the brakes are put on efforts to support people in empowering themselves politically or economically unless these are complemented by helping people develop power within that allows them to claim recognition as fully human and as entitled to the same rights and respect as any other humans in the slums of mumbai poor people s federations claimed refined and defined certain ways of doing things in the spaces they already controlled for example by doing their own surveys of their living conditions they then used these to show donors and city officials and that their way of doing things worked appadurai