17 Theorizing Informality

Ashima Sood

Introduction

In previous modules, we have seen how the idea of the informal sector came to the attention of urban scholars, and how informality manifests itself in the domain of housing and settlements. In this module, we ask the question: what is the relationship between the “formal ” and the “informal” in Indian cities? What does planning have to do with the emergence of informality? Is it correct to say that informality emerges only in response to a lack of adequate spatial and socio-economic planning?

While the previous modules explained the rise of the informal sector and informal settlements with reference to inadequate livelihood and housing provision, this module attempts to “theorize” informality in relation to the political economy of economic development. So far, our approach was to focus on the empirical manifestations and policy implications of the formal/informal divide in Indian cities. In this module, we attempt instead to theorize informality, ie, understand its nature based on evidence from India and elsewhere in the world. In other words, we dig deeper to understand the political and structural antecedents of informality in the Indian city. To frame our questions in a different way: why does the state fail to provide good quality jobs and accommodation to its citizens despite the political demands created by democracy? How is informality in livelihoods related if at all to informality in shelter? Are formal and informal really binary categories? How, if at all, are they related?

This module introduces a number of key scholars and perspectives that have engaged directly or indirectly with these questions, from Sanyal andBhattacharya (2011) to Kudva (2009), Benjamin (2008), Zérah (2008) and Roy (2009).

The rest of the module is divided into three sections. Section 2 debates the various ways in which informality has been understood by urban researchers, and goes on to discuss a number of alternative paradigms. Itintroduces the idea of “bypass” as it applies to urbanization, brings in the framework of splintering urbanism, originally conceptualized and applied in the context of high-technology fibre optic infrastructures in Europe, to understand patterns of fragmentation and polarization in public services provision in Indian cities. Section 3provides an overview of a paradigm- shifting approach to informality that views it not as a failure, but an outcome of planning in Indian cities. The section on Brief summarizes and concludes.

Section 2: Understanding Informality

In previous modules, we have considered the informal/ formal divide as it is manifested both in the spheres of labour and livelihoods and that of shelter and settlements. Although studies of emblematic and lesser known bastis such as Dharavi and others show the importance of mixed land use encompassing informality both in housing and the economy, we have not so far considered the why and how of the linkage between these two spheres. In this module, we not only consider the connection between informal settlements and economies in greater detail, we also enumerate a variety of other settings or frames within which the spectrum of formal/informal becomes visible. For instance, paradigms such as splintering urbanism focus on dualism in infrastructure and services provision while those such as occupancy urbanism also spotlight the political dimensions of the divide.

Indeed, scholars of urban informality propose a variety of frames for viewing the formal/informal, including as territorial formations or spatial categorisation (slum and the city), groups (informal labour), forms of organisation (rule- based/relation-based) and knowledges and practices, among others (McFarlane and Waibel 2013). To understand informality in the frameof organizational form, to take one example, scholars have explored the emergence of youth-led autonomous social groups in Brazilianfavelas or shantytowns.

McFarlane and Waibel (2013:1) articulate a second theme common to the theorizations of informality presented below: the critical interrogation of the “formal/informal” divide itself. Scholars, including the ones discussed below, have sought to move beyond this “ dichotomy” to a continuum of informality or interconnectedness and hybridity. Some of these authors such as Roy (2009) invert traditional understandings altogether to posit informality as a mode by which the state exercises its powers. Thus, more than the formal/informal gap, the paradigms discussed below analyse urban informality as a correlate or manifestation of broader processes of socio-spatial fragmentation in the course of socio-economic development.

Informality as “Space”: Segregation and Disempowerment?

Kudva’s (2009) analysis of the spatial and political impacts of urban informality falls outside the rubrics explored here but is notable for seeking to connect the twin lenses of shelter and work through which informality is separately viewed. Pulling together evidence from Delhi and Ahmedabad, Kudva argues that informal “ space”, in the sense of Lefebvre,1which brings together the informal as site both of livelihood and settlements, produces patterns of deep segregation in the city, along caste, communal and class lines. Thus while on the one hand, the informal is the site of mixed use, as described in Module 4.2, it is characterized by high degrees of socio-spatial polarization.

