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KAVERI HARITAS
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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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
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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,
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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)
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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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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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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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E N V I R O N M E N T & U R B A N I Z AT I O N
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