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patterns that are restricted to the developed as against the underdeveloped

countries? How would we assess the Indian urban experience in this context?

What is the relationship between the urban experience and modernity? If

urbanity is entwined with modernity does it also imply a mentality, a vision,

and a way of thinking distinctly different from the pre-modern? Does the pre-modern ebb out once the modern emerges? Or does the pre-modern get

reformulated and yet retain a kind of presence? Is there variance in the way the

pre-modern and modern connect with each other and is this variance related to

developed versus underdeveloped regions? Additionally, can one distinguish

between the urban (and thus modern) and non-urban (pre-modern) in any

given society? Does the rural represent the traditional and the urban the

modern? Or are they part of the same continuum?

Another line of argument examines the way colonial exploitation has

fashioned a new process of urbanization together with a new urban form. Is

post colonialism continuing this exploitative relationship? How does the

relationship between core and periphery construct urban processes and

urbanity in different regions and countries in the South and between them? To

what extent does indigenous processes and features such as the role played by

the nation-state and its policies determine the urban experience? What is its

particular manifestation in India?

Additionally, sociologists have distinguished between early and late (post-

modern) societies. How does post modernity in the form of globalisation and

global city-region formations impact on city structures in underdeveloped

countries like India? How does new forms of cultural consumption definecities? What impact does these changes have on urban processes and on cities

in the underdeveloped regions and more particularly in India? Have any of the

cities in India become a global city?

Most theorists now recognize that unlike regions in Europe, North America

Japan, and Australia, those in the underdeveloped regions have seen rapid

urbanization; for example, the 2001 census informs us that 43.9 per cent of

Tamil Nadus, 42.4 per cent of Maharashtras and 37.4 per cent of Gujarats

population is urban. Also the same census suggests that Maharashtra leads

with 41 million persons of its population being urban which is 14 percent of

the total population of the country [Census of India 2001]. Additionally, of the39 cities in the world which has registered a population over five million, 30

are from the underdeveloped countries. The Indian cities in this list are

Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, Banglore, Chennai and Hyderabad. Mumbais

population at present is second only to Shanghai and would soon outstrip it

and emerge as the biggest city in the world [Montgomery 2003]. Why is there

such rapid urbanisation in recent times? What is the relationship between the

national economy, national policies and urbanization in context of global

growth?

What is the character of our cities? What kind of distinct structures and

relationships do these promote? What are the attributes of inequalities and

social exclusions in towns, metropolises and mega cities? How do urban

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structures and forms characteristic of pre capitalist cities of India reorganize

itself as capitalist relations enter into these cities? In what way are

contemporary structure and forms related to pre-capitalist attributes of

inequality such as caste? What role does religion and ethnicity play in Indian

cities today? Also how are these inequalities and exclusions, both pre capitalist

and capitalist, related to the way space is organized in cities? How does spaceconstruct identities? What is the relationship between spatial segregation and

identity formation? Are these identities embedded and part of pre-capitalist

structures? Or do they resonate the old in a new form? What forms of

collective action takes place in cities? Why is it that cities have been a theatre

of communal riots in India? How are these processes related to local

governance institutions?

New Urban Sociology

In 1976, Castells asked a polemical yet a fundamental question: is there an urban

sociology, and answered in the negative. His critique was against the US model of

concentric circles as formulated by Burgess, constructed around the industrial city of

the late nineteenth and early twentieth century wherein low-income neighbourhoods

were woven into manufacturing districts and adjacent to commercial cores and

middle-income neighbourhoods. Historically, these middle-income groups moved to

the periphery after World War II and were joined by professional and white-collar

middle class. As a result of this pattern of migration, sociologists constructed a proto-

typical metropolis of central city ringed by suburban enclaves. In time, the

commercial core became the centre and they flourished but when manufacturing

declined in the core, cities perished and hollowed out.

During the same time, Louis Wirth drawing from George Simmel was elaborating the

theory of urbanism as a way life, wherein he analysed the impact of concentration of

numbers on societys culture, such as size, density, and heterogeneity. Wirth

suggested that in the cities we see an emergence of a distinct culture characterized by

the breakdown of family ties, individualism and competitiveness, diversity of social

commitment, transition from primary to secondary relations, absence of direct social

control, anonymity, isolation, utilitarianism, role segmentation and anomie.

Castells (Ibid.) critique of urban sociology was based on the disciplines dependence

on these two models for assessing the urban experience and he critiqued its theoreticaland methodological limitations. The concentric circle model was based on the social

integration paradigm, which started and ended up by giving ecological explanations to

processes, which were economic, social and cultural. How can one accept that the

pattern of movement and settlement of groups is given and that changes in residential

and industrial land use take place because of changes in taste and style of individuals

and firms? Communities, neighbourhoods or suburbs cannot be perceived as self-

adjusting organisms with classes, ethnic or racial groups competing over space and

passing through phases of invasion, domination and succession. The problem

according to Castells was that Burgess concentric zone theory examined the specific

processes of urban growth in one city, Chicago and made it a universal model.


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Wirths theorizations, he contended, did not have the specificity of the urban as an

object of investigation, for again, disorganization, disintegration and individualism

were not necessarily related to city life as these happen in all societies and in all

historical moments. This theory treated urbanism and the city as independent

explanatory variable. Castells contended urban culture couldnt be reduced to the

culture of one industrial society.

American urban sociologists, according to Castells did not realise that what they were

studying were the processes of capitalist industrialization, the emergence of market

economy and the processes of rationalization of modern society. Instead they were

reducing these processes to a culturist representation (in case of Wirth) or an

ecological explanation (in case of the concentric model). He objected to the fact that

urban sociology had become dependent on urbanism and urbanization as two

concepts, which reflect the experience of one city-Chicago, which was not applicable

even to the cities of Europe. Both these approaches Castells contends did not have an

explicit urban theoretical object and were rather a theory of social structure. What

then is the critical element in constructing a theory for the urban experience?

Before answering this question, it is imperative to look at the work of David Harvey

(1985) who also wrote and published his major theoretical findings at the same time

as Castells. David Harvey, a geographer-turned-political economist theorized on two

aspects of the urban experience, the production of space and its relation to rights of

people who live in the city. He focused on the process of urbanization and he

understood it as a process of capital accumulation. Drawing on Henri Lefebvres work

(Kofman and Lebas 1996 and Shields 1999), he reframed Marxist theory of capitalist

accumulation and gave it a significantly new direction. Harvey argues that land is a

commodity and that it has peculiar qualities. It is spatially fixed, it is necessary to

human life, and is relatively permanent. Land thus is essential to capital accumulation

and circulation, as it is to human life.

Harvey starts off his discussion on the urban experience by debating on the Marxist

conception of capitalist accumulation. He argues that capitalist accumulation goes

through three circuits. The first circuit concerns the production of commodities within

manufacturing and ultimately gives way to overproduction of goods. Capital thus

moves to the second circuit where it gets invested in fixed capital such as

infrastructure, housing, and construction of offices, leading to the growth of a town or

a city. In the process, land is transformed into built environment, both for production

and consumption and becomes thus a constituent of the process of accumulation ofcapital. The state plays a pivotal role in mediating the flows of capital from primary to

secondary circuit through the creation of financial tools and policies such as housing

loans and mortgage facilities. As in the first circuit after some time, there is over

investment in the secondary circuit due to the tendency of capitalists to under invest in

fixed capital (built environment) leading to its flow in the tertiary circuit. This

involves investment in scientific knowledge and technological advancements to

reproduce labour power.

