Emerging Luxotopias and Deepening Housing Inequalities in the Punjabi City of Zirakpur
In another important original essay Dr Kanchan Gandhi further examines housing inequalities in Zirakpur. Drawing on her first-hand research of communities in this rapidly growing city, Dr Gandhi spells out the massive housing quality fragmentation that is occurring in this rapidly expanding Indian city. As cities around the world begin to plot their return to their levels of pre-COVID growth and urbanisation, Dr Gandhi’s essay is a powerful reminder of the critical role that housing plays in the right to the city.
“Builders sell you a dream; but seldom deliver you this dream. But at Vera Gold builders, we deliver what we promise” (Construction site manager at Vera Gold Mark luxury housing project in Zirakpur, interviewed on 3rd November, 2019)
The construction manager at Gold Mark luxury housing site in Zirakpur was very confident that his company was going to deliver the best luxury housing project in the city. When I visited the site in late 2019, the project’s foundations had already been poured and the sales manager me that 70% of the apartments has been pre-sold. She also said that their luxury residential complex was the most unique project in the city since they were using the Mivan construction technology. Imported from Malaysia, these superior materials were chosen as distinguishing factors for constructing the apartments; it was unlike the brick, cement and lime materials used in all other group housing schemes, which has in the past led to the production of a “leaky” built environment in Zirakpur (Gandhi, 2020a).
The construction manager explained that the Mivan construction technology was a sophisticated system where aluminum panels were installed with cement framing to create RCC walls. The buildings created were earthquake resistant and did not suffer leakage like the traditional brick and mortar structures.
Once completed, the Gold Mark housing project will be 14 floors (see Figure, 1). The sales manager of the project claimed that the condominiums will be equipped with amenities like swimming pools, gyms, 24/7 available estate managers, spas and will offer 7-star facilities to its residents. The sales brochure of the project comprises pictures of a nuclear heteronormative family with women enjoying massages at the spa, children playing in the playgrounds and men and women using gym machines and swimming in the pool. (refer to the brochure at https://www.goldmark.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GM-Mini-Brochure.pdf)
Zirakpur is experiencing a boom of private builders and projects, akin to urban developments that happened in other metropolitan cities decades ago. For example, discussing the real estate growth in Delhi and its satellite city Gurgaon, Srivastava (2014:xxv) highlights that during the 1940s and 1950s the real estate company, Delhi Land and Finance (DLF) hoped to profit from the rapidly expanding demand for real estate, created advertisements using aspirational themes for gated residential communities. He contends that the real estate development in India has been a prime site for the making of the “consumer-citizen” leading to particular forms of middle-class activism.
Figure 1: Proposed Gold Mark luxury apartments (Source: Gold mark promotion booklet)
From the interview with the two managers of Vera Gold builders it appeared that the Gold Mark luxury housing will soon represent a prosperous island in the ocean of “the ordinary”. “The ordinary” in Zirakpur represents the various group housing projects built using traditional construction materials like brick, mortar and lime that are marked by quality issues. Kuldova (2017) describes such luxury-utopian-gated living as a “luxotopia” which represents an aspirational living not only for the urban middle and upper classes but also for the city’s poor. She however cautions that “such a luxotopia quickly turns into a dystopia of excessive fear, one excess turning into another” (Kuldova, 2017:45).
Zirakpur is a city that provides affordable housing options to skilled migrants from all over India that have moved to the tri-city region (Chandigarh-Panchkula-Mohali) for work opportunities. They find Chandigarh too expensive to buy or rent a house and have found cheaper options in the satellite city of Zirakpur. It is a classic case of splintered urbanisation (Gandhi, 2020a).
The proliferation of different types of group housing schemes has led to the creation of an uneven housing landscape in the city.
The housing schemes vary from affordable to luxury. Since much of this development happened without a Master Plan in place, it was haphazard and patchy. Zirakpur became a haven for builders in the early 2000s since they were given a free-hand to construct in the absence of any legal framework that held them responsible for the quality of construction.
Moreover, discussions with the residents of the city and a reading of the legal documents of cases filed against the builders reveal that the Zirakpur Municipal Corporation has so far favoured the builders more than the residents of the city (cf. Gandhi 2020b.) Zirakpur got its first Master Plan only in 2008. Before that urban development was steered politically. In 2016, The Real Estate Regulatory Act (RERA) was brought into force by the Ministry of Housing and Poverty Alleviation, Government of India (see PRS, India, 2013). This act aimed at regulating the real estate sector and holding the developers responsible for the promises they have made to the buyers. However, many group-housing projects in Zirakpur were completed prior to that.
