From Tenants to Owners: Mill Workers' Housing Claims in Deindustrialising Mumbai

This event is sponsored by the Center for South Asia.

About the event
The large-scale closure of textile mills in Mumbai caused an existential crisis for mill workers who lived as tenants in the chawls owned by the mill owners. The workers’ tenancy in these chawls was linked to their employment in the mills. Their ability to stay in these residences depended on at least one family member being employed at the same textile mill. Since the late 1990s, this situation has become unsustainable as the mills closed permanently. While allowing textile mill closures, the Government of Maharashtra introduced additional measures to protect chawl tenants. The mill owners exploited the 2001 provisions to shut down the mills and unlock the land's real estate potential. However, they relied on other laws to evict the tenants. In the lengthy legal battle that followed, the mill chawl tenants succeeded in having their eviction overturned and became the legal owners of their homes. This presentation examines the journey of mill chawl inhabitants from tenants to owners. It argues that their case must be understood within the broader context of state-led neo-liberal urban renewal policies and the moral capital of the textile labour force.

Sumeet Mhaskar is a Fulbright fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford.