An Inquiry Into Gentrified Mumbai
BY KENISHA MARTINS / 18 SEPTEMBER, 2021
Exploring the complex phenomenon of gentrification and its manifestations in the contemporary Indian context.
ew cafes opening up or a new restaurant is a common occurrence in the ever-changing nature of a huge city like Mumbai. The experience of changing city landscapes is not a new or unique phenomenon. The longer one looks the more one notices a new coffee shop or skyscraper pop through the sky of the almost unrecognizable cityscape bringing along economic opportunities presented and the improved standard of living alongside. These changes are not isolated in the landscape of the city but can be noticed by the ever-increasing rent and the loss of affordable housing.
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Illustration: Ruth Glass by Unknown via Gramho.com
A lot of these dynamic changes that happen in the confines of a city can be attributed to the processes of gentrification. It is broadly defined as a process in which poor neighbourhoods are transformed by the entrance of middle-class occupants who trigger a ‘socioeconomic uplift’ in the surrounding area. First coined in the 1960s by British sociologist Ruth Glass, in the survey of New Aspects of Open Change in London. She coined the definition after she observed the displacement of the working class in London by the affluent middle class. Ever since then the entire process of gentrification within the landscapes of developed countries, and the repercussions faced by its minority racialized communities have been documented and studied extensively.
However, existing literature lacks diverse perspectives regarding the manifestations of this complex phenomenon. Gentrification studies tend to make some huge cultural, political and economic implications regarding the manifestation of this phenomenon across the globe. The reason being most of the contemporary literature on gentrification has been built on western models mostly looking at countries within Europe and North America. This has created Eurocentric bias while examining this phenomenon in a lot of other countries. Neil Smith (2002) wrote a paper that inspired this inquiry of examining gentrification and challenging the narrative that it had become a global strategy common among countries. Smith argues that this phenomenon has or is occurring on a much larger scale in cities like Shanghai and Mumbai compared to the post-industrialized cities of Europe and North America.
These places have not quite been offered the nuanced breakdown as their counterparts in northern countries have. In India particularly, we see mechanisms of displacement from slum demolition to land privatization, all simply classified under the broad umbrella of gentrification. To get a better understanding of why gentrification manifests in such different ways in both countries, one has to be sensitive to the different timings, geographies as well as historical specificities.
In India particularly, we see mechanisms of displacement from slum demolition to land privatization, all simply classified under the broad umbrella of gentrification.
In the early 21st century we have seen places like London and other northern cities been transformed through the process of gentrification. Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth and Newham in London are classic examples of how gentrification manifests itself. These places which used to be the boroughs of the towns were drastically transformed by the arrival of a new population of the middle class which saw the decline of affordable housing. A study in these areas shows that of the nearly 300,000 new homes built in the capital during the 2010s, only a third were classed as ‘affordable’.
Studies in these places showed that black and ethnic minority Londoners were almost half as likely to own their own homes as white Britishers.
Similar effects have been witnessed in areas of Mumbai like Lower Parel where the traditional chimney-filled skyline consisting of India’s first spinning and weaving mills of the 1850s has been replaced by the new brightly-coloured residential high-rises with many of its old industrial buildings, such as those of Phoenix Mills, demolished or converted to make way for shopping malls, office complexes and leisure facilities.
The difference here is that a lot of the gentrification that is experienced within London is a result of the direct need for the creation of new urban aesthetic experience and cycles of disinvestment, whereas the gentrification experienced in Lower Parel hasn't only occurred for the creation of urban aesthetics but due to the decades of underinvestment in such places and an active disavowal of the area’s history (Harris, 2005). This disavowal occurs due to the unique nature of the role of the state, builders and workers in the areas.
In the case of Lower Parel, we see a huge transformation not as a result of the moment of the affluent class but more as a result of the mobility and control that some groups possess which can actively weaken other people. As Doreen Massey, a British social scientist says, it is the “power geometry of time-space compression” that some groups can undermine.
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Illustration: by unknown via Pinterest
The crux of gentrification theory always presumes a pattern of reinvestment in the urban core population as we have seen in the cities of England a displacement of an entire population to the growth of commercial and cultural uses of the land. is an emphasis on reinvestment in the land but this isn’t the case for a lot of post-colonial areas of the inner cities most of the land.
In the Indian context, a lot of the core areas remained the same, dominated by upper privileged classes. In these areas, colonial powers remained in the central areas and acted as the elite enclaves. Similar places in the south have never experienced a displacement which is a defining feature in the conventional sense. These cities never experienced the cycles of disuse, vacancy, or disinvestment witnessed in Euro-American cities
This kind of gentrification is not the involvement of the state, but the fact that capitalism has rendered parts of the population disposable - accumulation by dispossession
According to Dr Seth Schindler “gentrification in the global south is associated with industrialization, modernization, and modernity; indeed it is happening in tandem with, not in opposition to, suburbanization”. This kind of gentrification is not the involvement of the state, but the fact that capitalism has rendered parts of the population disposable - accumulation by dispossession.
We look at the case of Mahul located in the outskirts of Mumbai, once a former fishing village to the east of India’s great metropolis is now home to 30,000 people who were “rehabilitated” after their slum homes were demolished to make way for infrastructure projects. India's Central Pollution Control Board has since deemed this place to be critically polluted. A survey done by a survey by the city’s KEM hospital found that 67.1% of the neighbourhood’s residents complained of breathlessness more than three times a month, 86.6% complained of eye irritations and 84.5% had experienced a choking sensation.
Illustration: by unknown via Pinterest
By comparing the gentrification that has occurred in London versus the gentrification that has occurred in Mumbai, we get a better perspective on the practical politics of gentrification across different global contexts. Even though both the cities seem to be experiencing the same phenomenon, we fail to notice what exactly has influenced this phenomenon. The wide nexus of politicians, builders and developers are the ones exploiting and profiting from Mumbai’s poorly implemented and monitored land-use policies and planning controls due to its long history of displacement and underinvestment. These features are not only unique to Mumbai but have been seen in many developing and underdeveloped countries, hence John J. Betancur, a professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago suggests that we need to study urban restructuring within the context of gentrification through their historical trajectories while also paying much attention to the mediating forces and contingencies between the global and the local economies and politics. This will help devise policies and solutions that have a real and substantial impact on the areas that have been affected by but overlooked in the wide array of gentrification studies.
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Keywords
socio-economic uplift, Ruth Glass, gentrification, eurocentric bias, post-industrialized cities, middle class, Mumbai slums, Shanghai, slum demolition, Phoenix Mills, Mahul, Doreen Masey, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth, Newham
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References
Betancur, J. J. (2014). Gentrification in Latin America: Overview and critical analysis. Urban Studies Research, 2014, 1–14.
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/usr/2014/986961/
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Gentrification explained. Gentrification Explained | Urban Displacement Project. (n.d.). Retrieved September 14, 2021, from
https://www.urbandisplacement.org/gentrification-explained.
Ghertner, D. A. (2014). India's Urban Revolution: Geographies of displacement beyond Gentrification. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 46(7), 1554–1571.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a46288
Guardian News and Media. (2018, February 26). Absolute hell: The Toxic Outpost Where Mumbai's Poorest Are 'Sent to Die'. The Guardian. Retrieved September 14, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/feb/26/mumbai-poor-mahul-gentrification-polluted.
Harris, A. (2008). From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public policy in Comparative perspective. Urban Studies, 45(12), 2407–2428.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098008097100
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