Table Of ContentBeyond Kolkata
Cities and the Urban Imperative
Series Editor: S ujata Patel, Professor, Department of Sociology,
University of Hyderabad
This series introduces a holistic approach to studying cities, the urban experience,
and its imaginations. It assesses what is distinctive of the urban phenomenon in
India, as also delineates the characteristic uniqueness of particular cities as they
embrace change and create ways of experiencing modernities.
Taking an interdisciplinary route, the series evaluates the many facets of
urbanisation and city formation, and explores the challenges faced in relation
to regional, national and global processes.
The books in this series present the changing trends in macro and micro
urban processes; the nature of demographic patterns of migration and natural
growth therein; spatial reorganisation and segregation in urban areas; uneven
economic development of manufacturing and services in cities; unequal access
to power in the context of formal citizenship; increasing everyday violence and
declining organised protest; breakdown of urban family life in juxtaposition
with the reconstitution of community. They will trace how new forms of
socialities are replacing old forms of trust and solidarity, and how these are
being institutionalised in distinct and diverse ways within South Asia.
Also in this Series
Growing up in the Knowledge Society: Living the IT Dream in Bangalore
Nicholas Nisbett
ISBN 978-0-415-55146-5
Governing India’s Metropolises: Case Studies of Four Cities
Editors: Joël Ruet and Stephanie Tawa Lama-Rewal
ISBN 978-0-415-55148-9
India’s Middle Class: New Forms of Urban Leisure, Consumption and Prosperity
Christiane Brosius
ISBN 978-0-415-54453-5
Urban Navigations: Politics, Space and the City in South Asia
Editors: Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria and Colin McFarlane
ISBN 978-0-415-61760-4
Participolis: Consent and Contention in Neoliberal Urban Governance
Editors: Karen Coelho, Lalitha Kamath and M. Vijayabaskar
ISBN 978-0-415-81193-4
Dharavi: From Mega-Slum to Urban Paradigm
Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirsky
ISBN 978-0-415-81252-8
Beyond Kolkata
Rajarhat and the Dystopia
of Urban Imagination
Ishita Dey
Ranabir Samaddar
Suhit K. Sen
OR Routledge
U
T
EL
GD Taylor & Francis Group
ELONDON NEW YORK NEW DELHI
First published 2013 in India
by Routledge
912 Tolstoy House, 15–17 Tolstoy Marg, Connaught Place,
New Delhi 110 001
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group
Typeset by
Solution Graphics
A–14, Indira Puri, Loni Road
Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh 201 102
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage
and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-415-84435-2
Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them?
[…]
Every page a victory
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man.
Who paid the bill?
So many reports
So many questions.
(Bertolt Brecht, ‘Questions from a Worker Who Reads’, 1976)
The city appears to you as a whole where no desire is lost and of which
you are a part, and since it enjoys everything you do not enjoy, you can do
nothing but inhabit this desire and be content. Such is the power, some-
times called malignant, sometimes benign, that Anastasia, the treacherous
city possesses; if for eight hours a day you work as a cutter of agate, onyx,
chrysoprase, your labour, which gives form to desire, takes from desire its
form, and you believe you are enjoying Anastasia wholly when you are
only its slave.
(Marco Polo reporting on a city to Kublai Khan,
‘Cities and Desire 2’, 1997)
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
List of Plates ix
List of Maps and Tables xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
Preface xv
Acknowledgements xvii
1. Where is Rajarhat? 1
2. Destruction of a World 25
3. Losers and Gainers 79
4. Urban Legends of Consent 110
5. Logistics and Nightmares 135
6. New Town, New Labour 160
7. The Global and National
Histories of Rajarhat 183
8. Politics of the Multitude 209
9. Concluding Reflections 234
Glossary 244
Bibliography 246
About the Authors 259
Index 260
This page intentionally left blank
List of Plates
Between pages 134 and 135
Old Kolkata
Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata
A heritage building: The Town Hall
An old cinema hall: The New Empire
IT and Infrastructural Revolution: New Town
Offices housing IBM and other IT firms in New Town
The proposed financial hub built by Shrachi
The HIDCO palace
Inadequate infrastructure: A rare power plant
High-rise buildings and shopping malls
A water body being filled up for the purpose of construction
A road under construction
A bridge under construction
Waste-handling
Notice for New Life
Assurance of good living by the promoters: A New Town hoarding
A new hotel with hoarding of a realtor
In Transition
Stretches of desolate land
A service village
