Gautam Bhan

Part of the School of Human Development at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bengaluru, Gautam teaches, researches and writes on the politics of urban poverty and inequality, urban and planning theory, housing, and identity and social practice. His recent work focuses on questions of southern urban theory and practice, and their application to housing, social protection and informality in Indian cities.

He anchors IIHS role as a National Resource Centre with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, and is part of IIHS’ work in affordable housing policy and practice. In this role, he has advised the Karnataka Affordable Housing Policy as well as the Odisha Liveable Habitat Mission. His previous research has focused on displacement and resettlement of the urban poor in Delhi, and his new work engages with regimes of urban welfare and social security, including work on urban health. He has been an active part of urban social movements on sexuality as well as housing rights, and currently advises and trains governmental agencies at local, state and national levels on housing policy.

He is the author of In the Public’s Interest: Evictions, Citizenship and Inequality in Contemporary Delhi  (University  of Georgia Press 2017; Orient Blackswan 2017), co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Planning in the Global South (Routledge 2018), co-author of Swept off the Map: Surviving Eviction and Resettlement in Delhi (2008), and co-editor of Because I have a Voice: Queer Politics in India (2006), in addition to numerous academic articles. He also writes frequently in public intellectual spaces and frequently in Caravan, India Today, Tehelka, Indian Express, the Hindustan Times and The Times of India.

Watch Gautam Bhan in the short video, Housing Justice from the Global South, part of the #UnequalCities series of conversations on housing justice.