This book examines the housing crisis in India and underlines the need for formal affordable housing markets. India is home to the worlds largest population of slum-dwellers. The book examines actual causes of the problem, and the financial and political issues which underlie it. The volume: Analyses multiple perspectives on affordable housing from the points of view of slum-dwellers, builders, facilitators, bureaucrats and politicians Presents a fresh overview of the housing sector in India based on the conditions of slum-dwellers in a typical, medium-sized fast-growing city, Raipur, in the state of Chhattisgarh Puts forward radical conclusions, practical solutions, and policy recommendations for a formal affordable housing market in India This will be a major intervention for scholars and researchers of urban sociology, built environment, public policy, development studies, economics, political economy, institutional economics, and urban studies as well as policymakers, planners and professionals in the urban development sector.