Harvey (1985) explains his theory on the interface between urban restructuring and

economic restructuring in his empirical writings that explore the growth of two cities:

Paris and Baltimore. In his texts he traces how the citys growth was associated withchanging investment strategies as capital moved from manufacturing to land


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development. Harvey shows when capital is invested in the built environment, new

opportunities for capital accumulation in the primary circuit open up again, rendering

the existing built environment no longer as efficient for capital accumulation. As a

result the built environment concerned is abandoned or downgraded and capital

moves elsewhere to restore profitability. Capital accumulation in the built

environment does not resolve the crisis of capital accumulation that takes place at thefirst stage but it causes further crises.

How can one intervene in this process of capital accumulation? Harveys answer is

class conflict-the organisation of social and political struggles to fix the role of

accumulation (1987; 2000). Because the urban process under capitalism is created in

and through the interaction of capital accumulation and class struggle against the

ruling groups that include landlords and developers, only struggles by social groups

threatened by the removal of capital can help prevent capital flight and ensure the

survival of an urban infrastructure.

While for Harvey, production of space defines the theoretical object of urban studies,for Castells the key concept is society more specifically advanced capitalist society

wherein collective consumption (housing, transportation, communication) is a key

element defining that system. Urban social movements organise themselves for

collective consumption and through that fashion define space. The Chicago

theorists, according to Castells, had also discussed space but they reduced it to a

social unit. On the other hand, for Castells, space is and has a material element. It is

here that human activity is exercised, and is in turn organised in a particular form

through the technico-social complex of which it is part. Space, he argues, should be

considered in the web of social structures, as an element of reality that is embedded in

social processes. For Castells the spatial structure and urban system are the same, and

can be used interchangeably to describe the particular way in which the basicelements of the social structure are spatially structured and articulated.

Like Harvey, Castells (1977) argues that the state plays a critical and central role in

the organisation of the four spheres that define advanced capitalist society, i.e.,

production, consumption, exchange and politics. The state mediates between the

various elements that constitute the urban system and engages in dialectical

relationships with capitalist interests, elite groups, its own employees and the

masses. Since the city is the spatial location of capitalist development, it is the city,

and hence space, that reflects the workings and outcomes of this relationship. Urban

crisis occurs as a result of state failure to manage resources of and for collective

consumption. Urban social movements articulate the crisis of the system, as city isthe critical element of the means of production of consumption.

It is in this context that Castells suggests that the urban experience be perceived in a

holistic manner, that is, it needs to encompass aspects taken from all fields that have

written on the urban. There is a need for urban sociology to reinvent itself by

enlarging its vision, incorporating perceptions and perspectives from different

branches of knowledge and ultimately reorganizing its epistemic principles in order to

become a science of society, that is, a genuine social science. In this way for Castells,

urban sociology can create for itself its own theoretical object , which while using an

interdisciplinary perspective studies the processes and structures of advanced

capitalist societies.


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One of the major contributions by Castells and Harvey is their insistence that just as

time is a critical element in formulating theories regarding society, space is as much a

central element. Space is not neutral; rather it is embedded in social relations. It is in

perennial dialectical relation with other social forces. There are two ways that these

theorists have theorized space, the first aspect relates to how the economy, or more

specifically capitalism constructs space and secondly the way space in turn structuresthe economy and society and thus becomes a source of differentiation between and

within settlements.

Additionally both insist that contemporary society is intimately connected to spatial

dimensions and therefore theorizing the urban implies theorizing contemporary

advanced capitalist society. The two concepts that they devised, i.e. the space of flows

[Castells, 1989] and time-space compression [Harvey, 1990] suggest that their intent

was to contribute to contemporary social theory. Ultimately in their canvas, urban

sociology becomes a lens through which modern society is conceived. Instead of

being a sub-discipline of sociology, it is and becomes a discipline in itself. Both of

these contributions offer a major challenge to sociologists studying the urbanexperience in India and simultaneously raise the problem whether such an urban

sociology can frame the contours of contemporary sociological theory of Indian social

experience.

In the last three decades since Castells polemically questioned the theoretical and

epistemological difficulties, the field called urban studies or new urban sociology,

has grown enormously and today Castells [Susser, 2000] is more positive and hopeful

that new urban sociology in the form of urban studies has already emerged.

Urbanologists have embraced seemingly unrelated subjects such as ecology,

architecture, art and aesthetics, with geography, economics, politics, and history to

push the disciplinary boundaries that address urban issues.

The Contours of Urban Studies

Today we have a clearer appraisal of the contours of urban studies or new urban

sociology. Recently, following the seminal work of Pickvance (1976) Lebas (1982)

and Saunders (1981), Kleniewski (2005), Low (2002), Savage and Ward (1993),

Walton (2000), and Zukin (1980) has summarised the major trends in this field.

Developing the perspective introduced by both Castells and Harvey and incorporating

new research completed by contemporary scholars, they argue that the best and the

most appropriate way to study the urban phenomenon is through the perspective of

political economy.

They elaborate four processes that define and constitute the urban. These are, a) the

movement, concentration and extension of capital over space and time-processes that

creates urban forms, towns and cities; b) the contradiction between forces of

production and relations of production-processes that creates social conflicts and leads

to the growth of social movements within the urban arena; c) the way power and

ideology are arranged in and through the state and the way the state organises these in

order to intervene in the process of spatial reorganisation, d) the way cultural

representations are given meaning within the above dynamics. Urban studies, these

authors argue, analyses simultaneously the mode of production as it articulates in

space, the structures and dynamics of power relations and assessment of cultural


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processes. Thus, urban studies, they posit, is necessarily interdisciplinary, historical

and comparative.

The study of capital formation in space cannot be attempted from one disciplinary

gaze. It needs to be culled from more than one discipline. Thus interdisciplinarity is a

critical and crucial element of urban studies. For example, the political processes that produce specific forms of capital accumulation on space warrant analytical

perspectives from political sciences as well as economics. The resultant spatial forms

and social organizations require the explanatory powers of sociological theories,

whereas the cultural patterns, social movements and belief systems that give meanings

to these processes necessitate the anthropological interpretative lenses. In addition to

the above, equally pertinent is the need to understand perspectives from geography,

architecture, environmental sciences, and urban planning and as well the humanities

and cultural studies. To do urban studies is to be interdisciplinary.

The second major contour of urban studies concerns history. By opening up the

ground for inquiries about processes of how capital and space are interconnected inspecific contexts, urbanologists investigate the history of urbanization and

industrialization rather than merely document the successive emergence of urban

forms (e.g. the change from the pre-industrial to the industrial city, or the

reproduction of metropolitan urban forms in colonial and post-colonial capitals

[Zukin as cited in Walton 2000:300]. Historical explanations have allowed us to

highlight how urbanization and industrialisation have not been universally

coterminous not only in the colonised worlds but also in North America and the rest

of Europe. As was previously mentioned, the model of the evolution of Chicago city

did not meet the realities of other cities in the west. The experiences of cities in other

regions of the world are even further apart. Urban studies thus have opened up the

field of intellectual interest to study individual cities historically across the last two

hundred years.

History and interdisciplinarity provide a wider scope to the study of the

interconnections of capital and space. Thereby these introduce a comparative

perspective for urban studies. To do comparison implies that analysis need be

empirically grounded. For instance, in assessing the differences between urban forms

and patterns of their evolution, there is a need to compare empirically relative

densities of cities, the stage of development of their means of communication and

transportation. These comparisons can be then extended over different urban systems

regionally and nationally. This would yield an understanding of the universals and thespecifics of the processes of spatial concentration and urbanisation.

