Beyond Illegality: Slums as Urban Responses to State Failure in Colonial and Postcolonial India

Slums, or informal urban constructions that have housed large segments of the urban poor, have been a contentious feature of South Asian urban politics since the colonial period. State authorities have historically viewed slums as separate, illegal constructions, and have either tolerated or actively demolished them. The legitimacy of these slums does not rest on their legality or state approval. On the contrary, the slums are legitimate because from the colonial period onwards, they were often a necessary survival option for the urban poor, who were systematically denied meaningful citizenship rights and excluded from state support. In the colonial period, colonial regimes treated Indians as subjects and produced slums by destroying dense Indian neighborhoods in the name of sanitation without giving the displaced poor suitable alternative living arrangements. Post-independence governments applied this same exclusionary attitude towards the urban poor and their informal settlements. Following Partition, an event that led to mass displacement, India and Pakistan refused to legally recognize slums and invest in their welfare, thus locking the urban poor into informality. Under the neoliberalist politics of the 1990s, this logic continued. Civil societies asserted that the urban poor had to “prove” their worthiness of investment and legitimacy. Informal settlements were depoliticized, and the states’ failure to invest in infrastructure through cutoff dates, eventually led to their malfunction and subsequent descent into informality. Many of these patterns continue into the present day. South Asian governance continues to be based on differentiated citizenship, a structure which marginalizes the poor’s housing interests. South Asian states favor formal property and manage the poor as populations, providing tolerance and limited room for negotiation rather than secure legal recognition and land rights. Ultimately, slums emerged from these longstanding unequal frameworks perpetuated by state policies, and are a legitimate and necessary means for the Indian poor to obtain shelter and survive in the city. 

Slums During the Colonial Period 

Nineteenth century colonial urban planning was marked by severe housing shortages, which limited the poor’s access to formal housing options. As a 1872 Census reported, “The houses of Bombay are far too few in number to afford proper accommodation for its inhabitants” (Nijman, 75.) This housing shortage emerged in part because the colonial industrial economy itself attracted rural populations to migrate to cities to search for industrial work (Glover, 115), thus producing a high concentration of people in cities. The poor’s wages were so low and they did not have enough money to afford formal housing. Even without actively demolishing homes, the colonial government created conditions which perpetuated limited formal housing, and prompted the poor to form their own makeshift housing...

This is an excerpt from a much longer essay, written in April 2026.