Publication

This paper questions the accuracy and validity of the criticisms made by Ananya Roy on the approach of a Mumbai based NGO, the Society to Promote Area Resource Centers (SPARC) and its partner grassroots federations in Mumbai. This includes the suggestion that the focus on sanitation rather than on land tenure is an appeal to middle-class values about cleanliness and that the support for relocating those who lived right next to the railway tracks made them agents of the state. But SPARC's support for community toilets was in response to what grassroots organizations asked for and these also have high social returns.