Book Review Title - Understanding Housing Resettlement Through Women’s Experiences
Book Title - A Place to Call Home: Women as Agents of Change in Mumbai by Ramya Ramanath
Publisher - Economic and Political Weekly
Author - Simran Pal Kaur, Research Associate, Indian Housing Federation
Publication Date - August 07, 2021
ABSTRACT
In the book, A Place to Call Home: Women as Agents of Change in Mumbai, Ramya Ramanath explores the uncertainties and transitions that women living on the peripheries of a national park experienced owing to slum clearance and subsequent relocation to small 225 square feet apartment units at a resettlement site called Sangharsh Nagar (symbolising a “neighbourhood born of struggle”). The book showcases the author’s deeply invested ethnographic field study in understanding the impacts of the displacement and disruptions in the lives of diverse groups of 120 women who emerge as primary agents in laying claims to the placemaking process at their new homes.
Ramanath’s book is a reminder that housing is not all about houses. It breaks away from the conventional obsession with number of units, materials and plot sizes. It intricately highlights the elements that distinguish “housing” from houses by making stronger connections between housing and infrastructure, demographics, income, financing, occupation, identity, community and external actors.