The spatial politics of informality thus conceived is marked by violence and failure of impediments to collective action by workers. Ahmedabad has seen increasing communal separation and bouts of violence; in Delhi, the removal of industrial units from mixed use areas in the early 2000s was met with limited but violent labour mobilization.

Thus, in Kudva’s view (2009: 1624), informality in Delhi and Ahmedabad has produced “patchworks of segregated, segmented localitiesin which spaces of work and living overlap to various degrees.” This has rendered these spaces poorly prepared for collective action and vulnerable to being pushed to the periphery by neoliberalising state and planning mechanisms.In contrast to Kudva’s pessimistic prognosis on informality, we now turn to a different set of paradigms that view it in more dynamic terms.

Bypass Urbanism

One powerful perspective that connects the development of masterplanned new towns as representative of a capitalist “accumulation” economy to the growth of an informal “need” economy, characterized by self-employment, was provided by the economists KalyanSanyal and Rajesh Bhattacharya in a 2011 article. Employing a Marxian framework, these authors critically examine the new townships that seek to create new spaces for new forms of services sector-led economic activity, such as information technology and business process outsourcing (BPO) that are closely integrated with the global economy. Such spaces of bypass may include “exclusive corridors of transport, enclaves of business and gated communities” (Sanyal and Bhattacharya 2011: 45).Sanyal and Bhattacharya (2011) argument is that the accumulation economy seeks to build new townships and urban centres in order to “bypass” the squalor that characterizes older city areas, where the “need economy”, based primarily on self-employmentand subsistence-oriented labour, has encroached and established itself.

Nonetheless, this bypass proves to only be a temporary solution because overtime, the need economy comes to encroach on these new spaces. What form does this encroachment take?Here, Sanyal and Bhattacharya (2011: 45) point to the case of Navi Mumbai “the largest planned new town in India” (Shaw 2003). Even here “unauthorised settlements” evidently comprised a large 39% of the population in 2000. This local economy included three major population segments according to Shaw (Sanyal and Bhattacharya 2011: 45): (i)   a floating migrant labour force in the construction industry who erect temporary shelters during their stay; (ii) a permanent workforce (engaged in low-paid jobs in industry and service establishments, in domestic work in middle and upper-middle class homes, and as self-employed) who live in shanties and slums; and (iii) villagers, who lost their agricultural land for the development of Navi Mumbai, and who now serve as the core of a non-agricultural local economy.

In the Indian context, the need economy gains a foothold because the accumulation economy also generates a “ survival circuit” of low-paid service jobs such as “nannies, housemaids, cooks, drivers, security guards, handymen, and so on” (Sassen 2001 in Sanyal and Bhattacharya 2011: 44). In India, it is the informal need economy that services the workers in this survival circuit. Furthermore, in an interesting twist that parallels Shaw’s description of the local economy of Navi Mumbai, Sanyal and Bhattacharya contend that it is “those displaced by the new towns” who return as “producers and providers of subsistence to the labourers” in this survival circuit (2011: 44).

Indeed, pulling together other examples such as Rajarhat New Town near Kolkata, Sanyal and Bhattacharya suggest that these loops of eviction, bypass and encroachment are central to the persistence of informality in Indian cities. Even as the development of new townships to bypass the need economy requires the displacement and eviction of existing populations, the accumulation economy itself facilitates the growth of the need economy in its surrounds.

However, there is also a political dimension to this bypass and encroachment loop that is key to Sanyal and Bhattacharya’s argument. The politics of the need economy of self- employed workers is negotiated not through traditional trade union channels, but on the street, in the form of assertions to the right to the city and to public space.2 Another way to understand these claims is through the rubric of “political society” analysed by Chatterjee (2004, 2008).3 The political society represents the ways in which the informal economy bargains with the state to realize these claims. In other words, it embodies the street politics of the need economy.

