Infrastructural anxieties: Navigating the extended pauses of in situ slum redevelopment in India

This article focuses on the major in situ slum rehabilitation project of Ramapir no Tekro , the largest slum in Gujarat State. As in situ approaches gain political momentum in India as a more inclusive mechanism for producing the articulated goal of “slum-free cities,” the promises and practices surrounding in situ projects remain under-scrutinized in critical urban scholarship. This case study contributes to feminist theorizations of urban political ecology (UPE) and infrastructure by tracing the everyday and affective experiences of self-employed women working as waste pickers and who reside in the settlement over a span of 8 years and across the project's many promises and extended pauses. This case enables an analysis of how a major reconfiguration of urban space and infrastructure intersect with gender, caste, and class identities to reproduce marginalization for residents across the interim periods of the project. I argue that the discursively “pro-poor” approach of in situ slum redevelopment policy must still be read as a significant economic and social shock for residents as they navigate material challenges and affective uncertainties that map across the in-between phases and temporary displacements necessitated by in situ slum redevelopment. By taking care seriously, this case highlights how residents articulate their own urban environmental desires and envision their infrastructural futures. However, in doing so, it also suggests that this case of in situ rehabilitation in a long-established schedule caste Hindu settlement must be read alongside the ongoing and socially differentiated regimes of punitive housing evictions and demolitions among Muslim and Tribal migrant settlements across urban India.