Article

Diversity and Dynamics of Environment and Urbanization Asia

5(2) 285–301
Informal Rental Housing in © 2014 National Institute
of Urban Affairs (NIUA)
a Mid-sized City in India1,2 SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/0975425315577173
http://eua.sagepub.com
Renu Desai and Darshini Mahadevia

Abstract
Informal housing predominates urban housing options in developing countries, including India, in both
its metro and its mid-sized cities. Within urban housing, two-fifths is rental in India. This study is located
within one mid-sized city (Guwahati) in one of the least developed states (Assam) in India. The pro-
cesses of supply of rental housing in the informal sector are linked with the processes of overall supply
of housing identified in Guwahati as housing through (i) informal occupation of public and private lands,
(ii) alienation of land and (iii) public sector. Within that, landownership, processes of land occupation/
subdivision and development, and the role of various actors create submarkets. Submarket-specific,
settlement-specific and owner-specific processes shape a diversity of informal rental housing with
regard to extent, quality, level of basic services, rents and tenure security for the urban poor, posing
challenges for pursuing a policy of ‘formalizing the informal’ in the case of India.

非正式住房在发展中国家的城市中成为了主要的住房选择，包括印度的大城市和中等城市。在
印度的城市住房中，五分之二是租赁住房。本研究针对一个位于印度最不发达邦 (Assam) 的中
型城市 (Guwahati)。非正式租赁住房的供应过程通过以下因素与 Guwahati 市明确的完整住房
供应过程联系在一起：(i) 非正式的公共和私人土地权属，(ii) 土地转让，以及 (iii) 公共部门。
其中，土地所有权、土地占有/细分过程的发展，以及各个参与者的角色共同创建了子市场。
针对印度的情况，在基础服务的程度、质量、水平，城市贫民的租金和权属保障，面临挑战寻
求一个政策“以正式的手段解决非正式住房问题”等方面，特定的子市场、特定的解决方案和
特定的所有者形成了非正式租赁住房的多样性。

Keywords
India, Guwahati, informal housing, rental housing, tenants, urban development

Introduction
The Indian urbanscape is largely, and particularly in the mid-sized cities, informal, provoking Roy’s
(2009) analysis of informality as the idiom of urbanization in the country. The informality is on account
of overregulated land regime on the one hand and phenomenal and speculative property price increase
as a consequence of neo-liberal policies on the other hand. In this context, processes of informally
occupying vacant public and private lands or purchasing a plot in an informal subdivision, along with

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286 Renu Desai and Darshini Mahadevia

subsequent negotiations with the state and political parties, are important processes through which the
poor and low-income groups, and sometimes even middle-income groups, fulfil their housing needs in
cities.3 These groups inhabit this informal housing sector as both owners and tenants.
At the national level, 38 per cent of urban households lived in rented premises in 2008–2009 (NSSO,
2010, H-v), which is an increase from 34 per cent in 2002 (NSSO, 2004, A-173). The UN-Habitat (2003)
study states that in developing countries the informal housing sector comprised a large proportion of
renting and there is wide diversity of this rental housing, which caters to the affordability and needs of
different tenant groups. Despite this, we continue to have limited understanding about the diversity and
dynamics of informal rental housing in cities in India.
This study on rental housing is located in Guwahati, a mid-sized city situated in Assam, one of India’s
least developed states. The last decade’s real estate boom has percolated down to the mid-sized cities,
leading to pressure on urban land and hence divesting low-income groups of the lands informally occu-
pied by them for their housing and livelihoods. Consequently, evictions of informal settlements and
workplaces have been observed even in cities such as Guwahati, increasing the vulnerability of many
urban poor households. Tenants are among the most vulnerable households in the informal housing market,
during evictions and often even otherwise.
Rental housing is influenced by various settlement-specific factors such as settlement formation pro-
cesses, topography, community mobilization, political patronage and settlement’s location in the city’s
social and economic geography (which impacts owners’ plot/dwelling size, tenure security, infrastruc-
ture development as well as income groups of tenants seeking rental housing in the settlement). Individual
owner-specific factors such as their plot/dwelling size, economic background and priorities also influ-
ence the development of rental housing. Rental housing studies have shown that for owners from poor
and low-income backgrounds, developing rental housing and becoming landlords is often an important
way of augmenting their income and means of livelihood (Kumar, 1996, 2001; Turnstall, 2008;
UN-Habitat, 2003).
The rental housing submarkets have been categorized in numerous ways, on the basis of characteris-
tics such as location (city periphery, industrial areas, commercial areas, along important transport routes,
etc.), type of supplier (private individual/household, employer, government, etc.), legal aspects of the
settlement (formal settlement, squatter settlement, informal subdivision, etc.), housing type (dwelling
unit, single room, bed, etc.), size, construction quality, kind of contract and rent levels (see Ballesteros,
2004; Kumar, 2001; NIUA, 1989; UN-Habitat, 2003). While these categorizations offer a lens into
understanding the diversity of rental housing in a city, they do not necessarily help in understanding the
processes and factors that shape each one of them. In this article, we explore how informal rental housing
in Guwahati is influenced by processes linked to land and housing development and hence propose a
categorization accordingly.
The importance of this article lies in the significance of rental housing in meeting housing demand
and a need to understand its eclectic nature in the informal market with regard to extent, quality, level of
basic services, rents and tenure security, with many determinants influencing this. The next section
briefly presents the context of the city and her informal housing. The third section, using the submarket
approach, explains the dynamics of rental housing supply, its quality and tenure security through case
studies. Neither the submarkets nor case studies are full representatives of the city’s rental sector.
However, they do explain the need for understanding the eclectic nature of informal rental housing mar-
ket for policy purposes in India, which is the content of the last section. The article also has a bearing on
global approaches to informal housing in developing countries.

