28 Debate on urban settings

Sancharini Mitra

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. Chicago School

3. Urban as Cultural Form

4. New Urban Sociology

5. Political Economy Approach

6. Understanding Governance

7. Urbanisation in India

8. Social Exclusion in Urban Spaces

9. Urban Poverty in Context of Cities

10. Summary

1. Introduction:

This module tries to highlight the different perspectives through which the urban settings have been looked at. It focuses on key arguments starting from the pioneering debates of the Chicago School (the works of Park and Burgess) to the emergence of the New Urban Sociology and the criticisms posed by Manuel Castells and David Harvey. The module also tries to understand how there happened a shift in understanding the urban settings – from looking at the urban as a cultural form to a more holistic approach. It then focuses on the Indian scenario pertaining to urban studies and the different ongoing debates. It examines complex processes like urbanization – its major trends and issues; social exclusion in urban locales in terms of class, caste and gender; urban poverty, which has to be understood in a different light than rural poverty; and also, urban as influenced by the neoliberal discourse of ‘governance’.

2.  The Chicago School:

The sociologists who were earlier engrossed in the study of the ‘urban’, barely had a concrete theoretical object of the urban. Whatever they studied were merely processes they termed as ‘urbanization’ or homogeneity of human behaviour and attitudes they termed as ‘urbanism’, but their understanding did not culminate into a holistic theorization on the urban. The notable works from scholars of the Chicago School included ‘human ecology’ by Park, and the ‘concentric zone model’ by Burgess.

There are certain limitations of the Chicago School as pointed out by Sharon Zukin (1980). Urban sociologists of this school looked only at patterns of migration and human settlements in an urban context and took them as givens. They used only ecological and cultural lenses to analyze the urban system. They used the two terms ‘urbanization’ and ‘modernization’ in a parallel manner, which was criticized later on. They also ignored the role of the state which is crucial in the formation of cities.

2.1. Human Ecology: Robert Ezra Park

Robert Ezra Park (1936) was much influenced by the evolutionary naturalism propounded by John Dewey. According to him, society is an arena of intense competition on one hand, as well as solidarity and consensus on the other. Thus, ‘natural order’ is established in a society. He applied several principles (like competitive cooperation, for example) used by naturalists, botanists or zoologists, in order to study the social order – how interdependence and interrelation among inhabitants create a kind of closed system, and how ‘competitive cooperation’ happens within its limits. Again, every such community happens to be interrelated with others. This, he calls the ‘web of life’.

He talks about the ‘balance of nature’ in society which is maintained through ‘competition, dominance and succession’. Competition regulates interrelations among individuals; for e.g. struggle for a strategic location for commercial enterprises decides the margins of the urban community, the land value etc. He coins the term ‘biological economics’, which is directly connected to population pressure. He argues that population might transform the community in certain ways, and thus upset equilibrium, bringing about more intense competition and division of labour.

Finally, he talks about ‘symbiosis and society’, where he argues that, the relation between human beings with their immediate environment is arbitrary. This dependent relation is always mediated by other humans. Their social structure grows on the basis of normative customs, and gets institutionalized. He argues that, human society is arranged at two levels – biotic (the symbiotic society based on competition), and cultural (which is based on interaction and moral consensus). However, human relations are far more complex than this basic classification. Different social orders seem to be arranged in a hierarchical manner with ecology at the base and moral order at the top. Society thus functions like a ‘control organization’ which integrates individual beings, brings about cooperation among them, and extends greater control in each higher level of the social order (Park, 1936)1.

2.2. Concentric Zone Theory: Ernest Burgess

Ernest Burgess, of the Chicago School, formulated his Concentric Zone Theory (1925) 2based on the city of Chicago as a model. The description of model, according to Burgess, can be applied to any large city. Concentric Zones refer to circular belts or zones having a common center. According to him, urban population moves away from the core and expands towards the periphery (the suburbs). Burgess classifies five concentric zones –

i. The Central Business District (CBD): The CBD demonstrates a concentration of economic institutions, commercial, civic, or transportation activities. Key banks, shopping areas, offices, law courts, departmental stores, theatres, restaurants, etc are located in this zone.

ii. Zone of Transition: This zone is also termed as the ‘light manufacturing zone’. There is a constant encroachment in this area by the center. This belt also demonstrates a cluster of slums, decaying houses etc; rate of poverty and crime are usually high.

iii. Zone of Workingmen’s Homes: This Burgess points out as the ‘low class residential area’. Immigrants tend to agglomerate here because of easy access to the CBD and the light manufacturing industries.

iv. Residential Zone: also known as the ‘medium class residential’ zone, this area houses single-family homes, usually consisting of the middle or affluent, higher class residents. People living in this zone belong to technical, business or clerical professions.

v. Commuters’ Zone: This is the affluent suburbs – inhabited with people of the uppermost socio-economic tier of the society. Big bungalows, mansions etc are located in this zone.

