What kinds of challenges do residents of jhuggis, resettlement colonies and transit camps encounter when they deal with displacement, seek essential services, obtain government documentation, engage in legal disputes and strive to make their voices heard? The Right to be Counted is Sanjeev Routray’s extensive ethnographic study on the networks, performances, cultural traditions and obstacles that such residents face in Delhi.
The book is structured into two parts. The first part establishes the context—the city-planning practices, which are immersed in informalities, arbitrariness, discrimination and violent demolitions. The second part offers a detailed account of the different types of intermediaries that connect the residents with politicians and government offices.
The author scrutinises the planning processes in Delhi, uncovering a landscape riddled with informal structures and networks, where political interference is an inevitable reality. The “planned city” bears the perception of resettlements being temporary. New projects are carried out, ignoring established planning norms, to accommodate international events, promote tourism and craft a world-class image for the city. Government offices and officials in Delhi disregard people living in jhuggis or resettlement areas. But not all illegal structures share the same fate. While temples and parks built illegally are formalised by dint of religious or cultural relevance, the affiliation of an average resident to the informal settlement must rely on political clientelism to avoid eviction.
The author also highlights the changes that have taken place in the resettlement policy—from allocating plots to allotting resettlement flats. The other side of the coin is that resettlement projects negatively affect livelihoods, assets and social connections. Apart from facing poor living conditions and a tenuous relationship with the state, residents of jhuggis also encounter opposition from middle-class enclaves of the locality who desire beautification of the area and see jhuggis as hurdles to a rise in property prices. Through their residential welfare associations, middle-class enclaves often resort to judicial interventions, demanding demolition of jhuggis.
Part II of the book presents the most captivating and engaging account, where the author explores three localities—a jhuggi, a resettlement colony and a transit camp. The primary distinction between these localities lies in the degree of informality imposed upon them. Jhuggis are informal clusters of housing that constantly face the threat of demolition. In contrast, transit camps serve as ad hoc rehabilitation systems to which individuals living in jhuggis are relocated. Transit camps are often on sites marked as recreational land—areas not designated for living. Resettlement colonies, while planned for rehabilitation, are often situated near riverbeds and regions with hazardous health implications.
This part of the book also delves deep into how pradhans (local chiefs), samaj sevaks (social workers), sarkari karamcharis (government workers), dalals (brokers) and activist organisations play significant roles in the creation and maintenance of citizenship struggles. Pradhans hail from these localities. They are affiliated to political parties and function as active agents of vote bank politics. They participate in community activities and conduct themselves as guardians of the community. Pradhans are an important link between residents, local councillors, ministers, police and government offices. They have the capacity to get things done for the community. They themselves face hardship in their political aspirations and understand the discrimination that people living in such settlements face; yet they cannot be completely trusted as they can let the settlement get demolished for personal benefits.
Samaj sevaks are from middle-class families that are educationally, culturally and economically uplifted. They work with these settlements because of their ideological inclinations and see their work as a sacrifice; they could have chosen jobs with greater comfort. They are a bridge between residents of these localities and the English language-oriented higher government offices and judiciary. They also connect the community with lawyers who can represent them in court cases filed by middle-class enclaves.
Sarkari karamcharis assist residents by providing vital contacts to hospitals and the state bureaucracy. Activist organisations mobilise the diverse population of these settlements to collectivise and protest. They act as pressure groups through petitions and letters, organise events to foster solidarity among residents, and reinvent counter-discourses.
Though the given diverse intermediaries play different roles, they sometimes overlap and conflict with each other due to common interest and credit-seeking tendencies. The most common conflict is between pradhans and samaj sevaks, who are much more engaged within the communities.
As Routray mentions, the book is quite timely. It informs one about the kind of politics and the new hardships that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, and the National Population Register will impose on these communities. It is not only a well-written account for students of urban studies and social work, but is also articulated in simple language for anyone interested in the realities of the hidden, invisiblised localities of Delhi. The accounts of struggles to access rights provoke readers to reconsider the city they wish to inhabit and the damage their desire for a world-class city can cause to those already enduring challenging and hazardous conditions.
(Amit Kumar is junior researcher at the Centre for Development Research or ZEF, Bonn, Germany)
This was first published in the 16-31 March, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth