Aspirational cities : community-led interventions impact quality of life in Bengaluru slums

Abstract

Rising levels of inequality in Indian cities is a ubiquitous notion in urban studies. The implications of inequality translate into myriad forms of exclusions for the urban poor. With respect to the category of ‘urban slums’ these take three interrelated exclusionary parities. First, the physical exclusion of the slum, where the slum as a space is seen separate from the city, reinforced by various gentrification processes. Second, exclusion from formal economy by increasing informalization of the labor force. Finally, exclusion from political language which does not account for the key issues and the voices of the slum, rendering it a politically silent zone.

To formulate a novel inquiry would mean uncovering new terrains of urbanization that enable critique instead of harboring predefined policy problems. This research situates the lack of work on ‘aspirations’ within informal settlements as a key academic and policy gap. Through rigorous primary work in the urban slum of Bengaluru over six months, this research addresses this gap by looking at various community-led processes and how they address the three-fold exclusions. The key question: Why are community-led interventions more impactful than state-led measures at addressing the needs of the slums. Such questions become pivotal to Indian cities, which face the dual challenges of being engines of economic growth and sustaining the rapidly changing ecological landscape. In no other city is this dual more disruptive than Bengaluru. Adopting a case study approach, this work critically analyses the community-based interventions in a specific slum of Rajinder Nagar in Bengaluru. The research shows that community-based interventions are more attuned to the individual and collective aspirations of the youth within the slum. This is confirmed through a range of methods involving data collection along with longitudinal analysis of individual trajectories of slum youth during this research. This is not only useful to understand why state-led policies to uplift the slums are ineffective but also provides a new prescription through which local development could be understood within policy studies. It is argued that strengthening the capacity of local development through community-led measures is the most effective way of addressing issues in informal settlements.

Key words: Urban Slums, Economic Mobility, Youth, Municipalism