From Bangladesh Colony to Shanthinagar: housing rights, sexuality, and consumption in Keralam

Abstract

As the developmental state attempted to transform the urban slum in Kerala into a model housing colony, narratives of decency, self-restraint, and sexual discipline became crucial for securing housing rights in the transformed space. ‘Bad’ and ‘good’ consumption; ‘bad’ and ‘good’ poor and images of ‘normality’ and the ‘normal home’ as the abode of the ideal citizen and worker were some of the strategies deployed by the residents of the Bangladesh Colony to encounter the quotidian world of moral non-acceptance. This article examines how neoliberal articulation of rights through government projects often have contradictory effects on the lives of differently positioned women. The moral economy of consumption hinders the realization of the neoliberal ideal of the consumer-citizen. Practices considered as ‘excess’ in consumption by female sex workers were perceived as a threat to this slum community lying on the urban margins, resulting in their expulsion. The article integrates theories of urban assemblage and queer temporality to understand how women sex workers resisted such expulsions. These theories converge on the notion of excess/abundance. Abundance of relationships, of political alliances and strategies, of consumption practices—exceeding heteronormative ideals—was deployed by women sex workers to resist their erasure and confinement into any single identity.

Keywords:

• consumption
• housing
• sexuality
• slum
• sex workers
• Kerala

Acknowledgements

This paper draws from my doctoral work and I wish to acknowledge the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway for their support. I am extremely indebted to Dr Vigdis Broch-Due, my doctoral supervisor. My deep thanks to all the referees of this paper for their truly insightful comments. Sincere thanks also go to the residents of Shanthinagar and activists of SWFK for assisting and participating in the fieldwork.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For the complete news on the event and Chief Minister’s speech, see Rajesh (2011).

2 Kalluthan Kadavu slum in Kozhikode is another area where the manual scavengers were rehabilitated by the government.

3 Cent is a common measure of land and 1 cent is equal to 435.56 square feet.

4 In 2007, landless Dalit and Adivasi families occupied the rubber plantation leased by the government to Harrisons Malayalam Company. They formed the organization Sadhu Jana Vimochana Samyukta Vedi and demanded the government to provide five acres of cultivable land and 50,000 rupees as the initial investment towards farming. After two years of agitation, the government declared the ‘Chengara package’ promising land to 1495 landless families belonging to Dalit and Adivasi communities. But as most of the allotted land was not suitable for human habitation and for farming, people declined the package and continued the agitation.

5 Landless Adivasi families under the leadership of Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha started agitating in front of the government secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram in 2001 demanding land. They pointed out that the starvation deaths in the Adivasi areas in Keralam were a direct outcome of the land alienation faced by them. Though the government declared willingness to give land to all landless Adivasis in the state, it remained just a promise and in 2003 they entered and occupied land lying adjacent to the reserved forest in Muthanga in Wyanad district. This led to the confrontation between the agitators and police, with police firing upon the agitators.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Reshma Bharadwaj

Reshma Bharadwaj is at the Department of Social Work, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, PO Kalady, Ernakulam 683574, Kerala, India. Email: [email protected]