These contours have set the stage for the development within contemporary urban

studies of five themes. These are: inequalities-the nature and extent of their

prevalence in cities and their causes and consequences; the study of global cities,

sometimes also called world cities, and their relationship to globalisation;

contemporary forms of urbanism-the nature of urban culture and its relation to

modernity and post modernity; the role of the state in promoting urbanisation and the

nature of social movements around ethnicity and identity. Lastly, a significant section

of work is done on the urban phenomenon in the non-advanced capitalist regions-the

South and asks the question what is its nature and characteristics of cities in the South


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and their relationship to the capitalist system. It is to the last theme that we now turn

to.

Urban Studies in the South

After the Second World War scholars who started studying the South initially used

the evolutionary approach to study the urban phenomenon. [Gugler 1996;1997] Laterin the seventies with the growth of the dependency approach a new perspective was

introduced in the field of urban studies-that of uneven development and world system

theory. Drawing on the above perspective, these theories highlighted the historic

networks of subordination and domination between advanced (capitalist) and less

advanced (dependent) countries and their respective political economies, thereby

inaugurating a paradigm shift in understanding the linkage between capitalist

developments, the state, cultural representations, space and forms of urbanisation.

[King 1990a; McGee 1969; Safa 1982; Smith 1996].

Theorists started by making a critique of the evolutionary and modernization

approach. Critiques expanded to question the universal modernity paradigm and fourmain lines of inquiry were elaborated. The first concerned the ahistoricity of such

paradigm and the image portrayed of a uniform trajectory that failed to deal with the

historically specific spatial forms. The second was a critique of the ecological

perspective as imposed on the Southern cities, which could not explain the way

uneven development, and inequalities were sustained. The third took issue with how

evolutionary theories, which did not and could not account for human agency or of

social conflicts. Lastly there were contentions over how such theories were over-

deterministic in explaining the character of places and cities rather than deriving

explanations from the processes of uneven development themselves.

These developments were reflected in a number works. For example, McGee (1969)

and later McGee, T. and Armstrong W. (1985) critiqued the theory that urbanization

starts with early industrialization when people migrate from rural to urban areas

proceeding with industrial expansion and proportionate increase of urban population.

He also critiqued those theorists that highlighted the decline in the process of

urbanization by means of the model that uses demographic and economic aspects of

understanding city growth. For example, he showed that unlike cities in the North

which showed a phase of relative decentralization of population and economic

activities and leads to absolute decentralization as people move out of the center of

cities, cities in the south would not at all experience this process in a similar manner.

Rather, they experience hyper-urbanization and pseudo-urbanization, that is anincrease of population in urban areas without the expansion of manufacturing

activities to absorb this increase.

Safa (1982) has argued that capitalist penetration shapes the process of urbanization in

the South in several distinctive ways. She discusses four aspects. These are the

dependent nature of capitalist development in the third world; an assessment of the

historical processes of integration of these regions within the world market; the nature

of class structure and especially the role played by the elite in organising capitalist

accumulation; and the role of the state in orchestrating these aspects. She further

explicates the processes by which patterns of urbanisation emerge. On one hand there

is disintegration of the rural subsistence sector and on the other there is the growth ofand increasing reliance on the urban informal economy. Following the work already


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done by Keith Hart (1973) and others, she argues that the urban informal sector is not

distinct, rather it is integrated with the formal sector. These processes result in

increasing inequalities and thereby creating a new stratification system within cities.

Additionally, the experience of colonialism has not allowed an autonomous state to

evolve and dependent capitalism has further weakened this possibility. The state in

some regions has not played an active role in providing public services andinfrastructure and wherever it is has it has resulted in increasing inequalities.

Collective action against the state and for access to the services such as housing, jobs,

transport and education has also been uneven.

Castells (1977, 1983) has entered into this debate by extending the dependency

approach to study cities in the South and combining with it, some of his earlier

concepts of collective consumption and social movements. He argued that as a result

of dependent capitalism, countries vary in regard to their urban systems, regimes of

accumulation and surplus extraction, social organizations and conflicts, as well as the

nature and extent of collective action. He refers to social movements emerging as a

result of urban contradictions, namely those related to the production, distributionand management of the collective consumption of goods and services and states that

the urban crisis is directly linked to the phenomenon of marginality.

Additionally, Castells (1983) had argued that dependent capitalism has implications

on the occupational structure of cities-characterized by a large chunk of the

population working in the informal sector and living in squatter settlements. These

urban poor are the new subjects of the process of social change representing a new

ideology and politics. He perceives the mobilisation of these urban poor as

representing a new class conflict replacing the traditional opposition between the

bourgeoisie and the working class.

Henceforth with these contributions, the study of urbanization, urbanism and cities

has taken a decisive turn. The theory of uneven development has influenced the

discussions, debate and scholarship of urbanization in the South. This is particularly

true in the last decade when globalisation has reorganized the world economy and

organically reconnected it in new ways. The World city and Global city paradigms

had already established that cities in the west were increasingly playing a pivotal role

in the international economy as centres of commerce, sites of production and bases for

specialized economic activities [Friedman and Wolff 1982; Sassen 1991] This line of

argument has now been extended to study cities in the south which are now

functionally interconnected in a hierarchy of the global economy and internationaldivision of labour [Gugler 2004; King 1990a; Smith 2001].

Based on the above-mentioned discussions concerning the study of the urban in the

north and the south, we can discern the following as themes that need to be

incorporated within urban studies.

Uneven Development and Urbanization

Processes of urbanization and counter-urbanization refer to the stages of growth and

decline of the demographic and economic aspects of cities. Urbanization starts with

early industrialization when people migrate from rural to urban areas. It proceeds with

industrial expansion and the proportion of urban population increases. A state ofrelative centralization occurs when cities stretch over their boundaries and begin to


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develop suburbs. The latter leads to relative decentralization of population and

economic activities and leads to absolute decentralization as people move out of the

center of cities, which in turn become more specialized in tertiary activities. The final

stage is that of ruralization and the complete deindustrialization of urban areas. [Safa,

1982].

The theme integrates the notion of uneven development and urbanization to the world

system approach. In this perspective cities are seen as occupying specific spaces in the

world economic system organized in terms of an international division of labour that

places nation states and cities on a core periphery continuum. Under this perspective

the core defines cities in the underdeveloped areas in terms of economic processes,

organization of production and nation state policies. This dependence is reconstructed

within nation states and regions in which these peripheral cities are located in a

cascading unevenness created as every core city integrates a periphery.

This approach has mainly been used to study Latin American cities where the rate of

urbanization, as defined by the proportion of population is high and equals that ofEurope-75 per cent. Despite this, Latin America does not compare well with Europe

in terms of urban infrastructure, employment and living standards. Additionally Latin

American cities are characterized by high inequalities (unlike Europe) with a high

proportion of its population living in squatter settlements where drugs, prostitution

and other illegal activities flourish and where there is high incidence of crime and

violence. Discussing these processes, urbanologists studying Latin American cities

had initially highlighted external constraints as a variable leading to economic and

cultural dependence. [Safa, 1982].

The urban economy including its infrastructure was dependent on imperial needs.

Profits from industries were exported to the core countries; most studies highlighted

the dependent role played by the indigenous bourgeoisie. Increasingly however, social

scientists have started discussing urbanisation as a two way process in which a critical

role is played by nation state and its policies on one hand and by the ruling elite on the

other. (after all they are the ones who make the choices regarding capital

accumulation) Thus the focus of the research now is towards the dynamics of

domination-subordination in cities and the class conflicts.

How does one translate these concerns to encapsulate the Indian experience?

