Gender identity in urban poor

mobilizations: evidence from

Bengaluru

KAVERI HARITAS

Kaveri Ishwar Haritas

is a PhD candidate at
the Graduate Institute
of International and
Development Studies,
Geneva, Switzerland. She is
also a member of the Swiss
Gender Doctoral School
and a Research Assistant at
the University of Lausanne.
This article draws from
partial fieldwork conducted
under her thesis project on
the political and collective
engagement of women in
urban poor settlements in
Bangalore, supported by
the Swiss National Science
Foundation as part of a
larger module of research
entitled Sex, Race, Caste
and Class: Intersectionality
of Social Relations.
Address: Avenue de France
19B, 1202 Genve; e-mail:
kaveri.ishwarharitas@
graduateinstitute.ch
1. The term slum usually has
derogatory connotations and
can suggest that a settlement
needs replacement or can
legitimate the eviction of its
residents. However, it is a
difficult term to avoid for at
least three reasons.First, some
networks of neighbourhood
organizations choose to identify
themselves with a positive use
of the term, partly to neutralize
these negative connotations;
one of the most successful
is the National Slum Dwellers
Federation in India. Second,
the only global estimates for
housing deficiencies, collected
by the United Nations, are for

ABSTRACT This paper draws on field research conducted among a group

of resettled slum(1) dwellers in the west of Bengaluru, and analyzes womens
collective engagement to improve the provision of urban services in low-income
neighbourhoods. The paper argues the need to deepen the focus on urban
poor mobilizations below the level of the urban poor as a group to look at
the various groups, and the differences, divergences and contradictions within.
Using gender as a differential, the paper focuses on women who dominate local
neighbourhood level initiatives within low-income settlements, and analyzes
their specific opportunities and constraints as actors within the larger domain
of urban poor mobilizations. It proposes that these seemingly insignificant dayto-day negotiations diverge from more individual forms of leadership, creating
a political space at the lowest level of the neighbourhood where the projects of
material improvement and emancipation take place simultaneously.
KEYWORDS gender / leadership / mobilization / poverty / rehabilitation /
resettlement / slum / women

I. INTRODUCTION
In the context of the scarcity of resources experienced within low-income
settlements, women and womens organizations play a crucial role in the
improvement of infrastructure and services. Drawing on field research
conducted among a group of resettled slum dwellers in Bengaluru, India,
this paper argues for the importance of women, among other stakeholders,
in addressing urban poverty. It describes the constraints that women as
actors face in their engagement and seeks to identify the reasons why,
despite their overwhelming presence at the neighbourhood level, women
as a group, characterized by a specific set of agendas and strategies, are not
more visible within academic discourses on urban poor mobilizations. It
proposes that gender identity intersects with other identities relative to
class, stage of life, paid work and care responsibilities, determining the
extent of and limits to womens collective engagement. Women emerge
in this discussion as political actors within the realm of urban poor
mobilizations, transcending the publicprivate schism. In this process,
the gendered division of domestic responsibilities on the one hand
enables womens entry into the public sphere, and on the other, limits
their engagement at the neighbourhood level.

Environment & Urbanization Copyright 2013 International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
Vol 25(1): 125138. DOI: 10.1177/0956247813477811 www.sagepublications.com

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II. BACKGROUND: URBAN POOR MOBILIZATIONS

Residents of low-income settlements and slums, along with the urban
poor, are discursively constructed as a single homogenous group in
state policies that deal with urban poverty. Poverty reduction policies
and programmes target the slum as a locus of urban poverty since, as
Mathur points out, slums, as spatial entities, can be identified and
targeted.(2) According to Gilbert, the term slum is problematic because
it is reductionist, putting all those without either adequate sanitation or
security of tenure into a single homogenous category.(3) Gilbert draws
attention to the differences between squatter settlements in the periphery
of cities and inner-city slums, distinguishing between peripheral slums
of hope and inner-city slums of despair.(4) In a similar vein, Bhide looks
at the differences between communities in Mumbai that are frequently
displaced and those that are well settled, for whom the term slum
is a burdensome label.(5) While considerable literature exists on the
differences between slums in terms of their legal status and security of
tenure, there is little work on the differences within these low-income
settlements in terms of gender, religion, caste, relative class and political
beliefs and affiliation.
A rich body of analytical work on urban poor movements in India
in the field of urban studies includes an analysis of tensions or relations
between the urban poor and the state,(6) and between the urban poor
and the urban middle classes.(7) Studies frequently refer to urban poor or
slum-based mobilizations, including within this category a vast array of
mobilizations organized by neighbourhood groups, local slum/area leaders
and larger organizations, based on caste and class alliances. Some studies,
such as that by Benjamin and Bhuvaneshwari(8) on slums in Bengaluru,
provide rich material on the diverse factions within slums and low-income
settlements, but its analysis remains at the level of urban governance. This
work, through its analysis of local and corporate economies, contributes
to an understanding of the manner in which certain institutions and
forms of governance impact on poverty. Benjamin and Bhuvaneshwaris
research also provides rich food for analysis on mobilizations within
lower-income settlements. But going a step further, a focus on what
happens within these local economies and urban poor settlements
could provide an understanding of why certain identity groups based on
gender, religion, caste, class, age and occupation or political affiliation or
beliefs (including but not limited to party affiliations) are included in, or
excluded from, the process of claim-making. This focus would provide
a certain visibility to those who are marginal, not only at the city level
but also within urban poor settlements, and thus allow an analysis of the
marginal among the marginalized.
Gender is one of the most important of these marginal identities.
Women form a crucial part of urban poor movements, particularly at the
neighbourhood level, where their negotiations and lobbying with state
departments and political representatives have transformative power.
While considerable work exists on urban poor mobilizations,(9) a select
few accounts use gender as an analytical framework to analyze the specific
position of women within urban poor movements for survival. These
include Joop de Wits thesis on poverty, politics and gender in Madras
slums,(10) Ananya Roys work on Calcutta slums(11) and Patel and Mitlins
work on Mahila Milan.(12) This approach moves beyond a focus on the

