Changing Times, Changing Contexts, Changing Coalitions: Structures, Agendas, and Politics of Urban Radical Coalitions in Mumbai

This paper contributes to the debate over the relationship between urban coalitions and their political contexts. The main argument in this paper is that the structures, agendas, and political strategies of urban radical coalitions in Mumbai were shaped by their political contexts. The argument is based on the experiences of two urban radical coalitions in Mumbai active in two different periods. The first was the Anti-Price Rise Movement (APRM), active during the 1960s and 1970s, and the other was Pani Haq Samiti (PHS), active since 2005. While the political context of APRM was characterized by transformative and democratic elements, the political context of PHS was dominated by neoliberalism and majoritarianism. The respective contexts shaped the structures, agendas, and political strategies of the two coalitions. APRM comprised women activists of mainstream left political parties, while PHS comprised social movements, civil society groups, and individuals. APRM worked with a transformative agenda of affecting structural changes, but PHS worked on the narrow agenda of securing water access to slum-dwellers. APRM was engaged in city-scale political mobilization and political action with large-scale participation of women, while PHS deployed strategies such as neighborhood-level micro-mobilization, building coalitions, judicial interventions, and legislative lobbying.