“Surplus Humanity” and the Margins of Legality - Chapman University

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6 Chapman Law Review [Vol. 14:1
household of six people into fifteen square meters, with a latrine
usually shared by six families. 29 Pavement and sidewalk
dwellers in Mumbai reach approximately one million. 30 Of these,
seventy percent have been in the city for at least six years, and
one-third have been evicted from a chawl or a slum. 31 While
Mumbai‘s estimated annual housing deficit of 45,000 units
translates into a corresponding increase in slum dwellings,
400,000 units lie empty because owners loath the mandated
regime of fixed rents and the resulting propensity of tenants to
become permanent occupiers. 32 Homelessness and slum growth
in Mumbai is directly related to job losses associated with
industrial restructuring. In 1921, textile mills hired 16.2% of the
males and 9.5% of the females of the city‘s population. 33 In 1931,
the Census Commissioner stated that ―‗[s]ave for its textile
manufacture‘, . . . ‗Bombay has really little claim to be called an
industrial city. . . .‘.‖ 34 Until 1980, 250,000 textile mill workers
lived in Mumbai; today the number has fallen below 30,000. 35
This is part of a broader contraction of the formal sector of the
economy that has forced the urban poor to fend for themselves in
the so-called informal sector.
Life in Dharavi demonstrates that, for the urban poor,
housing is a verb. 36 Dharavi, a 175-hector (0.67 square miles)
maze of dark alleys and corrugated shacks, compacts 18,000
people per acre into 10-by-15 foot rooms stacked on top of one
another. 37 Here, slum-dwellers juggle housing cost, tenure
security, quality of shelter, distance from work, and personal
safety. Even pavement-dwelling, much less an extra-legal shack,
is not free; regular fees have to paid to the police, crime
29 ALAIN R.A. JACQUEMIN, URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND NEW TOWNS IN THE THIRD
WORLD: LESSONS FROM THE NEW BOMBAY EXPERIENCE 89 (1999).
30 Minar Pimple & Lysa John, Security of Tenure: Mumbai‘s Experience, in HOLDING
THEIR GROUND: SECURE LAND TENURE FOR THE URBAN POOR IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
75, 76, 78 (Alain Durand-Lasserve & Lauren Royston eds., 2002).
31 JACQUEMIN, supra note 29, at 90.
32 SUKETU MEHTA, MAXIMUM CITY: BOMBAY LOST AND FOUND 117 (2004).
33 R. CHANDAVARKAR, THE ORIGINS OF INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM IN INDIA: BUSINESS
STRATEGIES AND THE WORKING CLASSES IN BOMBAY, 1900–1940 77 (1994).
34 Id.
35 Sharit K. Bhowmik, The Politics of Urban Space in Mumbai: ‗Citizen‘ versus the
Urban Poor, in CONTESTED TRANSFORMATIONS: CHANGING ECONOMIES AND IDENTITIES IN
CONTEMPORARY INDIA 149, 151 (Mary E. John et al. eds., 2006) [hereinafter CONTESTED
TRANSFORMATIONS]. The decline of the textile industry in Mumbai resulted from the
global shift of textile production to comparatively low-wage settings like Bangladesh,
China, and Vietnam. See Sanjaya Lall, India‘s Manufactured Exports: Comparative
Structure and Prospects, 27 WORLD DEV. 1769, 1769–70 (1999).
36 John F. C. Turner, Housing as a Verb, in FREEDOM TO BUILD: DWELLER CONTROL
OF THE HOUSING PROCESS 148, 151 (John F. C. Turner & Robert Fichter eds., 1972).
37 KALPANA SHARMA, REDISCOVERING DHARAVI: STORIES FROM ASIA‘S LARGEST SLUM
18 (2000).