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Diversity and Dynamics of Informal Rental Housing in a Mid-sized City in India 287

The Research Context

Guwahati, with a population touching almost one million in 2011,4 has 46 per cent of all dwelling units
as rental (GMC, 2006). It is the capital and commercial city of Assam State, and is the largest city in
India’s Northeast (NE) region, which has poor linkages to the rest of the country. The city is located
along River Brahmaputra, and is bound on the south by the Khasi, Garo and Jaintia hills. It has had a
large number of wetlands and hills within, which have been/are being reclaimed in the process of urban
expansion along the west–east axis. Further, the lands in Assam are mainly owned by the state govern-
ment and the national government ministries such as the railways and the defence. The state government
leases lands to various users for residence, education, health, agriculture, etc. through grants of long-
term 30-year leases (locally called pattas) under the Assam Land Policy, 1989. Given the limitations of
land area expansion on account of geophysical reasons and non-availability of lands with long-term
lease, the land prices are high in general and very high for lands with long-term lease.
The population in the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) more than doubled during the
1971–1981 and 1981–1991 decades as migrants poured into the city from nearby areas, other districts of
Assam, neighbouring states including other NE states and across the international border from Bangladesh.
The migration of different groups has not only manifested in the form of many community-centric settle-
ments but also conflicts over identity, which in turn has influenced decisions about granting of pattas to
the informal-settlement dwellers. The political demand of the ethnic Assamese (residents of Assam) is to
restrict granting pattas to only those who came to Assam before March 25, 1971.5
Land encroachment is called dakhal in the local language, and the term does not carry any pejorative
sense. Because of this method of accessing lands, the state government has legalized the encroachments
from time to time. Under the Assam Land Policy, 1989, in greater Guwahati, an indigenous landless family
is entitled to 1 katha 10 lechha (about 400 sq.m.) of land provided it meets stringent conditions such as
(i) no member of the family owning land elsewhere in an urban area and (ii) occupancy of government
land or duration of stay in the city for at least 15 years. Two types of pattas are given, which extend dif-
ferent levels of tenure security. Miyadi patta is a lease given for 30 years, transferable through inheri-
tance as well as sale/purchase, and it involves paying a one-time fee (called premium) to the land revenue
department of the state government. It is considered as good as permanent land tenure. Ek sonya patta is
an annual lease renewable by paying a fee to the land revenue department. Not many people follow this
renewal practice. In the instance of dakhal, a penalty called Tauzi fine is levied by the land revenue
department. The fine payment receipt provides a proof of occupation of the land from the time the fine
is paid, and hence many encroachers prefer to pay this fine and obtain this receipt. This is the stepping
stone to apply for miyadi patta under the 1989 policy.
The state government has steeply increased the fees for miyadi patta, making them inaccessible to
the poor and also becoming more stringent about granting it due to the apprehension of the Bangladeshi
migrants benefitting from it and consequent political flare up in the state. Not everyone can obtain it,
resulting in informal settlements with a mosaic of plots with different types of pattas and no patta.
Nonetheless, occupants of many informal settlements have a high level of de facto tenure security
because (i) evictions have not been attempted except in some housing submarkets; (ii) there is a
policy provision for granting pattas; (iii) many settlements have some plots with miyadi patta; and
(iv) there are powerful mobilizations by organizations like Brihattar Guwahati Maati Patta Dabi
Samiti (BGMPDS) and Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) against attempted evictions and to
demand pattas.

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288 Renu Desai and Darshini Mahadevia

The rental housing has developed within such dakhals and differential level of land rights in a diver-
sity of housing submarkets. This rental housing fulfils the housing demands of those unable to own a
house, and it also enhances the income of (informal) owners in a situation of lack of economic opportunities
in Guwahati.
A submarket is one where there are certain common characteristics with regard to components of
housing. In this article, we propose a categorization of housing submarkets that allows us to systemati-
cally explore how processes of land and housing development in the city are determinants of rental
housing. There are three broad processes of land and housing development that shape Guwahati’s
housing settlements:

(1) housing through the informal occupation of public and private6 lands,
(2) housing through alienation of land,
(3) public-sector housing.

Within these, we identified different submarkets based on landownership, processes of land occupation/
subdivision and development, and the actors involved. Qualitative and quantitative research was carried
out in eight case-study settlements, covering six different housing submarkets. As mentioned earlier,
these settlements are not necessarily representative of the city’s rental sector, although field visits were
done across the city before selecting them.
The qualitative research involved settlement mapping, ad hoc conversations during mapping and
semi-structured interviews. Interviews with owners/landlords explored their (i) social and economic
background, (ii) migration history, (iii) occupation/purchase of land and the process of developing their
land and housing on it and (iv) decisions regarding constructing rental housing and choice of tenants.
Information on the (i) formation of the settlement, its chronological development and actors involved in
these; and (ii) their implications on the tenants were obtained through interviews with long-term owners.
Interviews with tenants explored their (i) social and economic background and migration history;
(ii) nature of rental housing and the infrastructure/services; (iii) mobility as tenants in the city and the
reasons for this mobility; and (iv) decisions regarding the choice of rental housing in the city. A total of
25 owners (majority being landlords) and 20 tenants were interviewed across the eight settlements.
Quantitative research involved structured questionnaires targeting both owners and tenants, with ques-
tions on their social and economic background, the size and quality of houses, basic services and rents.
The quantitative data have been presented in this article wherever required.
Significantly, a particular religious group dominated each of the eight case-study settlements. If the
owners were of a particular group, the tenants tended to belong to the same group. An instance of some
Hindu owners dissuading other Hindu owners from renting to Muslims was found in one settlement. In
our sample of public-sector rental housing, Hindus dominate as tenants to the near exclusion of Muslims.
The hill settlement was the only one that had a substantial proportion of owners and tenants from sched-
uled tribes (STs).7 A majority of the owners and tenants in our survey stated that they were Assamese,
which was difficult to ascertain due to ethno-religious conflicts between Bangladeshis and Assamese
leading to the former identifying themselves as the latter. Two case-study settlements had a high propor-
tion of tenants from Bihar8; one located near a commercial area where they are employed as manual
labour in warehouses, driving cycle rickshaws, etc., and the other in the GMC colony of sanitation work-
ers engaged in municipal sanitation work.

