Draft

NGOs, Civil Society, and Civic Exclusion in Urban India

D.Parthasarathy
IIT Bombay

Abstract

Urban planning and restructuring in major Indian cities has involved reconfiguration of land use patterns
and urban space as well as the upgrading of transportation infrastructure. The specific manner in which
this has been carried out has significant impacts on the urban poor and the working classes in terms of
displacement, forced evictions, and demolitions of 'illegal' structures, used for housing, work, and for
hawking / vending. Through an analysis of the public discourse on issues arising out of these (in terms of
the stance adopted by the judiciary, the government, the media and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), this paper 'explodes' hegemonic constructions of 'civil society' by urban elites and NGOs which
support urban restructuring policies against the interests of the urban poor. In the context of increasing
social and economic marginalization in Indian metropolises arising out of economic liberalization, the
media, sections of the intelligentsia and some NGOs shape public discourses on rights and citizenship,
within a dominant idea of 'civil society' which excludes large numbers of citizens from basic rights and
access to urban space and amenities.

Dominant political discourse and action thus hegemonize popular consciousness, re-turning the poor and
the minorities from class action to community based collective mobilization. Urban conflicts arising from
competition over space and resources consequently collide as it were with ethnic scapegoating and
'communal' conflicts. Competing mobilizations occur over pre-dominant urban spatial arrangements and
architecture which are reconfigured in terms of a contested past and present, and a preferred future in
which ethnicity, symbolism, history, and economic ideologies all play their part.

The major focus of the paper is on Bombay/Mumbai while illustrations are drawn from other Indian
metropolises as well.
NGOs, Civil Society, and Civic Exclusion in Urban India
D.Parthasarathy
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
email: dp@hss.iitb.ac.in

Recent debates on the meaning of ‘civil society’ as used by Karl Marx has revolved around the semantic
ambiguity of the equivalent German term burgerlich that “allows the bourgeoise to hide behind the
citoyen”, … the bourgeoise obliterates its name and transforms itself into a "societe anonyme" (Rehmann,
p.4). This phenomenon was first clearly described by Roland Barthes in his Mythologies who argues that
despite the “several types of bourgeoisie (succeeding) one another in power” and despite the fact that
capitalism is openly professed, “as a political fact, the bourgeoisie has some difficulty in acknowledging
itself” (Barthes, 1984). The disappearance of the bourgeoisie as an ideological fact and its obliteratation
“in passing from reality to representation involves what Barthes calls an “ex-nominating operation’: the
bourgeoisie is defined as the social class which does not want to be named” (1984).

Nation is one of the ideas which helps to effect the “the hemorrhage of the name 'bourgeois'”. For the
bourgeoisie, the passage from the real and actual to the ideological involves a reification by which even as
reality is transformed into “an image of the world, history into nature”, an ideology comes out that
“records facts or perceives values, but refuses explanations; the order of the world can be seen as
sufficient or ineffable, it is never seen as significant” (Barthes, 1984). Another recent trend has been for
the bourgeoisie to hide behind ‘civil society’ and ‘citizenship’, though as Rehmann in his interpretation of
Marx and Gramsci argues, it is hardly a recent trend, except perhaps in countries like India. In line with
recent tendencies on the part of developmental and governmental institutions and agencies to usurp social
science terms and use them for partisan purposes, the use (and abuse) of ‘civil society’ should be of little
surprise. What is surprising is the alacrity shown by Indian neo-liberals and urban business groups to use
the term in its push towards economic liberalization, global integration and the ‘minimalist state”. For
such groups trading is a ‘natural’, almost biological tendency of human beings, and so all associations and
institutions of production and trade are part of civil society rather than being part of bourgeois society or
more correctly, ‘market’. In the burgeoning literature on ‘good governance’, civil society - where it is
differentiated form the market - refers to NGOs or peoples’ organizations and associations narrowly
defined.
The obfuscation of capitalism and the coyness of the bourgeoisie to reveal itself is paralleled in Indian
cities by the tendency of elites to hide behind the term ‘citizen’ in protecting and advancing its interests
against those of a waning, diminishing, disappearing organized working class. Such a strategy is useful
both for projecting particular interests as universally beneficial as well as mobilizing unaffiliated,
apathetic, fearful-of the-working class middle classes in its own rise to dominance; useful in legitimizing
the putting down of explicitly political and democratic struggles, by using judicial, bureaucratic and mass
media methods. Such strategies are especially useful in obfuscating urban (capitalist) restructuring
process and consequent land use changes, changes which are unacceptable to groups undergoing
marginalization.

Restructuring of land use patterns as well as the upgrading of infrastructure in metropolitan cities in India
have led to significant impacts on the urban poor in terms of forced evictions and demolitions of 'illegal'
structures, used for housing and for hawking / vending. In parallel with these changes, there are
continuous attempts by city elites to beautify, modernize, and change the face of cities to reflect and cater
to their own production and consumption needs. This paper seeks to analyze the public discourse on
issues arising out of these. Through a study of statements and pronouncements by academics, researchers,
NGOs, media, bureaucracy, and politicians1, it is shown that the notion of rights and citizenship that is
projected in support of such programmes, are narrow in scope, and ultimately generates scope for
chauvinist politics to the detriment of the lives and livelihoods of migrants in the city.

