Presentation - The 21st Century Indian City

Fearing the Unruly City: When Politics and Economy contaminates Policy in ‘The Politics and Economics of Land’ in The Century Indian City: Developing and Agenda for Urbanization in India March 23rd to 25th 2011, New Delhi

21st

Solomon Benjamin National Institute for Advanced Study, Bangalore

Can we really ‘read’ the urban? Are its constituent elements and spatialization beyond the categories of 'Policy' Program? Can it really be mapped within the ‘Grid and the Law’ (Blomley), and to be framed within indicators of 'growth’

The Burdwan Pick-up Truck Via an India-China connection

Illustration of Ramannagaram's silk cocoon local economy (from BENJAMIN DELPHI 1998)

What looks like ‘ECONOMY’ shaped by institutional of multiple scalars building politics that re-works loans forced by multilateral agencies

Radical Economies

Disrupting singular forms of property in patenting: Not just ‘repair’ but Toil and Innovation!

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“Shanzhai”: A metaphor to describe bandits who oppose and evade the corrupted authority to perform deeds they see as justified. One example of such bandits is the story of ‘Outlaws of the Marsh’ (水浒传) Chow to the US Senate: “..So far, however, China has done little

to stop the proliferation of fake mobile phones, which are even advertised on late-night television infomercials with pitches like "one-fifth the price, but the same function and look," or patriotic appeals like "Buy shanzhai to show your love of our country…”

THE POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, AND INSTITUTIONAL SUBSTANCE is intrinsic to opacity and fluidity Diverse tenures that rework property surpluses from both an intensity of real estate, and goods that undisciplined by ‘the brand’

Transporting small batches of copper wire stock locally via Cycle Rickshaws

Landscapes of Transformation

Thinking ‘CONNECTIONS’ beyond the Nation State..

From ‘sampled filled Suitcases’ in 2005 to Briefcase - laptops & courier based transactions in 2010

From Romila Thapar: Control over the Empire’s ‘Margin’ / Territory: Remains problematic, unruly, (perhaps ‘Hydra-like’(?): The fear of ‘Guilds’, Corrupt traders…) Displacing the CentrePeriphery perspective: Thinking ‘CONNECTIONS’ beyond maps to specific places as Spaces: Gaffar market not Delhi; National Market not Bangalore; ‘Burma Bazzar’ not Chennai or Gangtok, Lamington Road not Mumbai..

Boundaries transgress those of the nation state and city-village, and of economies and spatialities that link locations in India and China

Local Government mobilization via land in the construction of a Political Space shaping an increasingly trans-national economy

WHAT ARE THESE URBAN REALMS?

Urban India’s “China Bazaars”; DougGaun’s anarchic landscapes; Guangzhou’s and Delhi’s ‘Urban Villages’ A TRIAD OF: LOCAL COUNCILS / ADMINISTRATIONS (opaque and fluid) LAND REWORKING PROPERTY SURPLUSES (tenure opacity) ECONOMY DISRUPTING THE ‘BRAND’ (reverse engineering, toil, mess, no patents, and beyond IPR) Delhi;

URBAN REALMS inherently opaque and fluid

The Digitized RTC

post - 1969.. pre-1969

1875-76

An ethnography especially of land documents reveals the diversity of claims, and histories via tenure forms

But to reading these as competing ‘Occupancy Urbanisms’ (OU is not just and emancipatory ‘resistance’! )

And competing rationales mobilized to occupy: ‘Planning’ norms, ‘customary’ forms … these emerge from contesting genealogies …

The Karnataka Mulageni Athava Volamulageni Genidararige Malikathvavannu Pradhana Maduva Vidheyaka, 2011 (giving ownership to tenants), are repugnant to two pieces of Central legislation - the Registration Act, 1908 and the Transfer of Property Act, 1857. ….

.Bills were rushed through in both the Houses of the legislature in January. With both the Houses in pandemonium most of the time, the ruckus came in handy for the government to get bills passed without debate. (DH) Mulageni and Muli Rights By Mohan Shenoy It will be easier to understand the Mula rights and Mulageni tenants, if we study the history of revenue administration in the region. When Tipu Sultan got killed in the Mysore War of 1799, the Kannada (Kanara) areas and Sonda kingdom, both situated north of Malabar and also Malabar situated north of Travancore kingdom on the West Coast of India, which areas were ruled by Tipu Sultan until then, came under the Administration of East India Company. The Company had its headquarters in Madras. Therefore all these lands were included in the Administrative block known as the Madras Presidency. ....Sir Thomas Moore, a British officer,

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FLUID IDENTIES Among Thigala-speaking Dalit Christian communities in outlying villages such as Begur, Byrathi, Mestripalya and Gottigere, Christmas practices are decidedly communitarian. ….

A few weeks before Christmas, a few Thigala families get together and buy a cow or a goat and feed it till it is plump. On Christmas, the animal is slaughtered and the meat distributed to everyone in the village, irrespective of religion. There are also community feasts.

Mogaveera.. (Pre 1896, but still continues as a broad based ethnic structuring) Paduhoige Gramsabha

Neereshwalya Gramsabha Bengare Mahajan Sabha

The Federated Structure Of Local Organizations In Tota Bengare, Mangalore

The opaque, fluid, Bureaucracy is embedded in older institutions..

(BMS) Post 1896 Shri Mahavishnu Seshasayana Bhajana Mandira (Temple group)

BMS Ferry Service

Konkani Kharvi Mahajanasabha (Ethnic association)

Mangalore –Bengare

Mangalore – Fishingwomen Coop Society Veera Bengare Fishermen Coop. Bharathi Society Sports Gymnasium Clubs Bengare Mahila Rani bale (16 Nos) Vidyarthi Samaja Funds Veera (Fishing co-op groups with small boats) Sangha (Women Hanuman 11 Nos. ’s Gymnasium (Student Group) group)

Is there a single and knowable ‘agenda’ aimed to inform and discipline urbanization via policy framed to deploy developmentalism?

Call in the GIS experts, the finance consultants, and most important, the ‘native informants’…

Does this inability to ‘read’ an opaque territorialisation also disrupt the activist progressive academic? And, their counter narrative to 'neoliberalization' that strive for 'authentic' public consultations, the 'Rights' framework, Participatory planning? Is the activist academic also a native informant?

A close consideration of the politics and economy of land pose their materiality beyond just a passive stage set for Meta forces to be acted upon

Such a conceptual and empirical move also moves a perspective beyond ‘policy’ to reveal it’s rather fragile underpinnings

Mega Territories: As assumed by Planners, Administrators, Global / World city experts, and Progressive Activists

An essential features is the unsettling of singular forms property in land and economy -- this may lie in at the centre of this displacement. This unruly - undisciplined urban, that refuses an easy capture by what Blomley terms as the 'violence of the Grid and Law'.

The Map’s "power" is often only Paper thin..

A different genealogy to Violence? Not just evictions but rather, the zeal to map, to generate and deploy the native informant, to make ‘transparent’,

All this driven by the implicit acceptance of, and anxiety of 'the lack of complete and proper implementation' of the ‘Policy and the Plan’.

This representational politics is sought to be disciplined by its projectification, and implicates both those concerned with making cities globally competitive, but also the activist academics whose narrative tacitly builds on those given categories.

A different genealogy to Violence:

The police suspect that Swamy had been searching for the records of three acres of land acquired from him, and that he was attempting to either steal or forge a copy of the documents. The advocate's land was acquired for aerospace and IT parks. The investigation also revealed that Swamy had visited the office several times in the past. He was involved in helping farmers, who had lost their lands to KIADB, to get compensation from the board.