India’s Contemporary Urban Conundrum

333 Pages·2018·9.365 MB·English

by  Sujata Patel (editor), Omita Goyal (editor)

India’s Contemporary Urban Conundrum
This book lays out the different and complex dimensions of
urbanisation in India. It brings together contributors with expertise
in fi elds as varied as demography, geography, economics, political
science, sociology, anthropology, architecture, planning and land use,
environmental sciences, creative writing, fi lmmaking and grassroots
activism to reflect on and examine India’s urban experience.
It discusses various dimensions of city life—how to defi ne the urban;
the conditions generating work, living and (in)security; the nature of
contemporary cities; the dilemmas of creating and executing urban
policy, planning and governance; and the issues concerning ecology
and environment. The volume also articulates and evaluates the way
Indian urbanism promotes and organises aspirations and utopias of
the people, whilst simultaneously endorsing disparities, depravities
and confl icts.
The volume includes interventions that shape contemporary
debates. Comprehensive, accessible and topical, it will be useful
to scholars and researchers of urban studies, urban sociology,
development studies, public policy, economics, political studies,
gender studies, city studies, planning and governance. It will also
interest practitioners, think tanks and NGOs working on urban
issues.
Sujata Patel is National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced
Study, Shimla, India. Earlier, she taught sociology at the Universities
of Hyderabad and Pune and SNDT Women’s University. Her
work is influenced by Marxism, feminism, spatial studies and
post-structuralism, and covers areas such as modernity and social
theory, history of sociology/social sciences, city-formation, social
movements, gender construction, reservation, quota politics and
caste and class formations in India. She is also an interlocutor of
teaching and learning practices, and has written on the challenges
that organise its reconstitution within classrooms and university
structures. She is the author of over sixty peer-reviewed papers/book
chapters and the Series Editor of Oxford India Studies in Contemporary
Society and Routledge’s Cities and the Urban Imperative . From 2010
to 2015, she edited the Sage Studies in International Sociology and
Current Sociology Monographs . She is also the author of The Making
of Industrial Relations (1997), editor of T he ISA Handbook of Diverse
Sociological Traditions (2010) and D oing Sociology in India, Genealogies,
Locations and Practices (2011) and is co-editor of fi ve books: B ombay:
Metaphor of Modern India (1995), B ombay: Mosaic of Modern Culture
(1995), Bombay and Mumbai: The City in Transition (2003), Thinking
Social Science in India (2002) and U rban Studies (2006). She has been
associated in various capacities with the International Sociological
Association and has been its first Vice-President for National
Associations (2002–6). She was the President of Indian Sociological
Society from January 2016 to December 2017.
Omita Goyal is presently Chief Editor of the IIC Quarterly , the
Journal of the India International Centre, New Delhi, India. She
started her career in the voluntary sector with the Indian Social
Institute, New Delhi, and then moved into academic publishing
where she has spent over 27 years. She worked at Sage Publications
India Private Limited for 20 years, leaving as General Manager,
and thereafter was a consultant for the World Bank, UNICEF,
UNDP, Voluntary Health Association of India, Centre for Women’s
Development Studies, WHO, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague,
and TERI. In 2005, she was invited by Taylor and Francis Group
to start a social science programme under the social science and
humanities imprint, Routledge, as Publishing Director. She has a
master’s degree in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics.
India’s
Contemporary
Urban
Conundrum
EDITED BY
SUJATA PATEL
AND OMITA GOYAL
India International Centre
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 selection and editorial matter, India International Centre, New Delhi, India; individual
chapters, the contributors
India International Centre