However, this model was criticized because of its ideal-typical nature; but in reality, cities might not conform to this model always. Moreover, Burgess had made a clear classification of the zones, but actually, cities cannot demonstrate such clear demarcations. There is bound to be a gradual transition from one zone to the next. Finally, Burgess had formulated his entire theory based on only one city – Chicago. This model, critics argue, cannot always be applied universally to understand other major cities of the world (Cousins and Nagpaul 1979).

1 Park, Robert E. “Human Ecology.” American Journal of Sociology 42, no. 1 (1936): 1‐15

2 Burgess, Ernest. “The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project.” In The City Reader, edited by Richard T. Legates and Frederic Stout, 197–205. Oxon: Routledge, 2007. Originally published in The City, (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1908).

3.  The urban as a cultural form

The urban sociologists of the earlier traditions, both American and European, tried to analyze the urban settings from a cultural lens. They tried to give explanations to the urban experience in terms of human interaction, interrelationship, processes of acculturation, demographic factors etc. The notable sociologists who used the cultural lens to study urban are – Georg Simmel, Louis Wirth and Robert Redfield.

3.2. Georg Simmel (The metropolis and mental life)

Georg Simmel (1903) tried to establish that the growth of a modern city influences individual attitudes and behaviour (in terms of adjusting to city life), which ultimately affects interpersonal relationships.

Urban setting imposes on its citizens a kind of a “protective organ” which acts as a buffer zone for individuals in an ever-changing urban environment. An individual in a city becomes pragmatic, less emotional, reluctant and indifferent, as there occurs a growing emphasis on the intellect. This growing apathy of the urban population is termed as ‘blasé’ attitude. This lies in a stark contrast with smaller towns which are characterized with more familiarity among individuals and personal relationships.

This urban experience results from a ‘freedom’ that the city dwellers go through. Though it is liberating on one hand, on the other, the resulting ‘blasé’ attitude isolates the city dwellers from each other, as well as from the fellow country people. Thus human relations get fundamentally altered. Thus, interpersonal human relations and attitudes are greatly influenced by the urban environment. Also, there is a stark distinction between behaviour of individuals in a metropolis and in the small towns.

However, Simmel’s work has been challenged for being too simplistic. He shows a strict demarcation between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ life, in terms of human interrelations and interaction. But his work is limited only to understanding the urban experience from a cultural perspective, ignoring other possible factors like social structures, role of the state etc.

3.3.Louis Wirth (Urbanism as a way of life)

Wirth’s sociological understanding (1938) of the city gave a new direction to urban studies. His analysis revolves around three major issues – size of the population, density, and its heterogeneity. Combining these three elements, he theorizes on urbanism as an experience, and as different from the process of urbanization.

First of all, Wirth tries to provide a sociological definition of the city. He argues that it is difficult to define an urban agglomeration only based on its size. There are a number of census definitions available, but those have a limited purview of a city being simply an administrative unit. Improved transportation leads to the expansion of city life into the peripheries. Therefore, urbanization is not simply attraction of the population towards cities, but also how there happens a kind of emphasis on the characteristic traits of city lifestyle.

Now, he tries to draw a theory of urbanism, based on the linkages between population size, density and heterogeneity. To him, the larger the population of a city is, the more population density and heterogeneity is expected. Thus there is bound to happen a greater accentuation of traits characterized with a city. Since the city attracts a large population of migrants, it becomes a ‘melting pot’ for people of different races, ethnicities etc. Interaction in a city space is utilitarian, based on secondary relations. Because there is much variation in the population, there occurs spatial segregation in terms of race, class, ethnicity etc within the limits of a city.

When size of an area is constant, but the size and density of population increases, it leads to growing differentiation and specialization. Density also segregates places of residence from working places. Thus, spatial segregation results in increased volatility of relations. Various interests emerge out of different paths of social life; the individual dwelling in a city needs to acquire multiple memberships in different groups based on their respective interests, and thus meeting their ends.

