Refusing slum-centric mass housing: indigenous urbanism and national housing programmes in Aizawl, India

Abstract

This paper addresses the policy encounter between a top-down, national housing programme and bottom-up housing processes in the tribal city of Aizawl, to make two arguments. First, it extends the literature analysing the outcomes of neoliberal housing policies to argue that there are important continuities and differences with Indian and Latin American cities. Similar to other Indian cities, Aizawl was strait-jacketed by national standardised norms into producing large-scale, new housing on the peripheries where dwellers faced multiple exclusions. Ironically, the programme has created slums in Aizawl, which officially had none. Unlike other Indian cities, top-down housing transformation in Aizawl concentrated power in 'modern' state institutions slanted toward individual (property) interests and away from traditional governance associated with indigenous urbanism. The paper's second contribution is the argument that top-down housing transformation was deeply contested in Aizawl because it unsettled a local urbanism rooted in notions of indigeneity. This identity politics contributed to overturning the state's conception of mass housing and selecting a role in subsequent housing programmes that reinforced exclusions based on patriarchal and property lines. The paper reinforces the importance for policymakers of treating housing as process, and supporting tribal community governance institutions while including provisions to redress exclusions.