Cycle de conférence

Spatializing Law and Institutions: State Practices of constituting territory in Indian Cities

JEUDI 23 JANVIER 2020 | 13H00 - 15H00

Campus Condorcet (Centre de colloques, salle 3.09) | 5 cours des Humanités – 93300 Aubervilliers This presentation explores the State-Society relations by way of its focus on the State practices of constituting territory and citizens’ responses. It explores this aspect drawing on an ethnographic research undertaken between May to October 2018 in the North-Western wards of Bangalore city in the South Indian State of Karnataka. The North-Western wards of the city is witnessing rapid transformation since 2006. The territories of North Western wards. It is the site of Asia’s largest housing colony and a privately developed Special Economic Zone (SEZ). These projects are rolled out on already developed land and are implemented by different government agencies such as the urban development authority and the industrial development board. Each of these institutions intervene in territory through projects (schemes) and every day administrative procedures. The presentation will specifically look at the role of urban development institutions, industrial boards, local governments and the courts in shaping territory.  The paper will engage with the literature on land as territory and particularly and will engage with the works of following authors: Tsing 2010, Allen and Cochrane, 2007;  Blomley 2016, Painter, J and Rosemary Coombe 2014, Ferguson and Gupta 2002.

Dans le cadre du séminaire “Métropoles et capitales : trajectoires locales dans un monde global“  

  Claiming Property in Land: The Politics of Regularization

VENDREDI 24 JANVIER 2020 | 9H30 - 12H00

Campus Condorcet (Bâtiment de recherche Sud) | 5 cours des Humanités – 93300 Aubervilliers This paper is third in the sequence, which seeks to conceptualize urban governance through a lens of land and territory. Drawing on a qualitative research conducted in the South Indian city of Bangalore, between May to September 2018 together with content analysis of court judgements, the paper explores the manner in which city inhabitants claim land in Indian cities. Bangalore, the capital city of the South Indian State of Karnataka has a population of more than 8.5 million (GoI Census 2011). The city’s population increased threefold between 2001 and 2010 and is expected to reach ten million by 2020. More than two thirds of the city’s population reside in squatter settlements, slums and privately developed residential layouts  (Heitzman 2004; Sunaresan 2007; Benjamin 2005; Benjamin and Bhuvaneswari 2001). Unlike squatter settlements, occupants of private land subdivisions have legal claims to land but the land development do not comply with the provisions in the planning law. Consequently, the infrastructure provision is deficient and in addition, occupants face the threat of losing their land and investment in land when the State notifies it for land acquisition for mega projects. The paper traces the every day politics around how land owners in privately developed land subdivisions consolidate their claims to land and the conditions under which they are able to do so. In this light, the paper traces the shifting State approaches to regularizing private land subdivisions to illustrate the politics of repression and accommodation.

Dans le cadre du séminaire de l'équipe PARIS, Géo-cités  

Land Transformation in Indian Cities: Developers, Brokers and Government Institutions

JEUDI 30 JANVIER 2020 | 14H00 - 17H00

EHESS (salle 13) | 105 boulevard Raspail – 75006 Paris This presentation seeks to contribute towards an understanding of state-society relation through a focus on the roles of and inter-relationship between developers, brokers and government institutions. The landscape on the outskirts of Indian cities are changing rapidly. Such transformation is driven by the national and the regional governments to develop the outlying areas as centres of globally connected economic activities. The government have intervened in land directly in the form of projects for setting up Special Economic Zones, Industrial Corridors, and smart cities. The various projects are being implemented under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP). With the announcement of such projects, private developers advertised their residential projects such as gated housing complex, luxury apartments. Land prices soared between 2005 and until 2014. Drawing on a qualitative research conducted in Chennai, Bangalore and the towns of Kundli-Rai in Haryana, the presentation discusses three findings. First, it illustrates that developers are not a unified category. Second, in a nuanced reading of the material politics of land, it suggests that the actors’ embeddedness in local political relations influences their role. Third, it illustrates the complex relationship between the developers and urban development authorities and their role in subverting land acquisition process and shaping the market process. Through a comprehensive analysis of the practices of different categories of actors, the paper adds to our understand of state-society relations and the politics of land transformation. Finally, it argues for a grounded reading of the transformation and the role of various actors in the process.

Dans le cadre du séminaire “Dynamiques contemporaines en Asie du Sud, société-économie politique-espace”

The Politics of Land: Commons in the Indian Context

MERCREDI 12 FÉVRIER 2020 | 14H00 - 16H00

Campus Condorcet (Bâtiment de recherche Sud, salle 1.122) | 5 cours des Humanités – 93300 Aubervilliers

Drawing on the practices of squatter dwellers in a small town of Tamilnadu and in the outskirts of Bangalore, the paper maps the ways by which commons as a category intersects in the politics of land claims in Indian cities. It explores how the residents of squatter settlements consolidate their occupancy on land administratively categorized as community land and wasteland. The concept of common / common land is ambiguous in the Indian context. Land that were once controlled by the communities for collective use was taken over by the colonial rulers and recategorized as “wasteland”. Such land parcels have been mobilized in post independent India to redistribute land for the landless /homeless under different welfare programmes. Another trend is that landless/ homeless groups occupied such land on their own and incrementally assemble documentary evidence to justify their claims. With the Indian cities competing to attract foreign direct investments, the respective regional governments targeted the common land under their control for special economic zones. The presentation explores the contestations to claim land perceived as common land and the manner in which occupants mobilize documentary evidence to justify their claims. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken in Tamilnadu and Karnataka, together with the content analysis of the public talks of Dalit organizations and their leaders, this presentation explores the relevance of commons/collective as a category to conceptualize land contests in urban India.

Dans le cadre du séminaire “ Communs urbains pour l’habitat”