Contemporary cities in India, such as Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and later Delhi grew

directly out of needs of the colonial economy. How can we use this theory to help usunderstand the dynamics of these cities? Additionally India has had a long history of

pre capitalist urban growth, such as religious centres, administrative headquarters and

market towns. How have the structures of these towns and cities enveloped

themselves in the new system?

Another issue that has been discussed by the Latin American theorists is that of urban

primacy. Why is it that urbanization in Latin America is not spread over regions and

gets concentrated in big cities? (In 2000, 32 per cent of Latin American lived in cities

with at least 1 million residents. By 2015, the percentage will increase to 38.

[Montegomery, 2003]. What is the relationship of urban primacy with the core

regions of the world? This trend is now visible also in India where rapid urbanizationis leading to medium sized towns becoming metropolis. Today in India there are 35


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cities with more than 1 million population. To what extent is this trend related to

regional unevenness and over concentration of infrastructure in big cities? To what

extent is it related to commercialisation of agriculture? Do town and cities grow

because of underdevelopment? How are these trends also related to national and

State/provincial policies? Can and do national policies counter such uneven

development?

Global City, Information City and Flexible Accumulation

Recently, a battery of conceptual tools has evolved to reflect on the nature of

contemporary cities and urbanisation in the developed world. These concepts discuss

spatial dispersal of economic activities and global integration that are characteristic of

the new regime of accumulation and the new global division of labor triggered by

new information oriented technologies. This literature encompasses the debate

regarding the definition of cities geared by globalisation, (does one call them world

city, global city, city-region or mega city?) and as well recent work done by Castellson new information city and by Harvey on flexible accumulation.

In the early seventies Friedmann and Wolff (1982) borrowed Patrick Geddess

concept of world city to initiate a discussion on those cities that have increased in

size as they become centers of new global economy. Sassen (1991) calls these cities,

such as, New York, London and Tokyo, global cities. These cities act as command

and control centers for the new global economy. Both Friedmann and Wolff (1982),

Sassen (1991), and earlier Hall (1966) argue that these cities are distinct because they

have become nodes for the operation of the global regime and a critical foci for a

new regime of accumulation. In these cities, one can find transnational corporate

headquarters, business services such as international finance, transnational institutions

other than those mentioned above, as well as telecommunications and information

processing. Their social organization and spatial forms expand or contract as the latter

intervenes in the organization of economies of scale. The combination of spatial

dispersal and global integration, which is the characteristic of the new regime of

accumulation, creates new strategic roles for these major cities as well as other cities,

which link themselves to these in terms of a hierarchy of functional specialization.

Scott (2001) calls this formation region-city.[See alternative definition of region by

Massey et al., 1994].

Recently Castells in a three volume work (1989;1996;1997) argued that contemporarysociety has seen a complete change as a result of the growth of a new age, i.e. the

Information Age. He argues that by the middle of this century we will see a new kind

of urbanization spread over the entire world, functionally integrated and socially

differentiated and multi-cantered. This is possible because of telecommunications,

which allow both spatial concentration and decentralization leading to new

geographies of networks and nodes within and between the countries in the world, and

between and within metropolitan areas. This world is dominated by a dual system,

one that includes those who enter the transnational networks and excludes others

spatially creating extreme inequalities as communication patterns breakdown between

individual and cultures and extreme segregation fuels criminal culture and violence. A

weak state is the outcome, weak because it does not invest in collective consumptionand thus caters to its own population but is strong because it is extensively networked


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with other governments, inter-governmental and even NGO organizations. In this

context, urban social movements develop on two lines- both of which Castells

considers as defensive strategies. The first, attempts to defend the community, and

its place so that it has access to minimum of services. These sometimes become

identity movements and the second is the environmental movement, which while

discussing quality of life, most often than not defends one community.

David Harvey (1987) has also reflected on contemporary globalisation. He

distinguishes between Fordist (mass assembly line, mass political organisation and

welfare state interventions) and post Fordist mode of flexible capital accumulation

(the pursuit of niche markets, decentralisation coupled with spatial dispersal of

production, withdrawal of the nation-state from interventionist policies coupled with

deregulation and privatisation). Post Fordism triggers shrinking of markets,

unemployment, rapid shifts in spatial constraints, and global division of labour,

capital realignment, and technological and financial reorganization. These had spatial

implications; physical infrastructures in core cities becoming devalued. Cities are now

pushed to compete for a) position in the international division of labour, b) controland command functions, c) position as centres of consumption, and d) for

governmental redistribution.

How do we apply these ideas and relate them to cities in the underdeveloped region?

To what extent has globalisation impacted the economies of underdeveloped countries

and have these changes affected the structure of cities in India? Have Indian cities

become global cities or have they become part of the functional hierarchy of cities?

What kind of uneven development and dependencies does this relationship structures?

Harris (1995) has suggested that this trend is best represented by Bombay in India and

that it has become a global city. On the other hand, Patel (2003; 2004) has argued that

globalization has not changed the citys economy and spatial structure in the way it

has in global cities of the developed countries. Like other cities in India, Mumbais

economy remains dependent on the informal sector. This informal sector combines

technologies that range from primitive and labour intensive to advanced. In turn this

asymmetrical integration of technologies creates enclaves of uneven infrastructural

and built environment across the city.

Exclusions and Inequalities in Urban Arenas

What is the structure of cities? What is the nature of inequality in these cities? Sassen

(1991) argues that a new stratification system has developed in global cities. While

the manufacturing city saw the growth of a pyramidal stratification system with asmall elite class, a large middle class and still larger blue-collared class, in the global

cities the hourglass structure has evolved. Globalisation has opened up opportunities

to the skilled and they have become a mobile group. But this process has also

squeezed the middle class downwards and thus increased the number of those who are

at the bottom. Wilsons (1997) research on Chicago suggests that those who are in the

bottom find themselves trapped in that world as they are excluded not only in terms of

employment but also in terms of housing and other services. As most of those in the

bottom are African Americans, material exclusion has become associated with racial

and other divisions such as gender. [Massey, 1994]

Recent work on European cities has confirmed this trend. These studies have arguedthat immigrant ethnic and religious groups face exclusions from employment together


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with other services including state welfare programmes, as the state has started

withdrawing from the social sector. Additionally some communities such as migrants

also face exclusions in terms of political rights, such as right to vote. In these studies

inequalities are being redefined as exclusions to portray the multi-dimensionality of

experiences faced by those at the bottom. This concept now incorporates five

dimensions of inequalities. These dimensions concern livelihoods (e.g. income andsecure jobs), access to services (land, housing, education, waste disposal etc.), group

rights (e.g. rights to practice ethnic, caste, and community customs etc.), citizenship

rights (as in legal rights and freedom of expression), and moral rights (right to

security, community and humanity).

How do we assess the nature of stratification in Indian cities? Cities that grew in the

colonial period in India had a developed manufacturing base. Did a pyramidical

stratification system develop in these cities? What is the situation now after

manufacturing has declined? How does the combination of formal and informal

sectors structure stratification? Additionally, following from the above, does this

stratification system implicate itself in the entire society? If so what role does caste,ethnic and religious affiliations play in the structuring of this stratification system?

Those living at the bottom in the underdeveloped regions of the world face enormous

difficulties in reproducing life worlds; a large number of people in big cities live in

squatter settlements and slums and have little to no access to services such as water

and sanitation. Most of the people remain unemployed or underemployed, and if

employed they are visible only in the informal sector, which do not guarantee

minimum securities. In addition some, who are migrants, who do not have the right to

vote and most of them cannot be guaranteed security. Most, if not all, belong to

groups described as deprived, backward and marginal. Caste locations, together with

language, ethnicity and religious affiliation also structure these exclusions within the

excluded in Indian cities. How can we reformulate the concept of exclusion to analyze

the structure of inequalities in India?

