The Political Economy of the New Urban Development in India

Book excerpt: In the wake of the neoliberal turn in India, urban development is increasingly gaining importance. This is not only because of the significant rise in urban population in recent years but also because urban areas are seen as the main engines of growth. The creation of new urban spaces and the development of the existing ones are deemed as the means towards greater progress of the economy. Therefore, in the current context, the issue of developmental dynamics is not divorced from the urban question. Taking an historical-geographical-materialist approach, I seek to examine the political economy of the new urban development in India. I assert that urban-space making and restructuring processes in India are primarily guided by the necessity for unrestrained accumulation on a global scale mainly through dispossession, intensification of the commodification process and redistribution of surpluses. In this regard, the state-at multiple geographical scales-plays a crucial role in the formation and reproduction of the urban spaces. This, however, is a matter of contestation and is largely conditioned by the nature and course of class struggle. I further argue that accumulation by dispossession is crucial to understanding the city-making politics, however, it is not necessarily characterized by extra-economic coercion, as often claimed in the current literature. In fact, the mechanisms and strategies used for attaining accumulation by dispossession are contingent rather than necessary. Further, in the existing literature, the new middle class in India is presented as the main motivating force for the urban-space (re)making politics. It is also seen as the greatest beneficiary of neoliberal urban politics. I contend that the ascendancy of the new Indian middle class is largely a socio-economic construction that is also politically motivated. I argue that middle class politics too is much more contingent in nature than it is generally considered to be. Thus I call for a more nuanced look at the middle class politics based on spatio-temporal specificities. Additionally, this study asserts that the new urban development is not aimed at the betterment of the poor majority, as often gloriously portrayed in the mainstream arena. I demonstrate that the impacts on the poor working class are socio-spatially marginalizing, thus exacerbating the existing uneven (urban) geographies.