While most of the city’s residents are struggling to resolve their housing issues through litigation against the builders (Gandhi, 2020b.), Vera Gold is promising hassle-free housing where the builder takes responsibility of maintaining the houses. Similarly, other housing projects initiated after the RERA was enforced hold better promises for home-buyers than the ones built before the Act came into force. These differences in the quality of housing have created an uneven housing landscape in the city, which is now characterised by the presence of what Marcuse (1997) defines as the ghettos, enclaves and citadels among may other categories of housing.
This project once completed will be a fortified citadel where the elite in the city will deliberately segregate themselves from the rest of the city, while the housing on the sites flanking this citadel will represent enclaves, ghettos and villages that still retain their old caste-based neighbourhoods.
The types of developments now occurring in Zirakpur risk eventually leading to a Gurgaon-like scenario where grave inequalities are the order of the day (see Srivastava, 2015; Biswas, 2021). There is an informal settlement (see Figures 4 and 5) next to the Gold Mark project on one side and an affordable housing complex on the other side (see Figure 2). The site is a part of an urban village called “Balthana” which is now a part of the Zirakpur Municipal Corporation.
Figure 2: Group housing adjacent to the Gold Mark luxury housing project, Balthana village, Zirakpur. (Source: Author)
A focus group discussion with the residents of the group housing project adjacent to the Gold Mark luxury apartments revealed that they faced the problem of leakage that is characteristic of most group housing projects in the city. Another issue was the foul smell from the Ghaggar river, which had now turned into a drain due to the dumping of solid waste and sewage-sludge in it (see Figure, 3). The discussion revealed that the residents were not happy with the housing quality and the amenities given to them but had little choice since they could not afford to buy more expensive houses.
On the other side of the Gold Mark luxury apartments is an informal settlement, where the urban-poor rent tenements and live-in abysmal conditions. There is garbage and filth strewn on the site (see Figures 3 and 4); additionally, there’s a wet market selling fish and chicken next door. The women in this settlement felt that their housing was suffocating, but expressed that they did not have another option to rent in the city. The state does not provide affordable housing options for the incoming working-class migrants from other regions. Like other Indian cities, these migrants too are forced to live on marginal lands next to dumping grounds.
Figure 3: Ghaggar River, now a drain, that flows behind the Gold Mark site (Source: Author)
Figure 4: Informal settlements adjacent to the Gold Mark luxury apartments (Source: Author)
Figure 5: Informal shops and settlement next to the Gold Mark luxury housing project (Source: Author)
The Housing Justice in Unequal Cities Network (2019), highlights the key dimensions of the housing justice crisis, from racial segregation to the financialization of housing to the criminalization of poverty. More specifically, Roy (2019:14) contends that “In cities across the world, one of the most visible manifestations of social and political inequality is the divide between the housing landscapes of the wealthy and the housing crisis experienced by marginalized communities”.
Roy (pg. 17) further argues that “for the purposes of housing justice, a key part of this vantage point is the politics of the urban majority that in turn leads to a recasting of housing as a political problem”. In the case of Zirakpur, the residents must resort to a wide spectrum of housing-justice negotiations with the builders and with the state.
While the upper-class residents get access to both tenure and good quality housing, and the middle-class residents get tenure rights but poor quality of housing, the urban poor remain deprived from housing-justice since they have neither tenurial rights nor access to good-quality housing. They have little legal recourse to ensure their right to housing. In the cases where they have turned to the courts for housing justice, the latter has tended to not favor them (Bhan, 2009).
The hotelier on whose land the informal settlement was located, informed us that he was waiting for a profitable real-estate offer for his site. Once the deal is settled, he would evict his poor tenants. In all likelihood, these poor migrants will be pushed further off the city’s limits since its upper-class residents will not tolerate these “visual-eyesores” (cf. Baviskar’s 2003 articulation of Bourgeois Environmentalism).
It is time for the state to step-up its interventions and hold private-builders responsible for the quality of buildings that they are delivering.
The housing landscape in Zirakpur represents deep inequalities characteristic of most other Indian cities. There is a lack of allocation of housing for the urban poor who are pushed to the socio-spatial margins of the city on “uninhabitable” land. The use of sophisticated construction material and technology by some builders further exacerbates this inequality. The state has so far given a free-hand to private capital in the production of housing stock in Zirakpur; this has implied poor quality control.
As a new city, Zirakpur should be housing-just for all its residents across class-divides. To ensure this, private capital needs to be regulated and held accountable for its building practices by the state. The neoliberal turn in urban politics in India has served to deprive the poor from their “right to the city” (see Harvey, 2008). It is time for the Indian state and policy makers to step-up their welfare measures for the poor to achieve inclusive and just cities.
Dr Kanchan Gandhi is a postdoctoral fellow at IISER, Mohali. Her research interests lie in identity-politics, urban studies and disaster studies. The author is grateful to Dr. Anu Sabhlok from IISER, Mohali, for her support and guidance on this research project. The author thanks Neha Poonia from IISER, Mohali, for her research assistance during the field-visits to Zirakpur.
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