Event — Webinar

How to provide India’s slum-dwellers with social housing? The first page in the history of housing in independent India: 1947-1965

An online interactive lecture by Hans Schenk.

This lecture will take place from 11:00 - 12:00 a.m. Amsterdam Time (Central European Summer Time, CEST).

The Lecture

India 1947: The leaders of the newly independent nation, overseeing their colonial heritage, saw with disgust how the rank and file of citizens in India's towns and cities were housed. They expressed subsequently their determination to eradicate slums and promised slum-dwellers decent and affordable housing. The resulting activities form the core of this webinar. 

Hans Schenk begins his lecture with a benchmark, a very concise picture of the housing policy, or rather the lack of such a policy by the former colonial government. 

The second – and central – part is devoted to public attempts after 1947 to provide affordable and decent housing to the urban slum-dwellers and the problems that were subsequently encountered. 

This period of public effort did not last long. A fundamental change in policies took gradually place from the 60s onwards when the state lost its ambitions to play a central role in housing for poor citizens. These citizens were now supposed to solve their problems themselves getting some shelter and some access to sanitation; they only got marginal public support. This briefly introduced change from social housing to self-help solutions forms the third part of this webinar.

The Speaker

Hans Schenk worked formerly at the University of Amsterdam, where he taught, carried out research and was involved in consultancies, focusing on housing, planning, etc., in urban Asia. He has published widely on a variety of topics pertaining to several large and small Indian, Vietnamese and other Asian cities.

Recent publications:
-Changing ideas of Hanoi: state, citizens, markets, in H. Bekkering a.o./, eds, Ideas of the city in Asian settings. Amsterdam. Univ. Press/IIAS, 2019.
-Housing India’s Urban Poor 1800-1965, colonial and post-colonial studies. Manohar, for S. Asia/ Routledge for elsewhere, 2020
-Rise and Fall of socialist housing in Hanoi. Hanoi, forthcoming, 2022.

Registration

You can join this live webinar by sending us your contact information via the registration form on this page. Two days before the start of the webinar, we will get in touch with you and provide you with access information and other necessary details. 

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