Abstract
Everyday spaces for urban poor, informal workers and less privileged minority communities in the city of Mumbai portray that right to the city is differentially constituted for different people and communities. The chapter employs Foucault’s notions of governmentality and biopolitics to elucidate the complex manner in which the government and affluent sections of the society ensure that the urban poor continue to provide services for them amidst persistent insecurity, informality and anxiety. The chapter draws from three different, yet interlinked, cases mentioned above to establish and demonstrate the exercise of biopower in governing the city of Mumbai and its people. It explains the use of biopolitical strategies, such as statistical enquiries, censuses and programmes for enhancement or curtailment of benefits and services through which social lives get regulated, disciplined and marginalized.
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Notes
- 1.
Chawls are multi-storeyed one-room tenements created initially for the habitation of the working class population in Mumbai.
- 2.
The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is an apex body for the planning and coordination of development activities in Mumbai region.
- 3.
Sedentarization is the process of settling the nomadic population. James Scott in his book, ‘Seeing Like a State’ (1998), elaborated upon the desire of the state to know more about its subjects and therefore make attempts to settle subjects and make them legible.
- 4.
The cards issued for ensuring people’s entitlement for subsidized food procurement under the public distribution system (PDS).
- 5.
Foucault explains pastoral power in the following way: first, it was exercised over a flock of people on the move rather than over a static territory; second, it was a fundamentally beneficent power according to which the duty of the pastor (to the point of self-sacrifice) was the salvation of the flock; and finally, it was an individualizing power, in that the pastor must care for each and every member of the flock singly. Using the metaphor of pastoral power, Foucault explains the strategies of government vis-à-vis the conduct of population.
- 6.
P. Chidambaram, the then Home Minister, blamed migrants for rising crimes in Delhi (DNA 2010).
- 7.
Sheila Dikshit, Chief Minister of Delhi, blamed migrants for increasing crime against women in Delhi (India Today 2012).
- 8.
CW No 267 and CM 464 of 1993, Delhi High Court.
- 9.
Almitra H. Patel & Anr. Vs Union of India: (2000) 2 SSC 679.
- 10.
Agamben (1998) differentiates bare life from qualified life of political citizens. Bare life is excluded from the higher aims of the state, yet is a subject of political control.
- 11.
A nationwide sample survey called the National Sample Survey was initiated by the Government of India in the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, in 1950 to collect statistical sampling comprehensive socioeconomic data relating to different sector of the economy of the country. The National Sample Survey is a continuing multi-subject integrated survey conducted in the form of successive rounds, each round covering some topic of current interest. Currently, the survey is conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) in the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation of the Government of India.
- 12.
The Prime Minister of India in 2005 commissioned a High Level Committee under the Chairmanship of Justice Rajinder Sachar (retired) to prepare a report on the social, economic and educational condition of the Muslim community of India. The report is first of its kind revealing the backwardness of Indian Muslims. The report, widely known as Sachar Committee Report, has led to policy initiatives to address educational and occupational backwardness of the community since the report has been publicized.
- 13.
Mumbra is a small town approximately 40 km from Mumbai and falls under the neighbouring Thane Municipal Corporation. The high concentration of Muslims in this area is heavily influenced by the movement of a large number of Muslims from different locations in Mumbai during the 1992–1993 communal riots in the city.
- 14.
Study conducted by Shajahan between 2006 and 2009 on communal expressions and secular engagements in Mumbai and Thane.
- 15.
Enterprises that are not registered with appropriate authorities and do not possess proper licences.
- 16.
Foucault (1984) refers to heterotopia in contrast to utopia as a real space, which is simultaneously mythic and real. Foucault provides two categories of heterotopias such as heterotopia of crisis and deviation, respectively. The first refers to sacred and forbidden places and the second refers to places where people are placed when they do not conform to the norm. The author here tries to explain the neglected space of Muslim settlements as a heterotopia of deviation.
- 17.
Large-scale violent riots broke out in the city of Mumbai following the demolition of a 400-year-old mosque in Ayodhya, called the Babri Masjid, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh on 6 December 1992 by Hindu fundamentalist groups. The demolition was followed by widespread celebration of the event by Hindu nationalist groups and right-wing political parties such as the Shiv Sena and resultant responses from the Muslim community led to massive and targeted killings of Muslims apparently under the connivance of the state machinery, as reported by Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry.
- 18.
Mandals are collectives (usually unregistered and informal), in communities mostly formed for celebrating Hindu festivals.
- 19.
Foucault in an interview conducted by a round table of historians (Foucault 1977) defines dispositif as a heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements and philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions. Such are the elements of the apparatus. The apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements (see also Foucault ibid).
- 20.
Having a name in the books refers to the entry in the records at the police station about minor or petty offences against anybody in the locality.
- 21.
Report of Solid Waste Management in Class I Cities in India. This eight-member committee was set up by the Supreme Court of India in 1998. It comprised senior bureaucrats and other experts; there was no representation of labour. Among the key recommendations in the report was that solid waste management in cities would improve with privatization.
- 22.
The article refers to the zero garbage targets that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had set for itself for 3 months beginning from 1 October 2011. The collection of garbage improved only marginally since the drive. The article mentions the quantum collected and not the amount generated each day. With the collection not being 100 %, the figures that we have mentioned are at best estimates.
- 23.
Standard and non-standard workers are broad categories of workers; the terms are also used interchangeably with formal and informal workers, respectively. The former are those who have job security and employment-based social security, while the latter category of workers, employed on contractual basis or on a casual (including daily wage) basis, are in precarious employment. In India, with more than 92 % of the workforce in the informal economy – as wage earners or self employed – the absence of work and of employment-based social security is responsible for an uneven and conflictual relationship of these citizens with the state.
- 24.
Article 341 of the Constitution of India provides for the public notification and listing of castes, races or tribes or parts/groups within them to be deemed as Scheduled Castes in relation to that State or Union Territory.
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Jha, M.K., Shajahan, P.K., Vyas, M. (2013). Biopolitics and Urban Governmentality in Mumbai. In: Mezzadra, S., Reid, J., Samaddar, R. (eds) The Biopolitics of Development. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1596-7_4
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