sustainable Urban Development (UN HABITAT 2015:1):

Informal settlements – are residential areas where 1) inhabitants

have no security of tenure vis-à-vis the land or dwellings they
inhabit, with modalities ranging from squatting to informal rental
housing, 2) the neighbourhoods usually lack, or are cut off from,
basic services and city infrastructure and 3) the housing may not
comply with current planning and building regulations, and is
often situated in geographically and environmentally hazardous
areas.

Further, slums can be seen as the most “deprived and excluded” forms of
informal settlement (UN HABITAT 2015:1).

It can be argued that the most important issue that informal settlements face is
land tenure. Land tenure refers to the rights of individuals or groups in relation
to land. (Durand-Lasserve 2006). Security of tenure is a central issue because its
absence also means constant threat of eviction. As McFarlane (2008: 8) notes
insecure tenure is associated with poor quality housing, actual or fear of
consecutive demolition, lack access to sufficient and clean water and sanitation
facilities, and polluted environments with high level of vulnerability to illness
and disease.

In an important report, UN-Habitat (2003:82) distinguished between two

categories of informal settlements -- squatter settlements and illegal land
developments.
· Squatter settlements are housing units constructed on land to
whichoccupants have no legal claim, or have not purchased.

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 · In contrast, “illegal settlements or subdivisions” refer to settlements
where legal owners have allocated plots to occupants, through (re)sale,
subdivision, leasing or rent. The illegality arises from features such as
“low standard of services or infrastructure; breaches of land zoning; lack
of planning and building permits; or the irregular nature of the land
subdivision.”
The UN-Habitat definition emphasizes physical and legal aspects of
overcrowding, poor housing, inadequate access to water and sanitation and
insecure tenure, and plays down the social aspects of economic and social
marginality that characterize the slum in popular imagination (Davis 2006).
Squatter settlements correspond to what is known as slums and are widespread
across the developing world, from the favelas in Rio de Janeiro, to barricadasof
Lima and barrios of Manila (Davis 2006).

Slums or Bastis?
Scholars note that the term “slum” has had a long and troubled history, being
seen as a source of social vices such as “immorality” and dysfunctional families,
rather than consequence of economic inequality (Weinstein 2014; Davis 2006).
Similarly recognizing the legal connotations of the term and its absence from
vernacular discourse in India, authors such as Bhan (2013) prefer terms such as
basti.
The label of “slum” thus requires careful unpacking and analysis even in India. As
Naidu (2006) and Bhan (2013) note in the context of present-day Delhi, the old
walled city have been declared as slums. The booming economies of these areas
as well as the relatively higher levels of public services may not bear out the
characterization of slums we have discussed above. Based on the varying
classification as slum of old city areas despite the serious problems of
dilapidated housing and urban decay in these areas, Naidu argues that the
administrative label of “slum” reflects a political decision, rather than an
objective assessment of housing quality alone.
In light of this evidence, to what extent does the Census class of “slums” adequate
capture aspects of urban poverty and vulnerability? Bhan and Jana (2013:13-14)
critically analyse the three categories under which “slums” are counted in Census
2011:

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 • Notified Slums declared as such under any statute including Slum Acts.1
• Recognised Slums that may not be notified under statutes but are acknowledged
and categorised as slums by state or local authorities.
• Identified Slums “of at least 300 residents or about 60-70 households ofpoorly built
congested tenements, in unhygienicenvironment usually with inadequateinfrastructure
and lacking in proper sanitary and drinking water facilities” that are identified by the
charge officer and inspected by a nominated officer by the Directorate of Census
Operations .(Registrar General 2011b).
Note that this categorization does not consider the underlying characteristics
that qualify a housing cluster to be listed as a slum, only the official categories
under which they are counted. Even here, Bhan and Jana note several issues in
the Census reckoning of the slum population that deserve attention.

