This thesis is concerned with the housing and service needs of the poor (slum dwellers) in Bombay and how they are articulated and satisfied. It discusses how the poor perceive the constraints on slum servicing and improvement, their involvement in community organizations, and the role the community and its leaders play in influencing state action. Since housing and servicing issues directly impinge on the interests of politicians and bureaucrats as well as on those of the poor, patterns of provision mirror closely the nature of the relationship between the poor and how political and administrative power operates at various levels. Chapter 1 provides the research aims and objectives while Chapter 2 reviews the literature on community participation. Chapter 3 on Bombay places housing development in context and also serves as background study to the thesis. This research studies three different slum settlements housing migrants to Bombay. Two surveys of these three slum settlements were carried out, involving interviews with 135 households. Chapter 4 describes the characteristics of these households, while chapters 5, 6, and 7 give the arguments of the thesis. It is shown that, despite an established system of representative community organisations and a pro-participation rhetoric in bureaucratic discourse, most slum dwellers are excluded from participating in decision-making. A patron-client relationship exists between politicians, bureaucrats and community leaders, both in determining the community leaders' power as well as the level of services and physical benefits that he/she could win for the slum community. Leaders are generally better educated, better employed, more prosperous and highly motivated than most of their community. The NGO in this study has acted mainly as intermediary between the government and the slum-dwellers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:580806 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Desai, Vandana |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d4839cdd-effd-4ff2-975a-9a73c7b31d75 |
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