The Legal Right To Housing In India

This book on constructing a legal right to housing in India seeks to achieve three ends: first, examine the costs incurred in translating a moral right into the language of the law; second, unpack the ways in which existing law and policy impact the realisation of the right to housing and situate any attempt to legally guarantee the right within this context; and finally, begin thinking through the many complexities that will arise should the right be articulated within the law. A comprehensive chronology of central housing law and policy provides the descriptive background for this analytical text, while also acting as a rich introductory resource on the subject. Asserting a need as a right and then seeking legislative recognition for the right is a formula often used in rights struggles. This book takes a critical look at this process, in order to facilitate informed engagement with the law.

Examines the benefits of seeking legal recognition for the right to housing, within the Indian legal context.

A new & timely publication made all the more urgent by the enormity by the global housing crisis, with inadequate housing threatening the health, safety & dignity of so many. An invaluable addition to the already successful Human Rights Study Series.

A study that maps India's political opportunities and closures for claim making in general and housing grievances in particular.

Rights and the City takes stock of rights struggles and progress in cities by exploring the tensions that exist between different concepts of rights. Sandeep Agrawal and the volume's contributors expose the paradoxes that planners and municipal governments face when attempting not only to combat discriminatory practices, but also advance a human rights agenda. The authors examine the legal, conceptual, and philosophical aspects of rights, including its various forms—human, Indigenous, housing, property rights, and various other forms of rights. Using empirical evidence and examples, they translate the philosophical and legal aspects of rights into more practical terms and applications. Regionally, the book draws on municipalities from across Canada while also making broad international comparisons. Scholars, policy makers, and activists with an interest in urban studies, planning, and law will find much of value throughout this volume. Contributors: Sandeep Agrawal, Rachelle Alterman, Sasha Best, Alexandra Flynn, Eran S. Kaplinsky, Ola P. Malik, Jennifer A. Orange, Michelle L. Oren, Renée Vaugeois. Afterword by Benjamin Davy

A human right to housing represents the law's most direct and overt protection of housing and home. Unlike other human rights, through which the home incidentally receives protection and attention, the right to housing raises housing itself to the position of primary importance. However, the meaning, content, scope and even existence of a right to housing raise vexed questions. Drawing on insights from disciplines including law, anthropology, political theory, philosophy and geography, this book is both a contribution to the state of knowledge on the right to housing, and an entry into the broader human rights debate. It addresses profound questions on the role of human rights in belonging and citizenship, the formation of identity, the perpetuation of forms of social organisation and, ultimately, of the relationship between the individual and the state. The book addresses the legal, theoretical and conceptual issues, providing a deep analysis of the right to housing within and beyond human rights law. Structured in three parts, the book outlines the right to housing in international law and in key national legal systems; examines the most important concepts of housing: space, privacy and identity and, finally, looks at the potential of the right to alleviate human misery, marginalisation and deprivation. The book represents a major contribution to the scholarship on an under-studied and ill-defined right. In terms of content, it provides a much needed exploration of the right to housing. In approach it offers a new framework for argument within which the right to housing, as well as other under-theorised and contested rights, can be reconsidered, reconnecting human rights with the social conditions of their violation, and hence with the reasons for their existence. Shortlisted for The Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship 2013.

Contributed articles.