Demanding Development (South Asia Edition)

India’s urban slums exhibit arresting variation in their access to basic public Goods and Services - paved roads piped water trash removal sewers streetlights. Why are some vulnerable communities able to demand and secure development from the state while others fail? Drawing on more than two years of fieldwork in the cities of Bhopal and Jaipur demanding development accounts for the uneven success of India’s slum residents in claiming public services. Auerbach’s theory center on the political organization of slums and the informal leaders who spearhead resident efforts to petition the state for Public services. He finds that underneath the rough-and-tumble surface of electoral politics in India’s cities lies striking variation in the extent to which networks of party workers have spread across slums. Demanding development shows how this variation in the concentration and partisan distribution of party workers across settlements has powerful consequences for the ability of residents to politically mobilize and improve local conditions.