With this lens, then, one can also argue that the accumulation economy seeks to bypass these street politics, through the construction of new urban centres and dedicated corridors. However, the “quiet” but steady encroachment of the need economy also brings with it a resurgence of such street politics (Sanyal and Bhattacharya 2011: 47).

• 2 See Module 6.7 on the struggles of street vendors, for example.

3See Module 6.3 on Chatterjee’s discussion of civil society and political society.

Splintering Urbanism

The concept of splintering urbanism emerged from Graham and Marvin’s attempt to characterize the telecommunications infrastructures being built in the West in the 1990s. In key aspects, however, the “wiring of cities” with fibre optic networks resonated with patterns of public services provision that had long typified cities in the developing world (Coutard 2008; Graham and Marvin 2001). Notable particularly were “dynamics of dualisation”, such that some “premium networked ” spaces were equipped with dense “global-local” network infrastructures while other locations, even those that were geographically close to such spaces, languished as “network ghettoes” (Graham 1999; 2002). Central to these processes of dualisation were “ bypass strategies, i.e. strategies that seek the connection of ‘‘valued” or ‘‘ powerful” users and places, while at the same time bypassing ‘‘non-valued” or ‘‘less powerful” users and places” (Coutard 2008: 1816).

Indeed, “premium networked spaces” allow elite groups access to high quality globally connected telecommunications networks even as they are increasingly withdrawn from the local “urban fabric” (Graham and Marvin 2001:383 quoted in Coutard 2008: 1816). In other words, though conceptualized and applied originally in a very different context, Graham and Marvin’s (1999) account of splintering urbanism also appeared to echo the existence of well-provisioned enclaves such as cantonments or new townships alongside areas of poor infrastructure provision.

It is not surprising then that their ideas have been adapted to the Indian context by a number of scholars working across different settings. Although the splintering urbanism framework does not directly employ or engage informality as a concept, it predicts the rise of urban dualism or fragmentation, in the sense of poorly provisioned spaces existing alongside well- endowed enclaves. We have already seen how Sanyal and Bhattacharya also used the term “bypass” to describe similar processes, although their theorization is very different.

Splintering urbanism has emerged as a particularly valuable conceptual framework for scholars examining the development of information technology hubs in cities such as Hyderabad and Bangalore (Kennedy 2007, 2014; Das 2010; Idiculla 2016). In these settings, it has been applied to explain patterns of service differentiation with respect to a variety ofpublic service infrastructuressuch as road expressways where connectivity privileges premium networked spaces like the Electronic City Industrial Township (Idiculla 2016). Some scholars have also invoked it to theorize the more general spatial repercussions of newly developed premium networked spaces in Hyderabad’s Hi-TEC City and financial district (Das 2010; Kennedy 2014).

However, a note of caution is important: the splintering urbanism thesis is a conceptual tool for understanding change starting from universal, integrated standardised provision of network services in the West. In contrast, in India, such universal access to basic public services such as sanitation never obtained: colonial cantonments and civil lines were always much better-provisioned with respect to urban infrastructure than “native areas” (See module 3.1). Thus scholars such as Zerah (2008) have argued that the splintering urbanism does not provide a good fit in explanations of water and electricity infrastructures in cities such as Mumbai. Other scholars (Kennedy 2007; 2014) note that the spatial impacts of the development of spaces such as Hyderabad’s HiTEC City have been more mixed than the splintering urbanism framework would suggest. While there has been increasing differentiation in service levels, combining “global connectivity and local disconnection” (Graham and Marvin 2001: 377 in Kennedy 2007:106), local service levels have shown a slight improvement.

Despite its limitations, however, splintering urbanism offers a powerful alternative paradigm on the nature of urban dualism and in Indian cities, highlighting the role of infrastructure and public services differentiation increating the spectre of slums in close proximity to “world-class” gated communities and office complexes.