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what they term slums. And
third, in some nations, there
are advantages for residents
of informal settlements if
their settlement is recognized
officially as a slum; indeed,
the residents may lobby to get
their settlement classified as a
notified slum. Where the term
is used in this journal, it refers
to settlements characterized by
at least some of the following
features: alack of formal
recognition on the part of local
government of the settlement
and its residents;the
absence of secure tenure for
residents;inadequacies in
provision for infrastructure
and services; overcrowded
and sub-standard dwellings;
and location on land less
than suitable for occupation.
For a discussion of more
precise ways to classify the
range of housing sub-markets
through which those with
limited incomes buy, rent or
build accommodation, see
Environment and Urbanization
Vol 1, No 2, October (1989),
available at http://eau.sagepub.
com/content/1/2.toc.
2. Mathur, Om Prakash (2009),
Slum-free Cities A New
Deal for the Urban Poor, The
National Institute of Public
Finance and Public Policy, New
Delhi, July, 70 pages.
3. Gilbert, Alan (2007), The
return of the slum: does
language matter?, International
Journal of Urban and Regional
Research Vol 31, No 4,
December, pages 697713.
4. See also debates on
using the category of slum
theoretically, for example Roy,
A (2011), Slumdog cities:
rethinking subaltern urbanism,
International Journal of Urban
and Regional Research Vol
35, No 2, pages 223238; also
Arabindoo, Pushpa (2011),
Rhetoric of the slum, City Vol
15, No 6, pages 636646.
5. Bhide, Amita (2009), Shifting
terrains of communities and
community organization:
reflections on organizing for
housing rights in Mumbai,
Community Development
Journal Vol 44, No 3, pages
367381.
6. Benjamin, Solomon (2000),
Governance, economic
settings and poverty in

G E N D E R I D E N T I T Y I N U R B A N P O O R M O B I L I Z AT I O N S : B E N G A L U R U, I N D I A
Bangalore, Environment and
Urbanization Vol 12, No 1, April,
pages 3556.
7. Baud, Isa and Navtej Nainan
(2008), Negotiated spaces for
representation in Mumbai: ward
committees, advanced locality
management and the politics
of middle-class activism,
Environment and Urbanization
Vol 20, No 2, October, pages
483499; also Kamath, Lalitha
and M Vijayabhaskar (2009),
Limits and possibilities of
middle-class associations
as urban collective actors,
Economic and Political Weekly
Vol XLIV, No 26 and 27, pages
368376; and Smitha, K C (2010),
New forms of urban localism:
service delivery in Bangalore,
Economic And Political Weekly
Vol XLV, No 8, pages 7377.
8. Benjamin, Solomon and
R Bhuvaneshwari (2001),
Democracy, inclusive
governance and poverty in
Bangalore, Working Paper
No 26, The University of
Birmingham, DFID, 250 pages.
9. See reference 5; also see
reference 6; and Edelman,
Brent and Arup Mitra (2006),
Slum dwellers access to basic
amenities: the role of political
contact, its determinants
and adverse effects, Review
of Urban and Regional
Development Studies Vol 18, No
1, pages 2540.
10. de Wit, Joop (1996), Poverty,
Policy and Politics in Madras
Slums: Dynamics of Survival,
Gender and Leadership, Sage,
London, Thousand Oaks and
New Delhi, 305 pages.
11. Roy, A (2003), City Requiem,
Calcutta: Gender and the
Politics of Poverty, University of
Minnesota Press, 288 pages.
12. Patel, Sheela and Diana
Mitlin (2011), Gender issues
and slum/shack dweller
federations, Gender and Urban
Federations Series Working
Paper, IIED, London, 10 pages.
13. Ganguly Thukral, Enakshi
(1996), Development,
displacement and rehabilitation:
locating gender, Economic and
Political Weekly Vol 31, No 24,
pages 15001503.
14. Weinstein, Liza and Tarini
Bedi (2012), Building politics:
gender and political power in
globalizing Mumbai, in Samir