Urban transformations, Civic exclusion, and Elite discourses

Economic changes over the last couple of decades have left vast stretches of the industrial landscape in
cities like Mumbai devastated, marginalizing large numbers of the working class and their dependents.
The decline of the working class has destroyed the once powerful trade union movements and workers
have had to turn to other political entities for survival and subsistence, oftentimes to those (reactionary,
chauvinist) forces which played a significant role in the break up of the working class movement. At the
same time structural economic changes have been unable to absorb the large masses thrown into
unemployment as they lack the skills to find employment in the new jobs that are opening up. Urban
restructuring that accompanies structural economic changes have further marginalized those who have
been recently excluded, by denying space for living, livelihoods, recreation, and by establishing new,
garish, dazzling and brash cultural and socio-spatial sites that by their very nature and appearance thwart,

1
While I have interacted personally with some of the NGO activists, and some bureaucrats, the bulk of the
statements used in the writing of this paper, is based on public statements made by them as well as by judges and
politicians.
deny, forbid, and exclude the masses from accessing and using these sites. In the words of Arjun
Appadurai then, cities like Bombay/Mumbai are becoming sites “of various uncertainties about
citizenship” (Appadurai, 2000). The movements of the unprivileged and the marginal are put down in
various ways, sometimes with force, by ‘citizens’ movements’, prohibited by law, or unable to even start
owing to lack of political support and resources. The poor and the marginal are branded as thugs,
criminals, and encroachers; as people involved in illegal activities and therefore having no rights that
citizens are normally entitled to. Urban elites despite a profession of great conviction in liberalization
have faith neither in the dynamism of this underclass nor in their abilities to work out solutions to
complex urban problems. They are merely hindrances to urban renewal and beautification, cancerous
growths to be removed with surgical precision, obstacles to civic good governance, blemishes on a
‘naturally’ beautiful urban landscape.

It is in such situations that citizenship tends to be largely ‘spectral’ as Appadurai argues, but - perhaps
precisely because of this – and despite the presence of “some of the most creative and brilliant pro-poor
and housing-related nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)” (Appadurai, 2000), the civil society
landscape is largely dominated by NGOs, media, and bureaucrats with a narrow vision of ‘development’,
a complete lack of understanding of the modern concept of citizenship, and a lack of comprehension of
urban maladies including those caused by overcrowding and lack of infrastructure, all leading to forms of
civic exclusion that are described below.

A key element of elite posturing against the working class, the slum and pavement dwellers, and the
hawkers / vendors, involves an overturning of the classic American Revolution slogan – no taxation
without representation. Given a chance the ‘citizens’ of many of our cities ably assisted by civil society
bodies would gladly disenfranchise those who ostensibly don’t pay taxes – presumably income and
property tax. At one stroke then, the hard fought for and achieved modern concept of citizenship is done
away with. Rights can accrue only to those who pay taxes. Another element is the alleged illegality of life
and livelihood of the poor. A majority of the urban poor carry on their subsistence activities and live in
spaces legitimately but without licences, and without legal deeds. They are therefore held to be criminal
and not deserving of rights. According to one public statement made by a NGO representative the
judiciary ought to render justice only to those who care for and respect the law. Even principles of natural
justice are done away with, as reflected in the argument of the Citizens for a Just Society which filed a
Public Interest Litigation to proceed with slum demolitions near railway tracks. The NGO incidentally led
by the Gandhian Usha Mehta (now no more) stated that World Bank stipulations and guidelines regarding
rehabilitation conflict with Indian laws and therefore do not need to be adhered to.
The criminalization of an entire class is accompanied by a discourse which explains actions affecting the
‘public good’ (such as strikes) as criminal, a discourse which is part of the habitus of the India homo
heirarchicus, that all government employees (in this case civic employees) are public servants (the
reference here is essentially to class four workers involved in sanitation, water supply and conservancy
and maintenance work), and therefore even minimal labour rights ceded to others cannot be given to
them.

The discourse is characterized by unanimity between popular intellectuals writing columns in newspapers
(especially in the pop supplements), the mainstream media, dominant NGOs, sections of the bureaucracy
and the judiciary. The problems of the consuming classes become the problems for governments and the
judiciary. ‘Mumbaikars' isolated protests are blown out of all proportion and hailed as citizen's initiatives.
Even those who are opposed to the Shiv Sena brand of cultural chauvinism refer to the middle and upper
classes as ‘mumbaikars’ in their initiatives for dominating the cityscape. Workers, slum and pavement
dwellers, and hawkers are never ‘Mumbaikars’, and ironically it is the Shiv Sena which patronizes these
groups even if because of its own compulsions it is not able to fully secure rights for them.

Some of the headlines in newspapers are reflective of this attitude: “Mumbaikars take on BMC;” “Enough
is enough say irate mumbaikars;” “Citizens take to the streets”. Gerson da Cunha, a major columnist on
civic affairs and civic activist, active in AGNI an umbrella NGO working on civic issues in Mumbai is
frequently guilty of abusing the term citizen as in “Victory crowns Citizen efforts” with reference to
eviction of hawkers or “Mumbaikars take on BMC over hawking zones”, or “Angry citizens voice their
concern”2. The media and sections of the NGO sector especially get exercised and agitated when unions,
workers or marginal groups associate to agitate for or obtain certain demands. The agitation by municipal
workers over ex-gratia (bonus) at the time of Diwali3 is a case in point.