Occupancy Urbanism

One author who has grappled extensively with the issues of politics of informality that are traced out in Sanyal and Bhattacharya’s analysis of bypass and encroachment is Benjamin (2000, 2007, 2008). Based on fieldwork in cities such as Bangalore, Delhi and Chennai, Benjamin has brought to the fore the significance of tenure arrangements to the ability of “poor groups” to make claims in the city.

These insights are crystallized in the idea of “occupancy urbanism”, which in a 2008 article, Benjamin linked to the new political platforms forged by poor groups in both “ claiming public services and safeguarding territorial claims.” Such occupancy is embedded in multiple de facto, though not always de jure tenures,that are recognized and embedded in the knowledge bases of the lower bureaucracy. In previous research with Raman on Bangalore’s local economies, these authors (2000) highlighted not only the highly specific economies and lineages, including histories of rural -urban links, migration and financing circuits in a range of localities’ around the city but also the land tenure arrangements that predominate.

A chief feature of the occupancy urbanism paradigm is thus the importance it assigns to tenure arrangements both in reinforcing the poor’s claims to urban land and their productive potential (Benjamin and Raman 2000). In its focus on tenure, the paradigm recalls De Soto’s insistence on the tenure as the pathway out of poverty in Latin America (1990), but it makes a radical departure from the latter perspective by emphasizing the multiplicity and fluidity of tenure arrangements in Indian cities. Benjamin and Raman count not only ownership but also occupier, lease and rental rights; they include tenure arrangements associated with “revenue plots, Gramthana or layouts on village land and squatter settlements”, among many others (2000:61). Equally important, they highlight the local economy linkages of these tenure arrangements. For example, consider the dizzying range of tenures and associated economic activities in Bangalore’sValmikinagar area, as recounted by Benjamin and Raman (2000:61):

On the ‘First Main’ road of Valmikinagar, … different production activities related to recycling and autorickshaw industry arelocated. The plots here measuring 30’x40′; and 40’x60′, along the main roads support multiplefunctions. The front portion of the plots, easily visible to onlooker, has different economic activities.‘Vattarams’ or multiple rooms rented within a same compound have evolved in the rear portion of theplots along the main road and in the interior street. These provide a range of rental options for theworkers and their entrepreneurs involved in the various local economies… The rear portion has minimum 3 to 4 rental units. Some ofthe plots here have been subdivided, but even in such cases there is at least one or two units availablefor residential renting. The entrepreneurs usually stay in the residential units located above the shops,or at the rear portion. Further down the same road, empty plots are rented out for autorickshaw driversand matadors.

These authors argue that “tenure diversity is critical for surplus generation”, i.e., the productivity of these local economies, and for moving new groups, and migrants through the renting, lease, occupier, owner cycle.

Yet beyond its richly textured analysis of tenure and its linkages with local economies, the occupancy urbanism framework also underlines the political contestations, often dismissed as “vote bank politics”, that allows such groups to make claims in the city (Benjamin 2008). In Benjamin’s view, such “subversive” politics often stands in opposition to citywide masterplans as well as large-scale policy promoted megaprojects. At the same time, it is both flexible and successful in negotiating for territorial and public services claims with municipal bureaucrats and local politicians as well as smaller developers. This allows for the local economy to capture the real estate surpluses resulting from “reconstituted” land tenure (Benjamin 2008: 719). For example, sites that have seen eviction drives are often very quickly re-occupied. Equally, stealthy alliances between lower level bureaucrats, politicians and local economy actors make possible occupancy of under-used government lands. In sum, Benjamin (2008: 720) lists the following major aspects of the open-ended urban politics that characterizes occupancy urbanism:

• land, much of which is incrementally settled, is highly politicized;
• socially embedded local government’s political and lower level bureaucratic circuitshelp shape public investments and regulation;
• there is an economy of interconnected small firm production and retail, closelyconnected to land issues and local government.