First, they caution that the size cut-off of 60-70 household in the category of
“identified slums” would exclude many smaller clusters of vulnerable
households. Placing this in the context of increased displacement in Indian cities,
Bhan and Jana argue that these evictions are accompanied by low rates of
resettlement because evicted households cannot either are not eligible for
resettlements or cannot afford transport and other costs of living in urban
peripheries where most resettlement sites are located. These households are
rendered homeless or relegated to highly precarious tenements, where the cycle
of eviction is likely to continue. Thus the category of slums does not take full
account of urban poverty and vulnerability. 2
In practice, this means that states and cities that report low levels of “slum”
populations, according to official and Census definitions may be severely
underestimating levels of marginalization and urban deprivation.
Moreover, they point out that data on basic services delivery in slums may
overstate access by not taking account of quality of service. Thus for example,
data in the aggregate shows that slums have better access to treated tap water

1 This refers to the Slum Areas improvement and Clearance Act 1956which
includes buildings are “unfit for human habitation”, though it in no way takes
account of tenure (Dupont 2011: 86)
2Dupont (2010) notes that the Slum Census adopted a more comprehensive

definition, that even includes slum clusters of 20 or above. As can be seen, such a
definition can be more useful in adequately including pockets of urban
deprivation.

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than non-slum households, but this is premised on shared and communal taps
rather than household access in the former case.
In sum, Bhan and Jana (2013) argue that the Census definition of slums as it is
applied today fails to fully capture the extent of urban poverty and deprivation in
Indian cities. Where it is used to guide eligibility for schemes such as Rajiv
AwasYojana, it may miss the most vulnerable and deserving households.

Beyond the slum

Across India, informal settlements encompass a tremendous variety beyond the
slum or basti, as does the policy response to them. They include forms such as
the unauthorized colonies of Delhi, the gunthewadis of Maharashtra, Akrama-
Sakrama of Karnataka, among many others (Bhide 2014; Nair 2013). These
settlements correspond to the UN-Habitat category of illegal developments.
For instance, in Delhi “unauthorised colonies” comprise housing “that is built on
land not included in the development area in the plan or one built on land within
the developmental area but not yet zoned for residential use” (Bhan 2013:61).
These unauthorized colonies are often established by land assemblers or
“aggregators” who buy rural land and then chop it up for sale into plots. In all
these cases, the plot owners are not squatting – they hold paid ownership of
their land in some sense, but may not be able to register legal title on the land
with relevant authorities because the land falls outside the plan. Also because
these colonies are not included in the masterplan, they have typically not eligible
for basic municipal services, though Bhan (2013) notes that this has changed
under new policy frameworks such as the JNNURM. Even unauthorized colonies
vary widely in size and character. Some such as SangamVihar house over 1
million inhabitants (Sheikh et al 2015), while others such as Sainik Farms are
exclusive enclaves of the elite (Bhan 2013).

Elsewhere, in states such as Maharashtra, there are forms such as the

gunthewadi, “a construction on a layout with plots that are around 1,000 sqft,
that is, less than the acceptable norm for planning, which is 3,000 sqft” (Bhide
2014: 92). Bhide (2014) notes that these layouts are rendered unauthorised for
several reasons: (1) they are below the minimum size suggested by the planning
regulations and may not follow building codes (2) the land use has not been

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appropriately converted from agricultural to non-agricultural (3) the layouts are
not approved under the applicable Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning
Act.

Many of these studies draw on city-level research in the absence of

comprehensive national data and standardized terminology for informal
settlements in this mode. Nonetheless, it should be evident that such
unauthorized developments are an important component of informality in
Indian cities, in Delhi housing almost 5.3% of the population (Bhan 2013). Lama-
Rewal and Leminski (2012) argue that in the context of Delhi, these
unauthorized colonies comprise a missing middle of urban governance, including
a large section of the lower middle classes, and hence their political and policy
significance.

Informal settlements have emerged as a major response to housing shortage in

India and across the world. The next section traces the contours of this crisis and
explores the origins of informality in human settlements in India.

Data and Origins

The number of people living in cities in the developing world is expected to

double by the middle of the twenty-first century and the spatial extent of those
cities is expected to triple. The majority of new urban dwellers will meet their
housing needs in illegal settlements in informal city spaces (Garland 2015).

In the case of India, with growing urbanization cities will contain 40% of the
total population and produce 70% of the GDP by 2030 (McKinsey 2010). To
house these many people is a mammoth task given that there is already a
housing shortage.