The language used by the Honourable judges of the Mumbai High court in staying ex-gratia payment and
in questioning the union respondents makes one think that the main purpose of granting relief to the
respondents (NGOs representing ‘citizen’ interests) was not to judiciously intervene in the matter but
rather to ensure security of consumption for the great consuming classes of this country - the middle and

2
The corporate sector does not lag behind this trend of identifying elites as citizens and mumbaikars. In the
publicity material of the S.Kumars group promoted Landmarc Citi, the following can be found: “Mumbaikars have
something more to look forward to in the summer of 2001”; “The citizens of Mumbai (especially those of the south
and central metropolis) can anticipate a surprise for themselves in the world of leisure and pleasure”
3
It’s an annual affair, but this case refers to the agitation and subsequent events in the year 2000.
upper middle classes. The Indian security forces were on 'stand by' when the Babri Masjid was
demolished and when riots claimed thousands of lives in Mumbai in 1992-93. The courts did not then
think it wise to intervene and protect its citizens. But if the BMC goes on strike again the court has
warned that the armed forces will be brought in to "take over the civic services", presumably in order to
ensure that 'Mumbaikars' are not denied their right to consumption and are allowed to consume in peace.
Presumably also then, Mumbaikars includes only the middle class consumers of this metropolis, and not
its workers, as the court as well as the media keeps railing against the 'greedy' unions holding the city "to
ransom", all in the name of Mumbaikars.

The court goes to on give an instructive discourse on the economics of running an enterprise. If the BMC
were making losses would you take a cut in your pay asks the judge? To which the union counsel
reportedly replied "candidly no." Apart from the effrontery implicit in such a question it displays
ignorance both about the working of public utilities and about government expenditure. Most public
utilities do not aim to make profits. Their purpose is to provide support to the citizens in carrying out their
duties and everyday tasks, and to enable the business classes to make profits. Profit making and payment
of tax seems to have become the primary basis for judgement of an individual or organization's
contribution and utility to society. This is perhaps a reflection of the market and liberalization discourse
that is imbibed by many NGOs and civil society organizations, and the way in which the public sphere in
Indian cities within which debates are carried out, has become monopolized by specific ideologies.

It is a reflection of this kind of narrow self-interest that gets reflected in the actions of urban planners,
bureaucrats and courts. A bureaucrat like G.R.Khairnar becomes a hero because he implements the rules
without fear or favour and demolishes buildings, hutments and roadside hawkers' shacks. If in this process
thousands become homeless and lose their sources of livelihood that is of little consequence. There is
perhaps nothing more dangerous than honesty and integrity without a larger vision, imagination and
critical thinking regarding the process of development. The interests of the great consuming classes of our
cities and metropolises have become paramount.

A resolution by the NGO AGNI in the year 2000 asked the state government to exercise its powers to
restrain BMC in paying ex-gratia, an argument the high court accepted. The consequences of interference
in an elected body with constitutional powers of its own are not thought of. Frequently NGOs are willing
to take (in the short term) the support of one constitutional or even external (World Bank) authority in
their fights against other bodies, without considering the overall impact on the weakening of public
institutions. Movements against some corrupt corporators end up seeking to strengthen the bureaucracy.
What is important to note here is that for the poor who have little access to the bureaucracy, politicians
are more accessible and able to resolve their problems. There seems to be an overall emphasis by NGOs
to depoliticise society. At the same time alternative legal and informal dispute settlement mechanisms are
rejected in favour of judicial and bureaucratic methods. Recently AGNI rejected a demand by municipal
unions for dispute adjudication through industrial tribunals. The chairman of AGNI, a former Chief
Secretary of the state argued that “if the (tribunal) decides in favour of the employees,… it will have a
cascading effect on the finances of the municipal corporation”. He was also afraid that it would set a
precedent for other government employees with similar effects on government finances. Financial crisis
then is used to deny constitutional rights, something that is observed at the national level as well as a
result of structural adjustment programmes4.

Accompanying this is a tendency to vest greater powers and authority in non-representative bodies
including NGOs in the name of participation. While representation for NGOs in government bodies and
projects is not problematic, what is the effect of vesting of management and custodianship of urban
resources in NGOs? Citispace (Citizens for the Protection of Public Space) for instance has been given
custodianship of all green spaces in Bombay. Such actions along with private ownership and management
of public spaces such as parks, entertainment complexes, beaches, clubs, golf courses etc. result in
enclosure of social spaces which are barricaded and remain accessible only to those who can afford them,
and excludes others.

In their struggles to protect the interests of the ‘city’ and its ‘citizens’, NGOs thus display an antipathy
towards public priorities and politics of all kinds, and a valorization of certain kinds of citizen
mobilization and civil society associations: for instance NGOs over trade unions; bureaucratic methods
over political processes, the use of mass media over more direct means of communication as tools of
debate.