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Diversity and Dynamics of Informal Rental Housing in a Mid-sized City in India 289

Table 1. Housing Submarkets Created by Land and Housing Developmental Processes

Land and housing

No. Development Process No. Housing Submarket Case-study Settlement
1 Housing through i Informal occupation of railway (i) Railway slum between
informal occupation land Lakhtokia gate and SRCB Road
of public and private ii Informal occupation of state (ii) Bhootnath Milanpath Dolki
lands government’s revenue lands (in (iii) A few plots in Bhootnath area
the plains, on swampy lands and (iv) Nizarapara, Birubari
in the hills)

2 Housing through
alienation of land
Informal sector
iii Informal occupation of state Not studied
government’s reserve forest (RF)
lands (mostly in the hills)
iv Informal occupation of private (v) Part of Bhaskarnagar near
lands earmarked for acquisition Bamunimaidan
v Informal occupation of private Not studied
lands (including private trust
lands and patta lands)
i Commercial informal subdivisions (vi) Shahnagar, Hathigaon
ii Commercial formal subdivisions Not studied
for self-built housing

Formal sector
iii Commercial formal housing Not studied
supply
3 Public sector housing i Employer-provided housing (vii) GMC Colony at Fatasil
provision provision (encroached and un-
encroached)
ii Public housing provision Studied but not presented
Source: Fieldwork.
Note: Not all settlements mentioned in the table have been described in the text.

Housing Submarkets in Guwahati

Each of the three categories of land and housing development processes identified above for Guwahati
has a number of housing submarkets within them (see Table 1). In housing through the informal occupation
of public and private lands, we identify five housing submarkets based on landownership. In housing
through alienation of land, we identify three submarkets based on the process through which land is
subdivided, sold and developed for housing. In public-sector housing, two submarkets are created of
which we have presented only the first one here. In this section, we discuss how submarket-specific
processes and characteristics along with settlement-specific processes and characteristics such as settle-
ment formation processes, topography, community mobilization and political patronage impact owners’
plot/dwelling sizes, tenure security and infrastructure development, and thus have important implica-
tions for the development of and nature of rental housing in a settlement.

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290 Renu Desai and Darshini Mahadevia

Housing through Informal Occupation of Public and Private Lands

The five submarkets under this category are presented in Table 1. The first comprises informal occupa-
tion on lands owned by the Indian Railways; an estimated 21 per cent of slums were on railway lands in
2009 (GMC, 2009).9 The second and third ones are formed through the informal occupation of two kinds
of state government lands: revenue lands of the revenue department and reserve forest (RF) lands of the
forest department. The former are found in the plains, on low-lying marshy lands and the hills; the latter
are mostly in the hills. Together, they account for 47 per cent of the city’s slums (GMC, 2009). However,
many informal settlements in the hills, especially those on RF lands, are not categorized as slums, as they
house the poor as well as middle classes. An official survey of Guwahati’s hill settlements shows that
17.7 per cent of 65,000 hill households live on RF lands whereas the remaining live on revenue lands
(AC Nielson, 2011), while the land right activists put much higher estimate of settlers on RF lands.
The fourth housing submarket, whose estimate is not available, comprises the informal occupation of
private lands that were marked for acquisition by the state government under the Urban Land Ceiling Act
(ULCRA),10 but could not be acquired as the owner subdivided and informally sold them. We use the term
‘private lands’ for those lands that have long-term pattas and hence are as good as privately owned land.
Finally, the fifth housing submarket comprises informally occupied ‘private lands’, whose estimate is put
at 17 per cent by the 2009 slum survey. This includes patta lands and lands belonging to trusts. Eight per cent
of slums are on lands with a mix of private landownership and government landownership.
Landownership determines the level of tenure security level of the occupants in each of these five
housing submarkets. Those occupying state government revenue lands and on private lands earmarked
for acquisition can apply for pattas under the Assam Land Policy, 1989. As a result, they generally have
high de facto tenure security, especially in the settlements where some of the informal owners have
miyadi patta. Informal owners in the other submarkets cannot apply for pattas. De facto tenure security
seems to be relatively high on the private lands despite no policy for granting patta. Railway lands
belong to the central government where the state government does not have any jurisdiction to grant
patta, which has resulted in frequent evictions on some of them.
There is no policy to grant pattas on the RF lands. These lands have been settled since the 1970s,
particularly by tribal groups who were displaced from the plains in the process of Guwahati’s develop-
ment. Successive governments have accepted their presence in the hills, and some hill settlements have
been partly provided with approach roads, electricity and water connections (Misra, 2011). However,
recently, evictions in several of these settlements have been carried out without formulating any resettle-
ment and rehabilitation policy. In June 2011, the state government stopped its eviction drive in the face
of the resistance to evictions by the BGMPDS and KMSS (who work in tandem), and it constituted a
committee to look into formulating a new land policy. Despite discussions with organizations including
BGMPDS and KMSS, the government proposals for a new policy have so far not addressed the issues of
the urban poor, including those living on RF lands. Nonetheless, the resistance has increased the sense
of tenure security amongst the hill settlers on RF lands.
Housing submarkets in which informal owners have been given a formal tenure through miyadi patta
or have a high level of de facto tenure security support the development of better-quality housing and
infrastructure through willing owners investing in these as they are assured returns to their investments
due to no threat of eviction. This in turn encourages their development of rental housing, including better-
quality rental housing. The better-quality infrastructure further makes it feasible to accommodate tenants
in the settlement.

