Deep democracy: urban governmentality and the horizon of politics

This paper describes the work of an alliance formed by three civic organiza tions in Mumbai to address poverty - the NGO SPARC, the National Shun Dwell ers Federation and Mahila Milan, a cooperative representing women's savings groups. It highlights key features of their work which include: putting th e knowledge and capacity of the poor and the savings groups that they form at the core of all their work (with NGOs in a supporting role); keeping pol itically neutral and negotiating with whoever is in power; driving change t hrough setting precedents (for example, a community-designed and managed to ilet, a house design developed collectively by the urban poor that they can build far cheaper than public or private agencies) and using these to nego tiate support and changed policies (a strategy that develops new "legal" so lutions oil the poor's own terms); a horizontal structure as the Alliance i s underpinned by, accountable to and serves thousands of small savings grou ps formed mostly by poor women; community-to-community exchange visits that root innovation and learning in what urban poor groups do; and urban poor groups undertaking surveys and censuses to produce their own data about "sl ums" (which official policies lack and need) to help build partnerships wit h official agencies in ways that strengthen and support their own organizat ions. The paper notes that these are features shared with urban poor federa tions and alliances in other countries and it describes the international c ommunity exchanges and other links between them. These groups are internati onalizing themselves, creating networks of globalization from below. Indivi dually and collectively, they seek to demonstrate to governments (local, re gional, national) and international agencies that urban poor groups are mor e capable than they in poverty reduction, and they also provide these agenc ies with strong community-based partners through which to do so. They are, or call be, instruments of deep democracy, rooted in local context and able to mediate globalizing forces in ways that benefit the poor. In so doing, both within nations and globally, they are seeking to redefine what governa nce and governability mean.