Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a dangerous new normal for everyone through Lockdown orders and social distancing guidelines. But for the billions of urban poor, these guidelines aren’t just burdensome; they’re essentially impossible.

More than a billion people live in slums and informal settlements globally. With the rise of urbanisation slums are rising, interestingly.As much as 50-80% of employment is informal in developing cities, from street vendors to minibus drivers to migrant workers. Many of these families are essentially surviving day-to-day, living in dense neighborhoods with unreliable and often shared access to basic services like water, sanitation and electricity. Many don’t have bank accounts, basic employment contracts or insurance. Their incomes and workplaces are not on any government agency’s radar. In short, they lack the resources to survive without defying lockdown orders.

Migrants further have a problem of assimilation in the new city.Migrants offer significant benefits to cities including by assisting in addressing depopulation and ensuring the viability of basic services as well as greater diversity and public relations opportunities.In spite of this they often find in difficult integrate.

The shortcomings of recent social distancing orders are evident in cities like New Delhi, Bangkok, Lagos, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro, where millions of residents feel their lives have been upended with little protection or access to support. These cities , like Delhi already face many urban problems.

Recognizing and addressing the stark reality of urban inequality is essential for addressing the current pandemic. It can also help cities build back better and more resilient to future crises. Resilience is needed, particularly at this time. Raising awareness for this issue is critical, and people are taking to social media in effort to spread the word. Some good samaritans are even using tactics to buy Facebook page likes to help drive traffic towards informative content to encourage resilience and attempt to eradicate inequality in the current pandemic. 

Perhaps situation is dire in India, where a national lockdown with little notice ordered 1.3 billion people to self-isolate for at least 40 days. Between 152-216 million people in India live in dense informal housing, or slums. Sometimes around ten or people live in a single room.How these people can follow social distancing norms is a big question.

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There is a plethora of Urban Political Institutions. Rao (1974) has identified four problem areas in the study of political institutions, organization and processes in the urban context:

1)Formal political structure

2)Informal political organizations

3)Small town politics and

4)Violence.

There is the formal political structure, municipal or corporation government where national, regional and local political parties compete for positions of power. Lloyd Rudolph’s (1961) essay on Populist Government in Madras outlines the struggle for power in the Madras Corporation and shows the decisive dominance of the D.M.K, a regional political party. It also reveals the control exercised by the party leaders in the context of the anti-Brahmin movement and the populist support the party has acquired. The study brings out clearly the relationship between urbanization and the changing power structure.

Besides formal structures of power, informal political organisations operate through caste, religious and sectarian groups, and occupational categories. Associations formed on these lines acquire political dimensions in so far as they act as pressure groups, and in some cases they even form part of organized political parties. There is a great caste divide in Urban India.

The informal organization is defined as a network of social and personal relationships that occur in a work environment. It is a fact that an informal organization co-exists with a formal one and generally emerges because of default. Although formal principles do not bound these, they are still considered an integral part of formal organization.

A third aspect of politics in the urban context refers to the small town politics where elites, factions or ethnic groups, more than political parties, are significant in understanding the power structure. Ethnic groups get politicized and act as vote banks and pressure groups articulating their interests, and complete for various benefits of urbanism. This results in a situation of conflict between ethnic groups and between the migrant ethnic groups and the locals with a heady mix of Ethnicity.

Another important feature of urban politics is violence resulting from communal conflict, political disturbance, student strikes and regional armies such as the Shiv Sena in Bombay- a city of Class Divide.

Owen M Lynch (1980) studied the political mobilization and ethnicity among the Adi-Dravidas in a Bombay slum, who are a low-ranking caste from southern India and who have migrated to Bombay. Here, different political parties compete for their votes. One party calls on them to identify as ‘untouchables’ on all-India basis; another party bids them to remember their South Indian roots. The way in which the Adi-Dravidas define themselves politically is thus related both to their position in Bombay as rural migrants from another region and to their caste.

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egyankosh

Peopling Process of India

Ghettoes

The Process of Social Thinking has reflection in space. Urban Space becomes the Shaper for thoughts and ideologies. Activities and the ideological and concepts of social processes are related to space. To assess the effects of ideologies within urban space, there is a need for analyzing the urbanization in terms of social thinking. In order to understand social phenomena, it is also important to consider their spatial determinations, and their reflection in the urban.

It is not  easy to develop a definition of urban space because such a definition must consider the social parameters of its constituent parts: urban and space. The difficulty of defining urban space is enhanced if one considers that urban space is an artifact of urbanization – a social process that describes the manner in which cities grow and societies become more complex. For example, a synergistic perspective of space situates the location of ‘‘urban’’ as an outcome of social and institutional forces associated with urbanization. In contrast, a structural perspective of space identifies ‘‘urban’’ as the product of social structures and relationships that typify urbanization. Combining the synergistic and structural perspectives results in the identification of social features associated with urban space.

According to Lefebvre (1978; 341) space is not independent from the power relations. It is political and ideological, and it is a product filled with ideologies.”

Weber,considers the city as an analogous subject of transformation from feudalism to capitalism. While focusing on economic and political organization in the conceptualization of city, he also underlines commerce as economic activity and relative characteristics of city as politics (Saunders: 1981).

Durkheim,explains city as an advanced level of labour division, solidarity among people and roles of these people. According to Marx, on the other hand, city is an arena of class division and struggle. Like Weber, Marx argues that city has crucial role for capitalist development. Like Marx, Engels considers city as an indicator of the capitalist class structure and relationship (Katznelson: 1992).

Here comes the Question of Public Space and its Manifestation

Democratic Public Space vs. Public Space

Once we agree that public space is necessary in a democratic society, the question then becomes, how should our public spaces function? One way to look at it is as a controlled and orderly space for retreat and recreation, where a properly behaved person can enjoy the spectacle of the city. Another way to look at it is as a space for open interaction, representation, and accessible to all, including marginalized people (Mitchell, 115). This type of public space allows for chaos and disorder.

Urbanism is a way of life  today. We largely have to live with and in cities. Defining what makes a good city is more a matter of heart and soul than of engineering. It is an art of weaving urban fabric.