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Diversity and Dynamics of Informal Rental Housing in a Mid-sized City in India 291

Informal occupation of public and private lands

Dakhal by middleman Dakhal by squatter who is Dakhal by squatter who

an owner occupier* becomes an absentee
owner*

Purchase of land by Purchase of land by

owner-occupier absentee owner

1 2 1 2

Builds house Builds own house Builds rental units

incrementally incrementally +
rental units

Sells land & house Rents Rents

Eviction of tenants and Eviction of tenants and

might build upgraded Builds own house / Upgrades rental
rental units units / Builds own house as well as
upgraded rental units

Figure 1. Process of Housing Supply Mechanism through Informal Occupation of Public and Private Lands
Source: Primary Data.
Note: *On state government lands, owners can apply for miyadi patta after 15 years.

Various actors are involved in forming settlements through the informal occupation of public and
private lands in Guwahati. This includes squatters (both poor and better off) themselves, who have made
dakhal or a middlemen who did dakhal and then sold off the land to the purchasers. Some squatters
and purchasers immediately become owner-occupiers, while others remain absentee owners for varying
periods of time. In many of them, since the size of squatted-upon or purchased plots are quite large, both
owner-occupiers and absentee owners tend to invest in the development of rental housing, provided there
is a relatively high level of de facto tenure security. Figure 1 illustrates this process. Many owner-occupiers
also build their own house incrementally along with developing some rental units that provide income
for incremental building/improvement of the owner’s house. For the absentee owners, tenancy plays a
significant role in protecting their plot of land from others who might want to do dakhal in them, as well
as in generating some income from the plot until the settlement/area is more developed and thus fit for
their own inhabitation or for more profitable development.
The informal settlement often develops over time through community mobilization in which local
resident organizations called unnayan samitis (development committees) play an important role by rais-
ing financial contributions from residents, building collective infrastructures, collectively applying for

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292 Renu Desai and Darshini Mahadevia

miyadi patta and petitioning their leaders for support. The settlement also gradually develops through
political patronage, in which political leaders and parties support infrastructure provision (for instance,
through Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) funds, by pressuring government agencies to
extend some infrastructure, etc.).
Rental housing is thus a step in the owner’s process of consolidating his/her own house or it is part of
a process in which owners gradually seek higher profits from their land. The latter involves the upgrad-
ing of rental housing quality so as to generate higher rental income for themselves or involves transform-
ing the land use (for instance, by building commercial structures) or selling off the land. The development
of the settlement and surrounding area over time is important in these processes as it has effects on tenure
security and infrastructure provision over time, which in turn is likely to transform the extent and quality
of rental housing in the settlement. We now turn to each of these five submarkets and examine them in
further detail.
Settlements on Railway Lands
Our case-study settlement on the narrow stretch of land on both sides of the railway tracks between
Lakhtokia Gate and SRCB Road (Map 1) is an example of very low tenure security. Frequent evictions
have led to houses being built out of the most temporary and inexpensive of materials such as plastic
sheets and bamboo mats. There is no government-provided infrastructure, and households themselves
have not made any investments for toilets and infrastructure due to fear of losing them in frequent evic-
tions. Water for bathing and washing clothes/utensils is obtained from shallow pits dug into the ground.
Drinking water is obtained from the nearby market or mosque. Informal owner-occupants have not
invested in improving rental units. Among all the case-study settlements, this one has the poorest quality
housing, the lowest built-up area and the lowest level of infrastructure access for both the owners and
tenants and it has the lowest rents.
There is a new form of land tenancy here. Some of the owner-occupants who own small kabadi (recy-
clable waste) shops located on parts of this land have demarcated areas within which they collect the
waste as well as allow some waste collectors and sorters to live as tenants in huts of plastic sheets and
bamboo mats. We call this ‘in-kind tenancy’ because the tenant pays rent through selling his/her col-
lected and sorted waste to only the landlord at a price the latter gives to the former. This suggests that by

Map 1. Railway Slum between Lakhtokia Gate and SRCB Road Showing Ground Built-up on Both Sides of the
Railway Tracks
Source: Primary Data.