But what constitutes the interests of the city and its citizens? While there are NGOs supporting the
marginalized groups in cities, a large number of them exclude vast sections in their definition of citizen
interests. Similar thinking and attitudes are reflected in the Supreme Court judgement concerning the
Delhi government's plea to go slow on shifting polluting and unauthorized industries from the city, due to
protests by affected people working in these factories. The court said that it had passed the orders
regarding the closure of factories on the basis that ``the health of the people is more important than the

4
See Randeria, 2002, for an account of the inability of the Indian state to implement its own laws citing
conditionalities imposed by the structural adjustment programme.
livelihood.'' The important question here is - whose health are we talking about? Does pollution not affect
the workers and the poor? If the health of the poor were affected by pollution, will the courts move with
such alacrity? And presumably the loss of livelihood does not affect the health of those who have become
unemployed as a result of the closure of factories. The judgement of the court itself is fairly
unexceptionable. What is exceptionable is the failure and refusal to provide opportunity to the
administration and the employers to go about implementing the judgement in an orderly manner, within a
realistic time frame, and to lay down guidelines for providing support for shifting the industries outside
the city. What is perhaps even more objectionable is the way in which the honourable bench referred to
the protesting workers as "'hooligans' holding the city to ransom". Gradually through laws and court
judgements, the rights of citizens to protest are being whittled away, with courts being made the sole
arbiter of disputes. While not supporting violent actions during protests by 'citizens', the dilution of public
and legal space for demonstration of protest and anger and its consequences in frequent violent outbursts
is to be noted5.

Environmental issues are the major foci of divisions within the ranks of urban NGOs, with many of them
placing environmental interests above those of livelihoods of the poor, with only a few attempting to
reconcile the two. In Bombay certain organizations and some activists have been quite hostile towards the
urban poor. Along with environment, health issues have provided another excuse to intervene in urban
regulation often at the cost of the poor by defining public interest in an exclusive manner. A major aspect
of the hawker eviction and zoning movement has been to ban street food vendors and street cooking on
health grounds. Despite arguments by hawker representatives regarding the unreasonable restriction on
rights that such a ban imposes, courts have imposed a ban on street food. Activists such as da Cunha have
argued that restaurants (which pay taxes!) and Mumbai’s dabbawala could easily take care of food needs
of the people, quite ignorant of the sections that are catered to by these, and the sections who depend on
street caterers for their daily food needs6.

The deliberate ignoring of the interests of the underclass and the privileging of those of the elite is
especially seen in urban restructuring and infrastructure upgradation programmes, where transport
projects mostly benefit private owners against those using public transport, vehicle owners over
pedestrians, and commuters over residential and livelihoods needs. Work-home relationships are

5
These arguments are elaborated in my "Judge as Administrator", Economic and Political Weekly, January 20-26,
2001.
6
See also “Jhadu Pooja at Sewa Nagar: Manushi’s Campaign for Cleansing Governance”, Madhu Kishwar,
MANUSHI, Issue 127, for a description of the dependence of the urban poor on street food.
disturbed with implications for commuting to work as part of resettlement projects. The actual benefit and
the sections who stand to benefit from public amenities (or salutary) projects are questionable. Slums
have been demolished to construct a helipad at Cuffe Parade in Mumbai for the sake of corporate citizens
with offices located there, who wish to escape traffic snarls.

More and more, public amenities, civic projects, and urban development patterns reflect the needs
(desires, fantasies) of a few, excluding the vast majority. While development control regulations are
frequently flouted to reduce space for public amenities, what is equally important to note is how
permissions are granted for facilities and amenities in the name of the public but which actually serve a
minority. Even commercial and recreational enterprises are designed in ways to exclude the poor formally
and informally. While large shopping malls and multiplexes are mushrooming across India’s major cities,
their specific location in social space is of significance. In Mumbai, the face of the mill districts is now
being changed as shopping malls, towering residential complexes, art galleries, bowling alleys, pool
parlours and pubs come up in defunct mills taking advantage of transfer of development rights rules and
slum development policies. A recent news report identifies 25 new projects for malls in Mumbai, most of
them outside the traditional business districts. In Shree Ram Mills in a traditional mill area in Parel, one
of India’s largest art galleries, the Sakshi Art Gallery, has come up. The Phoenix Mills also in Parel area
has seen large scale development. It boasts one of Mumbai’s most popular pubs - Fire and Ice, a bowling
alley (the Bowling company – “the coolest place to go bowling and more in town till today”), a pool
parlour, speciality restaurants (“where you can satisfy everyday, primary need of food, after your bowling
spirit has touched the bottom and all your stamina exhausted”), a McDonald's, Big Bazaar (a hypermart),
Planet M (a music store), and a Barista (part of a chain of coffee bars). The whole area (an entertainment-
cum-leisure-cum-shopping plaza’ called Landmarc Citi) is now advertised as a “plush 'n' swanky hangout
spot”7. Central Mumbai has now become the icon of all that's new8. Erstwhile and partly defunct mills
such as Phoenix, Morarjee and Kamala have become home to advertising agencies, finance companies,
publishing companies, law firms, telecom companies, entertainment facilities and houses for the
managerial elite. If neo-liberal intellectuals are to be believed these constitute the civil society. The center
for Civil Society explicitly states that its target audience includes the housewife, the copywriter, the ad
executive, the manager, the student, the journalist - all “those who take citizenship seriously” (all those

7
Future plans for the site include: a multiplex consisting of a 400-seater Imax theatre, six 200-seater cinema halls,
the country’s biggest discotheque, an amusement park with a roller-coaster, a ski slope, the city’s first ice-skating
ring, carousel, a 12-ride Giant Drop, live events like fashion shows, rock shows and much, much more to look
forward to”.
8
It must be however be said that even a hundred years ago, pioneering industrialists such as Sassoon wanted to turn
his textile mill into a private race course!
who consume conspicuously?). No wonder then that all urban transformation is for the benefit of these, as
are all urban amenities, jobs, services, production and trade, and not the least, space and rights in the city.

