Urban Restructuring and the Inequality of Social Capital among Poor Women in India: An Empirical Study

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This study explored the restructuring of urban governance and its impact on inequality among the poor in Ahmedabad, India. It addressed issues pertaining to the attitude of slum dwellers towards the neoliberal forms of growth as well as their multiple strategies to survive within and outside the realm of state policies and NGOs’ pro-poor programmes. My case study demonstrates that those whose household members are employed in the formal sector or engaged in small business tend to be in favour of the ruling Hindu right-wing party, which promotes growth-oriented urban policies that meet the modern aspirations of the middle-class. On the other hand, the semi-employed in the informal sector as well as Muslim residents tend to be sceptical of the intention of current urban policies due to their past experience of eviction in the name of development or their exclusion from public services. In this new political landscape, NGOs, which were hitherto in the vanguard of addressing the rights of informal sector workers and communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims, now remain silent in the wake of the neoliberal and communal drive of urban governance.