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Diversity and Dynamics of Informal Rental Housing in a Mid-sized City in India 293

allowing a certain number of waste collectors and sorters to live on the land they control, the kabadi
shopkeepers are trying to guarantee a steady supply of collected and sorted waste to their shops, while
keeping the costs of collection low. Some of the waste collectors also pay a monthly rent of `100–300 to
the shopkeeper for building their hut in an area demarcated by him/her.
Not all slums on the railway lands have such high tenure insecurity. Some settlements located away
from railway tracks and enjoying some kind of political patronage have not always been threatened with
demolition, have higher de facto tenure security and hence tend to have better-quality housing and infra-
structure as well as a higher extent of rental housing and better-quality rental housing. An example of
such a settlement is Shakuntala Colony, Kailashnagar, which is not located directly along the railway
tracks. Here, the informal owner-occupants have built houses out of brick walls and tin-sheet roofing,
formed the Kailashnagar Unnayan Samiti and the Kailashnagar Shakuntala Colony Congress Committee
and through petitioning the municipal councillor and MLA they have obtained some collective infra-
structures such as a road, a tube well and electricity. A higher level of de facto tenure security and some
collective infrastructure provision through community mobilization and political patronage have resulted
in the owners investing in better-quality rental units, of brick walls and tin-sheet roofing.
Settlements on State Government Revenue Lands and Private Lands Earmarked for Acquisition
The settlements in this submarket generally have high de facto tenure security, with some even having
plots of miyadi patta, and some level of infrastructure provision (often due to the activities of unnayan
samitis). Thus, many owners develop rental housing. Within the submarket, there are variations in the
extent and quality of rental housing influenced by Guwahati’s varying topography. In settlements on
very marshy lands (which are/were waterbodies or wetlands) and in the hills, the level of infrastructure
is poorer. On the hills, particularly on the upper reaches where accessibility and infrastructure extension is
a problem, the rents are low and hence the extent of rental housing is also low. Even where rental housing
is constructed on very marshy lands and on the upper reaches of the hills, it is generally of poor quality,
catering to poorer tenants.
In our case-study settlement of Bhootnath Milanpath Dolki (hereafter referred to as Dolki), an
informal settlement on a wetland, the majority of owners built their houses on stilts with bamboo-mat
walls and tin-sheet roofs (86 per cent of our sample of owners), due to the topographical characteristic.
Even large houses of the owners, on average of 45 sq.m., are built thus as more permanent materials
on marshy land would lead to very high building costs. Access into the settlement is very poor since
owners are unable to incur the high costs of constructing a proper road on the marshy land. The gov-
ernment has also not constructed a proper road despite repeated petitions by the unnayan samiti. Thus,
better-off tenants do not prefer to live in Dolki, and the owners have developed rental units with
extremely low built-up area, with shared water supply and toilets among the tenants and with low
monthly rents. Although some owners do wish to and have the economic ability to build better-quality
rental housing, they still resort to building small one-room rental units from bamboo-mat walls and
tin-sheet roofs (90.7 per cent of our sample of tenants). Since Dolki is located near a busy commercial
area, there is high demand for such low-rent housing amongst labourers, and hence 90 per cent of the
total households of Dolki are tenants.
Nizarapara, another of our case-study settlements, is an informal settlement on a hillside, where many
owners have large plots of land and have built good-quality houses of brick walls and tin-sheet roofs for
themselves (80 per cent of our sample of owners). The average built-up area of their houses is quite high,
at 60 sq.m. However, access into the settlement is cumbersome, especially as roads and paths get narrower

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294 Renu Desai and Darshini Mahadevia

higher up the hill, and taking a vehicle up to the house is not possible. Thus, better-off tenants do not
prefer to obtain rental housing further up the hill where they have to go by foot. Access to piped water is
also more difficult further up the hill. Consequently, rents decline as one goes higher up. Thus, despite
some owners wishing to and having the economic ability to build more and better-quality rental units,
there is relatively less rental housing in Nizarapara (59 per cent of the total households are tenants). For the
same reason, this mostly comprises units built out of bamboo-mat walls and tin-sheet roofs (76 per cent
of our sample of tenants). The rent for a unit built of these materials in the lower parts of the hill was
`600/month, while in the upper parts of the hill it was `200/month.11 Lower rent is due to the poorer
accessibility and infrastructure in the hill’s upper parts.
Contrast this with Bhaskarnagar, another case-study settlement (Map 2), which was on marshy land
25–30 years ago. It was notified for acquisition under the ULCRA of 1976. Although revenue lands were
squatted upon through dakhal or purchased through middlemen who did dakhal, private lands marked
for acquisition were informally sold off by their landowners before acquisition process was initiated so
as to make money before they lost the land to acquisition. The current residents have come to acquire
their plots after successive sales/purchases of this land. After purchasing the plots, the informal owners
carried out earth filling on them over the years and gradually converted this marshy land into a relatively

14
3
7
21 8
10 10 2 5 3 4
21 12 6 4 5 5 3 6
22 4 12 5 12 1 2 15
1 2
9 10 8 2 4 8 4
5
1 4 10 1 10 2 2
6 8
6 7 5
4 6 5 10 6 8 6 2 9 2 3
6 10 9 2
5 9 9 10 3 5 1
3 6 3 6 6 3 4
10 3 1 5
7 5 7 10
12 4 6 7 4 4 5 4
8 3 12 8
2 7 2
10 3 4
2 5 9 4 17
13 5 2 2
11 4 6 3
13 2 3 4 3 6
8 7 7 10 10 8 2
14 6 5 8 4 6
4 6
2 7 17 5 6 2
5 4 8 2
2 6 10 3
3 4 4
10 4 2 8 11 3
11 4 30 2
10
4
12
11
Households = 1096

Map 2. Bhaskarnagar Showing Plots (Indicated by a Dot) and Number of Dwellings Built Within the Plot13
Source: Primary Data.

