Patrick Heller Shruti Majumdar Brown University
Citizens' daily interactions with their government to seek access to basic public goods are at the heart of the exercise of citizenship. Particularly for the marginalized and poor, these interactions are necessary not only for the enjoyment of full citizenship, but they also have serious implications for survival. Preliminary ethnographic work in four slums in Calcutta, one of India's most populous cities, suggests that these interactions between the state and the poor can vary in important ways. Interactions not only vary in terms of how the poor engage the state; some make claims by knocking directly on the doors of public bureaucracies while others' engagement is indirect or brokered. Interactions also differ in of self-organization; some make claims more autonomously, while others are more dependent on the state for articulation of their demands. This research studies this variation first, and then examines possible explanations of these varying modes of civic engagement or degrees of citizenship among the poor. The research questions the basic assumption of most theories on citizenship that the urban poor are an undifferentiated mass that engage with the state in one particular way, which is different from the engagement of elites. The study integrates state and society centered explanations for citizenship practices and contributes to a better understanding of political processes, social movements and development.
Broader Impacts
The research has the potential to contribute to a better understanding of citizenship and patterns of civil participation among the urban poor. The comparative data and lessons learnt from the interviews will be made available to community-based organizations. Research findings will be shared with a multi-disciplinary audience in Calcutta, through the academic contacts established at the institute of affiliation -- Centre for the Study of Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC).
PI: Patrick Heller Co-PI: Shruti Majumdar Intellectual Merit The main goal of this research was to explore differentiated citizenships within the urban poor in India. This research is based on the assumption that in order to understand the dynamics of any democracy, both in its inception as well as in its subsequent unfolding, we must first understand and disaggregate the nature of engagement between the state and the poor, and the various forms it takes. Based on a year of fieldwork in four different slums and squatters in Calcutta, I explored how residents make claims on the state, particularly when it comes to accessing two of the most politically contested and scarce resources in the city i.e. water and land. Drawing from the ethnography, I highlight four different modes of engagement – clientelism, active citizenry, brokerage and disengagement. Alongside establishing these varying modes of engagement within the urban poor, I also attempt to explain this variation by exploring the conditions that give rise to certain forms of engagement versus certain others. I argue that three different rights and practices are significant in our understanding of the modes of engagement – associational autonomy, the right to vote and property rights. There is fair amount of scholarly agreement on their significance, but their role in facilitating or inhibiting access to state has rarely been understood, or even carefully historicized. By taking a historical perspective on claim-making, I delineate how the three variables matter – in particular with regard to their sequencing vis-à-vis each other, as well as to the specific conditions under which all of these rights are guaranteed. Broader Impacts The need to understand these linkages between state and the urban poor is particularly pressing for policy debates on urban governance and democratic deliberation, particularly in South Asia and Latin America. With the advent of globalization and massive attempts at political decentralization in the global South, it is increasingly important to understand the everyday politics of a burgeoning portion of cities – the urban poor. This research therefore generates broader impacts for policy, academic and community-level audiences. The research provides a potent example to policy audiences of why well-intentioned participatory initiatives of international organizations and central governments fail to translate at the local level. Finally, tangible products such as maps of locations of public investments have been disseminated among activists engaged in community work and slum rehabilitation in order for them to better understand the context they are working in.