Urban Social Movements and Collective Action

The fourth theme implicated on the debates over urban sociology relate to the

perception of cities as sites of new urban social movements. Castells had argued that

the city was a system organized over the provisions of services necessities of

everyday life, such as housing, health care, and transportation. State intervention was

necessary to provide these services to all; thus the investment in urban infrastructure.

This infrastructure determines the relationship between people and the state; citiesgrow and change on the basis of the contradictions and conflicts that emerge between

the state and the people over who needs this infrastructure, what should be its nature,

how does this infrastructure differentiate between strata in the city and controls its

mobility and growth, and what kind of investment needs to be made. New urban

social movements reflect these conflicts and question political decision-making

regarding such decisions and postulate alternatives.

This research has opened up an entirely new domain of knowledge with urban social

movements being conflated with new social movements. Researches have not only

studied movements for reclaiming homes, for expanding infrastructure in outlying

areas of the city or where most immigrant families live but also the womensmovement and environmental movement as movements that stake claims on these and


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ask for the reorganization infrastructure so that all of the citys population live a

healthy and a secure life. India has seen the growth of such movements (mainly from

the middle classes) in recent times. These movements have raised issues of traffic

congestion and its impact on air pollution and they have also raised issues regarding

air and water pollution as a result of industry. Additionally the poor in the city are

being organised to demand housing rights and other rights and services such as waterand sanitation [Evans, 2002; Smith and Feagin, 1987].

While class issues such as access to continuous employment together with adequate

housing and services remain paramount in India, cities in India are also witnessing the

growth of a new kind of politics that is of identity politics, where modern claims are

being made through a redefinition of traditional ethnic identities. This politics claims

the city for the majority community, and the majority is defined by language, region

or religious affiliation. For example, in Bombay, the Shiv Sena demanded that

employment opportunity and new investments taking place in Bombay benefit

individuals who are from Maharashtra and speak Marathi. Today, it has expanded its

definition of community to include all Hindus. Promoted by national trends, cities inIndia have become locale for identity politics to flourish. This kind of identity politics

has provoked communal conflict and thus communal riots have become a

characteristic feature of some cities, such as Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Godhra,

Hyderabad, Meerut, Moradabad among others. In this context it is imperative to ask

how the control of the local governance structures by a majority community aids and

sometimes instigates such conflicts? Why is it that tradition becomes a site for

reclaiming identity? Why is it that riots have become a form to claim a space in the

city rather than social movements? (It would be interesting to contrast the answers

with the case of Los Angeles, which saw riots in late eighties [Davis 1992]. Why is it

that cities in India despite lack of infrastructure do not have movements around the

issues of what role urban planning, state intervention in collective consumption? and

employment structure play in aggravating these conflicts.

In this context how do we frame the agenda for urban studies in India? Sociologists

have studied the urban phenomenon in terms of a structure---the traditional society,

which is changing and the new process, that of urbanisation which is emerging to take

its place. A large part of the work on urbanization and urbanism in India derived its

theoretical perspective from the ecological and/or behavioural schools. Also a great

number of works is descriptive and statistically derived. Urban communities have

been defined in terms of family, kinship, caste and ethnicity and questions have been

asked about their forms and structures in context to urbanisation.

Given that the process of urbanisation has been seen from a demographic and

economic lens the urban phenomenon has been increasingly studied from different

disciplinary perspectives. Urban geographers studied various aspects of space and its

organization within cities and regions defining the latter mainly as sub-national

territories. Historians studied the evolution of cities and their functions at different

periods of time. Economists examined land use as well as the occupational

classification of the urban populations tracing migration trends over time and their

implications on macro-economic indicators across the country. Anthropologists

compared urban to rural and tribal cultures. Also, political scientists studied power

and authority in cities, at times analysing local politics with reference to regional andnational structures.


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Contemporary sociology in India has moved to embrace many new perspectives and

new positions. In this context the emergence of dependency and world systems

theories has underscored the importance of an extended inquiry into the relationship

between capitalism and modernity. Now the historical development of cities was

placed in the broader contexts of the world capitalist system. This furbished insightsinto the specificity of cities and their inter-relationships as well as reformulations of

the relationship between cities and their hinterlands. As such cities were no longer

seen as self-contained objects with clear boundaries or as exemplars of a universal

modernity

Urban as a cultural representation

The fifth theme discussed by contemporary commentators concerns the cultural

aspects of the urban. While urbanism was stigmatised as mythical during the early

phases of urban sociology [Castells 1976] it is now becoming a theme most pertinent

to discuss current spatial transformations. Smith (2001) and Zukins (1980,1995)

works discuss the urban as cultural representation and argue that it is part of the newculture of consumerism that has emerged in contemporary society. The revolution in

communication technology and the growth of virtual reality are redefining space.

Today architecture, art markets, urban planning and capital investments are

organically linked in defining urban developments. New urban forms (both

architecture and interior designs) such as malls integrate internationalised production

and consumption. It is difficult to identify the differences between a MacDonalds and

a Benetton in London or New Delhi. Recently, Harvey (1987) has related his concept

of flexible accumulation to culture and the creation of symbolic capital, such as

branded products, designer apparel and accessories and more recently in spectacles

such as beauty contests, music festivals and sports events.

In India we see such capital accumulation in the organisation of spectacles in religious

festivals, (such as Ganapati festival in Mahrashtra, Durga Puja in Bengal or Dandiya

Raas in Gujarat) cricket matches and film-music shows. These new urban forms

create new social relations as these promote styles and icons and redefine the

constructions and meanings attached to space and place. Through such a process new

forms of traditions are constructed and created. Films and television act as important

mediators in this process. Do these integrate the populous to a virtual space and

culture outside their local, regional and nation-state identities and boundaries? What

influences do these cultures have on the city? Do these create new social inequalities

and how does such inequalities affect identities of caste and religion?

The Urban Phenomenon in India

Urbanisation in India is organized in a web of complex configurations and aspects,

which have articulated themselves unevenly. This unevenness is a consequence of the

way capitalism has historically and spatially structured the Indian economy and linked

it with various actors, political and social institutions and their structures and the way

these in turn have impacted on capitalism. Because capitalism was introduced through

colonialism, the urban phenomenon and its actors, need to be analysed in two phases:

colonial and post independence

The vast territory that constitutes India is spatially differentiated into geographicalunits, administrative units, and regions of political influences, which might not


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necessarily coincide. Culturally, India inhabits actors with multiple identities,

affiliated to many communities that are ethnically, linguistically, and religiously

differentiated. In addition, caste and gender intersects across these ethnic distinctions

thus creating complex social networks. Politically India presents a complex case that

is characterised by a variety of regimes, which span the two phases mentioned above.

The developments of and within the state structures and regime dynamics have beenregionally uneven. This has shaped and continues to shape capital accumulation and

distribution as well as the way collective action takes place. Such unevenness

warrants that urban studies incorporate a spatial sensitivity in its appraisal of the

urbanization process in India. Thus, students of urban studies need to understand the

ways the processes of capitalist formation have spatially organised actors, and the

varied economic, political and the social institutions in distinct and different ways.