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Diversity and Dynamics of Informal Rental Housing in a Mid-sized City in India 295

stable flat land. As a result, unlike in Dolki, topography no longer creates obstacles for infrastructure
provision. The settlement has a residents’ committee called the JalJal Committee (Water Committee),
set up in 2010. Through community mobilization and political patronage, proper roads and pathways
have been built. The settlement thus has good access. Consequently, it has a high extent of rental housing
(84 per cent of the total households are tenants), which includes better-quality pucca (of permanent
materials) rental housing for better-off tenants by owners who have the economic capacity to invest
more. Due to the settlement’s nearness to the busy commercial and industrial area, there is a high demand
for rental housing amongst different income groups. The quality of rental units in Bhaskarnagar is thus
shaped by submarket-specific, settlement-specific and owner-specific processes and factors.
Within the housing submarkets of the informal occupation of state government revenue lands and
informal occupation of private lands earmarked for acquisition, we find settlement-specific variations in
rental housing that are related to topography, community mobilization and political patronage, all of
which have implications for infrastructure development in the settlement, which in turn has implications
for the kind of rental housing feasible and the kind of tenants likely to seek housing in the settlement.
Variations are also linked to the settlement’s location in the city’s social and economic geography and its
implications for rental housing demand.
Informal Occupation of State Government RF Lands
Informal settlements on state government RF lands, which are mostly in the hills, have a lower level
of de facto tenure security since the inhabitants are not eligible for patta under current policies.
KMSS’s and BGMPDS’s presence have extended some level of de facto tenure security. Community
mobilization through unnayan samitis has been partially successful in obtaining some infrastructure
in these settlements. Nonetheless, as discussed earlier, there are accessibility problems in the hills,
leading to a lower demand for rental housing and low rents, and consequently lack of interest among
owners to construct rental housing. Moreover, as our visit to one hill settlement, namely, Mithangapuri
in Garchuk, revealed, many owners belong to tribal groups and work as casual labourers. They have
little economic capacity to invest in rental housing. All this combined has resulted in less rental hous-
ing on RF lands.
Informal Occupation of Private Lands
Many of these settlements are on the lands given on lease to private trusts such as the Kamakhya Temple12
Trust, which have been informally sold off by middlemen, some of whom were priests. They have high
de facto tenure security and a relatively high level of infrastructure provision through community mobi-
lization and political (and sometimes religious) patronage. This supports the development of a high
extent of and also better-quality rental housing.

Housing through Alienation of Land

The alienation of land through commercial sale shapes three housing submarkets. The first comprises
informal subdivision of agricultural lands by the landowner and their commercial sale. The second com-
prises the formal subdivision of land and its commercial sale for self-built housing and the third com-
prises the commercial supply of formal developer-built housing. Since rental housing for the urban poor
has developed mainly in the first, we examine only this submarket.

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296 Renu Desai and Darshini Mahadevia

Many tracts of agricultural land on the city’s periphery have been subdivided by landowners and
commercially sold off for residential purposes without obtaining permission for their conversion into
non-agricultural (NA) use and compliance of developmental control regulations. However, the sale
and purchase is through quasi-legal documents, for example, on a stamp paper, which gives the purchas-
ers a perception of tenure security, although in planning parlance they are considered illegal settlements.
Urban infrastructure provision by local authorities is also largely non-existent at first. Nonetheless,
due to large plot sizes in many of them, both owner-occupiers and absentee owners invest in develop-
ing rental housing and some facilities of water (open wells or borewells, connected to a hand pump or
to a shared water tap through a small overhead water tank) and common toilets (with septic tanks) for
their tenants.
This submarket also has variations linked to the rental housing supply process. As Figure 2 shows,
many owner-occupiers build their own house incrementally, sometimes also developing rental units at
the same time. The rental income contributes to the incremental building/improving of the owner’s
house. The absentee owners develop rental units to obtain an income from their plot of land. At this
stage of development, where the land is low lying and prone to waterlogging, owners invest in earth
filling for their plots. Collective infrastructures—especially roads, street lights and drainage—are

Commercial Informal subdivision

Private land-owner sub-divides agricultural land and sells off plots

Purchase of land by owner- Purchase of land by

occupier absentee owner

1
Land left vacant Builds rental units

Builds own Builds own house

house incrementally + Rents
incrementally rental units
Becomes owner-occupier

Sells land & house Rents

1

Evicts tenants and then Commercial

Eviction of tenants and development / Builds own house /
might build upgraded Upgrades Rental Units / Builds own &
rental units upgraded rental units

Figure 2. Process of Housing Supply Mechanism in Commercial Informal Subdivisions

Source: Primary Data.

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Diversity and Dynamics of Informal Rental Housing in a Mid-sized City in India 297

