India China Institute in partnership with the Graduate Program in International Affairs and the Global Studies Program at The New School invites to a public talk on Subaltern Urbanization in India by Partha Mukhopadhyay, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and an ICI Fellow.

India’s urbanisation is following at least two concomitant paths; first, a traditional metro-centric agglomeration process driven partly by the movement of people and second a process of ‘subaltern urbanisation’, involving, inter alia, the transformation of places, which are dispersed across the country, a process that can be usefully compared with in-situ urbanization in China. Subaltern urbanisation refers to the growth of such settlements that are independent of the metropolis and autonomous in their interactions with other settlements, local and global. Analyzing conventional and new data sources “against the grain”, we claim that there are many such economically vital smaller settlements in India, contrary to perceptions that India’s urbanisation is slow, that its smaller settlements are stagnant and its cities are not productive. Instead of basing policy on illusions of control, it is necessary to try and understand how agents construct this world, if we are to comprehend the ongoing Indian transformation.

Event Resources: Partha Mukhopadhyay’s Presentation