There has been much speculation about the potentially explosive mix of impoverished, unemployed mill
workers living in blighted tenements living next to swanky malls and entertainment facilities. Increased
crime rates and social conflict are reported in these areas. Organized protests against such developments
are not absent. Displaced mill workers have been holding regular dharnas and morchas outside the
Phoenix Mills precincts in protest against the mill land being leased out for `non-serious' purposes when
hundreds of them have no means of livelihood. There have been isolated cases of violence, damage to
property and threats to staff in these new developments. While in some cases the new activities violate the
Development Control Act, in other cases a liberal interpretation of ‘public purpose’ has been made to
lease out land for recreational and entertainment facilities. Needles to say, many of the recreation
facilities including cinemas, pool parlours, pubs, and bowling alleys charge hefty admission fees beyond
the capacity of a majority, and in any case do not provide the kinds of recreation that the urban poor
demand.

Some malls have attempted to keep out the “riff-raff” (Crossroads in Mumbai), by admitting only those
with a mobile phone or a credit card or on payment of a hefty entrance fee, effectively excluding the
lower and lower middle classes. A spokesman for the owner of the mall said, “we needed a barrier to
discourage the onlookers, who just come to window-shop. We have to pamper the egos of our genuine
customers”. Of course most malls manage as well with security guards to keep out the unwanted and a
“right of admission reserved” sign, since laws do not categorically allow the right to bar admission. In any
case most of the poor are just too intimidated by the façade of plush and swanky hangouts to even think of
entering them, contrary to the claims of the new spaces being more democratic. (An artist speaking on the
opening night of Sakshi Art Gallery stated “the mill workers were looking in at the revellers through the
glass door, but, then, it’s a transparent boundary, and it does swing open”.)

Consumption then well and truly defines citizenship. Not surprising in a society where the ration card -
essentially a device for identifying and providing subsidized food to the poor - has always been the
cornerstone for determining nationality and citizenship. Only, now, it is the possession of a credit card
and mobile phone that has become more important in defining citizenship and access to rights, amenities
and facilities.
Arbitrary developments in the traditional industrial areas in many cities has meant that the new economic
sectors do not accommodate the needs of the displaced industrial workforce and the growing informal
sector. Apart from reduced employment opportunities, such developments have further reduced the open
spaces available for the working class, and urban poor to gather for recreation, for meetings, or to just
hang out. Involving NGOs and neigbourhood groups in maintenance of maidans, gardens and green
spaces has meant enclosure of these spaces, since it is only middle class residents who are involved. In the
name of keeping away anti-social elements, entry fees are charged, and entry is restricted to specified
residents, in the case of parks and gardens taken over by NGOs and neighbourhood groups for
maintenance. Likewise in Mumbai, in order to keep pavements clear of hawkers for pedestrian use, they
have been turned over as part of a new scheme to nearby commercial and residential establishments for
maintenance who promptly attempt to beautify them with plants, furniture and so, defeating the very
purpose of clearing the pavements.

Middle class and elite ‘citizens’ are displaying an increased partisanship in their response to urban
planning problems, reflected most famously in the case of the protests of Pedder Road residents protesting
against a flyover in their vicinity. Residents of Carmichael Road and Tardeo opposing ‘twin towers’
(planned as the tallest residential complex in Bombay) in the area,9 had earlier fought against the location
of a hawkers’ zone in the locality for registered, legal hawkers. An association calling itself Worli Woods
opposed a landfall point for the proposed Bandra-Worli sea link on the grounds that residents use the area
for morning and evening walks, and at the same time was careful in stating that were not against the sea
link project as such; “only the fishermen opposed the project.” Approaches to railway stations,
thoroughfares and pavements have to be cleared of hawkers for efficient movement of vehicles, but at the
same time there is little protest about the mushrooming malls in already overcrowded areas which
generate traffic problems.

Inconsistency in attitudes towards urban problems is also seen in the increasingly loud chorus against
migrants into the city who are held responsible for overcrowding, growth of slums and so on. This
parallels chauvinist and nativist demands which target poorer migrants and the ignoring of white-collar
in-migrants who are also substantial in number. Analogous to this refrain is the blaming of migrants for
everything from “deterioration in the level of municipal politics (which) began with an increase in the
influx of migrants into the city” (Jamsheed Kanga, Times of India, 2/12/200), to crime, breakdown of
civic services, and unemployment. The rehabilitation policies for slum and pavement dwellers in turn
have been held responsible for increasing migration to the city! (da Cunha, in the Times of India).10 Most
NGOs and civic activists therefore seem to suffer from the absence of a larger vision for the city and the
nation, tending to identify localized problems and solutions and seemingly unable or unwilling to
understand larger issues and causes. Everything is reduced to a law and order problem. Slum dwellers and
hawkers are encroachers, are therefore illegal and hence criminal; everyone else in the city is law abiding.
Even if hawkers and slums have a legal entitlement they mar the beauty of the cityscape. If
neighbourhoods permit, special zones may be allowed, or else they need to be shifted outside the city and
away from the citizen’s gaze if possible or in ill-designed structures, such as a five storied building for
hawkers.

