The resettlement packages offered to slum dwellers in Mumbai not only violate their right to shelter but also lead to deterioration in their quality of life. There is an urgent need to calculate the cost of repeated demolitions that push slum dwellers to the city’s outer limits against that of acknowledging their right to housing.

The latest Cooum river restoration project in Chennai aims to focus on slum eviction as an achievable first step. A 19-kilometre elevated expressway on the river is also planned.

A presentation of an ethnography of the relationship between urban spaces, new cultures of consumption, the state, and the making of middle class identities in India. Firstly, the discussion explores the making of new urban spaces by focusing upon the Akshardham Temple complex on the banks of the Yamuna river in Delhi.

Millennial Delhi is changing rapidly. Between 1990 and 2003, 51,461 houses were demolished in Delhi under "slum clearance" schemes. Between 2004 and 2007 alone, however, at least 45,000 homes were demolished, and since the beginning of 2007, eviction notices have been served on at least three other large settlements.