Habitation counter-stories: thinking from the autoconstructed basti—Cheeta Camp, Mumbai

This paper explores the multiple sites of knowledge production that emerge through the process of making bastis, or autoconstructed settlements, in Mumbai. By centreing the knowledge and lexicon of lived experience in making and consolidating one basti, Cheeta Camp, we inform decolonised understandings of planning and urban studies more broadly. This paper discusses the pluralising of knowledge at two levels. First, knowledge about how settlements are made—the collective process of making schools shared community spaces and the effort to recast top-down expert-driven planning practices often despite the violent practices of the neoliberal state. This sheds light on how and where urban knowledge is produced and who produces it—the situated sites of activist knowledges that emerge through the process of making settlements. Second, how studying and writing about this lived experience is achieved by building counter-stories and vocabularies. This highlights other forms of knowledge, hitherto unrecognised as urban planning expertise that reconceptualises urban planning to prioritise social infrastructure and community stewardship.