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Anshul Rai Sharma is a PhD student in the Department of Geography advised by Yaffa Truelove. His research follows how people navigate precarious housing conditions in one of India's fastest-growing cities, Bengaluru.

Supported by the John Pitlick Fieldwork Grant, he conducted preliminary fieldwork in informal settlements and state-led resettlement sites of the city. His days were spent moving between resettlement colonies, informal settlements and city municipality offices, speaking with residents, activists, and bureaucrats.

What emerged is a complex landscape of housing, where stability exists on a spectrum, some households have ownership documents, others hold possession certificates, while many navigate daily life with no formal claims to their homes. This gradation of security shapes everything, from stable access to water to electricity connections, from children's school enrollment to families' long-term aspirations.

In a resettlement colony on Bengaluru's periphery, where concrete apartment blocks house displaced communities (Figure 1), residents shared how unstable water and electricity affected their lives, along with lack of ownership documents to their allotted housing units.��

Figure 1: Among the resettlement sites of Bengaluru, with unstable water and electricity.

Young people in these settlements became key interlocutors (Figure 2), offering perspectives on how housing precarity, and its attendant exclusions, shapes everyday life, aspirations and educational and professional trajectories.��

Figure 2: Interacting with young people in the settlements, sharing about research.

During festival celebrations (Figure 3), the vibrancy of community life stood out, in contrast to material deprivations, a reminder that these spaces are homes, not just research sites. This is a critical part of Anshul’s research, to present the informal settlements as living, agentive spaces as opposed to being passive victims of urbanisation. These gatherings, full of laughter and song, offered glimpses into the affective and creative dimensions of urban life that are often missed in ‘urban survival’ narratives.��

Figure 3: Celebrating festivities in the settlements.

A key moment in the summer was his involvement in the��“Bengaluru Waterscapes” workshop��(Figure 4), a collaborative effort by local organizations and researchers to address the city’s mounting water crises. These discussions were important in understanding of how environmental stress intersects with questions of housing and social justice.

Figure 4: Workshop on Bengaluru's waterscapes, led by MOD for city organizations to find solutions to water issues in the city's informal settlements.

Emerging from these experiences is a nuanced understanding of Bengaluru’s expansive housing crisis. It is also a social crisis, since settlements are not static or homogenous, they exist on a��spectrum of recognition which shaped by caste and religion. Caste, in particular, remains a decisive force in determining who can claim land, who receives services, and who remains excluded from the geography of the “world-class” city. Some of these emerging issues, and calls to address them were featured in Bengaluru’s local new outlet:��

Anshul’s forthcoming research will build on these preliminary findings, combining ethnography, archival work, and collaborative documentation to understand the crisis of housing and social justice in India’s IT Hub city of Bengaluru.��