1261 | 790 | Negotiating Marginalities to Claim a Right to the City-Space: Policy Dimensions from the Perspective of the People at the Margin of the Capital City of New Delhi, India

The concern of my research has been based on two sets of processes; the increasing urban affiliation of the ‘working class’ leading to enormous migration and the continuing process of gentrification of the city leading to constant demolition of slums and squatter settlements to make a place for the ‘exclusives’. With the presence of two such processes, I found this interesting to understand how the people at the ‘margin’ of ‘development’ are making a sense of their place where the increasing aestheticization of the capital city is continually pushing them out to the distant peripheries, denying their due share in the city-space and its benefits. With the sole objective to understand the present situation of the ‘right to the city’, the current paper tries to inquire about the policy processes and the planning system of the city where I anticipate this attempt to provide a useful lens for evaluating the ongoing urbanisation process and the nature of inclusiveness of the ‘poor’ into the city-space. The study is based on both quantitative and qualitative data analysis taking reference from the various stakeholders belonging to a number of working-class colonies in peri-urban Delhi where I expect the investigation to throw light upon the way urban governance is playing out in the metropolitan centers of the country and how the people are negotiating to establish a stake in the city to accomplish an actual sense of the place they inhabit. I believe the way space is imagined by both the government and the people at the ‘margin’ can be a useful tool to explore how the process of place-making is contemplating the global economic and political conditions of lived-spaces in an urban setting and what can be done to improve the delivery of services to meet the goal of sustainable transformation.

Dr. Sanchari Mukhopadhyay
PhD, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

ID Abstract: 790