However, Wirth has been criticized for making too generalized statements on traits of urban life. Castells argues that the characteristic traits that Wirth shows to be those of urban life (for e.g. stress on individualism, anomie, secondary relations etc) can be seen in spaces other than ‘urban’ locales. 3.4. Robert Redfield (Rural-Urban Continuum)

Robert Redfield’s most notable work was ‘The Folk Culture of Yucatan’ (1941), where he constructed the ‘rural-urban continuum’ – an imaginary, hypothetical continuum linking rural and urban societies at polar ends. He studied the process of acculturation from the rural to the urban forms of societies. He dealt with four societies for his study – a tribal society, a peasant based village, a town, and Mérida, the capital city of the Mexican state of Yucatan. He saw that all these four societies can be placed respectively across the continuum in terms of growing secularization, cultural disorganization, and greater stress on individualization.

His construct was very much ideal typical. On one hand, he understood ‘folk’ societies as isolated communities showing signs of cultural homogeneity, small population, easy technology, minimum division of labour, greater solidarity and harmony. On the other hand, he characterized urban societies as showing traits which were completely dissimilar to rural societies – with signs of disorganization, secularization and individualization.

The rural-urban continuum has been much criticized since then. First of all, the characteristic traits of rural or urban societies that Redfield has pointed out are too ideal typical, and might not represent real situations. Also, Redfield had stressed on the importance of historical research to study socio -cultural change, but without focusing on historical particulars. That has also been relegated to critical scrutiny.3

4.  New Urban Sociology: Debates with the Earlier Chicago School

The new urban sociology by Manuel Castells and David Harvey came as a critique to the ongoing debates of Chicago School. It differed from the Chicago School in ways of giving a more holistic account of urban processes and structures. It emphasized more on giving economic accounts, rather than simply giving ecological and cultural analyses of the urban system. The issues raised by the scholars are given below.

4.1. Manuel Castells

Manuel Castells (1975) had raised a fundamental question, ‘is there an urban sociology?’ answered negatively. He posed a major criticism to the dominant paradigm of the Chicago School because of its limitations, and raised a concern for the need of a ‘new urban sociology’.

3 Mintz, Sidney W. “The Folk‐Urban Continuum and the Rural Proletarian Community.” American Journal of Sociology 59, no. 2 (September 1953): 136‐143.

He had put forward the argument that urban sociology of the contemporary times had no ‘real’ or concrete ‘object’ to study. To him, urban sociology was based simply on studying traits which were not ‘rural’. He criticised the concentric zone model of being too universalistic in it orientation. The model is based only on the city of Chicago, and can hardly be applied to understand major cities in the rest of the world. Moreover, this theory resulted in giving an ecological account of social, cultural or economic processes.

He also criticized Louis Wirth’s theory ‘urbanism as a way of life’. He argued that disintegration, individualism, anomie etc, which Wirth had shown as characteristics of city life, can actually happen in any given society, at any point of time. Thus, these features cannot be reduced to being markers of urbanization either. The urban sociologists limited the scope of study within a culturist (e.g. the work of Wirth) or an ecological framework (the work of Burgess) (Patel 2009).

So, in order to formulate a ‘scientific’ theorization on the urban question, one needs to focus on ‘collective consumption’ as a unit of study in the locale of ‘advanced capitalist society’. Collective consumption refers to housing, telecommunication, transport system, etc, that form a crucial aspect of the urban system. Mass mobilisations or ‘urban social movements’ gather momentum around issues related to collective consumption (Walton 2000).

This also refashions ‘space’ in a capitalist society. Space is not simply a social unit, but has a material aspect to it, where all kinds of human actions take place. It is this space in the urban locale where all sorts of technical and social activities are concentrated.

Moreover, he highlights the crucial role of the state in organizing different spheres of advanced capitalist societies. The state acts as an arbitrator between dialectical interests of the capitalists and the masses. The city becomes a space for capitalist development. Thus, it also highlights the role of the state. When a state fails to manage equal distribution of resources for collective consumption, discontentment happens at the mass level. This gives rise to urban social movements. Thus, space is an important locale of study, rooted in contesting social relations. Society is innately linked with spatial locations. Therefore, in order to understand advanced capitalist society, one needs to theorize on the ‘urban’.

