Urban property regimes and citizenship in transition: Changing ownership patterns and systems of relatedness in India

Rising rates of urbanisation and informalisation of the labour force have turned property regimes in India into contested battlegrounds over livelihoods, resources and space. The present study seeks to harness the explicatory power of property for understanding the shifting societal systems and their underlying normative frameworks in post-liberalised India. Differential access to property is interlinked with the appropriation and mobilisation of other resources, including marriage alliances, the extraction of monopoly rent as well as the availability of bank accounts and credit cards.

Thus, property relations not only pertain to capital accumulation, but also to the legitimisation of citizenship and democratic rights defined along intersecting caste, class, religion and gender asymmetries.