Issues of human rights and natural justice are out of the window and rights accrue only by virtue of
paying taxes, owning property, or ensuring one doesn’t violate any laws even if one is forced by
circumstance to do so, laws that are in case biased against the poor11. This is despite the Supreme Court of
India specifically stating that street vending and hawking constitute a source of livelihood and
unreasonable restrictions constitute a violation of fundamental rights. A retired judge working with slum
and pavement dwellers in Mumbai cites a disturbing trend wherein "the middle class has adopted an
aggressive stance against slum dwellers without realizing that it is these very people who form the
backbone of the metropolis”12. Petitions by NGOs such as Citispace that hawking should not be permitted
near railway stations, educational institutions and places of worship, raise the question of whose interests
such actions benefit. Do the middle and lower classes really want hawkers to be moved from these sites?
Or do they find these services and locations convenient? Is it only the poor who use the services of
hawkers and vendors? Larger questions about labeling and creation of an entire class of people as
criminals arise. In Kolkata, where under Operation Sunshine, street hawkers have been ruthlessly evicted,
street vending is not merely illegal, but has been legislated as a cognizable and non-bailable offence.
Judges, bureaucrats, select civic activists, and columnists frequently refer to slum and pavement dwellers

9
The argument in this case was with reference to increase traffic problems and increased stress on urban
infrastructure such as water and sanitation. It is to be noted that such issues are taken by neighbourhood groups and
rarely by the larger NGOs.
10
The Delhi officials seem to share this perverse logic: “Allowing for improvements amounts to legitimising and
legalising the status of street vendors and if the administration makes things easy and dignified for them, then many
more millions would flock to Delhi”. “Working Under Constant Threat: Some Setbacks and Some Steps Forward in
Sewa Nagar, Madhu Kishwar, Manushi.
11
A citizen of Delhi can legally own any number of cars, trucks, buses or even aeroplanes. But owning more than
one cycle rickshaw is ‘illegal’. Such an ‘illegal’ vehicle can be confiscated and sold as junk by the municipality. A
person owning a car or a bus is allowed to hire any number of persons, who have a valid driving license, to drive
his/her vehicle. But if a rickshaw owner allows a relative to ply his vehicle, or hires someone else to operate it, the
municipal corporation treats it as an offence serious enough to confiscate and destroy his rickshaw. (From
Manushi’s invitation for Lok Sunwayi in Delhi.)
12
This was Justice Daud.
as illegal entities, encroachers, non-tax payers, as free-riders upon the system, if not as downright
criminals and ‘riff-raff’. There is thus a continuum in the discourse and action regarding the urban
underclass from exclusion to criminalization.

Civic discourses and the ideologies of liberalization and privatization

It is difficult at one level to directly link such perspectives to the discourse of liberalization and
privatization that so pervades urban discourses, as some critics are wont to do at a commonsensical level.
The Centre for Civil Society which are peopled by actors who can only be termed by an apparent
oxymoron as ‘rabidly liberal’, in fact whole-heartedly supports population influx into cities, and
especially the activities of street vendors and hawkers since the freedom to operate in urban markets is
seen as key to poverty reduction. On the other hand many civic activists and newspaper columnists
opposed to policies supportive of hawkers and slum / pavement dwellers view them as a nuisance at best
and as free riders, as a burden on the rest of society. Most of these are supportive or uncritical of
liberalization / privatization policies. They seem to reflect the views and ideas / ideology of a particular
section of the emerging urban bourgeoisie. For one their perspective derives from images of the city
garnered from the west – reflecting cleanliness, orderliness, specific kinds of urban infrastructure
(flyovers, viaducts), the absence of slums and so on. For another they reflect a peculiar, if not warped
logic which is a combination of a belief in a minimalist state and a greater role for the market, and a naïve
developmentalist faith in participatory civic self-help, which unfortunately doesn’t extend to self-help
initiatives of the poor, including various associations such as trade unions. A third strand of actors13
reserves its judgement or critically extends support to liberalization initiatives and blames the assault on
the urban poor on the continuation of the license-permit raj. These mainly target the urban civic officials,
politicians and the police for the problems faced by urban marginalized groups.

