Housing is many things to many people. The National Urban Housing and Habitat Policy (2007) sees housing and shelter as ‘basic human needs next to only food or clothing’, putting makaan in its familiar place beside roti and kapda. The United Nations agrees, speaking of the ‘right to adequate housing’ as a human right. However, the qualifier— ‘adequate’—begins to push at the boundaries of what is meant when talking about ‘housing’. Adequacy here includes a litany of elements: ‘(a) legal security of tenure; (b) availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure; (c) affordability; (d) habitability; (e) accessibility; (f) location; and (g) cultural adequacy’. In the move from ‘house’ to ‘housing’, the materiality of the dwelling unit expands to include legal status, infrastructure, aesthetics, as well as the relationship of the house to the city at large.

Both these definitions share a common, unstated refrain: the consequences of exclusion from a basic human need or right are such that, in most societies, such exclusions are seen as ethically and often legally unacceptable. It is important to note that while housing policy and programmes in India have emphasized an ethical commitment to increasing access to housing, the latter is not a textual, constitutional right in India. Legal jurisprudence does, however, offer significant precedents— though even these are contested, as will be seen later—that many have used to argue that access to housing is a derived right, and certainly one of the entitlements that a state owes to its citizens.