Phone: +91 80 2218 5000/ 5141 (ext) Address: Carol Upadhya Professor School of Social Sciences National Institute of Advanced Studies Indian Institute of Science Campus Bangalore 560012 India
Thomas Cowan. Subaltern Frontiers: Agrarian City-Making in Gurgaon (Cambridge University Press, 2... more Thomas Cowan. Subaltern Frontiers: Agrarian City-Making in Gurgaon (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 220 pp. $94.99. ISBN-13: 978-1-0091-0047-2 (E-book). Sushmita Pati. Properties of Rent: Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 320 pp. ₹995. ISBN-13: 978-1-0091-0047-2 (hard cover).
If the entanglements of real estate and finance capital are pivotal in ongoing urban transformati... more If the entanglements of real estate and finance capital are pivotal in ongoing urban transformations in cities of the global south, then a less visible but equally vital dimension is the process of land assembly on which residential and commercial real estate speculation and development are premised. This paper pries open the value chain of land assembly that underlies these transformations in a rapidly expanding peri-urban frontier of Bengaluru, India. Drawing on detailed interviews with land market intermediaries, operating across different scales, who were instrumental in assembling agricultural land for a large apartment complex, the paper shows how existing forms of social power and local knowledge are harnessed to create inter-scalar linkages that enable the creation and extraction of value in Indian real estate. It makes the case for understanding the economic and cultural work of intermediaries in animating land's value chain as ‘articulation work’. Finally, the paper as...
OVER the last two decades, Bangalore (now officially known as Bengaluru) has undergone not only a... more OVER the last two decades, Bangalore (now officially known as Bengaluru) has undergone not only a rapid spatial and demographic expansion but also far-reaching social, economic and environmental changes. From all the talk about Bangalore as the epicentre of India’s IT industry with its emergent ‘world-class’ infrastructure, one could conjure in the mind’s eye a digitally enabled city that is hyper efficient, generating high revenues and meeting the needs of the world’s most savvy professionals. In reality, Bangalore’s municipal government is bankrupt, the city and its rural periphery are suffering from extreme drought and when it does rain, the city’s streets flood (a new phenomenon) – leading many people to question the recent pattern of unbridled urban development and how the city has been planned (or not). Slums continue to expand (but the same cannot be said of the incomes of the poor), unbearable road congestion has produced air pollution almost as bad as Delhi’s, and the water...
The article explores the cultural politics of regionalism in Coastal Andhra following the bifurca... more The article explores the cultural politics of regionalism in Coastal Andhra following the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh through a focus on the planning of a new capital city, Amaravati. The envisioned city embodies an imagination of the state’s future development, in which older signifiers of Andhra identity are sutured with global aspirations. Viewing Amaravati as a symbolic space where Andhra is being reconstituted, the article traces the reterritorialization of the region by a deterritorialized provincial elite through return flows of capital and state-led revitalization of regional identity. While the Amaravati plan reflects broader trends of neoliberal urbanization in India, it is also deeply embedded in regional development aspirations and contestations.
Neoliberalism, Urbanization and Aspirations in Contemporary India
This chapter examines the market-based routes through which agrarian land in India is transformed... more This chapter examines the market-based routes through which agrarian land in India is transformed into real estate—especially on the peripheries of expanding metropolitan cities and regional towns. As agrarian land becomes a key site of speculative accumulation for regional, national, and transnational finance capital, as well as for urban middle class and affluent households, the increasing flow of money into rural land markets produces a pattern of ‘empty urbanization’, in which alienated and converted land often remains unused and unoccupied. This phenomenon reflects the increasing financialization of land in the post-liberalization period.
SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd eBooks, Mar 7, 2014
The Indian software outsourcing industry has grown rapidly over the last decade or two, and has p... more The Indian software outsourcing industry has grown rapidly over the last decade or two, and has produced a fairly large population of 'information technology (IT) professionals' who can be said to constitute a new and socially significant segment of the 'new middle classes' in ...
Thomas Cowan. Subaltern Frontiers: Agrarian City-Making in Gurgaon (Cambridge University Press, 2... more Thomas Cowan. Subaltern Frontiers: Agrarian City-Making in Gurgaon (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 220 pp. $94.99. ISBN-13: 978-1-0091-0047-2 (E-book). Sushmita Pati. Properties of Rent: Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 320 pp. ₹995. ISBN-13: 978-1-0091-0047-2 (hard cover).
If the entanglements of real estate and finance capital are pivotal in ongoing urban transformati... more If the entanglements of real estate and finance capital are pivotal in ongoing urban transformations in cities of the global south, then a less visible but equally vital dimension is the process of land assembly on which residential and commercial real estate speculation and development are premised. This paper pries open the value chain of land assembly that underlies these transformations in a rapidly expanding peri-urban frontier of Bengaluru, India. Drawing on detailed interviews with land market intermediaries, operating across different scales, who were instrumental in assembling agricultural land for a large apartment complex, the paper shows how existing forms of social power and local knowledge are harnessed to create inter-scalar linkages that enable the creation and extraction of value in Indian real estate. It makes the case for understanding the economic and cultural work of intermediaries in animating land's value chain as ‘articulation work’. Finally, the paper as...
OVER the last two decades, Bangalore (now officially known as Bengaluru) has undergone not only a... more OVER the last two decades, Bangalore (now officially known as Bengaluru) has undergone not only a rapid spatial and demographic expansion but also far-reaching social, economic and environmental changes. From all the talk about Bangalore as the epicentre of India’s IT industry with its emergent ‘world-class’ infrastructure, one could conjure in the mind’s eye a digitally enabled city that is hyper efficient, generating high revenues and meeting the needs of the world’s most savvy professionals. In reality, Bangalore’s municipal government is bankrupt, the city and its rural periphery are suffering from extreme drought and when it does rain, the city’s streets flood (a new phenomenon) – leading many people to question the recent pattern of unbridled urban development and how the city has been planned (or not). Slums continue to expand (but the same cannot be said of the incomes of the poor), unbearable road congestion has produced air pollution almost as bad as Delhi’s, and the water...
The article explores the cultural politics of regionalism in Coastal Andhra following the bifurca... more The article explores the cultural politics of regionalism in Coastal Andhra following the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh through a focus on the planning of a new capital city, Amaravati. The envisioned city embodies an imagination of the state’s future development, in which older signifiers of Andhra identity are sutured with global aspirations. Viewing Amaravati as a symbolic space where Andhra is being reconstituted, the article traces the reterritorialization of the region by a deterritorialized provincial elite through return flows of capital and state-led revitalization of regional identity. While the Amaravati plan reflects broader trends of neoliberal urbanization in India, it is also deeply embedded in regional development aspirations and contestations.
Neoliberalism, Urbanization and Aspirations in Contemporary India
This chapter examines the market-based routes through which agrarian land in India is transformed... more This chapter examines the market-based routes through which agrarian land in India is transformed into real estate—especially on the peripheries of expanding metropolitan cities and regional towns. As agrarian land becomes a key site of speculative accumulation for regional, national, and transnational finance capital, as well as for urban middle class and affluent households, the increasing flow of money into rural land markets produces a pattern of ‘empty urbanization’, in which alienated and converted land often remains unused and unoccupied. This phenomenon reflects the increasing financialization of land in the post-liberalization period.
SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd eBooks, Mar 7, 2014
The Indian software outsourcing industry has grown rapidly over the last decade or two, and has p... more The Indian software outsourcing industry has grown rapidly over the last decade or two, and has produced a fairly large population of 'information technology (IT) professionals' who can be said to constitute a new and socially significant segment of the 'new middle classes' in ...
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