This essay critiques the dominant development discourse in the Global South, which prioritizes economic growth and modernity while neglecting historical, political, and colonial legacies. Using Dharavi, India’s largest informal settlement, as a case study, it argues for a decolonial approach to housing policy. By tracing Dharavi’s colonial origins and its transition into a vibrant informal economy, the essay highlights the inadequacies of urban capitalist redevelopment projects like the Dharavi Redevelopment Project. It advocates for community-centered solutions such as community land trusts, emphasizing the need to deconstruct colonial hierarchies and prioritize residents’ agency to achieve equitable and sustainable social policy outcomes.

Current social policy discourse, particularly in the so-called Global South, is centered around the idea of development primarily as modernity and economic growth. Such discourse fails to consider not only the global systems of dependency that render some of these countries ‘underdeveloped’ in the first place, but also the complex historical and political legacies of different countries. This essay contextualizes development in the issue of housing, particularly in the informal settlements of Dharavi, Mumbai, one of the world’s largest residential settlement areas in the world with a population of over 600,000 people. I argue that a decolonial approach is both highly necessary and useful in this case. First, I will construct the existence of Dharavi, and more broadly Mumbai, in colonial and historical terms, evaluating the idea that the former colonizer-colonized dichotomy works as a formal-informal dichotomy today. Next, I will present the vibrant self-sustaining economy and social networks of Dharavi, challenging the urban capitalist redevelopment projects that dismiss residents’ needs and practices. Finally, with reference to vernacular rights culture, I propose decolonial approaches such as community land trusts as more equitable and effective social policy outcomes. 

Major cities in the Global South, such as Mumbai and Nairobi, acted as centers of British colonial administration between 1858 and 1947. During colonialism, processes of city-making, primarily through census-driven segregations of both people and places, served to manage crises of capital and labor reproduction, as well as of colonial legitimacy (Chhabria, 2020). The very first informal settlements in India were a result of this exclusionary process of capitalist development during and after independence, wherein migrants and seasonal laborers were priced out of the city and forced to create their own ‘illegal’ dwellings and livelihoods (ibidem). The colonial government indirectly founded Dharavi by pushing polluting industries, such as leather and pottery, to the edges of the city where many fishing villages existed (Páv, 2023). Now, somewhere between 300,000 and 1 million people live in Dharavi, working in many of the same industries (Rongmei, 2023). Issues of overpopulation, pollution, and sanitation run rampant, exacerbated by the lack of support from the government due to the settlement’s informal status. Martin Páv argues that the binarism of colonizer-colonized has been translated to the formal-informal binary post-independence. In his view, to assert this illegality, the government and land developers have viewed the shelter-insecure residents of Dharavi as either criminals or squatters to be punished for encroachment (Chhabria, 2020). It is also important to note that 15.7% of all those who live in informal settlements in the state of Maharashtra, where Dharavi is the largest settlement, are Dalits, so-called untouchables in the Indian caste system (Khandizod, 2024). This deliberate construction of ‘slum residents’ as marginal in both economic and sociopolitical terms began during colonialism and persists today. This aligns with Perlman and Castells’ view that marginality is imposed on the poor for social control— that migrants and laborers are fully integrated into society, but on terms that cause them to be “economically exploited, politically repressed, socially stigmatized, and culturally excluded” (Al-Sayyad and Roy, 2003). I concur with the idea that the legacies of colonialism now persist in the structures of colonial cities— in their geometry, officiality, and legality (Páv, 2023). As there were so-called white towns and “native zones” (Ekdale, 2012) to relegate workers to the edges of the city during colonialism, there are so-called slums and cities today. It is with this lens that I continue my analysis of approaches to the issue of housing. 