In spite of his dissatisfaction with urban sociology in the past, Castells is now more hopeful about the new urban sociology that has paved way for urban studies of the contemporary times. He hopes that urban studies will be more interdisciplinary and will try to bridge the epistemological gaps that the old school posed.

4.2. David Harvey

David Harvey was a contemporary of Castells. To him, the process of urbanization is directly related to capital accumulation. He was heavily influenced by the Marxist analysis of capital accumulation, and used his interpretation to form a completely new perspective on urbanization.

In Harvey’s analysis (2009)4 the primary focus was on how land becomes an important commodity. Land is spatially fixed. It is essential for the sustenance of human beings, and is also fairly permanent. So, in order to understand the implications of urbanization, one needs to take into account how land affects the accumulation and circulation of capital.

Harvey puts forth his argument at two levels – ‘capitalist accumulation’ and ‘class struggle’. Firstly, he talks about the circulation of capital via three consecutive circuits. The primary circuit or the first circuit of capital accumulation happens in the manufacturing sector. Capital is invested here for the production of goods. Production and consumption of goods happen within the span of a single time period. But this ultimately leads to the creation of a large quantity of surplus. Overproduction also leads to a decrease in the levels of profit.

4 Harvey, David. 2009. “The Urban Process under Capitalism: a Framework for Analysis.” In The Urban Sociology Reader, edited by Jan Lin and Christopher Mele, 100‐108. Oxon: Routledge, 2013.

So, from here, capital is moved to the secondary circuit. Here, one needs to understand two important concepts – fixed capital and consumption fund . At the level of production, capital is invested as ‘fixed capital’ which acts as aids in the whole mechanism of production, and is used throughout a long span of time. This fixed capital is not directly used as ‘raw material inputs’. At the consumption level, again, one creates a consumption fund from goods that act as a support mechanism, rather than directly contributing to the consumption process. Some goods can be directly consumed (for e.g. washing machines, television sets etc), while others can be used as a material structure for consumption (for e.g. offices, houses, roads, subways etc). The latter, he termed as the ‘built environment for consumption’. Both the roles of the capital market and the state are important in this context.

However, again there happens a kind of overinvestment in the secondary circuit, due to which, capital flows into the ‘tertiary circuit of capital’. The tertiary circuit comprises of investments in science and technological fields, so that scientific advancements can be utilized to enhance the production processes. Moreover, investment in this sector will also ensure qualitative reproduction of manual labour (in terms of enhancing the education and health of the labour engaged in the production processes, so that their working capacities increase). Thus, investment in the tertiary circuit finally benefits the capitalists themselves.

The second theme of his work is class struggle – the conflict between ‘capital and labour’ (ibid). There are two aspects of class struggle according to Harvey – quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative aspect deals with the mass of labour engaged as the production force. The more the surplus labour there is, the greater will be the size of the ‘reserve army of labour’. Therefore it will be easier for capitalists to resist and regulate class conflict in the place of work. On the other hand, the qualitative aspect takes into account skills, attitudes, training, etc (of the workers). There are divisions among the labour force along racial, ethnic or religious lines. Therefore, to understand class struggle in the workplace, one needs to realize how class consciousness might arise despite all kinds of internal divisions (often enforced by the capitalists themselves, so that the workers cannot unite).

4.3. Limitations

The new urban sociology based its critique of the Chicago School on Marxist analysis. However, one of its major limitations was that it reduced to being economistic in nature. It focussed on economic processes with regard to urban structures; but, in this process, it overlooked class as a conception (Kemeny, 1982)

5.  Political Economy Approach

Understanding the new urban sociology will be incomplete without mentioning the political economy approach. This has been one of the most important theoretical approaches in urban studies. First of all, political economy tries to give a historical explanation of urban development – from a pre-capitalist to a capitalist mode of production. It explains ‘urbanization and urbanism… as contingent historical processes’ (Walton 2000). It analyzes processes of industrialization, centralization of the market system, development of the state etc not only in western capitalist societies, but also looks into countries like China, former Soviet Union, or developing countries with mixed economies.

It tries to focus on class structures within cities – how the poorer sections, both from urban and rural locales, contribute their labour at cheaper rates, and thus subsidizing the production economy at large. The approach also critically analyzes the role of the state in paving ways for urbanization.

