Land Title, Settlement Recognition and the Emergence of Property Rights

Planners in India distinguish between declared and undeclared (or notified, recognized, and unrecognized) slums, but events have overtaken these gross distinctions, resulting in the emergence of five and perhaps six distinct types of slums. How slum settlements differ at a point of time is poorly understood. Gaps in knowledge result in growing urban decay, segmented housing markets, proliferating squalor, corruption and wasteful expenditure, and rising inequalities in service provision. Associated with these concerns, this project has three objectives: First, to refine and extend a satellite-image-based methodology for identifying, mapping, categorizing and tracking slum settlements through time and in real time. Second, to understand if and how individual slum settlements upgrade over time, acquiring property rights and access to public goods. Third, to examine how different factors – including the period of settlement, land type, population composition and social networks, and political linkages – have affected the trajectories observed. For this purpose, Morsel conducted Networking survey and Household survey in around 6000 HHs and GPS mapping of slum areas in Jaipur (Rajasthan) and Patna (Bihar) cities.