Dispossession without displacement: Producing property through slum redevelopment in Bengaluru, India

Abstract

The paper examines the role of slum redevelopment in the production of private property in land in a fast-growing city of southern India. Drawing on an in-depth case study in Bengaluru, we show that the tenurial rights of slum residents were eroded when the contested land on which they lived – which was layered with multiple rights and claims of various actors – was confirmed by the court as the sole property of an individual who claimed to be its owner. The transformation of the plot into private property and therefore into a fungible asset, free of encumbrances, allowed the landowner, the political entrepreneurs who spearheaded the redevelopment project, and various intermediaries to capture most of the rapidly escalating value of the land. The exchange of recognized land tenure rights for small flats carrying conditional titles further excluded slum residents from ‘proper’ urban citizenship based on property ownership and exacerbated the precarity of their lives in the city. In this case, in-situ (on the same site) slum redevelopment is shown to operate as a modality of enclosure in which the urban poor are displaced even while remaining in place – or a process of dispossession without displacement.

Speculative urbanism

“…the land aggregators studied by Gidwani and Upadhya), thereby offering a fuller account of the actors involved in speculation. Similarly, in focusing on a single small parcel of land, Upadhya and Rao (2022) uncover “the less visible, quotidian and conflicted processes, through which the ‘worlding’ of the city is unfolding” (12). What the authors describe as a “micro-study” (12) affords deep insights into the contestations and power relations underlying the construction of property regimes necessary for speculative development.…”

“…Likewise, Upadhya and Rao (2022) foreground the messiness of layered histories that inhere in land in their article on in-situ slum redevelopment in Bengaluru. Attending to the rapid, “seemingly overnight” disappearance of a slum in a formerly industrial area turned “real estate ‘hot spot’” (2), the authors examine the processes of land transfer underlying this dramatic redevelopment.…”

Unleashing speculative urbanism: Speculation and urban transformations

“…Having agreed to sell their property to a land broker, they not only use the windfall income to rebuild their family compound in a nearby kampung where land prices are still low but also engage in economic speculation by becoming landlords: building rental units for migrant workers and their families. In central Bengaluru, Upadhya and Rao (this issue) examine how a local landowner, armed with a legal ruling granting him sole land title, was able to negotiate the “in situ” displacement of long-established residents holding tenurial rights. Resisting displacement pressure, these residents eventually agreed to relocate to multi-story blocks of small flats to be built on part of the land, releasing the remainder for speculative urban redevelopment.…”

A review of literature on slum redevelopment policies of India: Geographies of dispossessions and caste

“…Upadhya and Rao (2022) examine the role of slum redevelopment in the city of Bengaluru, India where these policies have facilitated the production of private property at the cost of recognizing the tenurial rights of residents. Since the current national policy favors in situ redevelopment and rehabilitation, the exchange of small flats with conditional rights over land tenure act further excludes residents from urban citizenship based on property ownership.…”

“…Apart from urban policy discourse that ultimately has a simplistic rendering of slum redevelopment and rehabilitation policies, a majority of the research on slum redevelopment policies in India has omitted the socio‐spatial realities of caste groups and how those play a critical, if not the most important, role in shaping vulnerability in the face of “redevelopment.” Even the recent studies mentioned in the earlier sections of this paper focus on mapping and studying dispossessions without taking into account how that experience differs from one caste group to another. While dispossessions are identified, such as the dilution of tenurial rights of slum residents (Upadhya & Rao, 2022) or the exclusion of residents on the basis of unofficial, subjective criteria such as local networks of power (Dupont & Shankare Gowda, 2021), no mention is made of the role of caste or caste groups in these instances. This is not merely an omission that reflects the existence of multiple ways of understanding social realities but is an active, even if unintended, instance of the obscuring of structures of the power and privilege of dominant caste groups over marginalized groups.…”