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ABSTRACT
This article explores the nexus between the middle class and neoliberal politics in the remaking of Ahmedabad as a ‘Megacity’. The middle class is deeply invested in the discursive and material processes of producing Ahmedabad as a ‘Megacity’ in ways that advance largely exclusionary economic and political agendas. The Megacity project offers the middle class more direct and vociferous opportunities to realize its political interests without depending on electoral democracy. It argues that through the processes of crisis, participation, celebration, and capture the middle class has successfully mediated its aspirations and interests vis-à-vis the broader agenda of neoliberal urbanism. Ethnographic and other evidence is used to examine these processes and the enlistment of seemingly neutral discourses of development, nostalgia and community. By championing the ‘Megacity’ the middle class has proved to be a key ally in the official promotion of the ‘Gujarat model’ both in Gujarat and beyond the state.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. This is the author’s translation of the Gujarati poem, ‘City that plays by the river’, [Nadi ni ret man ramatu nagar] written by poet Adil Mansuri.
2. Pols are traditional housing clusters with narrow lanes organized around the caste and religious identity of its residents.
3. Desai, ‘Entrepreneurial Urbanism’, 35.
4. Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation website: http://ahmedabadcity.gov.in/portal/jsp/Static_pages/about_amc.jsp
5. Banerjee-Guha, ‘Neoliberalising the “Urban”’; Desai, ‘Entrepreneurial Urbanism’ and Rajagopal, ‘Special Political Zone’.
6. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 1.
7. Theodore and Brenner, ‘Cities and the Geographies’, 350.
8. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 2.
9. Theodore and Brenner, ‘Cities and the Geographies’, 351.
10. Ibid., 352.
11. Ibid., 368.
12. Banerjee-Guha, ‘Neoliberalising the “Urban”’, 96.
13. Theodore and Brenner, ‘Cities and the Geographies’, 375.
14. Some scholars such as Atul Kohli locate the shift towards economic liberalization in India to an earlier decade of the 1980s.
15. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 3.
16. The scheme is also known as the National Urban Renewal Mission or NURM.
17. Banerjee-Guha, ‘Neoliberalising the “Urban”’, 95.
18. Ibid., 97.
19. ‘Give Ahmedabad mega-city status: Mayor’, Times of India, 5 August 2002.
20. Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation website; (http://ahmedabadcity.gov.in/portal/jsp/Static_pages/about_amc.jsp)
21. Mahadevia, ‘NURM and the Poor’, 3399.
22. Sharma 2012.
23. Mahadevia, ‘Communal Space over Life Space’.
24. Mahadevia, ‘Communal Space over Life Space’, 4850. See also, Breman, The Making and Unmaking of an Industrial, for an account of the closure of Ahmedabad’s textile mills and its adverse effects on the city’s informal economy and communal relations; Jaffrelot, 25 April 2014
25. Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class, xviii.
26. Ibid.
27. Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class, 2.
28. Krishna, ‘The Bomb, Biography’, 2327.
29. Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class, xxiv.
30. Fernandes and Heller, ‘Hegemonic Aspirations’.
31. Although the bonhomie between economic liberalization and the political illiberalism of Hindutva is a hallmark of the Indian middle class at large, its manifestations in Gujarat are especially noteworthy for two reasons: One, Gujarat has been the most hospitable state for Hindutva politics, evidenced by the uninterrupted rule of the Hindu nationalist BJP in the state for over two decades, making this the longest political stint for the party anywhere in India. Second, the state is also one of the most rapidly urbanizing states in India, a phenomenon that is directly linked with the expansion of the middle class. Forty-three percent of Gujarat’s population is urban as per the 2011 census.
32. Theodore and Brenner, ‘Cities and the Geographies’, 368.
33. Harvey, ‘Neoliberalism and the City’.
34. Ibid., 9.
35. ‘State’s businessmen corner CII’, Times of India, 20 February 2003.
