Planned illegality, permanent temporariness, and strategic philanthropy: tenement towns under extended urbanisation of postmetropolitan Delhi

Abstract

This paper examines the planned externalisation of affordable workers housing under Delhi’s ongoing extended urbanisation. Drawing upon recent literature on planned illegalities, subaltern urbanisation, and agro-urban transformations in India and specifically in the Delhi region, the paper proposes tenement towns as a relational settlement category to understand the planned externalisation of housing. It examines three manufacturing clusters spread over an extensive territory in the DMIC urban corridor running out of Delhi. Finding evidence for how the workers housing is externalised into spaces marked as ‘rural outsides’ in the masterplanning documents. It examines the role of parallel agrarian institutions and social structures in enabling the illegal growth of the tenement towns. Finally, the paper critically examines the role such settlements play in maintaining a permanently temporary surplus workforce crucial for cheap global manufacturing. Through introducing tenement towns as a relational category, the paper attempts to contribute towards a global housing studies that transcends space-time and north-south boundaries.