We also need to distinguish between the processes of urbanization, as cross regional,

nation-state and worldwide process from those features of urbanization that govern

city growth. This assessment would help to perceive the many variations regarding

the urban process in India For example, global economic processes may influence thegeneral urbanization process of various regions within India differentially. On the

other hand, its impact on cities may vary, in terms of regional political processes. For

example, in cities such as Mumbai and Bangalore, the weight of the international

economic process and regional politics is different and this difference is related not

only to the distinct role of international division of labour and regional politics within

these cities, but also to the way local and national processes intervened to create these

distinctions.

The above argument leads us to another methodological qualification. It is imperative

to keep in mind that in some cases, what one identifies as causes of urbanization are

in other cases, identifiable as the consequences. For instance, if we take patterns of

migration it becomes clear that in India, it is not only the economic factors that

operate to shape migration trends but also the availability of infrastructure, such as

transport and communication and other ecological factors that differ across space.

Additionally, in some cases, caste and kin linkages together with community, as also

kin and family support structures, play an integral role in decisions of actors to

migrate. Thus urban growth in some cases may be triggered due to the history of caste

networks that has propelled migration. This in turn leads to the growth of

infrastructure and employment opportunities. On the other hand in other cases, the

establishment of townships of industrial activities together with infrastructure through

policy measures have created the conditions for migration.

It should be clear from the above that it is extremely difficult to generalize on the

urban phenomenon. Below I outline in broad strokes some of the patterns. In the last

decade studies on Indian cities have been published from different social science

perspectives, such as Gupta (1981,1998) and Dupont et al (2000), on Delhi, Calcutta

[Chaudhuri,1995] Hyderabad, [Naidu,1990] Vijaywada [Parthasarthy 1997],

Lucknow [Graf, 1997] Banglore [Heitzman, 2004; Nair, 2005] and Bombay [Patel

and Thorner 1995; Patel and Thorner 1995a; Patel and Masselos 2003], This Reader

wishes to extend the dialogue initiated by these efforts with the one placed below.

Though this introduction suggests that there is tremendous diversity of and about urban experience, Ihave been able to include examples mainly from metropolitan cities. Unfortunately, there is very little

published work on small and medium towns of India.


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.

This Reader argues that in many ways we, that is, those who research and write on

urban sociology in India, are at the same conjuncture as was Castells in the late

seventies. And like then, there seems to be an increasing interest in assessing the

urban process in contemporary India through new perspectives. The first network was

that of urban historians, called the Urban History Association of India. (Banga, 1991,1992) Now, three new research networks have been established to study and assess

the contemporary urban processes, two of which are based in Bombay -the Mumbai

Study Group and PUKAR,Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action and Research. Thethird research network, SARAI, is located in Delhi. It describes itself as a space for

research, practice and conversation about the contemporary media and urbanconstellations. Sarai has published four readers. Additionally innumerableconferences and workshops on cities have been organized. In January 2003, the first

South Asia wide conference on cities titled City One took place [Sarai 2003].

Colonial UrbanisationAs mentioned earlier, colonialism is a critical benchmark to understand contemporary

urbanisation. It inaugurated a new political economy and linked India to the

imperialist powers in a dependent relationship. This relationship restructured old

cities and established new ones. It is not that India did not have city formations

earlier. Indian cities emerged across time in different locations and within distinct

economies. During the pre-colonial period, cities were predominantly functionally

related to religious, military and/or administrative purposes for which it needed to

have production and trade functions. . In these cities, distinct kinds of urban forms

and styles of architecture evolved, reflecting the way incipient state formation

intersected with the hierarchical social structures of caste and religion [(Gillion

1968]).

How did colonial capitalism shape Indian urbanisation? Colonial and indigenous

power brokers, such as khatris, Gujarati banias and Agarwals, in North India shaped

new developments as existing towns (kasbas and ganj) were linked to new city centres

of international trade.[(Bayley 1992].) Two kinds of settlements emerged. On one

hand the administrative, military and security requirements of the imperial economy

led to the growth of administrative and cantonment towns. For example, New Delhis

urban structure is a representation of this development [(King 1990].). The same is

true of cantonment towns such as Pune or Lucknow [(Kosambi 1986;, Oldenburg

1984]).

On the other hand, other settlements grew which were related to international

commerce or trade and the growth of major infrastructure projects such as railways

and ports. These projects reshaped the national landscape and facilitated the

integration of the national economy as well as its regions and cities into the imperial

economy. The majority of these new urban settlements, such as Calcutta [(Gupta

1993]), Madras ([Neild 1979]), and Bombay [(Dossal 1991)] served as entrepots or

trading posts within the British capitalist empire. As the hinterland became organized

and connected, further developments of towns and cities ensued. Later, from the late

nineteenth century onwards, manufacturing emerged thus increasing migration into

new cities, and thereby increasing the urban population. These developments had had


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immediate and long-term implications on the trajectories of urbanization in India;

implications that still resonate till the present day.

During the colonial period, cities came to be internally differentiated along civil and

military lines and in terms of white and indigenous districts or towns [(for Madras

see Neild 1979]) and for Bombay [(Dossal 1991]) and for Calcutta [(Sarkar 1997).These spatial divisions were superimposed and extended into other divisions such as

occupational, as also those of castes, guilds and social status. The construction of

administrative buildings, residential compounds, as well as bungalows are other

examples of how space was both an outcome and a reflection of the power structures

characteristic of colonial capitalism. Additionally, these structures demarcated living

spaces along lines of hygiene and contamination, a distinction that was already well

entrenched into the Indian social structure albeit differently (see King in this volume).

Colonial dependency organised urbanization in a distinct manner. The spatial division

of labour characteristic of western capitalist development from pre-industrial to

industrial did not crystallize in India. Rather, Indian urbanisation was not coterminouswith industrialization and Indian cities did not develop solely as centres of

manufacturing industries. A new capitalist class emerged dependent on the foreign

masters. It was involved in colonial trade and commerce with a few going later into

industries in cities, such as Calcutta and Bombay. This industrialization remained

limited, in terms of technology, employment and capital [(Bagchi 1972]). Whereas in

the West, industrialization created a concentration of economic, political and cultural

activities in one space, the city, and organized these in terms of zones. In the case of

Indian cities, such an organization was imposed through planning mechanisms by the

colonial state rather than through organic developments . ([Menon 1997].)

Additionally, another factor shaping the nature, patterns and trends of urbanization

was the nature of agrarian economy. Unlike Europe, agricultural relations within India

did not change radically enough to create an alienated uprooted peasantry that could

flood cities. The dependent nature of agriculture made urbanization in India not only a

slow process, but also created an internal organic relationship with agriculture, as

dependent capitalist relations could not make either independent of each other. Marx

had earlier conceptualised the transition in Europe from feudal to capitalist system as

that of conflict between country and town. Such a conflict seems to be largely absent

in India. The landed retained their presence in the rural world, simultaneously creating

a space for themselves as an elite group in towns and cities and the labouring poor,

could not break connections with the villages, and its support structures given thelimited nature of manufacturing and organized industry in India. Thus the economies

of colonial towns and cities came to be organized around a huge mass of working

class involved in providing labour intensive work and services. One of the immediate

implications of this predicament is the fact that an urban-rural continuum remains an

important aspect of conceptualising urbanization in the country in all its aspects-

economic, social and cultural. This will be elaborated in detail in the next section.

These processes organically intersected with the hierarchical caste system. This

system had found resonance and roots within pre-colonial urban formations [(Shah

1988]). Now it organized itself in a decisive way with the new emerging economy.