36. ‘CII says sorry to Narendra Modi’, Times of India, 7 March 2003.
37. Desai, ‘Entrepreneurial Urbanism’, 7.
38. Ibid., 35.
39. Da Costa, ‘Sentimental Capitalism in Contemporary India’, 77. Focusing on the Cotton Exchange Exhibition (CEE) held on the premises of a defunct mill in the city’s eastern periphery in 2013, Da Costa demonstrates ‘the contemporary confluence of governmental, non-governmental, business, and artistic initiatives mobilizing spatial transformations and urban revitalization’.
40. Jaffrelot (2000) quoted in Leela Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class, 173, 174.
41. Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class, 175.
42. Mathur, ‘On the Sabarmati Riverfront’, 65.
43. Banerjee-Guha, ‘Neoliberalising the “Urban”’, 97.
44. Ballaney and Patel, Using the ‘Development Town Planning Scheme.
45. Ibid.
46. Sabarmati Riverfront project official website;http://www.sabarmatiriverfront.com/organisation
47. Mathur, ‘On the Sabarmati Riverfront’, 66. For a detailed history and genesis of the Sabarmati Riverfront Project and the agitation against it see Renu Desai’s 2006 working paper Uneasy Negotiations.
48. Mathur, ‘On the Sabarmati Riverfront’, 65.
49. Ibid., 67.
50. DNA, 17 August 2012
51. Field notes.
52. GIFT City official website: http://giftgujarat.in/gift/genesis.aspx
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
56. Banerjee-Guha, ‘Neoliberalising the “Urban”’, 98.
57. Harris, ‘Cities and the New Middle Class’, 19.
58. Janaki Nair 2005, 340, quoted in Harris, ‘Cities and the New Middle Class’, 4.
59. ‘Ahmedabad in list of ‘credit-worthy’ cities’, The Times of India, 31 August 2008.
60. Badshahi in Gujarati means ‘strong and royal’.
61. Personal interview with Mallika Sarabhai; the play has had 32 full house shows viewed by about 10,000 people (till the time of this writing).
62. Personal interview with Mallika Sarabhai, 2015.
63. Ibid.
64. Outlook Magazine, 25 May 2011, http://www.outlookindia.com/photos/default_vtl.aspx?pt=13&ptv=5567&pyr=0&date=5/25/2011&photono=6&pn=1&pgid=40789 (last accessed in October 2015).
65. For a comparative history of this founding myth across cities, see Suchitra Balasubrahmaniyan, NMML Occasional Paper, 2014.
66. Personal interview with Mallika Sarabhai, 2015.
67. ‘New in Ahmedabad? Here is a list of must do things’ Ahmedabad Times, 26 November 2014. The other recommended sites and things to do on the list included the Sabarmati Ashram built by M K Gandhi, the congested market square of Manek Chowk in the old city, Heritage Walk in the old city, shopping at Law Garden and a BRTS ride.
68. Personal interview with Mallika Sarabhai, 2015.
69. Ibid.
70. Hirway et al., Growth or Development.
71. Kadak Badshahi official website: https://www.facebook.com/KadakBadshahi/photos/pb.1510945232483093.2207520000.1430148991./1556085434635739/?type=3&theater (last accessed in June 2015)
72. Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class.
73. Ibid., 17. See also Sanjay Srivastava, 2014 for a detailed discussion of the relationship between the spatial politics of cities, the middle class and the urban poor.
74. Ibid., 138.
75. Embarq India is a member of the Embarq network, a Washington DC-based not-for-profit firm and an initiative of a think tank called World Resources Institute (WRI).
76. These activities in India are certainly identified with affluent middle class status.
77. Field notes.
78. Interview, Ahmedabad Mirror journalist, 2015.
79. DNA, 5 December 2012.
80. Dhattiwala, ‘Hindus, Muslims’.
81. ‘At Vibrant Gujarat summit, PM Modi promises to make India easiest place to do business’, The Times of India, 11 January 2015.
82. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 40, 41.