At another level a more nuanced analysis of these discourses and of the actors behind them reveal a
tenuous but definite linkage to specific kinds of urban change fostered by liberalization, decline in
municipal finances, and the specific kinds of bourgeoisie that is coming to occupy center space in Indian
cities, a bourgeoisie that is rooted in the service and trading sector and is geared towards meeting the
garish and conspicuous consumption that characterizes urban middle class and elite households today.
Thus the importance of guaranteeing security and comfort in consumption, which requires not only ease
in such things as commuting, and increased space for living and consuming, but also an easing of guilt,
which necessitates the removal by amputation of sections which constitute an eye sore, which constantly

13
For instance, the Manushi Nagrik Adhikar Manch in Delhi
remind us of the lives that we lead, and of our responsibilities. Perhaps then, it is a question of the
absence of the ‘communitarian’ concept of citizenship that is also part of the theory of deliberative
democracy advanced by Habermas that is at issue here, since this adds ‘responsibilities’ to ‘rights’,
‘public judgment’ to ‘private opinion’, and the concept of a public world of value to instrumental politics
(Boyte, 1995). Perhaps, the emerging public discourse about civic and urban problems derive from the
kind of legitimation crisis that Habermas wrote about, wherein the pressures of a free market economy, as
well as, in the Indian context, the imperatives of preventing a law and order breakdown, and ensuring
infrastructure development, require state intervention. Resolving the normative contradiction in such
interventions requires the production of an ideology and accompanying discourses which is what the
actors and NGOs we have discussed in this paper are producing. Specifically, the discourse involves a
privatistic retreat from a citizen's role, a selective use of citizenship from the point of view of client
interests (Habermas, 1997: 78). What differentiates such discourses from similar liberal discourses on
citizenship and civil society in the west is that, there, despite criticisms of positions such as those of
Rawls, there is definitely a linkage between justice and civic values in liberal conceptions of citizenship,
something that is missing in the Indian liberal discourse of the first two positions mentioned above. In
particular the Rawlsian conception of moral personhood posits a notion of citizenship, wherein citizens
must develop and exercise (1) a capacity for an effective sense of justice and (2) a capacity to form, revise
and pursue rationally a particular conception of the good (Rawls, 1989). Unlike this position however,
where the development and exercise of these powers are objects of desire, in Indian cities, it is the pursuit
of objects of desire that become ‘final goods’ which then take precedence over all other objectives and
determines the conception of citizenship.

If this indeed is the concept of citizenship that underlines urban middle class and elite discourses, the
possible reasons for its current predominance and even virulence needs to be examined. We also need to
examine its linkages and consequences for ethnic and chauvinist politics that characterize our cities today.
Some scholars have attempted to explain current urban conflicts (and in particular conflicts surrounding
slum dwellers and street hawkers) in cities like Bombay / Mumbai in terms of populism, and the
increased role of political parties, thereby downplaying the explanatory potential of many classic urban
theories (Sharma, 2000). Akin to Charles Taylor perhaps, one can then say that there is “something in the
dynamic of democracy which pushes to exclusion” (Taylor: 138). However such an approach would
ignore the “important role of struggles and social movements in the extension of citizenship rights”
(especially in terms of political participation), that writers like Giddens point to. (Habermas, 1997: 77).
Then again, it is possibly to give this argument a culturalist turn by using cultural differences and the
presence of nativist, ethnic, or chauvinist political entities as an a explanatory variable for accounting for
conflicts over citizenship and rights in cities. Even those scholars who consider the role of urban
economic transformations and the changing fortunes of diverse groups, tend to posit a direct linkage
between such changes and their exploitation by political forces. Going with Castells (1977), in this paper,
we reject such culturalist arguments, and stress the importance of analyzing the specific kinds of urban
socio-spatial and ideological changes that re-turn groups with a history of struggles for democracy and
citizenship rights from class action to community and identity based collective mobilization. There is a
need to understand as Harvey (1978) has shown, the rise in consciousness of community as a partial
outcome of class conflict over the built environment, and its implications for urban political process and
how they defuse and transmute. For, what is perhaps the most important issue in many urban struggles in
Indian cities today are conflicts related to the production and use of the built environment, which are both
a means of consumption as well as reproduction for both labour and capital.

The built environment we must remember is not just a means of consumption and production, but also an
ideological resource, especially providing symbols of historical victories, achievements, and roles. Land
use changes involving gentrification, transformation of mills into malls, and working class enclaves into
snazzy commercial districts and elite (gated and enclosed) residential areas, all involve an erasure of
history, a forced forgetting, the grabbing of symbols that signify the contribution of workers to the city,
its growth, its prosperity, its history. The change from one kind of economic activity to another is not
simply one of kind, but is related to skills tied to caste, culture, and ethnicity, to social capital that has
been built or has evolved over time, sometimes across cultural boundaries. The difference between street
food and restaurant food is not just one of hygiene and cost, but marks cultural and ethnic differences,
including syncretic cultural markers that have evolved in the city itself14. Chaos, mixed land use, living
and working in close proximity, the presence of itinerant, periodic and established street vendors and
hawkers have been traditional features of Indian cities on which they have thrived and oftentimes
constitute indigenous solutions to problems such as those of transportation. Changes in the built
environment, in land use, in urban social space in general, therefore involve a loss of memory related to
the identities of populations, of who they are, what they have accomplished, what their potentialities are
and their forms of social mobilization and association. The built environment that vanishes is replaced by
structures – permanent and temporary – that relates to an earlier or invented history. Places of worship
proliferate, as do temporary structures during festivals, and the areas these inhabit soon become marked
for specific occasions, for specific groups. Street symbols change, with boards, banners, hoardings

14
One of the most dramatic cultural shifts can be seen in Hyderabad where the ubiquitous irani cafés have been
replaced by food joints predominantly catering to the needs of migrants from coastal Andhra who now dominate the
city. These include the mess and the large number of self-service joints selling south India and Andhra vegetarian
food carrying the ubiquitous suffix of darshan or darshini.
containing messages and images which signify specific kinds of history or call for allegiance to a specific
social group often based on ethnicity. Trade union offices are replaced with offices of political parties or
local cultural / youth associations affiliated to specific cultural-political forces. Streets and localities
transmogrify, as it were, linking newly opened up visions of the future that link to specific ‘dredged’
versions or inventions of the past. Competing mobilizations over pre-dominant urban spatial
arrangements and architecture has to be viewed in this light, wherein space and the built environment are
reconfigured in terms of a contested past and present, and a preferred future.

