Water governance and the colonial urban project: the Dharmambudhi lake in Bengaluru, India

ABSTRACT

This paper uses the example of a lost urban lake – the Dharmambudhi within the south Indian city of Bengaluru to illustrate the profound and long-standing effects of historical socio-technical infrastructural change. We demonstrate processes by which capitalist urban development and notions of the sanitary city in the nineteenth century led to the collapse of the lake system and its conversion into a bus station. We also show how by removing the use of the water body, it became possible to destroy a critical urban ecological infrastructure, thus making it unusable to people who depended upon it to sustain their lives and livelihoods. This coupled with technocratic narratives of efficiency and scarcity led to the co-opting of the resource rendering them separate from urban life.

KEYWORDS:

• Techno-managerial urban development
• social-ecological systems change
• water infrastructure
• Bengaluru
• Sanitary cities

Acknowledgments

This study was enabled through a British Academy funded Newton International Fellowship granted to HU, funding from Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, and a Philip Leverhulme Prize awarded to VCB. The authors are deeply grateful to the Karnataka State Archives, Bengaluru; the Divisional Archives, Mysuru; the National Archives, New Delhi; the India Office of the British Library, London, the Mythic Society, Bengaluru; and the Survey of India, Bengaluru Office for granting us access to historical material housed within their collections. We also thank Seema Mundoli for her help with obtaining some of the archival material used in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Original quote in the local language Kannada: “Illi battha belithayiddaru, dhana karugalannu meyisthadiddaru, meenannu hidithayiddaru”.

2. Original quote in the local language Kannada “Munche ee raste nallah road antha karithaayidru – Dharmambudhi kereya kaaluve iruvudarinda, aa kaaluve bartha bartha nallah thara agoyithu”.

3. Original quote in the local language Kannada, “aagina kaladalli oorina boundary kere thanka maatra ittu, kathhlalli yaaru horagade ne barthayirlilla – ellaru helthayidru, bhootha, pretha, pisachigaliddru antha. Kere yaavaga maidana vayithu, roadgalu matthe railwaygalu yaavaga banthu – avaaginda ee ooru matthe ee oorina jana Bengaloorige seridaru”.

4. Original quote in the local language Kannada, “kerenalli neerenirlilla, swalpa jana dhana karugalannu meyisthaayidru alli”.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Newton Fund [NF171305]; Azim Premji University; Leverhulme Trust (GB).