After the Right to Water
Rethinking the State and Justice in Mumbai
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4383269 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Pranjal Deekshit (0000-0002-5032-2054, corresponding author), Simran Sumbre |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 711-720 |
| Publication date | 2022-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0309-1317 • E-ISSN: 1468-2427 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1468-2427.13095 |
| OpenAlex | W4292850562 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 16 |
Mumbai's informal settlements have a long history of being denied formal access to water. While previous research has shown how settlers barely manage to survive by extracting water in the blurred spaces between formal and informal provision and through complex socio-material relationships, here we narrate a story of the local struggle to claim formal access to municipal water connections using a fundamental human rights approach. By critically looking at the historical practices of the state in setting obscure standards that denied access to municipal water, we show how the local grassroots movement and its legal battle to establish a fundamental right to water also culminated in an ambiguous and differential standard being set by a court verdict. We argue that the precedence of creating multiple standards and their discretionary implementation is leveraged as a site for distributing and sustaining harm in which the social relations of domination influence not only everyday bureaucratic practices, but also the judicial process itself. While we critically investigate the instrumentality of a human rights approach in demanding new standards for access to water, borrowing from Koonan, we conclude by questioning the very process of legalizing differential understandings of such fundamental rights
Bureaucracy · Economic Justice · Grassroots · Harm · Human rights · Law and economics · Legitimation · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure
Informal Settlements
Hope for transformative urban coalition politics
Water for all’
Everyday practices of administrative ambiguation and the labour of de-ambiguation
Ambivalent Governance and Slow Violence in Mumbai's Mithi River
Toxicity 1
Coda
Toxicity 2
Enduring Harm
Changing Times, Changing Contexts, Changing Coalitions
Critiques of Human Rights
Sites of entitlement
Our needs, our priorities; women and men from the slums in Mumbai and Pune talk about their needs for water and sanitation
Mumbai slums since independence
Implementing the human right to water and sanitation
The Politics of the Evicted
Hydraulic City
Ambivalent Governance and Slow Violence in Mumbai's Mithi River
Becoming a Slum
The Quest for Water, Rights and Freedoms
Restoring a River, Re-storying History
Toxicity 1
Water Wars in Mumbai
Consuming Citizenship
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,5 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |