Archives: Journal Articles

The concept of subaltern urbanisation refers to the growth of settlement agglomerations, whether denoted urban by the Census of India or not, that are independent of the metropolis and autonomous in their interactions with other settlements, local and global. Analysing conventional and new data sources “against the grain”, this paper claims support for the existence of such economically vital small settlements, contrary to perceptions that India’s urbanisation is slow, that its smaller settlements are stagnant and its cities are not productive. It offers a classification scheme for settlements using the axes of spatial proximity to metropolises and degree of dministrative recognition, and looks at the potential factors for their transformation along economic, social and political dimensions. Instead of basing policy on illusions of control, understanding how agents make this world helps comprehend ongoing Indian transformations.

The United States Supreme Court sits as a unified bench of nine justices. The Indian Supreme Court sits in panels, and can have up to thirty-one judges. This article uses the divergent structures of the U.S. and Indian Supreme Courts to explore how specific court structures are adopted to promote different values or understandings of what a supreme court should be. It analyzes how structure impacts: (1) access to these courts; (2) the cohesiveness of the doctrine they produce; (3) inter-judge relations; and (4) perceptions about these courts, including perceived politicization. It argues a comparative analysis of court structure can challenge common assumptions about the ideal role of a court, as well as aid in judicial institutional design and reform. Such an analysis helps make explicit how law is permeated by the structure of the courts that interpret it.

How significant was the shift in the economic growth performance that occurred in the 1950s, relative to the shift that is supposed to have occurred in the 1980s? If one were to identify the single most significant break date in India?s growth performance, does it turn out to be 1951-52 or 1980-81 or some such year in the post-1980s? The hypothesis in this paper is that the single most important trend break in GDP growth is to be found not in the 1980s, as the existing literature claims, but in the early 1950s. This is not because the performance of the post-1950s period was exceptional in any way, but because the performance before the 1950s was exceptionally poor. Nehruvian socialism looks dismal if seen only in the context of opportunities that were missed. If seen in the context of the actual economic performance preceding the years 1950-1980, the achievements do not seem so bleak.

Civil society has played a key role in responding to the COVID-19 crisis in Indian cities. This article uses the conceptualisation of boundaries and borders to reflect on the role of local state and civil society actors in Gurugram’s pandemic response. It examines the state’s bordering practices, state-society relations as well as processes of negotiation that enabled disease management as well as relief efforts-especially for migrant workers-during the crisis.

THE city is often celebrated as the fullest expression of citizenship, a politico-spatial zone in which traditional rural barriers to participation weaken and public legality is at its strongest. But, concomitantly, cities of the global South are breeding inequality. Much of the hand-wringing on urban poverty and inequality in international and Indian policy documents deals with this tension by treating inequality as a residual problem, i.e., a problem that will go away with time, more growth and of course, the new elixir of ‘good governance’. But what if this inequality is not residual, but produced? What if inequality is not something that happens to people, but results from what is done to them? What if government policies are producing inequality not because they are bad or inappropriate or corrupt but precisely because that is their purpose; because they reflect how state power is organized and how institutions serve specific interests?

To answer this question, we draw on some of the work from an ongoing research project – the ‘Cities of Delhi’ – at the Centre for Policy Research.1 This project was initiated to ask why housing and delivery of basic services such as transport, water and sewerage was so unevenly distributed across the city. The project closely examines the workings of various state agencies, researches the rules, laws and actual practices of a number of key state interventions – in particular regularization of unauthorized colonies and slum removal and relocation – and has gathered extensive field data from twelve settlements of different types, viz. unauthorized colonies (UACs), regularized unauthorized colonies (R-UACs), resettlement colonies (RCs) and jhuggi jhopdicolonies (JJCs).

In 2009, the Government of India asked all Indian states and Union Territories to prepare State Action Plans on Climate Change, making it one of the largest efforts at sub-national climate planning globally. Through an examination of state climate plans in five Indian states, the paper explores the implications of sub-national climate measures by examining two questions: First, how do state action plans on climate change link with India’s national and international climate efforts in the context of multi-level governance of climate change? Second, do these plans serve as laboratories of experimentation in addressing climate change? Through an empirically driven inductive analysis, the paper argues that because state climate plans, at least in the initial stages, followed a centrally driven, and sometimes ambiguous agenda, their scope and room to experiment was circumscribed. While they did initiate a process and a conversation, the scope and impact of the plans was limited because they tended to follow conventional bureaucratic planning processes and were limited by a central mandate. The plan process did create some space for local innovation, particularly by enterprising bureaucrats, but this was limited by both restricted space and time for innovation. As a result, the plans made only initial steps toward bringing climate-resilient sustainability to the forefront of state development planning. There is however scope for improvement as states and stakeholders begin examining the plans with a view to implement recommendations, finance projects and even consider fresh iterations.

The voices of rural residents and front-line officials in India’s villages and small towns are often absent in accounts of the pandemic, which have focused on the crises unfolding in major cities. Yet these voices offer crucial insight into the invisible front lines of COVID-19, with critical lessons for governance and emergency response. For the past year, through two waves of COVID-19, we have gathered hundreds of grassroots accounts from citizen journalists and government workers embedded in communities across rural India. The stories that emerge reveal divergent experiences and gaps in trust and communication between local residents and officials. However, they also reveal instances where local actors bridge these gaps, suggesting the potential for a powerful “synergy—marked by cooperation and coordination—between locally embedded state and societal actors.” This synergy, we argue, is crucial for a robust pandemic response that reflects and meets local needs.

How does a hierarchical, top-down state respond to efforts to become directly accountable towards its citizens? This article analyses this question through India’s experience with implementing social audits for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Andhra Pradesh. Drawing on an intensive survey with MGNREGA wage-seekers, it examines the role of social audits in providing a platform for citizens to engage with the state; the state’s ability to respond to grievances raised through the audit; and the effects of the audit on the local corruption market.