Understanding participation in a heterogeneous community: The resettlement of kathputli colony

Abstract

Tracing the socio-spatial history of the settlement of the area that is now called Kathputli colony in west Delhi, the chapter examines the contested terrain of “resettlement” where a heterogeneous community’s idea of participation in planning and determining land use has to contend and negotiate with that of the state’s idea of the same. What emerges is a complex engagement between two visions of the city—one which allows space for lifestyles and livelihoods understood as inherent to existence by certain communities and the other in which a singular model of the world-class city functioning as a node of global capital accumulation dominates.