Professor Sai Balakrishnan will be exploring the narrative movements of urbanization in contemporary India from megacities to the contested geographies along new economic corridors. As policymakers search for new market-oriented means for the transfer of land from agrarian constituencies to infrastructural promoters and urban developers, the re-allocation of property control is erupting into volatile land-based social conflicts. Professor Balakrishnan puts forward the argument that some of India’s most decisive conflicts over its urban futures will unfold in these corridor regions where electorally strong agrarian propertied classes are coming into direct encounters with financially powerful incoming urban firms. She calls for new theories of land and urbanization that are capable of incorporating within them the agrarian political economy. Through focusing on the agrarian to urban land-use change along India’s first economic corridor, the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, she articulates how diverse agrarian property regimes shape the trajectories of contemporary urbanization in liberalizing India.
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