Article

Migrant Informalities of Indian Environment and Urbanization Asia

8(1) 7493
Steel Towns: Planning Lessons from 2017 National Institute
of Urban Affairs (NIUA)
Rourkela, Bhilai and Durgapur SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0975425316686585
http://eua.sagepub.com

Miho Mazereeuw1
Mayank Ojha2
Aditya Barve3

Abstract
This article examines the territorialization of migrant informality as a result of specific planning poli-
cies in Indian steel cities of Bhilai, Durgapur and Rourkela. Conceived of as temples of modern India
and built with Soviet, German and British collaboration during the height of the Cold War, these
sites internalized a post-colonial, migrant rural workforce, and hoped to forge a singular national
identity. Planned around steel mills that transformed the raw iron ore into a metal of the age, the
towns also intended to reform the rural agrarian labour into skilled, modern, urbane technicians,
through the design of spaces that they would inhabit. However, these citiesdesigned with conflict-
ing urban ideologiesexcluded access to shelter and livelihood to a vast majority of other migrating
residents. Due to their strong planning focus on the ideal industrial employee, planners of these
cities relegated the non-industrial, informal workforce to the crevices within and around the planned
area. As these very settlements are now being considered for urban upgrading with mass housing
schemes, surveys of over three-hundred residents and fieldwork undertaken in three steel cities
highlight how specific design decisions played a role in creating the housing mismatch that we see
today in the steel cities of India.

1
Assistant Professor of Architecture & Urbanism, School of Architecture + Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
2
Research Associate, Urban Risk Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
3
Research Scientist, Urban Risk Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Corresponding author:
Miho Mazereeuw, 2157 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge MA 02140, United States.
E-mail: mmaz@mit.edu
Mazereeuw et al. 75

300

Keywords
Steel cities, industrial urbanization, India

Prologue: Building the Temples of Modern India

Post-independence Indian steel cities find their roots in one of the largest mass migrations in modern
historythe partition of British India into two independent nations in 1947, India and Pakistan. This
mass movement of uprooted families had severe effects on demographics in parts of northern India.
Some of the earliest post-independence new towns (e.g., Faridabad, Nilokheri, Gandhidham) were devel-
oped to resettle the refugee population. Planned development of new towns was seen as a way to ensure
an even distribution of the population, with the hopes that the resultant urbanisation would not only
increase employment in the country but also add to its regional spread and promote regional self-
sufficiency (Mahalanobis, 1955).
Geographically, with Indias mineral resources concentrated in its north-eastern Peninsular Belt, inte-
grated steel plants and their worker townships were planned in this region along major transportation
corridors, connecting them to the main urban centres of New Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta. Thus, situated
at the loci between coal, iron-ore mines and markets for finished goods, these greenfield industrial town-
ships were seen as beacons of modernity, amidst forested landscapes inhabited by indigenous tribal
population (Figure 1).
To promote regional development, policy makers of the nascent Indian Republic drew inspiration
from the Soviet model of five-year plans. The second five-year plan (19561961) was specifically for-
mulated to provide a boost to domestic production, achieve industrial self-sufficiency and stimulate
modernization by creating 11 million new jobs in its remote regions (Schoettli, 2011). Towards this
objective, steel manufacturing was identified as the backbone of a developing economy by establishing
a direct correlation between national income and per capita steel production of the country. The aim was
to triple the domestic production of steel, establish large-scale integrated steel plants at Rourkela, Bhilai
and Durgapur with international assistance from West Germany, the then USSR and the United Kingdom,
respectively. These plants and the industrial townships were placed under the managerial control of
Hindustan Steel Limited (HSL), which was in turn under the administrative control of the Ministry of
Steel (Pingle, 1997). These towns afforded opportunities for economic uplift and development to a tran-
sient milieu of educated managerial migrants, refugees, distressed migrants and local tribal population
made landless by these new plants. By the end of the second five-year plan in 1961, Bhilai, Rourkela and
Durgapur were already sites of some of the biggest steel plants in Asia and well on their way to becoming
major industrial urban centres.
In the following sections, we will look closely at the development of these steel cities to examine the
policy and design strategies employed for housing the primarily migrant workforce. We will also describe
how the disparate planning ideals, notions of labour relations, and the conceptualization of the secondary
and tertiary migrants as outsiders played a key role in alienating a significant portion of the population
as well as resulted in workresidence mismatch and housing issues that these cities face today.
76 Environment and Urbanization Asia 8(1)

Figure 1. Location of Greenfield Steel Cities of India in the Mineral Rich North-eastern Peninsular Belt
Source: Authors own.