gradually provided through community mobilization and political support. The area thus begins to develop
and land prices increase. Then, some owner-occupiers and absentee owners evict their tenants to build/
expand their own houses or upgrade the rental units so as to attract a better-off tenant population and obtain
a higher rental income. Some owners also sell off their land to developers for commercial development.
Thus, rental housing may be a step in the owner’s process of building/improving his/her own house
or it may be part of a process in which owners gradually seek higher returns from their land. The latter
involves upgrading the quality of rental housing so as to generate higher rental income or by transform-
ing the land use to commercial or selling off the land. These processes would happen if infrastructure
development in the settlement and surrounding area took place over time. If infrastructure development
occurs largely through the local government investments, the extent of rental housing increases and its
quality improves, giving higher returns to the owners. Different settlements in this submarket might be
at different stages of this process, and also different with regard to their location in the city’s social and
economic geography, size of owners’ plots, and economic capacity and preferences of owners, thus lead-
ing to variations.
This process of the area developing and some owners upgrading their rental housing units to cater to
a better-off tenant population was in evidence in Shahnagar, which, at the time of our study, was a patch-
work of vacant plots of absentee owners, plots of an absentee owner in which tenants live in low-quality
rental units, plots with the owner’s family living in a pucca house and their tenants living adjacent to
them in low-quality rental housing, and plots with the owner’s family as well as their tenants living in
pucca housing. In our sample of owners, most lived in either houses made from brick walls and tin-sheet
roofs (40 per cent of our sample of owners) or brick walls and reinforced cement concrete (RCC) roofs
(46.7 per cent of our sample of owners). The average built-up area of owners’ houses is also quite large
with the average being 131 sq.m. They also have a high level of basic services provision.
About 45 per cent of tenant households surveyed lived in rental units made from bamboo-mat walls
and tin-sheet roofs while 49 per cent lived in pucca rental units made of brick walls and tin-sheet roofs;
5.3 per cent lived in pucca rental units made of brick walls and concrete roofs. Although there is a diver-
sity of rental units in terms of built-up area, the average built-up area is 33 sq.m., higher than the average
built-up area of rental units in any of the other informal housing submarkets (where the average built-up
area varies between 12 and 18 sq.m.). In fact, 24.6 per cent of the surveyed tenant households live in
rental units of more than 30 sq.m. built-up area. Similarly, while there is a range of monthly rents paid,
the average monthly rent in Shahnagar is `1,100 (US$21.15 at early 2012 prices). This is higher than in
any of the other informal housing submarkets. There is, however, a poorer tenant population too, with
about 16 per cent of the surveyed tenant households paying monthly rent of less than `500 (US$9.62 at
early 2012 prices). Basic services provision in terms of an individual water connection or individual
toilet to the tenant is also highest in this submarket. Of the surveyed tenants, 18.6 per cent were found to
have an individual water connection and 22 per cent to have an individual toilet.

Public-sector Housing Provision

The public-sector housing is provided by various public-sector organizations for their employees on
their own lands. Guwahati has two types of institutional actors, as a result of which two housing sub-
markets are created: employer-provided housing and public housing. In this article, only employer-
provided rental housing is discussed since the latter’s share in the city is miniscule. The former

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298 Renu Desai and Darshini Mahadevia

comprises housing built by public-sector agencies and institutions such as the Indian Railways,
Guwahati University, Guwahati Medical College and GMC, which are given on rent to their employees
of different classes. The staff colonies built by the Indian Railways are scattered at different locations in
the city. For example, the Indian Railways has built five types of rental housing quarters, ranging from
250 sq.m. to 40 sq.m. units, each for a different class of employee. Similarly, Guwahati University has
at least nine types of rental housing quarters, ranging from 160 sq.m. units to 70–90 sq.m. units. The
GMC has also built rental-housing quarters of different sizes and types at several locations, but only for
its sanitation employees.
The GMC Colony at Fatasil, our case-study settlement, was constructed more than 30 years ago for
its employees and comprises three sections known as Andhra Colony, Punjabi Colony and Bihari Colony,
each named after the ethnic group inhabiting it.13 The colony has varying types of rental units: four three-
storey RCC buildings and numerous Assam-type (AT) units built out of brick walls and sloping tin-sheet
roofs. The latter are provided with shared water taps and toilets. The maintenance of the housing and
infrastructure is very poor. The RCC buildings are now damaged with broken balcony slabs and para-
pets. Basic services such as water, toilet provision, drainage and solid waste management are extremely
inadequate, creating an extremely unhygienic environment. Even residents of the RCC buildings do not
get running water in their flats, and they have to fill water from the shared taps in the lanes. Often, resi-
dents of the colony have to fetch water from outside the settlement. In the Andhra Colony, 95 families
share six latrines. Some tenants in the AT units have space to extend their houses, and they have used this
to build an individual toilet and bath.
The vacant parts of these employer-provided settlements have been encroached upon with structures
built of bamboo mat or brick walls and tin-sheet roofs, by the employee-tenants for sub-renting them and
also by squatters. This informal housing has emerged partly because the GMC has not constructed ade-
quate houses for its sanitation workers. All of GMC’s permanent employees in the settlement, including
those squatting in the settlement, pay rent to the GMC, which is deducted from their salaries. The fami-
lies of retired GMC workers continue to live in the colony and no longer pay any rent. Temporary sanita-
tion workers who live in the colony also do not pay rent. All tenants living here and in such settlements
have high tenure security, which, however, has not translated into good-quality housing and basic
services.

Policy Issues Emerging from Rental Housing in Guwahati

This article indicates that the rental-housing market, particularly in any informal settlement, needs to be
understood as part of a dynamic process of informal housing development in any city. There is a high
extent of informal housing in all Indian cities; however, there are certain unique factors that have caused
such large extent in Guwahati, which have to do with the geomorphology of the city (dominance of wet-
lands and hills) and landownership regime wherein the state government owns all the land. The informal
housing has various submarkets, which are defined through landownership, the processes of informal
occupation/subdivision and development, and the role of different actors in the same. Rental housing and
its extent and nature (type of unit, housing quality, infrastructure levels, rents and tenure security) are
shaped by the dynamics in these submarkets. There are also settlement-specific processes and character-
istics (such as settlement formation processes, topography, community mobilization, political patronage

