Beyond Market and Politics: Changing Regularization Policies towards Unauthorized Colonies in Delhi

The literature on regularization of illegal land in urban areas provides a general understanding that bureaucrats in various developing country initiate legalization of illegal settlements for either direct or indirect political gains or economic benefits. This thesis questions this conventional understanding of the motivations of the bureaucrat to legalize illegal settlements. The thesis argues that the motivations to legalize illegal settlements cannot always be explained as direct economic and political gain by the actors of the state. In some instances the actors of the state might be driven by their ideological positions and a belief in their role as a provider of the public good. The thesis discusses a case in New Delhi, where between 1980-84, the local development agency switched its role from that of massive demolition and displacement of irregular settlements to that of large scale legalization and servicing of these colonies. About 500 irregular colonies were regularized at the same time. The focus of the thesis is to analyze this particular action by the agency. The thesis is guided by the following questions: Why did the agency, who in the past had been violently opposed to these colonies, change its policies towards them? How can we seek to explain such variations in the State's response to illegal occupation of urban land? What were the factors within the state and outside it that contributed to the change? The focus of the thesis has been to explore the political and institutional constraints to explain the changes in the regularization policies in Delhi. The thesis has two primary objectives; first, to establish the changing nature of the regularization policies with respect to the evolving political culture through an institutional perspective. Second, it attempted to analyze the justification presented by the main actors for their role in regularization. The thesis has three main findings. First, due to the overt politicization of the regularization policies of Delhi in the late sixties and early seventies, the administrative style of the (Delhi Development Authority (DDA) began to reflect the political culture nurtured in the center by Indira Gandhi. The politicization of the planning process on one hand, encouraged a patron-client relationship between the local administrator/politician and the residents of the irregular colonies. On the other hand fate of DDA depended more and more on the relationship of the DDA chief with the central leadership. The local government of Delhi could not formally control the policies of the DDA, however, it did regularly opposed various DDA policies by organizing demonstrations etc.. This constant pressure and opposition from the local politicians greatly influenced the regularization policies of the DDA. Second, in these two decades, as the state went through a series of political transformations, DDA did experience few short periods of relative autonomy from the ruling party and the local politicians to pursue regularization policies. These periods of relative autonomy occurred in times when the ruling party considered itself relatively 'strong'. When the state felt secure and legitimate, as in early sixties and invincible during the emergency, it allowed DDA to pursue its "rational planning " options. But when the state felt threatened or lacked widespread support it used the regularization policies to deliver political favors and gain support. Third, the case seems to show that all initiation of regularization policies in Delhi cannot be explained completely by populist political pressures or the direct conditions of the market. Nor can the regularizations be simply explained by the need to get direct political gain by the political leadership or economic gain by the administrators. The case shows that the administrators and the politicians sometimes 'learn' from their past experiences, and are motivated to act on them. Thesis Supervisor: Omar Munif Razzaz