In 2012, about 18.78 million (1.8 crore) households grapple with housing
shortage in urban India as per the estimate of the Technical Group on Urban
Housing Shortage (2012-17) constituted by the Ministry of Housing & Urban

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Poverty Alleviation (MoHUPA). This included those who were homeless, lived in
non-serviceable katccha housing, lived in badly depreciated houses or
unacceptably congested ones. The estimate was based on Census & NSS 65th
Round results on Housing conditions and Urban Slums (July 2008-June 2009).
What was worse was that the total housing shortage across both self-owned and
rental categories was the worst in the lowest decile by expenditure, ie, the
poorest households. In contrast, the top decile (10%) of households by
expenditure faced the lowest housing shortage.

In another estimate by the private sector firm KPMG, some 18.4 million houses
were needed in the 1 bedroom economically weaker segment (EWS) and another
13.8 million in the lower income group (LIG) segment, i.e., nearly 3.2 crore
houses by 2022.

According to MoHUPA (2011:15), 52.37 million people as against an urban

population of 286.12 million in Census 2001 lived in slums. Further, the authors
reported projections by the Report of the Committee on Slum Statistics /Census,
2010. This estimate put the slum population in all 5161 Towns in 2001 at a
higher 75.26 million, ie, nearly 26.31% of the urban population, and going up to
104.67 million people in 2017. Interestingly, over a third, ie, 36.6% of the entire
slum population of India’s million-plus cities was in Mumbai (MoHUPA 2011:25).
The MoHUPA report also noted other features of India’s slum population, but the
most important was the caste break-up. Dalits comprised nearly 18.5% of slum
populations, as against 10.2% of non-slum populations (p 27). Indeed, the 2001
census also showed that “of the total Scheduled Castes in the urban areas, 28.8
per cent reside[d] in the slums” compared to “20.9 per cent for Scheduled Tribes
and 16.9 per cent for” others (MoHUPA 2011: 29). This suggests that slums also
to some degree, serve to spatially segregate Dalit citizens away from the high-
castes in the city.

Why and How do Informal Settlements arise?

The data we have seen indicates how housing shortages especially for the most
underprivileged have been paralleled by a rise in slums. What are the specific

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circumstances that have strengthened this connection? Broadly, scholars have
argued that slums have proliferatedin India since Independence due to the
inadequacy of the developmental state. In the neoliberal era, ie, post-
liberalization in India in the 1990s, the public sector no longer contributes to the
provision of serviced land or housing for low-income groups. Furthermore, the
private sector targets its land and housing development activities at high-income
and middle-income groups with regular employment and access to formal credit
(Masum2014).
As a result, the urban poor and large segments of low- and moderate-income
groups are left with little choice but to rely on informal land and housing
markets for access to land and shelter making them the only realistic alternative
for housing for poor income people (Lasserve 2006).Despite that fact that the
poor have used their own means to provide housing, such housing continues to
be looked at in a negative light.
A number of researchers have looked at the genesis of informal housing in city-
level case studies.Authors such as Weinstein (2014) and Saglio-Yatzimirsky
(2013) for example trace the origins of Dharavi to the rapid industrial growth
and waves of migration into nineteenth century Mumbai. Once a fishing village,
Dharavi was designated a dumping ground, both for Mumbai’s garbage, and also
its polluting industries, and “unwanted populations of labour migrants, refugees,
and others with insecure land rights” (Weinstein 2014: 25). Saglio-Yatzimirsky
(2013) highlights how a large number of tanneries were established in Sion, now
site of present-day Dharavi, in the 1880s, and attracted migrant communities
who quickly settled into caste and occupation-based “districts”.
Looking at the experience of Sangli-Miraj, Akola and Aurangabad in Maharashtra,
Bhide (2014;Bhide and Waingankar 2015) shows how a combination of factors
leads to the rise of unauthorised settlements. Maharashtra has led in
urbanization, and is the second most urbanized state with a 45% urban
population. It has also been in leader in town regulation, with a nearly a century
old town planning legislation, and also in slum population, with nearly 25% in
slums, according to Census 2001 (Bhide and Waingankar 2015: 127). No data is
available on gunthewadis, though they comprisea fraction of informal
settlements in the state.

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Tabulating the differences between gunthewadis and slums in detail, from
nature of the layouts, to general level of amenities,Bhide and Waingankar (2015:
134) nonetheless conclude that:

There is a gradient of ‘illegalities’ that these forms express. These range from non-
approved constructions to non-approved use to non-approved sale of land to wrongly
approved developments. In their very existence, they are a testament to the varying
layers of regulation of housing activity in the state, their impact on housing activity and
shadow activities linked to each of these regulations.