Comparative studies become important here because processes of urbanization are way different from the developed to the developing countries. Now, there is greater focus on understanding ‘global cities’ (or the international financial and informational hubs) that are linked with each other across the globe more than they are linked with their national hinterlands. The study of the informal economy is given importance. Helen Safa (1982) has shown how economies in the developing countries tend to be segregated into formal and informal sectors – the ‘dual sector approach and how economists have criticized it. The informal sectors have a major role to play in providing employment to the mass of population who cannot be absorbed by the formal economic sector.

Spatial relations are also taken into account – how space and society are intertwined. It is understood that each and every social action is situated in a spatial location, due to which urban ‘space’ becomes an important category of analysis. The success of this approach lies in its capability of giving structural explanations to urban settings.

6. Understanding governance

The role of the state under a neoliberal paradigm is important to understand, especially in the framework of the new urban sociology. One needs to know how the terms ‘government’ and ‘governance’ are used in this context, and why.

‘Governance’ became a central concept since the surge of neoliberal discourse in the 1990s, with rapid globalization. The socio-centric understanding of the term signifies continual reduction of the state’s power to intervene in the functioning of the market economy, leading to a ‘withering away of the state’. On the contrary, Taylor5 argues that as a result of growing social complexity, the power of a state’s core executive increases. State’s activities are all directed towards encouraging and facilitating a business-friendly atmosphere. ‘Governance’, therefore, is an ‘ideological construct’ which tends to justify the functioning of a neoliberal state.

In the 1980s and ’90s, the already established governments in different states, especially those which were authoritarian and bureaucratic, were considered to be barriers to growth. The result was revolutionizing governance. The international financial institutions like World Bank, IMF etc decide how ‘good governance’ should be carried out, thereby, legitimizing the neoliberal discourse. It comes as a response to ‘state failure’. Good governance refers to means of facilitating development, greater privatization, and a slash in direct interventions by the governments. A state showing traits of good governance should also be able to fight corruption, privatize public endeavours, remove economic regulations, improve democratic processes, etc.

However, these do not mean that the state’s power is on the brim of being withered. Increasing societal complexities actually benefit the state’s core executive bodies to bring the situation in their own favour. Since good governance requires a strong centre for managing strategic activities, the core of the state actually gets more and more strengthened. It is the state which decides how to perform ‘good governance’ – how much to regulate or not.

7.  Urbanization in India – Perspectives and trends

5 Taylor, Andrew. “Governance.” In Contemporary Political Concepts: A Critical Introduction, edited by Georgina Blakeley and Valerie Bryson, 35‐50. London: Pluto Press, 2002.

In order to comprehend the debates regarding urban settings in India, one needs to look into urbanization process and its related issues. Urbanization refers to a process characterized by ‘more and more people living in the urban areas’. India is an integral part of that process. In 2010, India had accounted for 11% of the world’s urban population. The U.N reports estimate that this will reach 15% by 2030. ‘Urbanization in India has been slow but steady’ (Mohan and Dasgupta, 2004). India’s rate of urban population growth has been stable since 1921 – from 11.2%, it increased to 27.8% in 2001. However, the total number of urban settlements expanded to only 140% (from 1830 to 4378). ‘Balanced urban growth pattern’ had resulted in increasing percentage of people living in ‘Class I towns’ (where population is more than 100,000).

According to Rakesh Mohan6, the process of urbanization is often linked with industrialization – as if they are synonymous. However, the two processes complement each other. Urbanization is a natural consequence of economic change along with a country’s development. The rate of urbanization in India increased from 27.81% as far as 2001 census is concerned, to 31.16% in 2011. According to the census reports (2011), population distributions in the rural and urban areas are 68.84% and 31.16%. Therefore, proportion of rural population declined from 72.19% to 68.84%. The reports also show that the most highly urbanized states in India are – Goa, Mizoram, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Maharashtra. Whereas, low rates of urbanization can be seen in the following states – Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, Orissa, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan.

8.  Social exclusion in the urban spaces

There can be different forms of exclusion of certain sections of the urban population. It can happen in terms of class, caste, religion, ethnicity, gender and other forms. The following are some of the few elements on the basis of which exclusion happens in the urban locales.

8.1.  Class

Certain spaces in major cities are increasingly becoming privatized, being accessible to only a certain class. Public spaces in a city often act as an arena of continuous contestation on the basis of culture. This culture, as Zukin argues, is the basis of a city’s economic growth. According to Zukin, this culture is the ‘symbolic economy’ of a city. Public spaces in cities – the streets, parks, building complexes etc –tend to face a kind of cultural war between different ethnic or racial minorities with their vernacular culture on one hand, and the middle class population on the other.

