ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at 'housing practices', that is, practices associated with acquiring and sustaining rights to habitation in Dharavi, in order to explore questions of agency and voice in situations of instability and civil violence. The shift in focus, from the riots and their aftermath to housing and slum redevelopment schemes, is a deliberate attempt to show how violence is diffused in everyday life and comes to acquire different forms in different spheres of life. Each successive government in Maharashtra has drawn up its own plans for slum redevelopment and low cost housing. The juxtaposition of different timescales reveals its effects on Dharavi's landscape. Unfinished housing projects, high-rise buildings, huts with plastered brick walls and asbestos roofs co-exist side by side. Residents are able to specify the particular conditions under which each building project comes to be implemented.
