Survey City: Film screening

Ayesha and her family live in a Delhi basti (informal settlement). She wants nothing more than to have security of tenure of her tiny house at the precarious edges of Delhi. 

There are always rumors of demolition as the land is classified as ‘illegally occupied’. Ayesha and her neighbors – who mostly collect materials for recycling – are always trying to work out ways of becoming permanent residents of a city in which they were born and have lived.

India’s capital, Delhi, is a highly unequal city. By various estimates, between 15-30% of the population lives on just 0.5% of the land in low-income informal settlements, the bastis. For basti residents, such as Ayesha, tenure security and access to legal title to land depends on inclusion in multiple government surveys that promise these. These promises most frequently arrive at election time.

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However, though documents produced through surveys promise clarity and certainty to the urban poor, they are simultaneously part of confusing processes that are unclear to both those who are being documented and doing the documentation.

This film explores the human elements – fear, anxieties, hope, confusion – that surround the urban poor’s efforts to be good citizens and listen the state as it promises a better life through surveys and documentation. It also explores the frequently inexplicable nature of the state and its processes as it deals with those at the precarious edges of the city. The film focuses on the discovery of a set of survey-related document intended to provided security of tenure but was declared ‘lost’.