Planned ambitions versus lived realities: an examination of the BSUP scheme in the periphery of Mumbai

This research examined the BSUP scheme in the periphery of Mumbai for its effectiveness in creating upward social mobility and social integration amongst the urban poor, which is the main objective of the scheme. The scheme is a part of the neoliberal-era settlement rehousing schemes in India that offer tenure security to the urban poor (A. Roy, 2014). The examination of the scheme involved investigating the scheme’s pre-, during-, and post-implementation phases in Kalyan Dombivli (KD) city – a 1.2 million population sub-city in the Mumbai city region – at a range of spatial scales – that include the scale of city and region, of neighbourhood/community, and that of the household. The research adopted a qualitative case study approach for its context-sensitivity (Yin, 2014; c.f. Porta Della & Keating, 2008). A longitudinal and a multi-scalar examination of the scheme was based upon and contributed to two sets of literature – the first is the human agential and the process-oriented approaches of ‘the quiet encroachment of the ordinary’ (Bayat, 2004), and that of ‘place-making’ (Lombard, 2015) and the second is the literature on (neoliberal) governmentalities and how these are accomplished and experienced under the everyday settings (Rose & Miller, 1992; Li, 1999; Sharma, 2008; Charlton, 2014; Charlton & Meth, 2017). The examination of the case revealed that the scheme’s essentialist-universalistic imaginaries of the ‘slums’, ‘slum’ dwellers and the outcomes of the ‘slum’ redevelopment met differently with the ground realities in KD. Findings reveal that the spatial-relational constitution of heterogeneity amongst the poorer groups plays a key role in the way they engage with the accomplishment of the BSUP scheme and experience the BSUP housing. This thesis draws attention to the significance of examining the process of poorer groups’ settlement transformation in understanding how they accomplish and experience the rehousing governmentalities.