impacts of urban policies on women.(13) It has allowed the analysis to

shift from the descriptive, with women described as suffering more than
men in the context of certain deprivations (in case of displacement, or
access to water and sanitation), to an analysis of women as stakeholders
with the agency to transform their lives. In this sense, the analysis of
gender in the context of urban social movements has transcended the
publicprivate schism that relegates women to the private realm of
domesticity.(14) Womens work as active organizers of local initiatives and
active participants within more broad-based urban poor networks and
movements has thus come to the fore, transforming not only their image
but also perceptions of urban poor mobilizations. Within this paradigm of
urban poor-based organizations and movements, this paper interrogates
the nature of voluntary work provided by the urban poor, deconstructing
the manner in which perceptions of the neighbourhood as an extension
of the domestic domain enable womens leadership at the neighbourhood
level, helping transcend the publicprivate schism.
Despite their political agency, women as a group are less explored
within the broader consideration of urban poor mobilizations, which
focuses on an analysis of relations between such actors as the urban
poor, the state, NGOs, political representatives, para-statal agencies and
development agencies, homogenizing these various groups in the process.
Intra-group differences tend to be ignored, with dominant interests
uniformly applied to all individuals. In the process, contestations both
within hegemonically defined groups and epistemic communities,
formed across groups on the basis of political affiliation and ideologies,
are ignored. For example, the middle class is discursively defined through
the practices of dominant individuals, while the more marginal members
who do not share dominant views, or those who contest and challenge
dominant views, remain ignored. In the specific context of gender,
urban poverty and mobilizations, the analysis excludes womens relation
to and positions within these mobilizations. Thus the conditions of
mobilization, negotiation and decision-making are framed at the level of
the slum or settlement, through those who ostensibly claim to represent
its inhabitants.
Those who represent urban poor settlements, slum leaders,
slum lords or area leaders as they are referred to, are almost always
men who claim to represent entire urban poor groups, mediating with
political representatives and administrative officials on behalf of their
constituencies. For example, de Wit and Berner in their analysis of the
limits to slum dwellers empowerment call this kind of representation
brokerage, with the broker normally a well-connected local leader or
strongman. They remark that, in India, they had not encountered women
in this role.(15) Slum or area leaders claim to represent residents and often
act as middlemen, connecting the populations they claim to represent
to political representatives in need of vote banks, to mass movement
organizations in need of manpower, and to NGOs and CBOs seeking to
work in the slum. These middlemen often wield immense power and
while some play a beneficial role in the uplifting of their communities,
some are feared by other residents. They ensure the continuance of
their power over the slum by guarding official information, which they
distribute parsimoniously, as described by Milbert,(16) causing a situation
of dependency. Politically supported slum lords are more powerful, as
they play the role of mediator between government officials and residents

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and represent their slums before government functionaries. De Wit and

Berner point to the need to understand whether such leadership is more
self-interested than community welfare oriented.(17)
This paper distinguishes between representational forms of leadership
and those driven by other motives such as collective benefit. In this
respect, the day-to-day negotiations of groups of women are set apart from
those of leaders, leadership being a rather male-dominated domain. In
essence, the insignificant day-to-day negotiations that are often carried
out by women more than men, through visits to the councillors office,
through community events to which the councillor is invited, through
phone calls made by groups during times of distress, diverge both in
praxis and intent from the typical slum leader modes of representation.

III. THE FIELDWORK

The research on which this paper draws took place in Bangalore, renamed
Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka state in the southern part of India,
during 20102011. Bengaluru, referred to as the Silicon Valley of India,
is home to a population of about 9.5 million.(18) City administration
officials estimate that as of 2011, between 30 and 40 per cent of the citys
population, i.e. at least three million people, lived in slums in the city.(19)
A slum in Bengaluru typically houses both old and new migrants(20)
from rural areas both within the state and from neighbouring states,
mostly from Tamil Nadu. Some of these migrants are seasonal, moving
to the city when there is little demand for agricultural labour in the
rural areas and moving back when agricultural labour is in greater
demand.(21) Data collected during an exploratory field visit to 22 slums
in Bengaluru,(22) as well as interviews with NGO staff working in slums
in the city,(23) revealed that a majority of residents in the slums visited
were either Dalit or Muslim. While people from dominant castes such as
Gowdas also reside in slums, they are far fewer in number.
The fieldwork on which this paper is based was part of broader
research for a thesis that took place over a period of nine months and
was conducted in a group of urban poor settlements in Lakshmi Devi
Nagar (ward number 42(24)) and Laggere (ward number 69(25)) located in
the Rajarajeshwarinagar assembly constituency (number 154) in the west
of Bengaluru.(26) Laggere and Lakshmi Devi Nagar are home to several lowcost apartment buildings constructed by the Karnataka Slum Development
Board (hereinafter referred to as the KSDB) to house slum dwellers
evicted from other parts of the city, including from informal settlements
consisting of huts.(27) It houses the citys first apartment building complex
constructed under the JNNURM(28)BSUP component,(29) a national urban
planning initiative involving the provision of affordable housing and
improved basic infrastructure (hereinafter called the BSUP apartments).
Apart from a thriving garment industry, these wards also house lower
and upper-middle class neighbourhoods. This paper is limited to an
analysis of womens engagement in a neighbourhood association working
for the improvement of one of several KSDB constructions referred to
as the slum board quarters by those residing in the vicinity. Within
this neighbourhood, which consists of about 240 apartments, hereinafter
referred to as the quarters, there are clear differences of class between
daily wage workers engaged in construction work, those working in

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Dasgupta, Robyn Driskell,
Yvonne Braun and Nicola Yeats
(editors), Womens Encounter
with Globalization, Frontpage
Publications Ltd., London, 230
pages.
15. de Wit, Joop and Erhard
Berner (2009), Progressive
patronage? Municipalities,
NGOs, CBOs and the limits to
slum dwellers empowerment,
Development and Change Vol
40, No 5, pages 927947.
16. Milbert, Isabelle (2006),
Slums, slum dwellers and
multi-level governance,
The European Journal of
Development Research Vol 18,
No 2, pages 299318.
17. See reference 15.

