Forest in the city: contested informal settlements on the hills of Guwahati

Abstract

The thesis documents and analyzes contestations around informal settlements on the hills of Guwahati, Northeast India’s largest city. It first draws on archival research to explore how post-independence urban development in Guwahati led to the displacement and dispossession of indigenous tribal communities. This process of exclusionary urbanization continued into the contemporary period, as settlements on the hills surrounding the city confronted pressures to remove them. The study draws on the large body of literature on informal settlements in cities of the global south, especially evictions driven by middle-class urban environmental politics.