Legal land tenure programmes: security and precarity of the poor in Urban India

Abstract

This essay discusses the veracity of legal tenure granted to informal settlers on public land in the context of top-down neo-liberal policies superimposed on an already existing regime of urban regulations and welfare measures. It raises questions regarding the fairness of practices where the poor pay the price for changing development models. Insights from Madhya Pradesh (MP) state in India show that legal tenure documents stimulate incremental investment in building and are considered robust enough for channelling government funding for housing improvement. Such investment is secure until the land becomes valuable enough to support profitable redevelopment or is required for high-profile infrastructure projects to refashion cities. This leads to a mixed bag of security and precarity of the poor in a temporal framework of land markets, law, dramatic reordering of city spaces and dualistic policies catering to the market and to welfare. (143 words).