18. See 2011 Indian

government census data:
Provisional Population Totals
Paper 1 of 2011 Table 1:
Distribution of population,
decadal growth rate, sex ratio
and population density for state
and districts 2011, accessed
25 October 2012 at url: http://
www.censusindia.gov.in/2011prov-results/prov_data_
products_karnatka.html.
19. Times of India (2011),
Every third Bangalorean lives
in sub-human slum, available
at http://articles.timesofindia.
indiatimes.com/2011-03-17/
bangalore/29137890_1_slumpopulation-slum-dwellersurban-poverty, 17 March.
20. For example, in the Laggere
slums, some of the low-cost
apartments allotted have
been rented out to these new
migrants. Also see Gowda,
Sidde and G P Shivashankara
(2007), Rural migration to the
Indian metropolis: case study
Bangalore, ITPI Journal Vol 4,
No 1, pages 6769.
21. For example, a settlement
of north Karnataka construction
workers living in hutments
in Laggere is composed of
seasonal migrants.
22. Exploratory fieldwork
conducted in 20092010,
consisting of visits to a random
sample of 22 slums in different
parts of Bangalore and drawing
from interviews conducted
with NGO staff working in the
slums revealed a predominant

G E N D E R I D E N T I T Y I N U R B A N P O O R M O B I L I Z AT I O N S : B E N G A L U R U, I N D I A
Dalit and Muslim population
in these slums. Of the slums
visited, 10 had a dominant
Dalit population, seven had a
dominant Muslim population,
one had a predominantly OBC
population and three had an
equal mix of Muslim and Hindu
(including Dalit) populations.
23. Interviews with Isaac
Arul Selva from Janasahayog
and with Ram Kumar, APSA
coordinator, 15 December
2009. APSA works in more
than 200 slums in Bangalore
and Janasahayog publishes
a news magazine for slum
dwellers. Its information-based
model of NGO-mediated
intervention was the focus of
Madon and Sahays work on
forms of mediation by NGOs
on behalf of citizen groups; see
Madon, S and S Sahay (2002),
An information-based model
of NGO mediation for the
empowerment of slum dwellers
in Bangalore, The Information
Society Vol 18, No 1, pages
1319.
24. Lakshmi Devi Nagar
ward includes the following
areas: Goragunte Playa (P),
Lakshmidevi Nagar, Kempamma
Layout, Kaveri Nagar, Nandini
Layout I Stage, Narasimha
Layout, Yeshwanthpur
Industrial Suburb (P), Jenakal
Siddeshwara Nagar.
25. Laggere ward covers the
following areas: Preethi Nagar,
Tyagi Nagar, Vidhana Soudha
Layout, Freedom Fighters
Colony, Laggere, Narasimha
Murthy Nagar, LG Ramanna
Colony, Muneshwara Nagar,
Rajeshwari Nagar, Rajiva Gandhi
Nagar.
26. The names of the
settlements have been
intentionally withheld to
provide anonymity to the
respondents.
27. One example is the
settlement of north Karnataka
construction workers who
were earlier located next to the
Laggere government school
and are at present situated
opposite the JNNURMBSUP
construction site. See PUCL,
Slum Jagatthu, AIDWA, Students
Federation of India, APSA,
Vimochana and Alternative Law
Forum (2006), Slums under
fire: a fact-finding report on
the slum fires in Bangalore,

nearby garment factories, domestic maids, those engaged as drivers, auto

drivers, and those driving their own autos or cars as taxis.
The research used qualitative methods of data collection, including
participant observation, semi-structured open-ended interviews and focus
group discussions. The choice of methods was based on the objective of
identifying the priorities of respondents and their specific trajectories to
obtain what they perceived as crucial to their survival in the city. The
interviews analyzed for the purpose of this paper include qualitative
interviews with five women members of the local association, five women
residents and one male resident in the neighbourhood not participating
in the activities of the association, and two focus group discussions with
a total of 20 female residents, five of whom participated in the activities
of the association.

IV. THE NEIGHBOURHOOD AND ITS RESIDENTS

The quarters occupied by the respondents were constructed by the KSDB
in the early 1980s.(30) They are dilapidated structures with humid and
corroded walls and chipping concrete. Rainwater leaks into top floor
apartments, and water from bathrooms and toilets seeps into apartments
on the floors below. Sanitation services in the area are characterized
both by poor materials and lack of adequate maintenance (including
waste disposal), resulting in serious sanitation issues in the area. Burst
sanitary drains spill human excreta onto the narrow tracts of land
separating apartment buildings. Although they do not conform to the
image of temporary slum housing, referred to as katcha structures in
official language,(31) these apartments are unfit for human habitation.
During interviews, residents recounted that the KSDB had earmarked
these structures for demolition and were requiring the residents to move
into temporary housing a proposition unacceptable to a majority of
the residents. Those who rented apartments within these quarters feared
losing their homes, and those who owned their apartments did not wish
to reside in the asbestos sheet matchbox rooms provided by the KSDB as
temporary rehabilitation until the new apartments were reconstructed.
Residents, who said they had moved from slums along the railway
lines into the quarters in the 1980s, were ambiguous in describing their
housing. When discussing issues of their collective action through
an association they formed to work on the improvement of their
neighbourhood, they referred to the housing as quarters. However,
when they described negotiations with the local municipal councillor,
they referred to themselves as poor people living in slums. In effect,
the use of the term slum here is relational and contextual, avoided in
the context of their aspirations to a cleaner and healthier neighbourhood
and appropriated in the context of claim-making with local political
representatives. When asked about their plans for the future, residents
spoke about their aspirations for their children, their plans for their
higher studies and marriage and, in some of the cases, their wish to move
out of the slum.
When one family was asked about future plans, the husband responded
as follows: If we are getting our daughter married, we would like to leave the
quarters and shift to a good decent [authors emphasis] area. At the time of her
marriage we dont want to be in the slum. When asked why he considered