   The singular contribution of the “occupancy urbanism” is that it recognizes the dynamic and shifting contestations over territory as well as the complex histories that shape Indian cities. It also sees informality or occupancy as an active and intelligent rather than a passive force, and highlights the incremental processes of urban land settlement. You may have noticed that in this sense, it celebrates subaltern phenomena such as vote bank politics that are otherwise denounced and disparaged in middle class discourses on the city (see Module 6.4).

Occupancy urbanism also speaks more directly to processes that characterize metropolitan cores rather than the peri-urban and new infrastructure developments that are at the heart of bypass and splintering urbanisms.

Section 3: Informality as a Mode of Planning?

Anincisive conceptualization of informality comes from the work ofAnanya Roy in settings such as Calcutta (2003, 2004, 2009). Roycontended that informality does not result from lack of planning; it is instead, a direct outcome and indeed “mode” of planning itself. Drawing on two disparate “ scenes of Indian urbanization”, first the planning and development of Bengaluru’s new airport in 2008, and second, in the contestation around acquisition of land near Nandigram, Roy (2009:80) defines informality as “a state of deregulation, one where the ownership, use, and purpose of land cannot be fixed and mapped according toany prescribed set of regulations or the law.”

To illustrate the thesis that informality is a “mode” of (de)regulation, Roy (2009:83) points to the fact that in Indian cities, questions such as “How can I find the appropriate map? Who owns this piece of land? What uses are planned for it?” are nearly impossible to answer in the definitive. Instead, the responses to these questions remain fluid and contested, because multiple claims are made by different groups and individuals on the same piece of land, and sometimes involve a multitude of government agencies as well. Against this background, deregulation or informality is what allows the state “to alter land use, deploy eminent domain, and to acquire land ” for urban and industrial development (Roy 2009:81).

In previous discussions, we have viewed informality as a tactic of poor and marginalized groups, skirting the edges of legality in livelihoods or housing. Roy ’s contribution is important because it reverses this lens to understand informality as a mode for the exercise of state power. The idea of “informality from above” highlights the fact that the state itself is an “ informalized entity” (Roy 2009:84).

Such “informality from above” offers two major implications for our understanding of how informality shapes Indian cities. First, whether in livelihoods or settlements, informal/ formal can no longer be seen as dichotomous categories, but deeply connected to each other at their very genesis. Second, Roy (2009: 84) suggests that informality is less “a grassrootsphenomenon, but rather… a feature of structures of power.”Informality is not to be equated with poverty or marginalization, but is a practice adopted by privileged and state actors.

Yet, in later work, Roy (2011:223) has also returned to the idea of “subaltern urbanism”, which “provides accounts of the slum as a terrain of habitation, livelihood, self-organization and politics.” This suggests a notion of “subalterninformalities”, which bears closer resemblance to the motifs of occupancy urbanism, and encompasses and conjoins the many domains of informality. It also stands in opposition to “elite informalities” (Roy 2011:223).

As is evident, Roy’s theorization of informality as an “idiom of urbanization” has revolutionized scholarly thinking on the urban in India. It has inspired a wide range of studies both in India and elsewhere. Two lines of investigation closely related to Roy’s ideas are worth mentioning, the first of which examines how subaltern informality relates to the masterplan and the ways in which it deploys informality from aboveand the second, a literature that pays attention to how informality from above is made possible at all.

Based on our discussion so far, what can we say about how planning relates to the rise of unplanned settlements? Module 4.2 has already discussed the variety of informal settlements delineated by Bhan (2013) in an article in the Economic and Political Weekly.

However, there was a second component to this analysis. Bhan (2013) analyzed the history of informal settlement growth around subsequent Masterplans in Delhi in order to examine what, if any, relation the growth of the unplanned city bore to the Masterplan. A careful mapping using lists of unauthorized colonies that had applied for regularization in three “waves” between 1962-2009 revealed an intriguing pattern (Bhan 2013:63): against the backdrop of the previous Masterplans, the “largestclusters of unauthorised colonies clearly [did] populate areas justbeyond the developmental areas of the plan, ie, areas still considered“rural” or “urbanisable”. ” Even in 1993, the 1962 Delhi masterplan showed a clear relationship to the location of unauthorized colonies, leading Bhan to state that “the unauthorisedcolony marks the immediate “outside” of the master plan.” An analysis of jhuggi-jhopdi (JJ) clusters4 using 2010 data from the national capital’s boundaries showed a similarly striking pattern: even in 2010, existing and evicted bastis largely lay within the boundaries of the Delhi Masterplan 1962.