One can identify two simultaneous processes with regard to the interface of caste withthe new economy. On one hand, the capitalist economy gave opportunities for


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individual mobility to members of all castes. This process had particularly

significance to those who were members of the deprived castes. Spaces to live and

work no longer were related to caste status. Additionally, access to modern transport,

communication and travel has dissolved their received identity markers so that they

remained undistinguished from other groups. These processes did not seem to have

benefited all individuals within these castes. Caste discrimination continued in newand different ways. For example, scheduled castes were not recruited in the weaving

department of Bombays textile industry [(Chandavarkar 1994]). Thus capitalism and

the hierarchical caste structure interfaced each other in complex ways as urbanization

spread all over the territory.

Such processes gave opportunities to women in upper classes and labouring

underclass to make differential claims to the city space. Paradoxically this space was

not accessible to them for the entire duration of the day as sexualities defined their

bodies differentially according to time. Womens visibility and claims to public space,

also came to be divided within the city and was structured in terms of their class,

caste, ethnic identities as they interspersed with notions of labour and sexualities. Forexample certain spaces/areas came to be demarcated for sex work stamping womens

bodies with a particular definitions of sexuality, thereby creating new forms of

exclusions and lessening their visibility.[(Nair, 2005].)

Yet and in spite of these trends and processes, the metropolitan city, became during

the colonial period site for the growth of organized political movements, both of the

working class and that of nationalism. [(Masselos, 1974].) On the other hand, small

and medium towns and metropolitan cities saw the growth of community action and

conflict, sometimes leading to communal riots. [(Freitag, 1990;, Masselos, 1993].)

Through these forms of collective action, actors created a public space in the city for

themselves, by organizing protests, demonstrations and strikes. Processions both

religious and political helped to claim space of the city for its citizens and create new

stakeholders in the colonial city, which till then was defined by the colonial and

indigenous elite groups. As Ravinder Kumar (1983) has shown the Gandhian strategy

of using prabhatferis was a significant intervention in this process as was the ganpati

processions in marking the Mumbai city space as nationalist space.

Contemporary Urbanization

Though the broad patterns of urban growth followed from the structures imposed

through colonialism, there were some significant changes as the state directedindustrial growth to ensure regional evenness. Thus while earlier towns and cities

developed around coastal areas, and where natural resources were concentrated,

henceforth its spread was not restricted, mainly to these concerns. We thus can

discern a complex pattern of urbanization emerging after independence, in which the

demands of the market, its organization within the nation-state, together with the

nature of state policy on industrialization, an ideological affirmation of the values of

urbanism and its equation with development, all played roles in propelling the growth

of urbanization in India.

No wonder, in the period immediately before and after independence, urbanization

increased rapidly. In the decades 1931-41, while the total population increased at arate of 1.10-1.42 per cent, the urban population increased at a rate of 1.75-2.79 per


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cent. Also, in 1951, while the total population grew at 1.33 per cent (less than the

previous decade), the urban population grew at the annual rates of 2.79-3.46 per cent.

From the 1971 onwards the urban population grew at higher rates than the total

population. In 2001, Indias total population was 1027 million individuals compared

to 846 million in 1991, 683 million in 1981 and 548 million in 1971. And though out

of the 1 billion plus individuals in India in 2001, only 285 million (27.7 per cent). areconsidered urban, this figure constitutes ten per cent of the total world urban

population.

Two other trends are necessary to highlight for our purposes. The first is that some

States, like Tamil Nadu and Maharshtra but also Karnataka and Gujarat have

urbanized rapidly with the first two States having now, more than forty per cent of its

population designated as urban. Second, there has been rapid growth of towns and

between 1981 and 2001. Today there are 5161 urban centers in the country, a

thousand more than 1981. Of particularly significance for us is the fact that a large

number- 68.6 per cent, of those who lead a city life are located in Class I towns, that

is towns with more than a lakh population. Additionally, India has more than 35 citieswith a population of more than ten lakhs. That is, nearly 37.8 per cent of Indias total

urban population lives in large cities [(Sivaramakrishnan et al. 2005]).

These trends are drawn from the successive censuses. Although these figures are

helpful there are a number of shortcomings that should be considered in relying on

them. The first problem concerns the definition of towns against villages. As various

scholars have pointed out, in addition to a demographic and economic characteristics,

a population of more than 5000, a density 400 persons per square kilometre with 75

per cent male workers employed outside agriculture, towns are defined, when they

were given this status by the State government, through the conferment to them of a

municipality, or a corporation or a cantonment. Thus the census lists both statutory

towns and census towns. Given that these decisions are in most cases political

decisions, it is possible to discern unevenness in the growth of towns between

censuses.

The second problem relates to the difficulty to have reliable longitudinal comparisons

of levels of urbanization based on these censuses [(Mohan 1996]). The cut-off point

for identifying a town and distinguishing it from a village is the figure of 5000.

Scholars argue that given the population of the country this is an extremely low

figure. This definition fails to account for or appreciate the unevenness of the urban

process across regions, States and across the country. For example, Maharshtra, whichhas very high urbanization levels need to have higher cut off points. On the other hand

Arunachal Pradesh, which has a very low rate of urbanization, need to have lower cut

off point.

For our purposes, it is important to note that urbanization cannot be measured only

through demographic characteristics but is also related to economic development,

infrastructure growth, migration and employment patterns, together with social and

cultural institutions. Additionally, as mentioned in the earlier section, urbanization in

India is intimately linked to patterns of agricultural development. In some regions,

agricultural growth has led to the growth of agro industries and thus of new towns and

cities, such as Anand and Vijayawada, which are intimately connected to thehinterland. The opposite has also happened-towns and cities have grown without these


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linkages and thus the relationship with the hinterland is significantly different. These

variations have affected the nature of rural-urban linkages. In some parts of the

country, we witness a convergence of life styles and infrastructure in urban and rural

areas. This is not the case in other regions where we witness same lifestyles without

the relevant development of infrastructure. Such distinctions have also shaped

inequalities between towns and cities and within them.

Disparities notwithstanding, contemporary urbanization has been characterized by

three phases of growth - first the development of capital intensive industrialization

which dates back to the forties1940s, with the formation of cities such as Bokaro,

Bhilai, Durgapur, Rourkela. The second phase is associated with the development of

the small scale labour intensive industrialization, which started in the sixties1960s,

with provincial towns such as Surat, ([Shah, 1994, 97]) Faridabad, Ghaziabad,

Ludhiana, Kanpur and Meerut and lastly the service economy associated with

globalisation, which started in the late eighties1980s, with cities such as Bangalore

[(Heitzman, 2004],) and now Hyderabad and Pune. In some cities these phases coexist

while in others they remained distinct. This variation is a function of the way theregional and global economies are linked to the local processes as well as of the

nature of the migration process, and the role of the state and its policies together with

the nature of agricultural growth.

This pattern of growth deviates from the pattern of industrialization and urbanization

in Europe and other parts of the North as also some other parts of the South such as

Latin America where more than 65 per cent of the population is urban. And yet there

are some similarities with the areas of the South. The urban population in India, like

many others areas of the South are organized around the huge migrant and naturally

increasing population organized into an informal economy dominated by insecure

work, which straddles both rural and urban sectors. This working class infiltrates

economic sectors such as mining, quarrying, and service industries.

Breman (1994) distinguishes two strata in this group, the petty bourgeois and sub-

proletariat, whilst Harris (1986) draws our attention to another section, that of labour

elite or wageworkers, which dominates manufacturing cities, such as Mumbai,

Ahmedabad and Coimbatore in addition to the petty bourgeois, workers in

unregistered factories, poor traders and producers, and casual workers, in domestic,

retailing and manufacturing employment. The city also consists of groups of people,

mainly children and women who are not employed but are self-employed, who use

their homes for generating incomes by participating in the growing service industries,such as food processing. This trend has inverted the process of freeing women from

the home thereby decreasing their visibility in public spaces. This in turn has affected

their negotiating on the ways sexualities connote spatial structures. [(See Phadke in

this volume].) Of course there are at least two other sections that live in cities, both of

which form part of the elite of the city. These are first, the professional and skilled

employed and self employed, such as lawyers, teachers, doctors, engineers and now

IT experts. The second is the group of successful businesspersons, traders and

company owners.