Against this backdrop dominant political discourse and action hegemonize popular consciousness, re-
turning the poor and the minorities from class action to community based collective mobilization. This
process is helped in its course, by the discourses of elites and NGOs seeking to maintain territorial
exclusivity and recreating the city based on its own images of the metropolis. Specifically, such
discourses and strategies as we have shown earlier, dis-privilege certain modes of action and association
such as strikes and shut down of services, trade unions, and historically evolved modes of dispute
arbitration and adjudication. Under such conditions, the modes of mobilization and methods of dispute
settlement unleashed by chauvinist and ethnicity based political movements provide at least limited and
temporary succour to the urban poor and marginalized in resolving their subsistence problems15. They
reinscribe agency which has previously been immobilized by the victories of elite strategies.

Conclusion

The tendency of international aid agencies, new development thought, NGOs, and neo-liberal ideologues
to narrowly define civil society has led to support for forces and strategies which create and maintain
exclusionary policies in Indian metropolises, through changes in patterns of socio-spatial access,
locational decisions, and land use. The rise to dominance of middle class and elite sections in terms of
increased control over political and economic decision-making, and influence over definitions of
permissible or legitimate political strategies has increased their capabilities to maintain socio-spatial
boundaries, exclude marginal groups through forced displacement, and create localities in the image of its
own culture and ideology. The image which urban leaders have of their environment explain their actions,
their discourses, and the exclusionary tactics they adopt. Young and Kramer (1978) discussing similar
tendencies in English cities call this the assumptive world of urban leaders which is multidimensional and
“includes perceptions of the world, evaluations of its aspects, a sense of its relatedness to them, and

15
For more details on this see Julia Eckert, “Shivshahi in the Mohalla: How Shiv Sena Entrenched
Itself in Bombay “, Manushi, No,129, 2002.
recurrent demands that they be acted upon. These dimensions interact to generate preferred states of the
world and a ‘call to action’” (pp.239). In order to see the city based on this assumptive world, urban
leaders and policy makers in agreement with them use “certain stylized and symbolic constructions”
which arise from “membership in particular social worlds” (p.239). Most importantly these images of the
city and its constituents generate certain normative ideas of different social groups16, their motivations,
and the legitimacy of their actions and behaviour, ideas which are increasingly being shared by state
actors, especially bureaucrats and judges, due to the predominance of neo-liberal discourses.

The state, in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods, though playing a dominant role in alliance
with elite groups in urban planning and renewal never completely achieved control and supremacy over
civil society. Perhaps because of the strengths intrinsic to caste and ethnicity based social structures, these
continued to interact with emerging forms of economic activities in Indian cities17 to evolve unique
constellations of urban space and culture. Since the emergence of industrialization however, one constant
feature seems to be the struggle of working classes and the urban poor for expansion of citizenship rights,
which have not been studied to the extent urban based nationalist struggles have been focused upon. It is
perhaps appropriate then to end with an extended quotation from one such study focusing on colonial
Bombay:

“More fundamentally, the local state's authoritarianism and general unwillingness to support the
validation of expanded citizenship rights, was a function of its own class location in urban
society. Traditionally, it had made use of its unique resources of power, wealth, and prestige to
structure the dominance of capital over civil society. Integral to this hegemony was a system of
unscrutinized accommodations between the colonial regime and the dominant class factions,
largely at the expense of the majority of urban citizens. This process had shaped a
characteristically archaic and regressive capitalism, hostile to the development of civic rights, and
thus posing a formidable obstacle to sustainable urban renewal. In this era, however, the
escalating demands for a range of democratizing rights began to articulate challenges that could
not ultimately be met within the limitations of the colonial model of citizenship”18.

16
To relate this to Barthes statement quoted at the beginning of this paper “for the bourgeoisie….. reality is
transformed into “an image of the world, history into nature”, it may be mentioned that a leading Bombay
industrialist who went on record to state that lack of cleanliness and hygiene is natural to slum dwellers, is eulogized
as an important supporter to environmental issues by leading environmental activists in Mumbai.
17
For a detailed study on this see my “Collective Violence in a Provincial City”, Oxford University Press, 1997.
18
“The Quest for Urban Citizenship: Civic Rights, Public Opinion, and Colonial Resistance in Early Twentieth-
Century Bombay”, Sandip Hazareesingh, Modern Asian Studies 34, 4 (2000), pp. 797-829.
Paraphrasing the last sentence, we could perhaps state that the escalating demands for a range of
democratizing rights are beginning to articulate challenges which cannot ultimately be met within the
limitations of the neo-liberal model of citizenship that pervades elite discourses of urban planning and
renewal in Indian cities today, and which disturbingly parallels in its exclusionary tendencies, parochial
and ethnic / chauvinist perspectives.

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