Conceived of as isolated industrial townships amidst remote and underdeveloped regions, far from
metropolitan centres, the design of these steel cities was influenced by a range of imported, often
contradictory, planning ideas from reactionary movements in urbanism from the West. Proponents of the
new town movements in India like Otto Koenigsberger and Albert Mayer drew upon diverse sources
such as adaptations of Ebenezer Howards Garden City, American neighbourhood planning unit, works
of Patrick Geddes and works of contemporary international architects Le Corbusier and Ernst May.
Involvement of these influential planners with Nehrus administration in various official capacities
shaped the urban imaginary of the state. The codification of the urban planning norms for post-
independence new towns of Rourkela, Durgapur and Bhilai was the distillation of these ideas (Liscombe,
2006; Vidyarthi, 2010). This new secular urban form, with its, low density, monofunctional zoning,
Mazereeuw et al. 77

self-contained neighbourhood units designed around social institutions like schools, was consistent with
the urge to find a postcolonial identity for modern Indian cities. New towns in India, however, differed
from their western welfare towns counterparts in one key perspective. The transatlantic new towns
were initiated for the redeployment of the population that was already a productive group of urban
wage earners. In contrast, planners of the Indian steel cities deeply believed the mission of these state
built spaces were to improve the standard of living of the destitute refugees from rural areas and to
train the newcomers for productive work (Koenigsberger, 1952).
The population projections and design parameters were in direct service to the production of the
steelwith 7,500 main workers and 2,500 support workers per million tons of the metal produced (Roy,
2007). All the workers of the steel plant were supposed to be housed within the industrial township. The
construction costs were to be recovered through a 10 per cent deduction from their salaries over a period
of few years. All three towns were designed to have a clear segregation of spaces of production and
spaces of habitation; however, with a variance in how different classes of employment were mapped on
to the city fabric. In the case of Durgapur, the arrangement of sectors incorporated a representative
cross-section of the total community with the proportionate distribution of high and low-income house-
holds and corresponding large and small houses (White, 1993), whereas in Rourkela all the amenities
were decentralized in satellite sectors complete with its schools and public halls. These sectors were con-
nected by a ring road and were a direct representation of the pay grade with widely spaced out quarters
(Meher, 2003). These new towns were heralded for their new approach to urban planningdivergent
from the other Indian cities with their colonial legacy. It was an effort to create self-contained and
balanced communities where self-containmentnot only of the sectors but the entire industrial town
was the formal tool to set this new urban form apart from its often greenfield pastoral surrounding.
The specificity of Indian steel cities was determined by a secular, democratic, socialist environment
and of forging a normative identity for a modern urban citizen and a model worker (Roy, 2007). First,
the dominant, Fordist labour relations between the stateas the steel plants owner and employee
demanded model workers, who follow strict regimes not only in the work environment but outside
as model citizens, in the urban environment around the steel plant. The steel plant authorities adopted
a paternalistic role in curating the behaviour of its workers and their families, in its entirety. Second, the
citizens of these new towns were framed by the planners with a singular lens of class and labour
hierarchiesa populace amidst a process of postcolonial socio-economic transition. As a result, the
traditional identities of caste, language and ethnicity along with the newly created individual identities
of managers, refugees, distress migrants and displaced population were sought to be collapsed through
the planning of plural societies. By designing self-contained neighbourhoods for a cross-section of the
entire population with the goal of economic resettlement through professional re-education
(Koenigsberger, 1952). Here too, the steel plant authorities took upon themselves, the role of assisting
the workers in developing community solidarities in new, urban settings by setting up temples, churches,
schools, cinemas, youth clubs, cultural clubs and organisations. In all the three steel cities Rourkela,
Bhilai and Durgapur, officials of HSL played a key role towards shaping the healthy and contented
workforce through planning priorities and developmental outcomes (Sivaramakrishnan, 1982).

Planning Ideals and Mission Creep

The steel cities were cast as niche spaces in the public imagination and stood in contrast with the sur-
rounding areas of the territories upon which they were developed. The urban plans of these steel towns
embodied the spirit of the new nation, being amalgamated from disparate identities. However, the
78 Environment and Urbanization Asia 8(1)