This urban population is internally segmented on the basis of caste, language, ethnic

and religious identities with gender crisscrossing these. Some of these segmentationsare spatially organized in settlements and neighbourhoods within towns and cities


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affirming these identities over that of the working class. These trends has not led

primordial identities to decline rather the economy has become cluttered by the way

caste and kinship networks, as well as affiliation to gender, ethnicity and religion has

trapped it into its fold not allowing it to grow and be competitive. These networks

have sometimes proved a bottleneck for entire groups to move up the ladder, though it

has given opportunities for some individuals from these groups to move up themobility ladder.

State Policies, the Discourse on Urbanisation and Urban Politics

Most commentators agree that there is a lack of coherent policy on urban issues in

India and that this affects the way the state intervenes both in the urbanisation

process, as a process affecting the entire country and those policies relating to issues

and problems within towns and cities. This lack of coherence has incapacitated the

organisation of ideas on the urban process in India, such that most intellectuals do not

think the urban needs to be understood, studied and explained as a separate area

outside industrialisation. Additionally this process has had an implication on the waygovernance structures are designed for assessing and evaluating the urbanisation

process in India more generally and as well specifically, for the towns and cities in

India.

For instance, within cities socio-economic planning is replaced by physical planning.

Physical planning involves zoning and does not integrate issues of poverty,

infrastructure with the needs of the various deprived communities within the city. For

example, planned cities did not allow economic activities for the informal sector in

which more than fifty per cent of Indias urban population work. On the other hand

socio-economic planning is incorporated in the countrys Five Year Plan, which till

the third Five Year Plan had not allocated financial and legislative measures for urban

development. Even after that, there has been little effort to organise a comprehensive

planned programme of urbanisation, because the emphasis has been on investment

and management policies. Why is this so? [(Shaw, 1996, 2004:39]).

Scholars such as Ramachandran (1989) and Shaw (2004) have identified three

conflicting tendencies at work in the developmental discourse in India. The first relate

to ideological conflicts regarding the significance of the city and urban life in India

and for Indians versus the importance of the village and rural life for the nation

(Prakash 2002). This ideological conflict also affected another debate-that of

modernity versus tradition. Second, there were conflicts among intellectuals regardingspatial concentration of power. On one hand there were one group evoking the Soviet

experiment demanding centralization of power within spatial locations and on the

other those who demanded localization in small spaces. This conflict emerged

frontally in the context of discussions regarding the policies of expanding big cities or

small and medium towns. Third, related to this, there has been conflict regarding

strategies of intervention in the urban process. Should there be an intervention by the

centre or should the various states devise their own policies. Associated with the last

two points isn a similar conflict this time, between the city and the state. Should

there be a policy for cities or should there be a policy of particular administrative

regions?


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Scholars have argued that continuous opaqueness characterizes Indian town planning

process. The state has intervened at four levels within the planning process. The first

is regulatory method that is an intervention at the legislative level. This occurred

when the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act was passed in 1976. The second

was that of urban expansion, through the creation of satellite towns, (New Mumbai,

Gandhinagar, Gurgaon, NOIDA, Secunderabad, Mohali, Bhubaneshwar) the third wasthrough capital improvement techniques (the improvement of basic infrastructure) and

the fourth is urban renewal, such as slum clearance and slum up-gradation).

Indian town planning has found it easier to follow the strategy of urban expansion as

increasingly it has become caught up in demand politics, unleashed in India since late

sixties, whereby articulate political actors (such as land developers and sharks) used

various instruments of the state to demand and obtain benefits for themselves leaving

a large part of the urban population that expanded enormously after the sixties to fend

for itself. Regulatory interventions, such as the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation

Act, (ULCRA) did not decrease inequalities in housing (Narayanan 2002) Thus while

there was an increase in investment in both old and new urban towns, these towns andcities remained caught into an urban structure that catered mainly to the upper and

mobile middle classes of India. No wonder we see in the cities of India, the working

of the concept of dual city and the confrontation between an articulate labouring

underclass and an organised middle class.

The origin of the dual city process is rooted in the colonialism [(King 1990]).

During colonialism the city was divided into the white and native or black towns

[(Neild 1979]). Amenities and infrastructure was invested and made available to the

former at the expense of the latter. In point of fact, the latter were never

acknowledged as citizens (even after independence) who could intervene as political

actors. It was only during the sSeventh pPlan period that urban local bodies were

given constitutional status. Thus there was little recognition that within the city a large

number of its populations lived without having access to basic infrastructure such as

housing, land, sanitation and water, leave alone good education and healthy

environment.

And as cities started expanding these inequalities and exclusions over access to

infrastructure increase as they get structured with identities, such as class, caste and

ethnicity and gender. One arena where conflicts are emerging relates to access to

housing and related infrastructure. ([Shah, 1994;19,97]) Statistics reveal that the slum

population in Mumbai in 1991, was 43.2 per cent and in 2001 it was 48.9 per cent.Today most cities, including new satellite cities, have a huge slum population-

Faridabad-46.6 per cent, Meerut, 43.8 per cent, Nagpur 35.5 per cent and Kolkata,

32.6 per cent [(Sivaramakrishnan et al. 2005:110]).

Staying in slums implies a lack of access to facilities such as potable water, sanitation,

and sewerage. This has its impact on health and environment and determines life

chances, especially for women and children who do home based work and people the

ever-expanding informal economies. As a large number of these poor households are

female-headed ones, other conflicts emerge, as oftentimes these women do not even

have legal rights over these homes.


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And yet despite these conflicts primate cities are still growing faster than small and

medium towns because the latter not equipped with even the limited infrastructure

that the former has-a function of the lack of comprehension and planning that besets

urbanization in India. Additionally there is always work available in big cities- even

though it is in the unorganised sector. No wonder urban areas have low poverty levels

than the rural areas ([Sivaramakrishnan et al. 2005:104]).

Given these conditions, why is it that India has not seen the growth of consumption

movements as Castells has argued? Since the early seventies 1970s Indian cities have

been a witness to the growing consciousness among individuals and groups for

asserting citizenship rights-whether to housing, and related infrastructure or to

transport and means of communication or to public space by women without being

violated sexually [. (Chatterjee, 2004].) In addition, there has been a growth of strong

advocacy movements. On one hand these have demanded redistribution of land and

creation of an adequate policy of housing for the poor on the other hand, other

organisatons have represented middle class interests, which are in conflict with the

interests of the first. Unfortunately political parties as mentioned above have not beeninvolved actively in resolving these conflicts. The latter have tended to have short-

term interests and have rarely advocated a long-term comprehensive policy for city

level problems, though they do put forward strategies that need to be implemented

just before municipal elections.

In these circumstances, collective violence has sometimes embraced this political

space rather than an organized movement. This violence is usually triggered when

small and big conflicts emerge over access to infrastructure, such as when slum

dwellers are displaced, or when landlords evict tenants to sell houses to developers, or

when state creates new rules that distinguish legal from illegal slums and through

such rules create an entire new category of citizens or when it reorganizes the citys

boundaries forcing villagers to integrate with the city. Since the seventies, these

conflicts ha

urban studies an exploration in theory and practices

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