Bhan (2013) concludes that the masterplan thus serves as a bounding condition for unplanned settlements, keeping JJ clusters close to the public lands acquired in central Delhi in the 1950s. Bhan’s account highlights the limits of informality as a mode of planning in contestations with other state actors, such as the Courts, that view and enforce the plan as a legal document as much as state strategy. Thus even as development authorities attempt to create arenas of deregulation, these may be subject to regulation by other state actors.

Bhan’s argument also has significant policy implications, because it highlights the importance of plan boundaries even for shaping the location of unplanned settlements. Second, it underscores the potential role of public lands in helping low income residents make claim to densely settled central urban areas with ample access tomarkets and employment.

Exceptions and Exemptions

So far, the paradigms of informality we have discussed have been focused on what Roy calls “ subaltern informality” (2011) and how it emerges in urbanizing India. Yet, if informality is a mode by which state plans and governs Indian cities, in what ways is such informality from above realized?

Here, it is useful to consider another literature that examines the functioning of the state.Aihwa Ong’s paradigm of “exception ”, i.e., “‘extraordinary departure in policy ” as a mode of “neoliberal governmentality” emerged from settings such as the Chinese Special Economic Zones(Ong 2004) but it has been influential in characterizing processes of deregulation in India and elsewhere (Münster and Strümpell 2014).

4Bhan(2013: 70) describes JJ clusters in his way: “In Hindi, jhuggi-jhomprirefers to temporary,fragile housing shacks typically made of temporarymaterials like tarp or thatch, though itsuse can be more general and just refer to poorsettlements.” In the Indian context, Gururani draws on Roy’s notion of “flexible planning”, which according to her work in Gurgaon, “ encompasses a range of political techniques through which exemptions are routinely made, plans redrawn, compromises made, and brute force executed.” Her works highlights that legal framework developed over the 1970s that allowed Gurgaon to emerge as just such a “zone of exemption”, with private developers being given unprecedented leeway in shaping the city. Although Gururani does not invoke Roy’s reframing of informality in this work, it offers an interesting case study of “informality from above”.5

In Brief

As previous modules 3.1 and 3.2 have shown, processes of informality, whether in the domains of livelihoods or habitat, came to scholarly attention in the countries of the South on the trajectory of economic development. Nonetheless, AlSayyad (2004) asks the question: is it the informal that is the newer phenomenon or is it the formal, which came to characterize processes of modernization in the 19 th century? Historical perspectives such as Polanyi’s would suggest that it is formal markets that came to be invented in the 19th century. AlSayyad (2004) argues however that liberalization and globalization have, over the last few decades, transformed the nature of informality. Informalization has spread to larger sections of the workforce beyond those hitherto regarded as marginalized or poor.

It is not surprising then that the paradigms of informality presented in this module have tended to push beyond the binary of formal-informal to encompass a broader array of domains, whether in Kudva’s conceptualization of informality as space, to Benjamin’s view of occupancy as a mode of politics. Equally, they have upended traditional views of informality as a space of marginality or passivity, to highlight its dynamism. Indeed, in Roy’s framework of informality as mode for state functioning, we see informality as far from marginal but in fact central and powerful.

5Similarly, in a macro policy analysis, Sood (2015) has traced out how the Constitutional exception of the industrial township is being applied to bypass the requirement for elected representation under the 74th Constitutional Amendment in settings such as Special Economic Zones. See also Module 6.1. If informality is indeed an idiom of urbanization as these modules have shown in different ways, it is critical to understanding the evolution of Indian cities.