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it a slum, he responded: Now you yourself said that there is a problem with
the drainage The use of the term slum in this case is thus linked to
the lack of basic urban services. By the same logic, underserviced areas,
regardless of tenure and housing quality, are all slums. Yet this logic
is not consistent: one of the respondents, when asked if the KSDB had
declared the area a slum in order to proceed with demolition, responded
that these were quarters but that they housed people from the slum.
From this perspective, those who lived in a slum at some point in their
lives continued to be slum dwellers, even if the legal conditions of their
habitat had changed. Given this ambiguity in their responses, I prefer to
refer to this particular neighbourhood as quarters as more positive in
approach. In my analysis I adopt the term urban poor settlements, so
as to bring under it a vast range of underserviced low-income habitats,
while avoiding the moral connotations of the term slum. I use this term
qualitatively and not in economic terms of poverty and wages, given the
inadequacy of standard tools used to define and measure poverty.(32)

V. COLLECTIVE MOBILIZATION AT THE NEIGHBOURHOOD LEVEL

The neighbourhood level association, the lowest in the pyramid of
associational activity, works on the development of the quarters, which
consist of a few streets within the larger group of KSDB quarters.(33) The
name of this association has been intentionally withheld to provide
anonymity and it will hereafter be referred to simply as the Association.
It was founded by one of the residents, Priya (name changed), with the
support of an NGO working in the area. While the NGO supports the
Association in kind, providing resources for projects and events, Priya
raises funds from the government and other organizations to support
their projects. The Association functions along similar lines to the
resident welfare associations (RWAs) found in middle- and upper middleclass areas,(34) with members airing their grievances, based on which the
Association formulates its activities.(35) When this research was conducted
in early 2010, the Association consisted of eight members: seven women
and one man. Of the seven women, six were married and of these, five
were over the age of 30. Of these five older women, four had older married
children and one (Priya) had school-going children. Of the remaining two
women under the age of 30, one was married with one child while the
other was unmarried. The only man in the Association was 30 years old
and unmarried.
The Association works primarily on issues of education and the
development of the neighbourhood. In addition to frequent negotiations
with the municipal councillor and other government functionaries
directed at increasing water supply and providing sanitation services,
the Associations past activities include obtaining additional land from
the government in order to build extra classrooms for the school; the
distribution of free books and uniforms to children; and obtaining funds
to provide day passes for needy children pursuing high school education
in other parts of the city. The Association played a key role in the last
municipal elections in 2010, trading votes for the provision of free
drinking water (called kaveri water) connections. While water was supplied
through these new connections in the days preceding the elections, a few
months later the taps had run dry and adequate water supply still eludes

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February.
28. The Jawaharlal Nehru
National Urban Renewal
Mission (JNNURM) is directed
at the fast track planned
development of urban
infrastructure, service delivery
mechanisms, community
participation and accountability
of urban local bodies or
parastatal agencies. It is divided
into two components, one
directed at the development
of urban infrastructure,
including the construction
of roads, improvements in
public transportation etc., and
the Basic Services for Urban
Poor (BSUP) programme. The
BSUP component includes
provision of affordable
housing; improvement of
basic services such as water
supply, sewerage, drainage,
community toilets, electricity;
and provision of civic amenities
such as community halls, child
care centres...
29. The Hindu (2010), JNNURM
bonanza for state, Front
page, available at http://www.
thehindu.com/2010/08/08/
stories/2010080850590100.htm.
30. Interview with Mehboob,
a resident of one of the KSDB
quarters, 10 January 2010.
31. See MHUPA, National
Buildings Organization (no
date), Formats and guidelines
for survey and preparation of
slum, household and livelihood
profiles of cities/towns,
accessed 12 September 2012
at http://nbo.nic.in/Images/
PDF/Surveyguideline.pdf.
32. Bapat, Meera (2009),
Poverty lines and lives of the
poor. Underestimation of urban
poverty the case of India,
Working Paper 20, Poverty
Reduction in Urban Areas
Series, IIED, February, 53 pages.
33. The quarters, consisting of
streets, are sub-divided and
each has an individual name.
Each sub-quarter has a unique
history, having been relocated
at a specific point in time from
different parts of the city.
34. See reference 7.
35. Meeting of the Association
dated 28 January 2010.

