[Urbanstudy] Talk at NIAS on 'Claiming adequate housing between formality and informality: Mapping political opportunities in metropolitan Bangalore, India' by Swetha Rao Dhananka

[Sanam Roohi]

Dear friends,


*Bangalore Research Network*


invites you to a talk on


"Claiming adequate housing between formality and informality: Mapping
political opportunities in metropolitan Bangalore, India"

      by *Swetha Rao Dhananka*




Date:              Thursday, 7 August, 2014

Time:               4.30 pm

Venue:            Conference Room 2, NIAS, IISc Campus, Bangalore 560 012


 *Abstract: *This lecture will address the question of how the interaction
between formality and informality in post-colonial urban India produces
particular conditions for mobilisation and claiming adequate housing. I
argue that formal conditions for mobilising given by the Indian polity are
considerably skewed by informal exchange circuits such as corruption and
clientelism and are differential towards civil society organisations
depending on their resources and their level of co-optation. I demonstrate
this empirically in the case of Bangalore. The concept of political
opportunity refers to those aspects of the political system that affects
the possibility that challenger groups have to engage and mobilize
effectively (Giugni, 2011, 271). I assess the formal political
opportunities on the basis of “effectiveness” and “divergence in outcome”
(Helmke & Levitsky, 2006) to gauge the function of interacting informal
opportunities and also to identify incentives for corruption (Khan, 1996).

Through my analysis of literature on the Indian polity, expert interviews
and semi-structured interviews with different types of civil society
organisations involved in claiming adequate housing in Bangalore, I
conclude that formal political opportunities are not as favourable as the
legal and policy framework suggest they are. I demonstrate the implication
of such unfavourable conditions through the analysis of two social movement
organisations (SMOs) asserting a hold over productive land. The case
studies will demonstrate how informal circuits of corruption foster
informal repression. Such repression as a form of political violence aims
to silence the claimants, denying them urban space – thereby resulting in
the reproduction of *space *that reifies society’s power structures.




*Bio: *Swetha Rao Dhananka holds a PhD in political science from the
University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Currently she is teaching at the
faculty of Geography at the same university. She is interested in issues
around urbanisation and its social effects and the capacities of the most
vulnerable to assert their own space in rapidly changing cities.


Thanks and regards,
Sanam

........................................
Sanam Roohi
PhD Candidate
Provincial Globalisation Programme (provglo.org)
NIAS / AISSR
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