Each One For Themselves: The transformations of cooperative housing societies by framings of private property in India

Keywords: cooperative housing, affordable housing, private ownership, redevelopment
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

The cooperative housing society is the predominant form of organisation amongst apartment owners in the Indian metropolis of Mumbai. While this indicates the successful evolution of an unbroken history of co-operative housing societies adopted from the colonial presidency of Bombay beginning in the early 1900s (Ganapati, 2010), the vastly changed character of the modern cooperative housing society raises questions on the inherent nature of its contemporary form (Rao, 2012). Introduced with the promise of providing affordable housing to the urban middle classes, the cooperative housing society in Mumbai today finds itself unable to keep that promise as real estate values of apartments in societies keep rising (Chakravorty, 2013). This paper traces the history of cooperative housing societies in Mumbai by following its changing ability to deliver affordable housing.
This history is tied to changes in the legal framework of the cooperative housing setup as ‘tenant’ members were replaced by ‘owner’ members thereby allowing an intended commons to be transformed by logics of private property ownership (Rao, 2012). A critical outcome of these amendments to the law has been the cooperative society’s inability to stem members’ demands for an unhindered access to the real estate market. The paper includes an instrumental case-study detailing the process of redeveloping of a cooperative housing society to highlight the distance between the workings of the cooperative society today and its founding objectives.