G E N D E R I D E N T I T Y I N U R B A N P O O R M O B I L I Z AT I O N S : B E N G A L U R U, I N D I A

residents. Water used for bathing and cleaning (uppu neeru as it is called by
residents, meaning saltwater) is provided once a week and, at best, twice a
week during periods of adequate rainfall. Drinking water is rarely supplied
and is often purchased by residents from middle-class homes that line
these settlements. In this context, the Associations close contact with the
municipal councillor provides residents with a channel through which
claims for water and sanitation services are made.
When first interviewed prior to the municipal elections held in
March 2010, Priya was exuberant at having successfully negotiated
access to water, and was positive that the councillor with whom she
had traded votes would meet all the demands raised by the Association.
Several months later, between December 2010 and May 2011, follow-up
interviews revealed that the councillor had done nothing more. When
asked, he reportedly said that he had not yet received funds from the
government. During a focus group discussion organized at the time, a
woman member made strong statements about the repercussions of the
councillors failure to fulfil their demands. Addressing Priya, she said: Do
you know how badly people scold us? You know that old lady there, she scolds
me so badly, she says, you said you will clean this up (referring to the piles of
garbage lining the narrow streets of the quarters), you said you will do this and
that do you know how people hold us responsible?
Having campaigned on behalf of the councillor to enable the process
of vote banking, Priya and some of the members active in the campaign
were now earning the wrath of residents who held them responsible. In
response, the Association members resolved to file an application under
the Right to Information Act 2005 (RTI) to find out if it really was true
that the councillor had not been allocated funds by the government. In a
follow-up phone interview in September 2012, it appeared that the RTI had
still not been filed. Instead, Priya said that the councillor had responded
to at least half the demands they had made. Even though he had not
solved the water problem, he was paying for water that was supplied by
trucks during months of high scarcity. She said that the councillor gave
all the residents free medical insurance, covering hospital treatment up
to 100,000 rupees for all residents in the neighbourhood. She said that if
he were to respond to the remaining demands, they would have to follow
up and support him. The argument she made was that they could obtain
what they wanted only if they supported him. By this logic, filing an RTI,
she said, would be too confrontational.
The nature of these political contacts and the modes of claimmaking that provide interfaces between the Association and the political
representative reveal the political nature of these negotiations, which
go beyond contact with formal political processes to the charting of
political strategies and the nurturing of long-term relationships with
political representatives. This can be interpreted within the perspective
of local patronclient politics. But another way of perceiving these
actions is to view them as political strategies directed at accountability,
exercised outside the realm of legally defined modes such as the right
to information. The accountability of the councillor, in the eyes of the
residents, is shared between the Association and the councillor. While
the councillor is accountable to the residents and the Association, the
latter is responsible in turn for following up with the councillor. In this
sense, claim-making in the vote banking context operates in a political
patronage mode of direct democracy, whether mediated by local collectives

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or made alone, as argued by Benjamin.(36) However, the responsibility

to make things happen belongs not only to those benefiting from the
vote bank but also to those who facilitated vote banking. In this sense,
direct democracy filters down, below the municipal councillors and other
political representatives, to those who mobilize votes for them during
elections. In effect, representation within formal political structures is
preceded by more informal forms of representation and leadership, taking
democratic representation one step below that of the ward level.

Vol 25 No 1 April 2013

36. See reference 6.

VI. THE EXTENTS AND LIMITS OF COLLECTIVE ENGAGEMENT

Despite the active work of the Association and the resulting tangible
improvements in the neighbourhood, not all women participate in
Association activities. Among the women who form the great majority
in the Association, older women, who are not engaged in paid work,
predominate. Interviews with members, including younger women
engaged in paid work, provided key insights into the way that time use
determines womens engagement at the local level. In contrast to the
women in the Association, women working in nearby garment factories
revealed little or no engagement at the community level. Two focus group
discussions with a total of 20 garment factory workers from the quarters
revealed that none of them were engaged with the Association, nor were
they active in events organized by the Association or in lobbying conducted
by the Association. When asked about the poor service provision in the
area, a majority of respondents (15) said that they had no option but to
buy water at higher prices from middle-class homes located nearby and
to pay collectively for the cleaning up of broken drain pipes when the
stench became too much to handle. They were all solely responsible for
their household chores and had to cook and clean in addition to their
work in the factories. The remaining eight respondents shared domestic
work with other family members (such as their mothers or mothers-inlaw) who fetched water and engaged actively with the Association. These
workers all said that they had little time to engage at the community level,
since they worked six days a week and sometimes overtime, reserving
Sundays and other holidays for domestic work and leisure.
Even among the women who were part of the Association,
the extent of their involvement and active participation depended on
their situation. For example, Rasheeda, a member, said she had very
little time available due to her domestic responsibilities. In addition to
carrying water, cooking and cleaning, she also had to take care of her
grandchild sometimes, and this left her little time for the Associations
work. Because she could not spend enough time attending meetings and
taking part in events, she actually knew very little about the Association.
She also complained about the lack of compensation for Association
work. While several Association projects receive support in kind from the
local NGO, (37) they do not provide salaries or stipends for those working
in the community. Work on improving their neighbourhoods is thus
an additional charge, and while they do enjoy the benefits of improved
service provision, women still stand to bear the larger burden. Padma,
another Association member who has to care for a sick family member,
also said that she was unable to spend as much time on the Associations
work as she would like. She said that, often, Priya would organize a

132

37. Interview with Priya, 5

January 2011. The in-kind
support received from the local
NGO included books, uniforms
and other materials for
children attending the public
school; bus passes for children
pursuing high school education
in further away places;
organization of the platform,
speakers and chairs for public
events, etc.