optimism surrounding these towns faded away within the next decade. In the next section, this article
will examine how the planning ideals, drawn from a wide range of influences often contradictory to each
other, reinforced deeply entrenched the class, caste and ethnic barriers within a prescriptive reflection of
urban industrial life within the steel plant.
HSL tasked the designers of steel cities with providing the avenues to ensure the wellbeing of the
populace. However, in all the cases, consultants were solely operating on the brief provided by HSL in
the form of clients instructions. Workers housing, urban infrastructure, utility networks and ameni-
ties for education, healthcare, leisure and recreationwere to be developed along the lines of these
instructions and operated by these authorities under the purview of the steel plants directorial boards.
These armatures of secular infrastructure were envisioned to aid the modern urban citizens with their
socio-economic transition. As anchoring devices for the neighbourhood units, they were also designed
to facilitate a smooth transition of the migrants into the urban-industrial lifestyle, community engage-
ments and help in developing solidarities across traditional divides (Glover, 2013). With housing allot-
ted according to the workers rank at the steel plant, changes in income brackets, work profiles or the
nature of employment, necessitated families to frequently switch neighbourhoods and relocate, even
during their tenure periods. The direct mapping of labour hierarchies in the organization of neighbour-
hoods countered the benign intentions of the planners, as in the case of Rourkela the decentralized and
homogenous income-based sectors proved to be a deterrent for the intermixing of different social
classes (Meher, 2003). On the other hand, in the mixed-income neighbourhoods of Durgapur, the inter-
mixing was carefully designed within the urban plan; however, it was limited to the economic status of
the families and presented little incentive to erase the entrenched cast hierarchies. Visible formal cues
of different housing types corresponding with salary structures helped reinforce class hierarchies pro-
duced at the workplace.
Rapid industrialization in remote regions, as envisaged, was successful in triggering a perception
of opportunities for upward socioeconomic mobility. However, beyond the initial construction and
hiring phase for steel production, these cities failed to absorb and assimilate the influx of kin and
acquaintances, as well as subsequent waves of migrantswhether distressed rural inhabitants from
the hinterland or development-induced refugees. Throughout the first decade, steel jobs within these
cities remained relatively constant; however, the overall growth rate of the urban population was
rapid. In the case of Durgapur, there was a six-fold increase in the population in just the span of 10
years from the 1960s to 1970s (Jagannathan, 1987). The framing of these sites with the core planning
focus on the employee towns thus resulted into a constant urge within the HSL administrators for
maintaining the exclusive character of the steel township. This demarcation of work-based citizen-
ship of Insider vs. Outsiders residents meant that the migrant workers that were not directly employed
by the plant were seen as unwanted elements by the authorities. Proposals to allow the sale of plots
to them within the sectors were met with opposition from HSLs managerial class. In 1966, a report by
the Nakhra Committeeset up to consider the increasing shortage of accommodation and the pros-
pect of selling landhighlighted the fact that the employees by themselves cannot form a sustainable
civic life. The report called for the HSL management to recognize the members of the community
working for the townships such as traders, cobblers, rickshaw pullers and others as an integral part
of the civic life of the township (Sivaramakrishnan, 1976).
The three cities each had their variation on the concept of garden city with the self-contained neigh-
bourhoods; however, the other key imperatives of the garden citypreservation of the agricultural belt
around the city and connectivity to the urban job centres within the citywere overlooked. The poor
comprehension of the urban social issues by the managerial class of steel towns was complicated by the
rapid growth and uncontrolled migration from surrounding, underdeveloped areas. For example, a World
Mazereeuw et al. 79

Bank report of 1983 evaluating the city of Bhilai for the urban redevelopment projects describes the
shortcomings of the town plan. It takes note that housing was provided for only about 60 per cent of the
steel plant employees, excluding a significant portion of the workforce. It also identifies the failing in
the provision of areas for commercial and service enterprises, which grew in an unplanned manner
outside of the industrial township, as the population in the city nearly doubled in the decade between
1971 and 1981 (The World Bank, 1983).
Industrial employment outside the steel plant soon exceeded the number of workers employed by the
plant itself. However, this change was not reflected in the planning priorities of HSLs town manage-
ment. The scale and temporal variation in the process of in-migration are well documented in the case of
Rourkela, Durgapur and Bhilai (Blair, 1969; Meher, 2003; Parry, 1999, 2003). The migration from the
surrounding area was at its peak during the construction and immediate post-construction phases when
contractors and middlemen recruited labour by capitalizing on their local networks in the hinterland.
In the absence of adequate secondary industrial development in the formal sector, the economy of the
city tended towards increasing informalization as contractors and migrant workers replaced formal
industrial development in the services and tertiary sectors (Blair, 1969). In Durgapur, within 10 years
from 1961, workers employed in the tertiary sector had increased from 17 per cent to 31 per cent
(Sivaramakrishnan, 1976).
The concept of model employer was integral to the steel towns, and as the cities started growing
rapidly, it ran counter to the aims of creating model citizens. The mutual reinforcing of the culture of
the company town with the idea of model employer meant that the company provided all the essential
services as amenities to its employees. It was also assumed that the running costs would be carried by the
industry thus negating the need for taxation and by extension the need for forming the municipal institu-
tions. Due to the special status of these sites, the involvement of elected provincial governments was
limited to the initial rehabilitation, recruitment of the local population and maintaining law and order.
The managerial class of HSL played the role of the urban local bodies and was responsible for the con-
struction of community centres, schools, municipal services, and setting up markets and land manage-
ment. This strategy was effective in creating a passive and satisfied workforce but at the same time, it
discouraged the development of the indigenous institutions and limited the forms of self-government
necessary for successful urban governance. Industrial authorities were not responsible for the provision
of infrastructure to the urban growth outside the industrial enclaves resulting in the sharp contrast
between the quality services provided between different parts of the same urban area.
The planning narratives of these new towns, heavily influenced by the managerial class of HSL,
revolved around the industrial activity rather than urbanization that the industry will bring about. The
settlement around the industry was an adjunct planning requirement to house employees rather than
the core concern to manage the future growth. The density of the townships, house types, the location
and dispensation of the community amenities was often decided by the small group of managers within
the steel factory, with the chairman of the steel mill often as the de facto Mayor (Roy, 2007). In the
subsequent section, we will examine how this poor comprehension of the migrant heterogeneity
manifested in the form of informality within the urban structure of these towns.

