[Urbanstudy] Talk on "Who Becomes a Slum Leader in Urban India?" on 17 May by Tariq Thachil

[Shahana Sheikh]

Dear All,

The Centre for Policy Research (CPR) is pleased to invite you to a
talk on "*Who
Becomes a Slum Leader in Urban India?*" by *Tariq Thachil*, Assistant
Professor of Political Science at Yale University.

Date:               17 May 2016
Time:               4 p.m.

Venue:     Conference Hall, Centre for Policy Research, Dharma Marg,
Chanakyapuri, New Delhi 110 021

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Tariq Thachil will be presenting the findings from his paper *'Who Becomes
a Slum Leader in Urban India"* which he has co-authored with Adam Auerbach.

*Abstract of the paper:* How do the political brokers essential to urban
machine politics emerge? Political brokers operate in an informal space
between citizens and the state in which they facilitate the exchange of
electoral support for access to goods, services, and protection. Studies of
clientelism largely take these actors as a static given and do not address
how they initially amass the following of urban voters that make them
attractive to political elites. We address this question through a study of
a pervasive broker across cities in India—informal slum leaders. We find
these leaders emerge through bottom-up selection by slum residents. To
identify the resident preferences that guide such bottom-up selection, we
conducted an ethnographically informed conjoint survey experiment with
2,199 residents across 110 slum settlements in two north Indian cities. We
find that shared ethnicity—the overwhelming focus of contemporary
scholarship on political selection in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa—is
often matched or trumped by non-ethnic indicators of a broker’s
connectivity to urban bureaucracies and capacity to make claims on the
state. These findings shed important light on the origins of patron-client
hierarchies and the political changes engendered by rapid urbanization
across the developing world.

*Tariq Thachil* is Peter Strauss Assistant Professor of Political Science
at Yale University. His first book, Elite Parties, Poor Voters: How Social
Services Win Votes in India (Cambridge 2014) examined how the BJP
transcended its upper caste reputation to win support from Dalit and
Adivasi voters across India. His current work examines the political
consequences of urbanization and internal migration within India.

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We look forward to welcoming you to CPR for what promises to be an
interesting discussion. Please feel free to share this invitation with
friends and colleagues who may be interested.



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