The lack of affordable housing and the state’s failure to plan for and provide land
for such housing may be the underlying causes of the rise of informal housing
but Bhide and Waingankar (2014) make an interesting argument, also made by
Bhan (2013) in the context of Delhi (Module 4.3): housing regulation and
planning processes have a direct relationship with the rise of informality.
In the case of Sangli-Miraj, Bhide (2014) illustrates this by pointing to the role of
the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act (ULCRA) and of the Development
Plan in the 1970s in hastening the rise of gunthewadis. Faced with the prospect
of land acquisition for public housing, large landowners responded by creating
residential layouts – the gunthewadis.
Bhan (2013) meanwhile notes how in Delhi, subsequent masterplans failed to
include existing unauthorised colonies, and regularization drives selected some
but not all unauthorised colonies for legalization, thus using the state’s
discretionary powers to produce and regulate these settlements.3

In a study of informal housing in Guwahati, Desai and Mahadevia(2014) untangle

the complicated housing supply chains that emerge through occupation of public
and private lands. They argue that renting is often the last stage of such squatting
where middlemen occupy land and sell to absentee owners or occupiers.
However, renters are the most vulnerable in terms of tenure security in the
absence of written contracts

3 Note that Bhan (2013) defines the terms “informal” and “illegal” differently
from the sense used here.

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Policy responses to informal settlements

In considering policy responses to informal settlements, it is important to note

one of the most important: Demolition and eviction. Demolition drives routinely
affect squatter settlements in Indian cities (Dupont 2011). In the national
capital,Ghertner (2008) highlights how these demolitions have been justified by
a legal discourse that constructs slums as “nuisance”.

In the case of Delhi, from 1990 to 2010, even just taking government data, over
260 bastis were demolished in the city (Bhan 2009). Bhan (2015) notes that he
extent of evictions was so extreme that the 2011 Census recorded a 25% fall in
population in the New Delhi district, attributing it directly to evictions of “slums
and JJ Clusters.” In Bhan’s (2015) words: “contemporary Delhi is a city scarred
by the repeated evictions of the homes of its poorest residents at a scale unseen
since the Emergency”.

Other metropolises have seen similar numbers (Dupont 2011), though there are
few national surveys or counts. For instance, both Mumbai and Kolkata,
according to non-governmental data, 2004-05 saw over 450000 and 70000
people being displaced (p 79). Dupont notes that laws in states such as
Maharashtra aimed to prevent slums by defining them as encroachments. As in
Delhi, the courts supported this interpretation. More significantly, the Slum Act
of 1956 distinguishes between notified and non-notified slums, with the latter
being excluded from “improvement” in basic services (Dupont 2011).

However, more effective policy responses have also evolved over time. While
many of these such were city-level programmes for resettlement or site-and –
service programmes, a number of national programmes emerged alongside the
JNNURM. These included the JNNURM programmes Basic Services for the Urban
Poor (BSUP) (Kamath 2012), which evolved into the Rajiv AwasYojanaand the
IntegratedHousing and Slum Development Programme(IHSDP) for smaller
towns and non-million plus cities (Burte 2014).

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The Rajiv AwasYojana (RAY), successor to the BSUP, was ambitious in its aims to
create a slum-free India through an integrated slum redevelopment including
housing infrastructure and titling (Kamath 2012: 76; Satterthwaite 2010). In a
study of two BSUP cities, Kamath (2012) notes three shifts in these approaches:
(1) the state has withdrawn to a facilitator’s role in order to encourage market
mechanisms allow non-governmental actors to participate. (2) There is
increased focus on tenure security. (3) Community participation and
management of housing is being encouraged. And (4) eligibility for subsidies is
increasingly determined through biometrics and similar technologies. This last
has come in for specific criticism.