The Territorialization of Informality: Spaces of Production and Habitation

Limitations within the planning narratives of steel towns began to emerge within the initial decade of
their implementation. The urbanization and industrialization of a rural, agricultural region aided the
development of infrastructures, modern transportation and communication systems as well as civic
80 Environment and Urbanization Asia 8(1)

amenities. However, due to excessive paternalistic control of the industry focusing on its employees, it
also generated a lopsided effect on the social and economic spheres of the marginalized migrant popula-
tion and indigenous communities residing in the area. The formal urban planning process also failed to
account for the agricultural labourers and sharecroppers who were displaced, and received neither the
compensation nor rehabilitation, while giving rise to parallel structures of habitation.
The main stated objectives of the steel towns were to create jobs. However, initially, the majority of
the recruits were outsiders, better-educated migrants. The local population, which was relegated to resettle-
ment colonies on the townships fringes were in the direct competition for stable sources of income in
the long run. The promised factory jobs took years to materialize and were limited in number when they
finally were offered. The inclusion of the local population was also impeded due to a lack of industrial
experience and requisite skills. Such disparities were felt especially by the adivasis and other socially
marginalized communities. Coupled with the depletion of natural resources, these economically weaker
sections of the population in the hinterland were reduced to unskilled daily wage workers. Unskilled
migrants from villages in the surrounding hinterland faced similar challenges once, they migrated to the
city. This social restructuring was apparent in the formal fabric of the steel town. Not unlike the colonial
mapping of the Indian city into civil lines, old city and the cantonmentthese post-colonial experiments
gave rise to analogical labour settlements, old villages and company townships. Amongst them, the
labour settlements further formed a triad of camps, bustees and temporary hutments (Figure 2).
Construction workers, who were brought to these remote regions, were amongst the first groups to
face the exclusionary aspect of these cities. The practice of setting up labour campsbordering the steel
plant but carefully removed from the industrial township, and based on the hopes that this mobile popu-
lation will move to next worksite after the construction phasebackfired in all of the new towns
(Sivaramakrishnan, 1976). This artificial demarcation of social space was extended and mapped onto the
geography of the steel cities in the form of busteesunauthorized settlements that cropped up on the
excess land acquired by the steel plant, a kind of speculative development sometimes aided by the con-
tractors and ancillary unit operators.
With the increasing shortage of housing for industrial and informal labourers, temporary hutments
appeared on marginalized land around railway lines, river beds and between the crevices of the industrial
units and township. This triad of informality soon became a permanent fixture of the periphery of these
cities and also provided the much needed cushion to the rigid self-contained nature of the industrial
township. Since all of the services and housing in the townships were under the purview of the company,
financial losses incurred by the industrial establishments affected the civic fabric of the cities. This situ-
ation was further compounded by the lack of internally generated taxation-based revenues and adequate
investments in housing which were not made while immigration still continued.
The housing deficit for employees within the steel plant was a concern as early as 1970s, just a few
years from the founding of the townships. HSL was facing acute housing shortages for its employees. By
1966, HSL could only provide housing to half of its employees in the three towns of Rourkela, Bhilai and
Durgapur. By 1971 about a third of the population in Rourkela and Bhilai was living in the informal
settlements. The labour force in the organized sector was thus compelled to compete with workers in the
unorganized sector for substandard housing in unplanned market centres, villages and resettlement colo-
nies. These sites often lacked infrastructural developments and inevitably degenerated into slums. In the
case of Bhilai alone, such unplanned areas accounted for about 37 per cent of the urban land while
catering to 50 per cent of its population (Srivastava & Singh, 1996).
The exclusionary nature of the design of townships was not limited to the settlement of workers.
Steel, being a process industrywhere the final product is a result of various parallel and sequential
processes, its production spawned a range of small-scale, ancillary industries and essential services.
Figure 2. From Left to Right: Rourkela, Bhilai and Durgapur; Steel Townships and Unregulated Sprawl with Respect to Steel Plants
Source: Created by authors based on information from Open Street Maps and Google Earth.
82 Environment and Urbanization Asia 8(1)

