ABSTRACT
By 2050 India will need to produce an additional 31 million hectares of urban land to meet the demands of its burgeoning urban populations. But the production of space, through legally sound channels, relies on a system where property rights can be readily ascertained and guaranteed. Given the non-availability of land records in urban India, the production of space through formal market and regulatory channels is hampered. The citizens are forced to rely on modes of producing space which interact only obliquely with official logic and legality. On its part the state resorts to the exercise of its powers of eminent domain to develop urban land. This approach, however, is marred by a reluctance on the state’s part to implement the social protection provisions of eminent domain laws and the subsequent public opposition to such an implementation. What emerges is a mix of the state’s reliance on legislation combined with a more liberal public policy in carrying out land assembly and development in urban areas.
