Delivering Development and Governance Through Local Institutions: Slum Dwellers Associations in The Smart Cities of an Eastern Indian State

Abstract

Slums in the Global South represent a spatial manifestation of the persistent challenges of poor housing, inadequate access to basic amenities and insecure land tenure. To address these issues, many countries in the Global South, including India, have launched different bottom up development strategies where local institutions play a pivotal role in governing access to resources and delivering welfare to the urban poor living in the slums. Smart cities, which combine the social design of New Urbanism and the promise of information technology as providing novel solutions to these perennial urban challenges. This paper presents the research findings that focused on the role of slum dwellers associations (SDAs) as local institutions in shaping governance and development for the urban poor in two Smart Cities of the eastern Indian state of Odisha. Based on a study of seventy-three slums in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela Smart Cities and using quantitative and qualitative data, the research findings bring out the need for grassroots institutions of the urban poor to promote governance and development. Better performance of SDAs in Bhubaneswar is due to their more inclusive and representative character, appropriate usage of technology, greater accountability and stronger institutional linkages. Conversely, weak presence of these factors in Rourkela leads to poor performance of SDAs in delivering governance and sustainable development to the urban poor.