While this catalytic role was envisaged for the trickle-down effect of economic growth, the steel plant
authorities and town planners rarely planned for such urban requirements. The master plans for steel cities
reserved very limited space for such ancillary industries. Almost a decade after the commencement of plant
activities, satellite industrial estates were developed to address the demand. However, their spatial logic
failed to take into account the economic relations and flows of matter entering and exiting the steel cities.
The ancillary units which were set up in these cities were of three types: production support industries
like ferroalloy plants, maintenance support industries and consumables such as spare parts. Each type of
industry had a specific location logic based on the type of parts they supplied. Machining industries
tended to be closer to the plant and operated as an extension of the steel plants machine shop (Saripalle,
1999). A secondary set of industries that opened in the proximity were those engaged in by-product-
based processes: fertilizer plants to utilize the slag, chemical manufacturers that used coke oven waste,
etc. The process industry nature of steelmaking meant that the ancillaries acted as subcontractors of the
steel plant and tended to have a high percentage of contract labour. Within the two decades, the initial
economic objective of the town with the steel plant being its key employer had undergone significant
change. By 1971, 61 per cent of the employment in Rourkela was in the informal sector. Figures for
Bhilai (41 per cent) and Durgapur (32 per cent) also indicate the growing informal urban pressures on
the steel towns (Sivaramakrishnan, 1976). With liberalization reforms, the reserved status of manufac-
turing activities, as well as financial incentives for their creation, were withdrawn by the government.
According to the 2011 census and industrial data gathered by the authors of this article, for every steel-
worker in the city there are 8 additional workers in Bhilai, 10 in Rourkela and 20 in Durgapur (Figure 3).
The changing economic dynamics, along with the low skill and capital requirements of the ancillaries,
abundant labour availability, low returns and greater competition, discouraged the sector from develop-
ing in a formal way. In the absence of designated zones within the townships or their industrial areas,
workshops, plants and machine work sprung up haphazardly in its peripheral regions.

Figure 3. Industrial Nodes Generate a Perception of Employment Opportunities and Scope for Upward
Mobility, Attracting a Range of Migrants. The figure shows number of people inhabiting urban agglomerations
around steel plants in relation to each plant employee
Source: Data computed from Steel Authority of India Limited, Annual report and Census of India, 2011.
Mazereeuw et al. 83

The commercial centres of the townships which planned to serve the residents in their neighbour-
hoods were unable to cope up with the emerging demands from industry beyond the controlled environ-
ment of the project area. The initial planning studies were limited in their assessment of the scale of
commerce that would eventually take place. The failure of the planners to accommodate the informal
character of the trade that operates on low daily overheads resulted in the inflexible market areas
designed, built and rented out by the township management. Small shopkeepers and street hawkers who
make up the bulk of the trading density in the city were expelled from these formal commercial centres
into the unplanned bazaar areas on the fringe of the township. These bazaars evolved out of the formal
informal hybridity to centrally accommodate a large spectrum of business activity from vegetable sellers
to textile merchants.
The steel cities aided in a territorialization of this informality by their designs, thus, with these cele-
brated spaces of the state barring its subjects whom it had summoned and aimed to transform, the steel
cities gave rise to socio-economic polarizations upon the territories in which these were hosted. Exclusion
from the coveted plant employment and consequently from the township areas, induced divisions
amongst in-migrants by their capacity in serving the goal of steel production. Moreover, the traditional
identities that were meant to be collapsed in these cities were reproduced, even intensified, beyond the
boundaries of the townships (Meher, 2003; Parry & Struempell, 2008). As a result, neither the steel plant
employee (expected to conform to the normative behaviours of a docile worker) nor the distress migrant
(disenfranchised, trapped in informal labour relations and competing for shelter and sustenance) could
act as an active citizen. It is these divisive and precarious labour relations that continue to resonate upon
the landscape of Indias temples of modernity.

Post-liberalization and Restructuring of the Urban Space

Growth and development in the steel cities closely followed the contours of the national economic
reforms. In 1973, HSL was restructured into a new holding companySAILSteel Authority of India
Ltd. to manage all the public sector steel plants in the country. By 1980s, with five plants and quarter
million employees, SAIL was one of the largest public sector employers in the country (Khandwalla,
1991). However, it was also in severe financial crisis. The first turnaround was in 1985. While keeping
its commitment to the socialist policies, SAIL marked a sharp increase in profits (Ninan, 1986). During
this phase, there was a marked growth in secondary industries in the steel cities, largely set up by the
beneficiaries of the voluntary retirement scheme of SAIL (Majumdar & Sengupta, 2010). By the 1990s,
however, economic liberalization policies in the country, initiated with the goal of making the economy
more market-oriented, expanded the role of private and foreign investment through a reduction in import
tariffs, deregulation of markets and reduction of taxes. With these reforms, SAIL was pitted directly with
the international steel industry as well as domestic steel manufacturers. Coupled with low productivity,
volatility in steel and raw material prices, the liberalization reforms forced SAIL to abandon the core
socialist policies of being a Model Employer. Post-liberalization restructuring of SAIL ranged from the
further contracting of labour to the divestment of non-core assets, as well as a divestment from townships
(Mukherjee, 2000).
This transition of steel cities towards post-Fordist means of production and labour relations was
accompanied by a restructuring of urban spaces. Historically, access to housing, employment and ameni-
ties in the townships was reserved exclusively for the employees of the steel plants, and urban develop-
ment was intrinsically linked with their economic prosperity. In the post-liberalization era, competing
claims to the citizenship and urban governance have emerged.
84 Environment and Urbanization Asia 8(1)