The right of India International Centre, New Delhi, India to be identifi ed as the author of
the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
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without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-138-32680-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-02399-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Berkeley
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
ix: List of Contributors
xvii: Foreword
KARAN SINGH
xix: Preface
OMITA GOYAL
1: Introduction:
Revisiting Urban India
SUJATA PATEL
I DEBATE ON DEFINING THE URBAN
17: Rurbanisation: An Alternate Development Paradigm
AMITABH KUNDU
28: Subaltern Urbanisation Revisited
PARTHA MUKHOPADHYAY, MARIE-HÉLÈNE ZÉRAH, ERIC DENIS
II CONDITIONS GENERATING WORK, LIVING AND (IN)SECURITY
45: Only ‘Good People’, Please:
Residential Segregation in Urbanising India
TRINA VITHAYATHIL, GAYATRI SINGH, KANHU C. PRADHAN
55: Inclusive Urbanisation: Informal Employment and Gender
JEEMOL UNNI
65: Resettlement, Mobility and Women’s Safety in Cities
RENU DESAI, VAISHALI PARMAR, DARSHINI MAHADEVIA
CONTENTS
77: Cities for Healthy People
DINESH MOHAN
III CITIES OF CONTEMPORARY INDIA
91: The Planned and the Unplanned:
Company Towns in India
ASHIMA SOOD, SHARADINI RATH
104: The Logistical City
RANABIR SAMADDAR
116: Cities and Smartness
PRASAD SHETTY, RUPALI GUPTE
128: Public Spaces and Places:
Gendered Intersectionalities in Indian Cities
SARASWATI RAJU, TANUSREE PAUL
139: Reading the City through Art
CHRISTIANE BROSIUS
IV URBAN POLICY, PLANNING AND GOVERNANCE
161: I ndia’s ‘Urban’ and the Policy Disconnect
AJAY K. MEHRA
172: Changing Trajectories of Urban Local Governance
AMITA BHIDE
184: Urban Development, Housing and ‘Slums’
SWASTIK HARISH
199: Engine Urbanism
HIMANSHU BURTE
ARTICLE
CONTENTS
210: Post-national Urbanism:
‘Ordinary’ People, Capital and the State
SANJAY SRIVASTAVA
V ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT AND WELL-BEING
PHOTO ESSAY
225: The Art of Evolution
HARSH RAMAN SINGH PAUL
250: Nurturing Urban Commons for Sustainable Urbanisation
SEEMA MUNDOLI, HITA UNNIKRISHNAN, HARINI NAGENDRA
263: The Unsustainable Urban Waste Economy:
What is to be Done?
BARBARA HARRISS-WHITE
279: The Canal and the City:
An Urban–Ecological Lens on Chennai’s Growth
KAREN COELHO
293: Cities: Changing the Metaphor to Quality of Life
VIKRAM SONI
IIC QUARTERLY
viii Illustrations by Pragnya Shankaran ([email protected])
CONTRIBUTORS
AMITA BHIDE is currently Professor and Dean, School of Habitat
Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). Bhide’s recent work
at the School of Habitat Studies has been on urban governance
reforms, and housing and land issues with a focus on small and
medium towns. Her recent publications include The Regularising
State and Comparing Informalities.
CHRISTIANE BROSIUS is Professor, Visual and Media Anthropology,
Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg
University. She has published widely on visual popular culture
and politics in India, on social spatialisation in Delhi, and on the
fi eld of art production in India and Nepal. She is co-founder of
www.tasveerghar.net. Currently, Brosius works on contemporary
art events and activism in Delhi and Kathmandu, on questions of
transcultural comparison and on urban disaster management in the
context of the Nepal earthquake in 2015.
HIMANSHU BURTE has practiced architecture, and written extensively
on the poetics and politics of the built environment since 1990. His
book, Space for Engagement: The Indian Artplace and a Habitational
Approach to Architecture, proposes an alternate conceptual framework
for architecture centred on the act of dwelling. A former Fulbright
Fellow, Burte teaches at School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of
Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.
KAREN COELHO is Assistant Professor, Madras Institute of
Development Studies (MIDS), based in Chennai. Coelho holds a
PhD in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from the University of Arizona,
Tucson. Her work critically explores urban governance
iixx