Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi
Acknowledgments xiii
1. Puzzling Disparities at the Margins of the City 1
1.1 The Puzzle of Uneven Public Goods Provision across Slum Settlements 7
1.2 Party Workers and Local Development 16
1.3 Urban Informality and the State 27
1.4 What Is a Slum? 29
1.5 Study Settings and Research Design 35
1.6 Organization of the Book 39
2 Setting the Stage: Governance and Political Parties in Urban India 42
2.1 India at Home in Its Cities and Towns 44
2.2 The Proliferation of Urban Slums 47
2.3 Governance in the Post-Decentralization Indian City 49
2.4 Distributive Politics in India's Slums 56
2.5 Party Organizations in Bhopal and Jaipur 59
2.6 Conclusion 63
3 How Party Worker Networks Impact Local Development 65
3.1 Competition, Connectivity, and Mobilizational Capacity 65
3.2 The Partisan Distribution of Party Workers 80
3.3 Why Party Worker Networks Vary across Settlements 83
3 .4 Conclusion 90
4 India's Slum Leaders 92
4.1 Demanding Development in India's Slums 93
4.2 The Pervasiveness of Informal Leadership 97
4.3 The Construction of Informal Leadership 98
4.4 The Problem-Solving Activities of Slum Leaders IOI
4.5 The Electoral Activities of Slum Leaders 105
4.6 Motivations to Engage in Slum Leadership 108
4.7 Slum Leaders as Party Workers 109
4.8 Conclusion 113
5 Views from the Ground: Historical Narratives from
Eight Squatter Settlements I 14
5.1 Jaipur Case Studies n6
5.2 Bhopal Case Studies 14 3
5.3 Comparative Observations 164
6 Party Workers and Public Goods Provision: Evidence
from 111 Settlements 169
6.1 Survey Design and Data 170
6.2 Other Sources of Data 176
6.3 Variables and Their Measurement 178
6.4 Statistical Models and Results 184
6.5 Causality and Historical Sequencing 200
6.6 Conclusion 205
7 Why Party Worker Networks Spread Unevenly Across
Settlements 206
7. I The Correlates of Party Worker Density and Party
Representational Balance ' 208
7 .2 Why Are Some Settlements More Populous and Ethnically
Diverse than Others? 213
7.3 Conclusion 220
8 Conclusion 222
8.1 Revisiting the Theory and Findings 223
8.2 Implications of the Book's Findings 228
Appendix A Measuring Social Capital 2 3 6
Appendix B Additional Tables and Figures 237
Bibliography 2 76
Index 293