Providing security of tenure to the urban poor : investigating the roots of slum improvement in Hyderabad, India

This thesis is concerned with the relationship between urban land reform and large-scale slum improvement in Hyderabad, India. It forges a link between citywide slum improvement in the 1980s and efforts to guarantee the occupancy rights of squatters a decade earlier. More than twenty-five years have passed since the city undertook land reform. This distance offers an opportunity to re-examine the history of land reform and its impact on slum improvement and the city in general. Studies interested in learning from Hyderabad's experience often credit the "political will" of the Government of Andhra Pradesh or the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad for the success of urban land reform in the city. In contrast, this thesis argues that Communist-led social movements, beginning as early as the 1940s, were a major influence in convincing the polity to acknowledge the land rights of the poor. In this way, political will is not equivalent to public benevolence or the charisma of a handful of decision makers; instead it emerges from challenging the political status quo. With the historical antecedents of land reform in mind, the thesis then investigates the current status of slums in the city. It concludes by enumerating conditions and caveats for cities contemplating the replication of Hyderabad's model for slum improvement and land reform.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• Punjani, Shahid (Shahid Nazmudin), 1976-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Bishwapriya Sanyal.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/69442

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/69442