G E N D E R I D E N T I T Y I N U R B A N P O O R M O B I L I Z AT I O N S : B E N G A L U R U, I N D I A

meeting in front of her house so that she did not have to leave home to
attend meetings.
Geethamma, a widow with three grown-up daughters and a schoolgoing son had a little more time for Association activities. She gets support
in her domestic chores from one of her daughters who lives next door.
The other two daughters work in the garment factory and earn a decent
livelihood, so their financial needs and the education of her son are taken
care of. Her specific situation allows her more time than Rasheeda or
Padma for Association meetings and events.
In contrast to the other women, Priya spends half her day on the
Associations work. She is one of two members of the Association with
young school-going children but is still able to spend more time on the
Associations work than other members. Priya is a Christian and lived first
in Laggere, with her parents, and now in Lakshmi Devi Nagar, with her
husband. She knows the area well and is well connected with the activities
of local NGOs, associations and mobilizations. She is better educated
than the other members of the Association, having completed a basic
degree in arts (BA degree). She began doing what she terms social work
when she completed her pre-university degree, and has a long history
of involvement, having worked in several NGOs before she founded the
Association in 2009 with the active support and encouragement of a local
NGO. While she received a salary earlier in her job with the NGO, now
as president of the Association she does not get paid. She explained that
her husband earns well and provides adequately for the family, and as
long as the children are well cared for she can undertake the work of
the Association during her free time. She spends a substantial amount of
time travelling, using local transport. When her first child was born, she
took him along with her when she worked, and when the second child
was born she tipped the ayah (cleaning help) at the school to keep the
elder child after school hours, because taking two children to work was
not possible. She admits it was more difficult before the children could
walk; after they could walk, she at least did not have to carry them all
day. By the time she began the Associations work in 2009, her children
were older and better able to take care of themselves, and she could work
without worrying about child care. Her older son, now in high school,
takes care of the younger one. When asked how she managed her domestic
responsibilities, cooking and cleaning, she said that she and her husband
shared the work in the home, which made it easier for her.
Priya is in a sense different from the other women members of the
Association. She has fewer care responsibilities and is also better educated.
Her work with NGOs provided her with a variety of resources and
networks that are not available to the other women members. Apart from
these differences, her resilience and commitment to her work, despite the
hardships she faced when her children were young, reveal tenacity and
immense personal agency. Yet she confesses that she has her limitations.
She had been offered paid employment in another NGO working in the
area but had to refuse because it involved frequent travel outside the city.
Her marital status and domestic responsibilities made this unworkable
for her:
... for me, my husband and children stand first. The most important
thing for us women is our husband and children, because at the
end of the day, people ask us, how is Sir and how are the children?

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No one will ask me how many jewels I have or how much money I
have, will anyone ask me this? No one will ask me this! If I have the
capacity to maintain my family, I can maintain other people in my
neighbourhood. If I am not able to do for my family, what will I do
for others?
This statement clearly manifests her implicit assumption of socially
defined gendered roles. A womans status, from her perspective, is defined
by the performance of her domestic obligations, and her worth is pegged
to her familys well-being. It is accepted without question that she is
responsible for her husbands and childrens well-being, a responsibility
that she bears solely. On the other hand, she argues that her involvement
in unpaid social work is possible because her husband is able to provide
sufficiently for the family, affirming his role as the provider. What this
statement also makes clear is that despite her interest in and commitment
to her work, it still takes second place to her domestic obligations.
The women in the Association and the garment workers share one
thing in common: gender defines their time use, and time-consuming
domestic work is disproportionately allocated to women. When
women who did not participate in Association activities even at the
neighbourhood level were asked the reason for their lack of engagement
in efforts that had visibly improved the quality of their lives, the majority
said that their domestic responsibilities did not leave them enough time;
this was true even for those not involved in paid work. Among those
doing paid work, even though some meetings were held in the evenings
or on holidays, domestic chores and leisure were a priority at these times.
These interviews reveal the gendered dimensions of poverty and the
manner in which they impinge on womens time. On top of paid work
and the gendered distribution of domestic work, living in low-income,
badly serviced housing adds to the unequal burden these women bear.
In the case of women who were not engaged in paid work, limited
financial resources translated into other domestic responsibilities, such
as child care and care of the elderly, the ailing or the invalid. In effect,
the demands on womens time, particularly in the slum, are heavy.
Social patriarchal structures are in effect reinforced by the states failure
to provide adequate urban infrastructure, services and facilities. Yet it is
undeniable that women are the only spokespersons when it comes to
these day-to-day negotiations. Part of the response lies in the voluntary
nature of the work. Voluntary work among the poor, even if one gains
immensely by it, has direct consequences on their wages and thus on the
quality of their lives. A days missed wages has tangible impacts on the
familys expenditure on meals, education, health, leisure, etc. People who
cannot afford to miss a days work often have to compensate with their
free time, working on holidays or working overtime, thus eating into the
little leisure time at their disposal. It is within this context that one can
better understand the fact that it is almost always women who are not
engaged in paid work who participate actively in these initiatives. For
these women, time spent on neighbourhood work is often considered
part of their domestic responsibilities. The home, in this sense, extends to
include the neighbourhood, especially given that domestic responsibilities
at home depend heavily on neighbourhood conditions. When asked why
women engaged in the activities of the Association, most women referred
to the need for basic services. After all, if one has to do the laundry, one

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needs water, and what if there is no water? Thus by extension, obtaining

a regular water supply becomes part of doing the laundry. If there is no
water, it is almost always the women who carry the burden of fetching
water from middle-class residences nearby. Neighbourhood activism is
important in ensuring the supply of basic urban services on which women
depend for their domestic responsibilities. In this sense, the domestic
realm extends to the neighbourhood, and domestic responsibilities
include the act of negotiating with political representatives for access to
basic urban services. This engagement, which is essentially political even
if not in the formal political arena, is in a sense sustained and justified
through the gendered division of domestic work. In essence, the domestic
sustains their venture into the public political domain, transforming not
only local politics but also gendered constructs of a womans place, in the
process. But this domestication is a double-edged sword as it also limits
their activities to the local neighbourhood level, by limiting the time they
can effectively spend on their engagement. In effect, despite playing a
transformative role, because their work is limited to their neighbourhoods
and because it transpires informally through daily negotiations, the work
of these women is less visible in the urban political domain.

VII. WOMEN AND REPRESENTATION

38. Appadurai, Arjun (2001),

Deep democracy: urban
governmentality and
the horizon of politics,
Environment and Urbanization
Vol 13, No 2, October, page 42.
39. See reference 6.

40. Keefer, Philip and Stuti

Khemani (2004), Why do the
poor receive poor services?,
Economic and Political Weekly
Vol 39, No 9, 28 February, pages
935943.

