As India witnesses rapid urbanisation, it is imperative to build an understanding of how cities are geared in terms of growth and inclusion.
India has been witnessing rapid urbanisation in the last decade, particularly in its large and medium-size cities. As more and more people move towards cities and towns, it is imperative to build an understanding of how cities are geared in terms of growth and inclusion. In what ways do India’s marginalised communities get excluded from the country’s growing urban spaces? This paper studies how individuals and groups are included in — or excluded from — urban transitions. It is based on an empirical examination of inclusion in three Indian cities, part of a project of ORF with the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in Norway, and also describes the processes of exclusion that have become embedded in India’s urban spaces.
Introduction
“Our urban spaces and governance mechanisms have become the theatres for political conflicts and economic struggles. ‘Exclusionary’ urbanization is benefitting certain social groups to the detriment of others, and directing resources to large metropolises depriving small and medium towns of funds needed for infrastructure and essential services” — Hamid Ansari, Vice President of India. [i]
By most indications, India’s future seems to be urban. [ii] According to reliable estimates, [iii]the country’s urban population will increase by half a billion over the next four decades (or nearly one million a month). With cities currently contributing a mammoth 70 percent of India’s GDP, there is little doubt that urban spaces will continue to grow, and for a number of reasons, [iv] among them, the economic opportunities that they offer their inhabitants. Further, for societies like India where the layers of caste and hierarchy often serve as obstacles for individual progress, cities also offer opportunities for upward mobility and assimilation. It is little wonder that India’s cities receive an enormous influx of people belonging to oppressed and marginalised communities. The last decade, for example, saw an increase of 40 percent in the population of dalits in urban areas. Historically, too, India’s religious minorities have been migrating to the cities in large numbers. [v]
What kind of life do these communities live in India’s urban spaces? Are vulnerable communities — the religious minorities, the dalits and adivasi, the poor, the women — able to gain from the growth of cities, or are they left excluded? Do they manage to access the most basic of social services, or is such access dependent on their location, migrant status, and socio-religious identity? This paper attempts to provide answers to these and other related questions. Based on a study of three Indian cities (Pune, Ahmedabad and Varanasi), this paper examines the issues of urban exclusion in the context of access to services, or the lack of it. It opens with a review of existing literature on dominant forms of exclusion in India’s urban spaces. The second section makes a detailed presentation of the empirical study, including the methodology used to uncover trends of exclusion in the three subject cities. The findings of the study are discussed in the third section, and the paper concludes with a description of the broad patterns that can be culled from the study, as well as raises questions for further research.
Urban exclusion in India: Review of literature
The City can be said to be a leveller: It offers the ideal conditions for the breakdown of rigid social structures that tend to discriminate against the marginalised. [vi] This is true for India, a society that is highly stratified. Calling attention to the transformative potential of cities and towns, Babasaheb Ambedkar, dalit icon and a key architect of the Indian Constitution, exhorted his fellow dalits to leave the “narrow-minded” villages for city life. [vii] In contemporary Indian history, cities which have witnessed a relative surge of populations belonging to traditionally marginalised communities have provided these immigrants with some chance of social mobility, greater than what they could have perhaps hoped for in their native village. A number of recent studies argue that the ‘anonymity’ that is accorded by the city has helped dalits, for example, in overcoming the social disadvantages and prejudices they were born to — in their walk up the social and economic ladder. [viii]
While there may be enough evidence to prove such claims of the city’s potential for social integration and economic opportunity, other recent studies point to contrary trends about caste-based segregation and exclusion in urban spaces. In many ways, these studies say, cities in India increasingly mirror the rural social and cultural realities that poor immigrants are wanting to escape. According to Vithayathil and Singh (2012), accelerated urbanisation (particularly in medium and large cities), globalisation, transformations in employment structures—these have not aided to a significant degree in the dismantling of deep social and ethnic divides known to Indian society. [ix] Indeed, spatial segregation by caste and socio-economic reasons are seen to be on the rise in many Indian cities. A more recent study by Sidhwani (2015) found stronger trends of spatial segregation in all major Indian cities. [x]
While there may be enough evidence to prove claims of the city’s potential for social integration and economic opportunity, other recent studies point to contrary trends about caste-based segregation and exclusion in urban spaces.
While there may be enough evidence to prove claims of the city’s potential for social integration and economic opportunity, other recent studies point to contrary trends about caste-based segregation and exclusion in urban spaces.
Yet the trends of rising spatial exclusion in urban spaces is not based on caste alone. Residential segregation by religion — particularly in the case of Muslims — is a growing phenomenon in most large and medium cities which are already saddled with a history of communalism. [xi] According to Mahadevia (2002), the process of urban exclusion, earlier segmented on the basis of class, was now happening on the basis of religion. [xii] Moreover, these socio-religious disadvantaged populations are still heavily concentrated in certain geographies of a city, mostly overpopulating slums and the poorest neighbourhoods; with higher population density and segregated populations come various negative consequences. [xiii] The very location of slum colonies has a direct impact on the access to municipal services. Compared to families with similar socio-economic characteristics living in the inner parts of a city, squatter communities in the peripheries receive little municipal services, if at all, such as drinking water, sanitation, education, healthcare, and food stamps. [xiv] Robust evidence exist establishing a direct correlation between increasing distance from the cities and higher incidence of poverty. [xv]
This paper collects detailed information on spatiality and exclusionary dynamics in select neighbourhoods in three Indian cities. While the study is largely a followup to several preceding studies (Vithayathil and Singh, 2012; and Sidhawani, 2015), it has also gone a step further. To get a deeper view of exclusionary dynamics, this present work opted for household surveys backed by stakeholder analyses. Care has been taken to understand exclusion from the point of view of migrant and poorer inhabitants as well. The household survey was carefully designed to capture these relevant dimensions.
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