5th Housing Theory Symposium | Brisbane

Notes from the Field- observations on migrant living in Gurgaon1

5th Housing Theory Symposium, Brisbane

Thomas Oommen
Assistant Professor Sushant School of Art and Architecture

Nipesh P Narayanan
Assistant Professor Sushant School of Art and Architecture

ABSTRACT
Housing is a political act - that is if politics is essentially resolving (or taking a position on) the question of who has rights to what, and how much control one has to change/choose the environment (Harvey 2008). With urbanization on the surge, and the large numbers of migrants entering and thereby creating cities, Indian housing deficit is increasing. Currently more than 93 million (census 2011) Indians are living in slums. The NCR2 region which receives upwards of 10,000 migrants a day is paradigmatic of this condition. Neither the private housing market which runs on speculation and concentrates on the IRR3 nor governmental attempts at providing subsidised housing seems to be yielding any fruit in bridging this gap. Prima facie, the reasons for this are manifold. The private sector, with its focus on profit, creates only exclusive housing for the upper middle class, and has not attempted to figure out a market model to tap the vast demand that exists for housing at the lower end of the economic spectrum. In the case of public housing, governmental attempts are woefully inadequate and bogged down with massive inefficiencies and delays. This paper takes the position that the housing problem is not just a problem of gap between production and demand. Rather it stakes the claim that the nature in which the housing issue has been theoretically framed and historically constructed has to be altered. This need for shifting the theoretical framework in which urban housing is conceived, is critical at this juncture, not just because of the fast pace of urbanization, but also because of the marked change in the conception of the Indian city itself (Chatterjee 2006). Though this conception is mostly moot on the housing of the large majority of urban dwellers, it is manifesting in very real terms as priorities and policies in terms of infrastructure, developmental controls, tax incentives etc. all of which are set to reconfigure the city, define lifestyle, the range of housing options and therefore the right to the city (Harvey 2008).

Gurgaon initiated as a satellite city for Delhi and dubbed as the millennium city of India is a new corporate hub. National Capital Region (Constitutes Delhi and the adjacent amalgamated cities of NOIDA, Gurgaon and Faridabad etc.) 3Internal Rate of Return
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Thomas Oommen | Nipesh P Narayanan

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5th Housing Theory Symposium | Brisbane Further, in the post-liberal economy, the unprecedented arrival of new mobile migrants - part of a much publicized demographic dividend to the city, has altered the requirements for housing. This is explained with observations from field studies from locales of migrant life in Gurgaon specifically the unique morphological and (non) planning phenomenon known as the urban village. The paper argues that while the market and the state, has framed the problem in terms of home ownership and the family bedroom apartment type, an actual look at the demographic and lifestyle of migrants, indicates alternate forms of collective urban living that may have much significance for envisaging housing for the future. It argues that the model for housing in the Indian city has been the village cluster and the village community, which may no longer be fully valid (Nandy 2007). The paper also traces forms of urban living that existed traditionally in Indian cities, in an attempt to explore whether they can serve as new models for the changing policy paradigms.

References Harvey, David (2008), The Right to the City, New Left Review 53 (September) http://newleftreview.org/II/53/david-harvey-the-right-to-the-city Accessed April 10, 2013 Chatterjee, Partha (2006), Politics of the Governed, Reflections on popular politics in most of the world; New York: Columbia University Press Nandy, Ashish (2007), The Journey to the Past as a Journey into the Self; Oxford University Press

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