Figure 4. Percentage Distribution of Respondents based on their Job Profiles and Place of Residence
Source: Field surveys by authors, August 2015.

In the social sphere, liberalized labour laws pushed a vast pool of workers into informal relations with
the employer. In a bid to modernize and make steel production more efficient, plant authorities invested
in modern machinery, upgraded production capacities and downsized the number of on-roll employees.
Non-routine and labour-intensive tasks were outsourced to labour contractors and subcontractors who
further hired workers from amongst a ready pool of job seekers. Negligence of plant authorities in ensur-
ing the conformity of informal contract relations, migrant workers continue to be exploited by their
employers, by means such as underpayment, deferring of wages, etc. The casualization of permanent
company positions took with them the right to company homes, healthcare, education and superannua-
tion benefits as well as the de facto right to the urban space that these activities entailed. Moreover,
migrant communities that constituted this contract labour force became crystallized as a distinct social
class, differentiated not only by gender and ethnicities but also by their place of residence within or out-
side the township boundaries (Figure 4).
The development of the city, maintenance of its infrastructure and amenities, was intrinsically con-
nected with the prosperity of the steel plant, which in turn followed boom and bust cycles resulting from
global commodity prices. Along with the restructuring of labour relations, and segregation of spaces
based on nature of employment, various parts of the city were differentially impacted by SAILs divest-
ment processes. Lower income neighbourhoods thus, witnessed a high degree of rollback of services,
amenities and infrastructure. Here, as the plant authorities initiated layoffs, voluntary retirement incen-
tives and the intermittent contracting of its workforce, housing vacancies in worker colonies were
synchronous with inhabitants of informal settlements and the in-migrating kin of former employees in
need of shelter. However, the authorities responded with the removal of power lines from a perceived
fear of theft, shutting down of water supply, closing of schools and healthcare facilities and discontinuing
the maintenance of the housing stock (Figure 5).
Mazereeuw et al. 85

Figure 5. Abandoned Original Housing Stock, Durgapur

Source: Authors own.

Post-liberalization, as SAIL gradually transferred management of urban assets and infrastructure pro-
visions from its own engineering departments, to either the elected local bodies, state government agen-
cies or parastatal development authorities, the disputes over jurisdictions and accountability over service
provision and civic maintenance became the norm. Along with a parochial view of SAIL, limited to its
on-roll employees and excluding in-migrating wage seekers and contractual labour, the latter also failed
to garner adequate strength of representation in elected municipal bodies in their formative years. Since
these were limited to areas beyond the township, inhabitants of informal settlements within the town-
ships sectors were forced to avail basic services through informal networks of water distribution, hook-
ing onto power lines in their vicinity, etc., whereas those inhabiting village outgrowths and peripheral
slumsareas with jurisdictional ambiguitieswere excluded from municipal initiatives such as tenure
regularization and infrastructure provision.
Residential clusters in the industrial townships designed for lower ranks of worker families also
exhibit a propensity to rebound following events of economic shocks, albeit through divergent trajecto-
ries when compared to middle income neighbourhoods. Households in the latter case enjoy greater
economic mobility, take up jobs in other industries and access housing elsewhere, while at the same time
having resources to seek redress through judicial channels. For instance, after Durgapurs Mining and
Allied Machinery Corporation (MAMC) filed bankruptcy in 1991, its townships 4,000 employees were
eventually granted the decision to be leased its entire housing stock in 2002, following a court order that
decided to deviate from strict procedure of law (TNN, 2003). The lower income groups and impoverished
86 Environment and Urbanization Asia 8(1)