Regularization
When it comes to unauthorised settlements and gunthewadis, the preferred
policy option has been regularization – “a process by which the colony is made
legal – theproperty titles are recognised by law and can be registered”… subject
to a charge (Bhan 2013:62-63). These regularization policies and legislations are
largely implemented at the state level - for instance, in Maharashtra Gunthewari
Developments (Regularisation,Upgradation and Control) Act was passed in 2001
(Kamath 2014). A key feature of such “drives” is that they apply a “cut-off” date
such that only plots developed before that date are eligible. Thus Delhi has seen
multiple regularization drives that have failed to regularize a proportion of
unauthorised colonies, thus continuing to produce “informality” in
habitation(Bhan 2013).

Other critiques are also pertinent. Zimmer (2011) notes for example that in
Delhi, regularisation remains largely delinked from infrastructure provision in
practice even though services provision is a precondition for it.

Nonetheless, the fundamental limitation of this approach is that it holds out but
does not quite fulfil the promise of post facto adjustments. In the case of
Solapur,Kamath (2014: 80) argues that the “planning regime incites illegalities
from the poor and the indigenousbourgeoisie at the same time”. Elsewhere in
Maharashtra, Bhide( 2014: 100) concurs: “Regularisation acts as aperverse

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incentive for the generation of new informalities, andstrengthens the very
phenomenon it seeks to control.“

Rajiv AwasYojana

The most prominent government scheme for addressing slums in India is the
2009 Rajiv AwasYojana, which has a vision of “slum free” India, a scheme that is
similar to the idea and practice of incremental housing as discussed above.
Legalizing the informal with the particular aim for land titling is an important
theme captured in the prominent 2009 Government of India scheme called Rajiv
AwasYojana.

RAY is therefore a significant policy guideline for enabling slums redevelopment,

rehabilitation and promotion of affordable mass housing (Das, 2014).Launched
in the Eleventh Five Year Plan, it seeks to enable poor urban families to realize
their dreams of home ownership, with a proper land title and access to basic
civic amenities. Granting full property rights to slum dwellers and enacting state
legislations in this regard are mandatory requirements under RAY, except in
regions with control and ownership of land by the community (Kundu 2012).

RAY emphasizes in situ development, rather than slum relocation, and recognises
the importance of land tenure security in the context of the first component of
the Slum-free Plan of Action to be prepared at state and city levels (Kundu 2014).
Since land availability is critical for developing housing for the poor, central
funds are made available only to the states and cities that can provide land with
property rights. This was previously considered necessary under Basic Services
for the Urban Poor (BSUP) and Integrated Housing, under JNNURM. However
while under BSUP, nearly 40 per cent of slum households were relocated; RAY
has prescribed a 10 per cent limit on slum relocation (Kundu: 2014).

A major thrust under RAY, is preventing the further growth of slums in urban
areas by redressing the failures of the formal system. This is done by
strengthening legal, administrative and land surveillance system and allowing
the land market to function strictly based on affordability. The guidelines,
however, suggest that reserving 25-40% of land in city development plans for

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housing of urban poor and creation of new social housing stock would be
necessary to meet the goal.
RAY would extend support to states that are willing to assign property rights to
people living in slum areas and pursue a Slum-free City Agenda (MoHUPA2011).
However, despite the grand vision of RAY, there are many problems that affect
RAY. RAY also falters because allotting property rights to the poor is not easy to
implement as many of these lands are disputed properties, which requires
detailed documentation and complex negotiation of these rights (Mahadevia etal
2011).

In Brief
Informal settlements encompass a tremendous variety beyond the slum or basti,
as does the policy response to them.
Despite their economic value, slums have been subjected and viewed in a
negative light, and often slum dwellers are termed as encroachers. The use of
the term serves to provide legitimacy to a situation where the poor come to be
seen as unworthy of legal and constitutional protection. (Bhan 2009).

People living in informal settlements are not accorded full citizenship rights in
the city (Roy 2011). Some scholars have argued is that a full recognition of
legitimacy by the state to informal settlements in their illegal occupation of land
would threaten the structure of legally held property. The basic services that are
extended to the poor are due to important social, economic and political reasons,
ranging from ethnic ties, availability of low-cost labour and the city’s largest
voting population to support particular political candidates. “As a result, a range
of services and facilities are extended on a case-to-case, ad hoc, or exceptional
basis, without jeopardizing the overall structure of legality and property
(Chatterjee 2004:137 quoted in McFarlane 2008:9).

The slogan of “slum-free” India only partially addresses the issue of informality
in habitat. Moreover, state policies aimed at preventing informality often
exacerbate it.

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