There is a growing urban fear of the ‘outsiders’ which facilitates greater ‘privatization’ of public spaces. Here, one can cite the example of Zukin’s study of Bryant Park in New York, the maintenance of which was taken up by a non-profit organization. By decorating the park, the organization had ensured that the park becomes an object of ‘visual consumption’ and is accessible only to a certain population, who can afford to pay for leisure. Therefore, there is greater stress on security guards, security gates, surveillance cameras etc to ensure increased ‘safety’ of the upper-middle class population from the ‘undesirables’ like tramps, drug peddlers, vagabonds etc. Thus, there happens a loss of public life for this ‘undesirable’ population, as they are too intimidated to enter these public spaces (Zukin, 1995).

One can also cite the example of the mushrooming of housing societies in the metro cities across India. The advertisements of these housing estates claim to give the consumer the ‘perfect solitude’

6 Mohan, Rakesh. “Urbanization in India: Patterns and Emerging Policy Issues.” In Urban Studies, edited by Sujata Patel and Kushal Deb, 59‐80. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009.

that every middle class person seeks in the chaotic atmosphere of the cities. These estates are meant to attract the upper middle class population of the cities, who can afford to pay for a comfortable, ‘blissful’ lifestyle inside the premises of these housing complexes. The premises of these buildings are walled, preventing the outside world to even have a look inside. Like the Bryant Park, here also one can see a stress on security of the ‘inhabitants’ and surveillance. These are termed as the ‘gated communities’, where the people, who cannot afford to pay for a lavish living, are shut out from.

8.2. Caste

It is assumed that the importance of caste in the cities is waning away because of growing cosmopolitanism; however, that is a myth. Caste politics had always played a pivotal role in the Indian scenario, irrespective of the rural or the urban context. Early studies on the urban settings maintained that urbanization impacts upon human life by gradually eroding communitarian relations (notably the works of Wirth). However, more contemporary scholars have concluded that community relations do exist in a variety of social contexts, both rural and urban. There happens to exist an ‘urban cultural community’ in the Indian context, informed by religion and caste (Stroope 2011).

There are different dimensions to understanding the caste system in the Indian cities. Studies have shown that upper caste Hindus are better off than scheduled castes, scheduled tribes or other backward castes in terms of education, employment opportunities and earned income. In the urban context, the OBCs, SCs and the STs are all generalized into parallel caste profiles, as separate from the upper caste Hindus. Because they already have access to quality higher education, the upper caste Hindus can also secure the best of jobs, thus marginalizing the STs, SCs and other backward castes in a dynamic labour market (Mohanty 2006).

With regard to the quota system, the central government had proposed reservation for SCs and STs in the corporate sectors. Though their reaction had been quite negative (as they seem to emphasize on the merit and qualification of the candidates, and not some ascribed criterion) the corporate sectors, in reality, take into account a potential candidate’s familial background. Therefore, chances are that an upper caste Hindu candidate will be favoured more while calling for a job interview than a Dalit or a Muslim candidate (Jodhka 2008). This unequal access to higher education and employment also leads to unequal distribution of wealth and better standards of living. Thus caste inequality is perpetuated; and the reservation system cannot be a long-term solution to this (Deshpande 2006).

8.3. Gender

Public spaces in cities are very much gendered. Access to a city’s public spaces is often restricted, or even denied, to women. To understand such a gendered scenario, one needs to look into two things – firstly, how certain discourses (like ‘protectionism’, ‘safety’, ‘risk’ etc) emerge justifying the exclusion of women from gaining access to certain spaces within the city; and secondly, how the caste-class-religious nexus functions threefold in deciding allotment of women’s access to space.

To elaborate on it a little more, a woman’s access to public space is determined by the location of the woman in terms of her class, caste, religion, ethnicity etc and, also, how much risk the woman is ready to negotiate with in order to lay claim on a city’s public space. This factor acts hand-in-hand with ‘fears’ concerning a woman’s ‘honour’. For e.g. a middle class woman is socialized in such a manner that she is always concerned about fears for her ‘reputation’. A lower or middle class woman is made to abide by the constructed imageries of how a ‘good woman’ should behave in the public space. If she retaliates against harassment, it is considered that she is encouraging it, because it is assumed that a ‘good woman’ never hits back, even verbally, at the abuser.