These seemingly insignificant day-to-day negotiations are the lowest level

at which democracy operates in the urban political domain, drawing from
the roots, anchors, intimacy, proximity and locality suggested by deep
democracy as argued by Appadurai.(38) They depict the lowest level at
which politics is conducted in cities, where local economies often compete
with corporate economies (as Benjamin describes(39)), in order to survive.
These negotiations take place in the many hundreds of urban low-income
settlements in Bengaluru, as in other parts of India and the world. They
may not take place within the aegis of an association, but their relevance
is still crucial to a keener understanding of urban poor movements and
social movements as such.
Such community-oriented work acquires different shades depending
on the actor involved and the intention with which it is conducted. When
carried out by NGO staff it gains an institutional dimension and is located
within a certain framework of development or social work, depending on
the ideology of the organization involved. When conducted by political
representatives or upper-class political aspirants, this work sustains
aspirations for political bases, and the relationship between the doer and
those who benefit is often framed in terms of clientelism.(40) This type of
work is also carried out by local leaders who represent the settlement:
slum leaders, area leaders, slum lords or pradhans. As Milbert points
out, these individual modes of representation and leadership are based on
these mens access to information crucial to the future of the slum, which
they guard and control and distribute parsimoniously and selectively.
In this sense, these leaders also use their work in their communities to
support their leadership over those they serve. These representational
modes, be they that of a formally elected councillor, a political aspirant or
a leader, all rely on individual leadership. Here again, as Milbert points out,
they cannot replace institutional social mediation as, despite their work
and commitment to the community, individual interests often outweigh

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collective ones. In the domain of formally elected representatives, vote

bases are often traded for financial or other political benefits, and in the
domain of individual forms of community leadership, their networks
function above all in their own and their familys interests.(41)
Distinct from these individual styles of representation, a collective
or associational form of community organization, whether undertaken
under the aegis of a formalized collective or informal collective, works
precisely to make information available to the community. Meetings
organized by the Association, for example, provide ample ground for the
dissemination of such information and networks of access. In this sense,
these collectives function similarly to the resident welfare associations,
defending collective interests, but differing in praxis, making claims on the
grounds of social justice rather than on the grounds of citizenship rights.
This form of collective engagement, which is local and firmly grounded
in accessing basic urban resources and free from other aspirations such
as political bases, provides valuable tools for the improvement of lowerincome neighbourhoods.
While these women gain immensely through access to information
and networks, and are often viewed as leading neighbourhood initiatives
(though not in the representational sense), they still face a dilemma in
defining their work. In this context, while the majority use the term
kelasa (meaning work) to describe what they need to do to improve their
material situations, a small minority, most of whom are active members
of the Association, use the term social work, a term commonly used to
describe the work carried out by NGOs. When the members were asked how
they present themselves before political representatives and government
functionaries, many replied that they do so as an NGO. Yet they differ
largely from a traditional NGO, lacking the ideological constraints,
financial support and, more importantly, the professionalization that
characterizes the domain. This need to define themselves within the larger
fray of development actors is also strengthened by their own aspirations
for a better life. For example, Priya says:
When I was working with the NGO, I had a salary. Since one year
now when I started the Association, it has been difficult for me too.
I asked them [the NGO that supports the Association with in-kind
contributions] for a salary. They have promised that once we have a
scheme [meaning project] then we can get a salary from that. It is a
scheme, not a salary. For example, if we get money to open an old age
home, then Rasheeda can take care of it and get a salary, not really
salary but payment. The money will come to the Trust and the Trust
can hire her to take care of the old age home Under government
schemes, a certain amount is allotted for salaries, then we can give
these people this work and the salaries.
Priya and Rasheeda, along with a few other members, express their
aspirations for projects, revealing a desire to work like an NGO and to
receive salaries like NGO staff from projects or schemes that they aspire
to implement in the neighbourhood. These aspirations are located in the
specific contexts of the difficult lives they live and the heavy domestic
burdens they often carry.
While such local collective engagement at the neighbourhood level,
particularly in the context of scarce urban resources, lends a more positive
view of urban poor mobilizations, the challenges they face, not only in

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41. See reference 16.

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terms of their constraints but also in terms of their context of poverty

and deprivation, cannot be ignored. In effect, what is positive in terms of
people organizing to improve the material conditions of their lives is in
another sense negative, as it overtaxes the urban poor, making them at
once the problem and the solution to the issues faced in the context of
urban poverty.

VIII. CONCLUSIONS
The objective of this article was to bring forth the voices of real people,
of real women, in an urban low-income settlement, and describe the
ways in which they perceive and deal with their realities. Using these
voices, I have attempted an initial analysis of how we can understand
the work that women do in the Association and in similar formal and
informal collectives in the context of their survival in the city. I suggest
that women as a group, within the larger group of the urban poor,
are significant not only in terms of their overwhelming presence and
activity in day-to-day collective negotiations for the improvement of lowincome neighbourhoods, but also in terms of the specific gender-based
opportunities and constraints they face as a group. I propose that these
forms of local collective engagement, which take place at the lowest level
of democracy, provide a unique case for the analysis of social actors who
are not located within the normally accepted groups of development
stakeholders, either in terms of praxis or intent. By remaining outside
the formal domain, while continuing to engage with political actors and
the state, these womens groups are at once liberated and constrained in
their work. In bringing forth information from the lowest level of the
representational pyramid, this article seeks to engage readers in reviewing
the seemingly insignificant happenings of everyday life and the actions
of seemingly apolitical actors in urban low-income settlements as crucial
to the transformation of urban spaces and urban politics.
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