migrants, however, had to take extra-legal measures of occupying vacant housing and garner support
from the increasingly influential role of the electoral democracy at the urban level. While Notified Area
Committees existed in the steel cities since 1970s, it was only after the reforms of 1991, that urban local
bodies were given greater planning, management and executive powers and direct revenue streams.
Awareness about the electoral process and strength in numbers helped the urban poor to exploit the local
political economy, and demand better services, infrastructure and amenities in spaces of their habitation
(Chatterjee, 2008).
Townshipsdue to their coveted position within the urban imaginarywere able to gain and retain
their claim towards the superior urban services. In Figure 6, the dichotomy between the quality of infra-
structure and amenities amongst township areas and beyond is clearly evident. Most of the respondents
remark about a drop in quality wherever these have been transferred to urban local bodies. However,
they acknowledged that the duration of water supply, uninterrupted electricity, quality schools and
healthcare facilities, etc. in the township are still unmatched in the larger urban agglomeration. Data
from the field surveys (Figure 7) corroborates the importance of amenities and infrastructure as the
most influential factor for the largest number of respondents governing their decisions while searching
for a house.
As part of the ongoing process of liquidating SAILs fixed cost assets and improving profitability, the
company came up with various schemes in the steel cities to lease its housing stock to its employees and
ex-employees. The schemes intended to release up to 25 per cent of the total number of dwelling units in
a phased manner, and at the same time generating additional revenue (Government of India, P.I.B.,

Figure 6. Perception of Neighbourhood Amenities Percentage of Respondents Satisfied with Services and
Facilities in their Neighbourhoods
Source: Field surveys by authors (August 2015).
Mazereeuw et al. 87

Figure 7. Ranking of Factors based on House Location Priorities: Primary Concerns Affecting Future Housing
Choice for Percentage of Respondents
Source: Field surveys by authors (August 2015).

2001; Press Trust of India, 2002). While the schemes opened up access to housing stock in the townships
for non-employees, as individual apartments were leased on a transferable basis for 30 of 33 years
renewable leases in Bhilai, Durgapur and Bokaro, they triggered a rapid transformation of spaces of
habitation which, coupled with the rigidity of planning and building types, gave rise to unique challenges
for urban development. Of the total number of respondents living in SAIL-owned housing, 51 per cent
were living on an allotment basis, 28 per cent on long-term lease (following housing lease schemes), and
17 per cent of the present home occupants had rented the units from beneficiaries of the house lease
scheme (Figures 8 and 9).
While from the outset, this release of housing stock into the market differentially favoured SAILs
employees, there was a further segmentation amongst beneficiaries on the basis of the building floor that
they had been allotted. A majority of the housing stock in these cities comprised either regimented row
houses or mid-rise, soviet style slab blocks for mass housing. Since these were constructed at extremely
low densities, they resulted in vast open tracts of vacant and unutilized offsets between adjacent build-
ings. The overabundance of open spaces combined with the lack of resources on behalf of SAIL and the
urban local bodies for their maintenance, resulted in radical transformations in public and private spaces.
Successive families inhabiting these apartments incrementally enclosed adjoining spaces as kitchen
gardens, lawns, temporary car sheds and eventually constructed additional rooms and living spaces. This
tendency resonated across income groups, where majority of the respondents from the survey (Figure10)
indicated a preference for serviced plots against ready-to-move apartments for reasons of flexibility, to
increment and appropriate spaces as per changing family needs.
88 Environment and Urbanization Asia 8(1)

Figure 8. Rigid House Types Linked with the Salary Structure Rather than the Family Needs Have Resulted in to
User-driven Incremental Change in the Housing
Source: Authors own.

Figure 9. User-driven Change in Housing Includes Parking Structures, Shops and Residential Extensions to
Ground-floor Units
Source: Authors own.
Mazereeuw et al. 89

Figure 10. Preferences for Site and Services/Apartment

Source: Field survey by authors, August 2015.

This also spawned a parallel, soft market, where allottees moving out of an apartment sought to get
reimbursed for super-additions, and negotiated with incoming allottees. For the above reasons, as the
housing lease schemes were floated, allottees of ground floor apartments rushed in to seize the opportu-
nity, whereas those on the upper floors speculated over the prices demanded by SAIL, causing them to
decline further. Moreover, a majority of the economically weaker sections were either unable to arrange
credit, or were averse to investing in parts of the township that had become branded as lower class
neighbourhoods.
After the schemes premature end, short of the targeted 25 per cent release and following a rebound in
steel prices, the residential areas evolved with patchy fragments of housing developments. Land continued
to be under the ownership of the steel plant authorities while stray row houses were under private, leased
occupation. In mid-rise blocks, on the other hand, unique disputes emerged as most ground floor apart-
ments were on leasehold and upper floor units were on an allotment basis. In the allotment model, altera-
tions and appropriations were limited to minor changes to suffice family needs. However, with houses on
lease and in the absence of controls and regulatory mechanisms exercised by SAIL or the development
authorities, the addition of living spaces, major internal renovations as well as spaces for commercial use
were added by all segments of the population. These often ended up compromising the structural stability
of the slab blocks or they encroached shared public spaces on the ground level. From the field surveys, 72
per cent of total respondents living in government housing answered in the affirmative when asked about
alterations to their houses. Of these, 46 per cent of respondents living in SAIL housing projects have made
structural changes, even though the typologies were not designed for such incremental additions.
The aggravated needs for new housing stock for low income residents resulted in a decoupling of
shelter and livelihood provisions. In the development phase of the township, most of the housing stock
was constructed with the view that the livelihood needs of inhabitants will be taken care of by employ-
ment in the plant. Similarly, in a few later examples of housing developments, whether by the state
governments housing board or industrial housing board, the developments took place close to existing
90 Environment and Urbanization Asia 8(1)

