Identification, materiality and housing transformations in Mumbai

Sometime midway in 2012, a large public meeting was called in a koliwada (fishing settlement or fishing village)¹ in Mumbai, which was attended by many prominent members of the Koli (fisher)² community in the city, spread across different settlements. The meeting was conducted in an open courtyard of one particular koliwada that had witnessed a spate of demolition drives during which several protestors from the settlement had been arrested. A well-known community leader took the stage and issued an ominous warning about the “tsunami” of real estate development that would sweep up the “native” fisher community, displacing them from their homes and ultimately depositing them in slum rehabilitation schemes - mass housing blocks where slum dwellers are rehoused when displaced by development projects. He suggested that the Koli community had brought this threat upon themselves by opening their settlements to “outsiders” (migrant workers) and that the time had come to remind the state of their identity as “natives” and as the “original inhabitants” of the city in order to forge their claims upon land and housing.³ He urged the residents of fishing villages to refrain from “joining hands” with private developers, and instead work and build their homes in a manner that would reflect their identity as fishers.