For Further Reading

• Benjamin, S., 2000.Governance, economic settings and poverty in Bangalore.Environment and Urbanization, 12(1), pp.35-56.
• Benjamin, S., 2004.Urban land transformation for pro-poor economies.Geoforum, 35(2), pp.177-187.
• Benjamin, S., 2007. Occupancy urbanism: ten theses. Sarai Reader, 7, pp.538-563.
• Benjamin, S., 2008. Occupancy urbanism: radicalizing politics and economy beyond policy and programs. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(3), pp.719-729.
• Benjamin, S.A. and Bhuvaneswari, R. (2001).Democracy, inclusive governance and poverty in Bangalore (p. 250). Birmingham, AL: University of Birmingham.
• Bhan, G. (2013). “Planned Illegalities: Housing and the ‘Failure’ of Planning in Delhi: 1947-2010’”.Economic and Political Weekly, 48(24), 58-70.
• Bhattacharya, R. and Sanyal, K., 2011. Bypassing the squalor: new towns, immaterial labour and exclusion in post-colonial urbanisation.Economic & Political Weekly, 46(31), p.41.
• Chatterjee, P., 2004. The politics of the governed: reflections on popular politics in most of the world.Columbia University Press.
• Chatterjee, P., 2008. Democracy and economic transformation in India.Economic and political weekly, pp.53-62.
• Coutard, O., 2008. Placing splintering urbanism: Introduction. Geoforum,39(6), pp.1815-1820.
• De Soto, H., 1990. The other path: The invisible revolution in the third world.
• Graham, S. and Marvin, S., 2001. Splintering urbanism: networked infrastructures, technological mobilities and the urban condition.Psychology Press.
• Graham, S., 1999. Global grids of glass: on global cities, telecommunications and planetary urban networks. Urban Studies, 36(5/6), p.929.
• Gururani, S. (2013). Flexible planning: the making of India’s “Millennial City” Gurgaon. Urban ecologies in Asia, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong.
• Idiculla, M. (2015).Crafting City Spaces: New Spatial-Legal Regimes in India. Paper presented at the RC21 International Conference on “The Ideal City: between myth and reality.” Urbino 27-29 August 2015
• Kennedy L (2007) Regional industrial policies driving peri-urban dynamics in Hyderabad, India.Cities 24(2): 95–109.
• Kennedy, L. (2014). The Politics of Economic Restructuring in India: Economic Governance and State Spatial Rescaling. Routledge.
• Kennedy, L. (2015). The politics and changing paradigm of megaproject development in metropolitan cities.Habitat International, Volume 45, Part 3, January 2015, Pages 163–168.
• Kudva, N., 2009. The everyday and the episodic: The spatial and political impacts of urban informality. Environment and Planning A, 41(7), pp.1614-1628.
• McFarlane, C. &Waibel, M. 2012Urban Informalities: Reflections on the Formal and Informal.Ashgate.
• Ong, A. (2004). The Chinese axis: zoning technologies and variegated sovereignty. Journal of East Asian Studies, 4(1), 69-96.
• Bhattacharya, R. and Sanyal, K., 2011. Bypassing the squalor: New towns, immaterial labour and exclusion in post-colonial urbanisation. Economic and Political Weekly, 46(31), pp.41-48.
• Roy, A. (2009). Why India cannot plan its cities: informality, insurgence and the idiom of urbanization. Planning theory, 8(1), 76-87.
• Roy, A. and AlSayyad, N., 2004. Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia. Lanham: Lexington Books.
• Roy, A., 2003. City requiem, Calcutta: gender and the politics of poverty (Vol. 10). U of Minnesota Press.
• Roy, A., 2005. Urban informality: toward an epistemology of planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 71(2), pp.147-158.
• Roy, A., 2011. Slumdog cities: rethinking subaltern urbanism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(2), pp.223-238.
• Zérah, M.H., 2008. Splintering urbanism in Mumbai: Contrasting trends in a multilayered society. Geoforum, 39(6), pp.1922-1932.