This book examines the housing crisis in India and underlines the need for formal affordable housing markets. India is home to the world's largest population of slum dwellers. The book examines actual causes of the problem, and the financial and political issues which underlie it. The volume:

• Analyses multiple perspectives on affordable housing from the points of view of slum dwellers, builders, facilitators, bureaucrats, and politicians
• Presents a fresh overview of the housing sector in India based on the conditions of slum dwellers in a typical, medium-sized, fast-growing city - Raipur, in the state of Chhattisgarh
• Puts forward radical conclusions, practical solutions, and policy recommendations for a formal affordable housing market in India

This will be a major intervention for scholars and researchers of urban sociology, built environment, public policy, development studies, economics, political economy, institutional economics, and urban studies as well as policymakers, planners, and professionals in the urban development sector.
About the Author:

Padmini Ram is Assistant Professor, School of Business Studies and Social Sciences, Christ University, Bengaluru, India and Principal Investigator, Christ-LabourNet Academic Research Endeavour (CLARE), an industry-academia collaboration working on informal economy. With over 17 years of experience in various sectors of public policy and development in India and abroad, she combines the rigour of an academic researcher and the pragmatic approach of a practitioner. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and her research papers have been published in several reputed international journals.

Malcolm Harper is Emeritus Professor of Enterprise Development, School of Management, Cranfield University, UK. He was educated at Oxford, Harvard, and Nairobi. Since 1995 he has worked independently, mainly in India. He has published extensively on enterprise development, micro-finance, and livelihoods. He was Chairman of Basix Finance in India for 10 years and is Chairman of M-CRIL/EDA of New Delhi, the international microfinance and social rating company. He is chair, trustee, and board member of various institutions in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States, and India, and has worked on issues of poverty across the world.