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Diversity and Dynamics of Informal Rental Housing in a Mid-sized City in India 299

and location), and some owner-specific factors (such as plot/dwelling size, economic capacity and priori-
ties) that influence informal rental supply. If urban policies and programmes are to pay attention to rental
housing and the needs of tenants, then these processes and determinants have to be better understood and
addressed. Certainly there are tenant-specific factors that also shape rental housing in a particular settle-
ment, but these have not been examined in this research. There cannot be one top-down and universal
approach to rental housing in Indian cities, and in particular mid-sized cities where the capacities to
deliver basic services are also highly limited, leave aside provision of formal housing.
The tenure security of tenants is relatively low as compared to the owners in an informal housing
market. Since there are no written rental agreements in the informal sector, tenants are at the mercy of
their landlord-owners. Tenure security often depends on tenants’ relationships with their owners.
However, tenure security is lowest for tenants in informal settlements on certain types of lands, in
Guwahati as well as other cities, such as the railway lands and all other central government lands, who
do not divest their lands for any purpose other than their own needs, leading to frequent demolitions.
It is also lowest for tenants in informal settlements that are undergoing development and a gentrifica-
tion process.
Tenure security of the tenants is tied to the tenure security of owners in the informal housing sector.
Where tenure security is very low, the extent of rental housing developed by owners is generally lower
and of poorer quality. Enhancing tenure security of owners is important for enhancing rental housing as
well as enhancing tenure security of the tenants. For this, policies should improve de facto tenure secu-
rity as well rather than focussing on only legal tenure, as the latter might lead to gentrification, particu-
larly of the tenants (Mahadevia, 2011). In Guwahati, this will require addressing the tenure issues related
to railway lands and RF lands on which tenure security is generally never granted by law. Where tenure
security cannot be enhanced in situ, such as in settlements very near the railway tracks, resettlement
might be the only option, which should be designed so as not to exclude the tenants. The informal owners
do not want tenants to be included as resettlement programme beneficiaries as that would make them
lose their rental income, even though it is from the informal market. This is of particular concern when
these are small-scale owner-landlords who are themselves quite poor.
Moreover, simply extending tenure security is not adequate. While this encourages owners to invest
in housing and infrastructure (collective as well as individual infrastructure), policies also need to
move towards extending adequate infrastructure in the informal sector. Leaving infrastructure provi-
sion to owners and political patronage can be ad hoc, and dependence on the presence of and success
of community mobilization will rarely ensure adequate infrastructure either for owners or for tenants.
This is particularly true for informal settlements on swampy lands and in the hills where topographical
conditions mean that infrastructure provision is expensive. Moreover, the high demand for rental
housing means that owner-landlords do not always bother to provide adequate infrastructure for ten-
ants since they know their rental units will be in demand in any case. It is only when they want to
attract a higher income group of tenants that owner-landlords invest in the infrastructure aspect of
rental housing.
Some studies on rental housing have emphasized that upgrading programmes provide an opportu-
nity to improve the conditions of not only owners but also tenants (e.g. Ballesteros, 2004). This is
certainly true, however, this research also raises questions about whether and how tenants can be pro-
tected from the gentrification of rental housing (upgradation of the quality of rental housing and
related rent increases) that slum improvement is likely to bring with it. How will tenure security for
existing urban poor tenants be improved so that the existing tenants do not get excluded or priced out

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300 Renu Desai and Darshini Mahadevia

as infrastructural improvements take place in urban slums if they were to be upgraded? How can rental
housing (especially quality of basic services for tenants) be upgraded while protecting poor tenants
from unmanageable rent increases?

Notes
1. This research was funded by SNPUPR (Support to National Policies for Urban Poverty Reduction), a partnership
of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (MHUPA) and UK’s Department for International
Development (DFID) under the programme to strengthen National Resource Centres for supporting states and
cities in developing pro-poor urban policies and programme implementation. We are grateful for this research
funding. We would like to acknowledge the contribution of Trishna Gogoi in the fieldwork, Aseem Mishra and
Abhijit Datey in data processing and Vishal Darji and Tejas Patel in mapping of the case-study settlements.
2. The comments and opinions in this article are of the authors and not of the Centre for Urban Equity or of the
CEPT University or the funding agency.
3. UN-Habitat defines informal housing as that which does not conform to the laws and regulatory framework of
the city with regard to occupying, transferring and subdividing land, and house construction. By this definition,
the majority of housing in Indian cities, be it of the poor, middle class or elite, has an element of informality. Our
focus in this article is on the poor and low-income groups who turn to informal housing because formal housing
is not affordable to them or not supplied at all.
4. The total population of 963,429 in 2011, from the population census data of 2011.
5. This date comes from the 1985 Assam Accord between the Government of India and the organizations who
were part of the Assam Movement that agitated against illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. According to the
Accord, those who had entered India after this date were to be deported.
6. Private lands are those with long-term lease rights, that is, miyadi patta.
7. Scheduled tribes are the indigenous population groups, and they abound in Assam and other states of the NE
India.
8. A neighbouring state, which is among the least developed states in India.
9. These percentages are based on the 2009 survey, which identified 90 slums in Guwahati. Recent surveys for
Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) have identified even more slums.
10. This legislation has been repealed in Assam in 2003 (Source: http://indiankanoon.org/doc/202659/, accessed on
January 10, 2014).
11. At the rate of US$1 = `52 in the early 2012, `600 will be US$11.54 and `200 will be US$5.85.
12. Important religious and tourist spot in Guwahati. Often, religious trusts, which behave as private organizations,
are granted land by the state government.
13. Migrants from Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Bihar first came to Assam during the colonial period to work as
sanitation workers.

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Renu Desai, Coordinator at the Centre for Urban Equity, CEPT University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.
E-mail: renu.desai@cept.ac.in

Darshini Mahadevia, Dean and Professor at the Faculty of Planning, CEPT University, Ahmedabad,
Gujarat, India. E-mail: darshini@cept.ac.in

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