Jaideep Gupte

Households amidst urban riots: The economic consequences of civil violence in India

This article analyzes the determinants of household riot victimization, based on a unique survey collected in Maharashtra, India. We adopt a multilevel framework that allows neighborhood and district effects to randomly influence household victimization. We find that economically vulnerable households, households living close to unsafe areas, and shop owners are more prone to suffer from riots. Households report lower levels of victimization if they live further from police stations, exhibit higher levels of trust, are able to rely on outside help in times of need and accumulate savings. The results show, however, a double-edge effect of income: wealthier households are better able to cope with the adverse effects of riots, but also have more to lose from riots and are more exposed to opportunistic violence and looting. We find further that affluent neighborhoods and neighborhoods where caste fragmentation is high report higher levels of victimization. Neighborhoods with stronger social interactions experience lower levels of victimization.The objective of this paper is to uncover the determinants of riot victimization in India. The analysis is based on a unique survey collected by the authors in March-May 2010 in Maharashtra. We adopt a multilevel framework that allows neighborhood and district effects to randomly influence household victimization. The main results are that households that (i) are economically vulnerable, (ii) live in the vicinity of a crime-prone area, and (iii) are not able to rely on community support are considerably more prone to suffer from riots than other households. All else equal, income per capita increases victimization, presumably through an opportunity cost mechanism. We find further that relatively affluent neighborhoods and those characterized by large caste fragmentation are more riot-prone than disfranchised and homogeneous ones. Victimization is more common in neighborhoods with weaker social interactions, but some evidence suggests that weak social interactions may also be a consequence of rioting.

Resilience as a policy narrative: potentials and limits in the context of urban planning

The aim of this paper is to analyse the emergence of the concept of ‘urban resilience’ in the literature and to assess its potentials and limitations as an element of policy planning. Using a systematic literature review covering the period 2003–2013 and a combination of techniques derived from narrative analysis, we show that diverse views of what urban resilience means and how it is best used (as a goal or as a conceptual/analytical framework) compete in the literature. Underlying these views are various (and sometimes diverging) interpretations of what the main issues are and what forms of policies or interventions are needed to address these issues. Urban planners need to be better aware of these different interpretations if they want to be in a position to use resilience appropriately and spell out what resilience can bring to their work. The review also highlights that the notion of urban resilience often lacks adequate acknowledgement of the political economy of urbanization and consequently does not challenge the status quo which, some argue, is socially unjust and environmentally unsustainable. As such it runs the risk to be seen as simply making marginalized urban communities more resilient to the shocks and inequity created by the current dominant paradigm.

‘These streets are ours’: Mumbai’s urban form and security in the vernacular

Abstract This article contributes to the growing literature on the spatial dynamics of urban violence in the developing world. It highlights the dialectic between urban form, violence and security provision as vernacular in nature, shaped by hyperlocal processes and actors. And yet, this dialectic is dominated by state and military-centred terminology, and continually underpinned by the state’s imposition of order to constitute the city as a site for legitimate control. This materialises as the often arbitrary recognition of one area as ‘at the margins’, and not another, as the recognition of one group of people as ‘slum dwellers’ or illegal residents, and not others, or as the recognition of some individuals as criminal, and not others. Using detailed case study material from a group of inner-city neighbourhoods in Mumbai, India, the article suggests that urban form in its physical, political and historical characterisations not only influences how vigilante protection operates, but also interacts in a non-benign manner with the mechanics by which the state endeavours to control violence. As such, it shapes who is vulnerable to violence, how vulnerable they are, and why. This speaks directly to the nature of security provision witnessed across the cities of the developing world.

The Dialectics of Urban Form and Violence

Over a 50-year span, Institute of Development Studies (IDS) research has not focused on cities or urbanisation to the extent it might have. We find that there is good reason for cities to now be described as the ‘new frontier’ for international development. In particular, violence is increasingly a defining characteristic of urban living in both conflict and non-conflict settings. This has important consequences for the relatively under-researched links between urban violence, the processes of state building, and wider development goals. Benefiting from key IDS contributions to the debates on the security–development nexus, citizenship and the hybrid nature of the governance landscape, we argue that the moment is opportune for the Institute to deepen its research and policy expertise on urban violence ‘in the vernacular’.

Cities, Violence and Order: The Challenges and Complex Taxonomy of Security Provision in Cities of Tomorrow

How will security in cities be understood in the future? For whom will it be provided? What are the ways by which urban security provision will be governed? And, what impact will violence and order in cities have on the processes of state-building in fragile contexts in the future? This article reports on a foresight study that addresses these questions. A key finding is that there are multiple and overlapping forms of urban violence, and the ways these interact have important consequences for understanding order in future cities.