Gendering Urban renewal: A loft resident and a tenant’s struggle for recognition for rehabilitation in Dharavi.

Abstract

My paper will look at the contestations over disenfranchisement, exclusion, and
marginalization within the urban, for female residents of Dharavi under the process of urban
renewal, specifically the Dharavi redevelopment project or DRP started since 2004. This work
is part of my ongoing Ph.D. work on understanding the dynamics of security of tenure of urban
poor in Dharavi in the context of urban renewal. While there is a growing body of literature on
threat of the dispossession due to the renewal (Weinstein 2014, Bhide and Spies 2013, Sharma
2023), little research has been done on the gender dimension of the dispossession produced by
the eligibility surveys of rehabilitation. By recognizing only ground floor unit and ownership
of hut for in situ rehabilitation in Dharavi, the policy remains gender blind in two ways. Firstly,
the ground floor usually goes to the male heir and thus the policy neglects the gender dimension
in inheritance. Secondly, many female residents do not have the resources to establish an
independent hut and instead access housing in Dharavi through tenancy, which is not
recognized for in-situ rehabilitation. I look at the gender dimension at an individual biography
level by presenting two cases from the field. The first case explores an individual case of a
female resident who struggled to get her loft she inherited from her father recognised as an
independent hut and become eligible to the urban renewal scheme. The second case explores
an individual case of a long-term female tenant strategies to navigate the threat of dispossession
from the latest urban renewal scheme. I shine light on the micro-strategies taken by female
residents to become eligible for rehabilitation. While these strategies open spaces for
negotiation, in absence of a collective visible strategy, they remain limited in changing the
rehabilitation policy.