Due to Dharavi’s position of imposed marginality within the city of Mumbai as discussed above, residents have developed a self-reliant economy and industry, which also sustains large parts of Mumbai’s wider economy. Residents of Dharavi also work in a range of jobs necessary to keeping the city afloat— industrial work, cultivation, petty commodity production, domestic work, construction, and transportation services (Chhabria, 2020). A large number of scholars have drawn attention to Dharavi’s unique informal economy, wherein a house takes on a multifunctional use as shop, factory, and home (Sharma, 2000). The informal economy of Dharavi provided the Indian economy with 1 billion US dollars in 2023, a number poised to grow due to new industries such as recycling (Kusnur, 2023). Despite these successes, the issue of overpopulation is a pertinent one that has been a government priority for decades. The main approach to address this was Vision Mumbai in 2004, which aimed to replace Dharavi’s squatter settlements with affordable high-rise tower flats (Zhang, 2016). The project has stalled since 2004 due to heavy criticism by experts and residents, but recently the bid was won by one of India’s most wealthy conglomerates, Adani Group. The Dharavi Redevelopment Project’s main aims are to divide Dharavi into five sectors, each allocated to a different private developer, and increase the Floor Space Index (FSI) by rehousing residents in high-rise blocks (Páv, 2023). This approach to redevelopment highlights the necessity of a decolonial approach, deconstructing the hierarchies of knowledge and power that dictate such a plan, rather than the parochial view of development as an “escape from the undignified condition of underdevelopment” that countries have simply fallen into (Esteva et al, 2013). 

Problems with the Dharavi Redevelopment Project lie in three main categories. First, the plan is based on a negative interpretation of Dharavi as an illegible and disorganized system which must be ‘solved’ by imposing segregated urban formality onto a working collaborative and interconnected economy. Secondly, it assumes that placing Dharavi residents into high-rises translates to an increase in their sociopolitical status, automatically rendering them middle-class citizens. Finally, it fails to repair the social and historical barriers wherein residents of Dharavi have long been seen as non-legitimate and illegal in their city. Rather than uprooting their lives, communities, and livelihoods in favor of an aesthetic and modern solution, residents of Dharavi should be allowed to invest in their own civic infrastructure and conceptualize their own social rights (Grey, 2023). 

What does this mean in practical terms? Drawing upon Dunford and Madhok’s idea of vernacular rights culture, or the ‘right to have rights’, first and foremost, decolonial approaches center community groups such as People’s Responsible Organization for a Responsible Dharavi (PROUD), which work to “forge links between different sections of Dharavi's population by turning common civic issues into social causes” (Chatterji, 2005). Centering residents and community groups allows for the conceptualization of revolutionary imaginaries of rights embedded in their unique histories, cultures and political contexts, such as colonialism and the vibrant economic structures and interconnectivities that define Dharavi. Many approaches to development such as the proposed Dharavi Redevelopment Project seek to incorporate the Dharavi residents into existing notions of rights and citizenship. While this may provide infrastructural solutions such as new apartments, a decolonial approach is necessary to “maintain the difference between two worlds”— to preserve the identity and practices of the community. The complexity here is that maintaining the quality of life and basic rights of citizens— such as clean and adequate numbers of bathrooms, beds, and houses— is largely a responsibility of the state,and the state should be held accountable to meet these standards. One possible solution was proposed during an international forum titled ‘Reinventing Dharavi’ conducted by Mumbai’s Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI). One group proposed that land ownership rights, which have been a massive hindrance to redevelopment, be released to a Dharavi Community Land Trust acting as a non-profit corporation (Carr, 2015). In this way, the redevelopment of Dharavi would take shape with a focus on the community, allowing them to invest in their own forms of civic infrastructure with living standards monitored by community leaders in collaboration with the government. Whether such an approach is feasible or whether it will solve the issues of overcrowding and sanitation without government assistance is unclear. However, conceptualizing rights and development in decolonial terms is critical to equitable and more importantly, legitimate social policy outcomes. 

The former colonizer-colonized dichotomy and present formal-informal dichotomy that ensures the continual underdevelopment of informal settlements such as Dharavi must be evaluated, and then addressed through a deconstruction of the knowledge, hierarchies, and structures of colonialism. In practical terms, local systems of economy and community such as Dharavi’s booming economy must be maintained rather than sacrificed for one-size-fits-all modern development plans. Finally, the right to have rights, and the responsibility of deciding what those rights should belong to the holders. These things, in conjunction, allow for more equitable, just, and culturally sound social policy outcomes.