Figure 11. View of VAMBAY Awas, Bhilai: Slum Rehabilitation Housing Constructed by the Bhilai Nagar
Municipal Corporation Highlights the Reasons for the Coexistence of Vacant Housing and Informal Settlements.
Poor Quality of Construction, Inadequate Sizes and Lack of Amenities Forced the Beneficiaries to Move Back
into Temporary Hutments
Source: Authors own.

industrial areas to suffice for their workers housing needs. However, as slums and labour camps began
to consolidate around those industries, the respective state governments brought these settlements under
the purview of the slum clearance boards with the primary aim of acquiring peripheral land. The slum
clearance constituted relocating the existing population to surrounding areas, breaking their existing ties
to economic linkages and livelihood opportunities (Figure 11).
As these former company towns adapt themselves into the neoliberal economic terrain of the country,
the nostalgia of the steel city is very much alive within the elected urban local bodies and can be seen in
the contemporary proposals of urban upgrading. Successive affordable housing schemes such as
JNNURM, RAY and PMAY, either fail to take-off or result in high vacancy rates due to the conventional
mass housing with its rigid one-size fits all approach, which tends to create islands of disparity by lock-
ing the residents in houses that they cannot change for long tenures. These schemes have little scope for
user-driven changes such as using surplus spaces in the house for renting or home-based enterprises for
generating supplementary income.
The field surveys (Figures 12 and 13) point towards the high propensity of lower income families
finding avenues for supplementary income through renting or commercial activity. Adapting parts of the
home as a productive asset is a critical imperative for these low-income households.
Mazereeuw et al. 91

Figure 12. Preference of the Respondent to Rent a Part of the House for Supplementary Income
Source: Field surveys by authors, August 2015.

Figure 13. Preference to Use a Part of the House for Commercial Activity for Supplementary Income
Source: Field surveys by authors, August 2015.
92 Environment and Urbanization Asia 8(1)

Conclusion
The steel cities, built as national symbols of modernity, produced a specific form of urbanism in the
hopes of affecting social change through the prevailing, dominant paradigms of urban design. However,
their lack of planning for the continuous migration of hopeful job seekers and evolving labour relations
led to an exclusionary urban-industrial system, which ran counter to the ambitions of social integration
and inclusive development of the ideal steel cities.
A lack of flexibility over what constitutes an ideal Indian steel city, who can be its citizens and how
should they reside in the city, is at the root of many of the problems these cities face today. Government
schemes aim to accommodate the urban poor, using rigid type designs of mass housing, without providing
their residents with any scope of improving livelihoods. The examination of the development of these cities,
cautions against the excessive control of the patterns of habitation. Fieldwork and surveys conducted in the
three cities highlight the need for new methodologies for optimizing development models while incor-
porating stakeholder perceptions, priorities and preferences to design a diverse mix of the development
scenarios that better reflect changing demographics. The fieldwork also points towards the need to incor-
porate livelihood avenues by providing innovative customizable units for lower income residents to expand
their economic base. Without more focus on living conditions for everyone, the polarization of the quality
of life will have detrimental effects on the urban fabric of brownfield and greenfield steel cities alike.
As Indian steel policy aims to grow the countrys steel production threefold in next 10 years, current
steel cities will undergo a phase of redevelopment. There are also projections for new public sector steel
plants with a combined capacity 188 metric tons to be built in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha as
National Investment Manufacturing zones (Ministry of Steel, 2015). It is critical to reflect upon and learn
from the growth patterns of the current steel cities. Rather than planning around just the specific steel
industrial activity, it is necessary to holistically plan for the urbanization that the plural industries and its
future populations will create. Also with the fluctuating global economy significantly changing projected
demands, it is even more prudent to diversify the economy, housing and civic fabric of these rapidly
developing regions. The project of steel cities that started with lofty idealism, presents an instructive
example of an eventual shift in objectives during the longer timeline of such large scale planning experi-
ments. It reflects the concerns of Otto Koenigsberger that there is a need for urban planners to be the
initiators of the development (Koenigsberger, 1983) by creating frameworks that the ever-changing
demographics in the city can adapt according to its needs.

Acknowledgement
This research was supported by the Tata Center for Technology and Design at MIT.

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