On the other hand, in locations of a city where there is a common acceptance of women accessing public spaces, even late at night (for e.g. office/ market areas), there is also a general societal acknowledgment of the ‘respectability’ of women, belonging to upper/ upper-middle class.

Religious markers on a woman’s body also impact upon the way in which women negotiate with risks in public spaces. For e.g. Muslim women, wearing burkhas, might experience the advantage of increased mobility and access to public space, but their religious markers do not prevent sexual harassment. Thus religious markers on the body might situate women at bigger threat of violence.

Thus, women have to constantly negotiate with ‘risk’ in order to ‘strategically’ produce ‘safety’ for themselves in public (Phadke, 2005)7.

9.  Urban poverty in the context of Indian cities

In India, poverty has always enjoyed major attention by development planners and policy makers. But it has always been viewed in the context of rural settings. Even if urban poverty was recognized, policies to alleviate poverty remained the same, only the term ‘rural’ was substituted by ‘urban’.

One needs to understand that with growing urbanization, massive scale migration happens from rural to the urban areas. Poverty acquires an urban nature. Urban poverty, thus, needs to be analyzed separately.

It is only very recently that planners have shed some light on the urban nature of poverty. It is now recognized that urban poverty has multiple dimensions to it. Urban poor has to live through a large number of deprivations. Their daily challenges comprise of various issues, like restricted access to housing facilities, lack of employment, limited access to health, education, sanitation, or other basic services (Jha, 2008).

Urban poverty consists of various components – (i) expansion of slums (bustees); (ii) rapid informalization/ casualization of labour; (iii) growth of informal sectors in urban areas; (iv) lack of basic amenities like education, health, employment etc.

In this module, I’ll highlight two of the schemes introduced by the government of India– JNNURM and SJSRY – to get an idea of how policies are oriented towards poverty alleviation in the Indian cities.

9.1. Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM)

This scheme was introduced in 2005 and was supposed to last till seven years from its inception. It was oriented towards achieving a sustainable development of certain cities, stressing on ‘urban renewal’ to improve standards of living of the urban poor. It was decided that in terms of implementing this scheme, the Government will provide basic services like enhanced water supply, better sanitation, shelter, health, education, improved banking, security of tenure, adequate street lights, etc to the urban poor.

This scheme focused to integrate poverty reduction objectives with economic growth. Its major objectives were –

i)To ensure that the aforementioned basic services are provided to urban poor.

ii) To ensure that the basic services are not simply implemented, but are continued in long run.

iii) To ensure adequate flow of funds to fill up the shortages in providing basic services (Palnitkar, 2008).

7 Phadke, Shilpa. “You Can Be Lonely in a Crowd: The Production of Safety in Mumbai” In Urban Studies, edited by Sujata Patel and Kushal Deb, 465‐483. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009. Originally published in Indian Journal of Gender Studies 12: 41‐62

9.2. Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rojgar Yojana (SJSRY)

This scheme came up with the ninth plan period. It tried to be more inclusive of the urban poor, aiming at empowerment of the ‘socially disprivileged section’ of society, especially women. This scheme had a more participatory orientation by building partnership with the urban poor. Therefore it was concerned more with providing employment to the unemployed or under-employed, or facilitating self-employment by training them with proper skills. The SJSRY had two major components –

i) Urban Self Employment Programme (USEP): this programme aims at training urban women from the marginalized sections with required skills, or providing them with loans, so that they can set up their own micro-finance enterprises.

ii) Urban Wage Employment Programme (UWEP): this programme on the other hand, tries to offer wage-employment to immigrating, unskillful labour population, living below the poverty line, in urban locales. The scheme tries to appropriate this labour for creating socially and economically valuable community assets (ibid).

10. Summary

The abovementioned sub-themes try to capture, in a nutshell, the ongoing debates regarding the urban settings, extending beyond the arguments posed by the Chicago School. The New Urban Sociology negates many of the arguments of the Chicago School, by bringing in new perspectives in the analysis of the urban settings. By looking at urbanization processes in the Indian scenario, one can see that the numbers of people coming from rural areas and settling down in the cities are ever-increasing. Moreover, social exclusion and urban poverty are integral parts of the Indian cities. Certain groups tend to become marginalized in urban spaces in terms of caste, class, gender, and other factors. Also, the Government of India defines urban poverty in a certain manner and tries to deal with it by means of different poverty alleviating schemes – which tries to cure poverty on a short term plan period basis.

WEB LINKS:

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