‘Bulldozer justice’: Domicide doesn’t just destroy homes – it turns homelands hostile

Urban infrastructural violence has long been normalised in Indian urban planning discourse as development and redevelopment. The judiciary in India has played a central role in what has been so far termed as evictions, displacement and slum clearance – which involve destroying homes made by common citizens from their private resources.

Dispossessing people of their homes by the state has not stayed limited to India’s metropolitan cities clamouring to become Singapore or New York. The strategy has also spread to small towns and the rural and forest hinterland in the name of infrastructure development for nation-building.

Undisguised public displays of brutality are believed to have become unacceptable in the second half of the 20th century, following the move towards a democratic and human rights-based global order. The truth is that dispossession and humiliation were merely adapted to fit in the neoliberal juridico-political framework.

India’s seemingly sophisticated jurisprudence of “slum clearance” makes the necessary nods at all the important rights – such as the right to life, livelihood and adequate housing. But ultimately, it provides a step-by-step playbook for governments to willfully snatch land from people.

The idea that land belongs to whoever has the brute force to grab it has been foundational to the power exercised not only...

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