Summary of the seminar organized at TISS on « Cities and Small Towns in the Global
Era »
Bhuvana and I participated in this workshop that was held on the 29th and 30th of August. I
also made a presentation on a kind of conceptual paper we are trying to write up with Eric
and Partha to test the notion of “Subaltern Urbanization” and its relevance. One of the idea
was to also get feedback on the possibility, dangers, limits of using this notion. More on this
later.
First, summary of the interesting things that were discussed.
Will not dwell on all the papers since all the papers presented were not always so interesting
for us for a number of reasons.
In his keynote speech, Dr.Amitabh Kundu drew attention to the lack of data on urban centres
with population below 100000. He also opined that the Indian definition of urban is restricted.
Further he pointed out that while there is not much shift in the rate of urbanization, the
number of urban centres has increased between the census period 2001 and 2011. The
2011 census also shows that rural to urban migration has declined and so is the growth rate
of metros. Information on urban to urban migration and urban to rural migration is limited.
There is also a decline in poverty in metros. There is a decline in women’s participation in
economy. These findings raises the following questions: (i) Why is there an increase in the
number of urban centres between the two census periods?: (ii) What are the patterns of
migration between rural-rural; rural to urban; and urban to urban? Can the growth of small
towns be explained by the mobility of population from metros to smaller urban centres? And
(iii) why is there a decline in women’s participation in economy?
He also stressed
researchers to revisit the Empowered sub-Committee (HEPC) report on urban visions for
India. JNURRM is to be extended to small towns.
Session 1.
Shaw’s paper was not so interesting. She mostly refered to a paper by Himanshu using NSS
data per size of town (but ending in 2000) and I will ask Himanshu for this work. Otherwise,
she drew a history of central government schemes from IDSMT to IUDSSMT. She finally
showed the latest urbanization levels per state without really taking into account the question
of classification (high increase for Kerala…) and this was indeed raised during the
discussion.
This was followed by a presentation by Prof. Sandhu on Punjab where he mentioned that
small towns increased in numbers but declined in share of population. He mostly confined his
analysis to class II to class V towns (143 in numbers) and explained the division of Punjab in
three main regions (Central Punjab with 60% of the urban population historically due to the
main railway lines and the NH, North Eastern Punjab 15% and South Western Punjab 25%).
Some equipment better in some cases but very low for latrines. Also clearly negative
relationship between town size and the percentage of SCs. One question to his paper was
about the impact of the ‘terrorist period’ on urbanization which he said was not so important.
Overall, it was descriptive but still interesting in the historical background he provided on the
State.
The paper on Allahabad by G.N. Bhatt was not too general and mostly presented the city.
The only insight that we could get was the conflict between local governance and
development authorities, much closer to large towns’ debate (and Allahabad hardly qualify
for a small town).
Debolina Kundu provided an uptodate presentation on JNNURM and the various schemes
under it and the fact the IUDSSMT represents only 20% of the funds allocated for 700 towns
as against the 80% remaining for the 63 larger towns under UIG. Also mentioned the bias
towards the largest cities in states, and the most evident is West Bengal where almost all the
funds had gone to Calcutta. Discussion brought about the same thing about Bihar (85% of
the fund have gone to Patna). Amita Bhide also made the relevant remark that though funds
and situations are different for smaller cities, the policy package was the same and this is an
important question in terms of public policy.
One interesting point of debate in this session related to methodological issues of
intertemporal changes when analysing the data across decades since some of the cities will
have changed categories.
Session 2
Started with a key note presentation by Swapna Banerjee Guha that made a summary of
contemporary urban research and mentioned that small cities are mostly looked at through
the lens of their “lack of globalness”. She mentioned that some of the ongoing research
focuses on the possibility of small towns to articulate their growth based on local and regional
resources.
Amita Bhide’s presentation on Sangli was very interesting and detailed (the closest to a real
“town story” for the fist day). Using a case study of a housing project, she showed the
interplay of actors and the existing conflicts. She also explained the regional and local
political economy in a historical perspective. She tried to identify distinctive features of small
towns which are: (i) very intertwined relationships between politics and bureaucrary (more
proximity than in bigger towns), (ii) a different understanding of reform projects, (iii) a
different place for civil society, and in this case the very specific politically motivated critics
faces by the NGO (also her paper showed very interestingly the central role of the local
newspapers taking side against the project at some point of time which, to a question I
raised, she does not explain by the nature of ownership but by the fact the most of the
journalists are part time as well as being members of political parties, (iv) the overlap
between local and state politics, and (v) the space of the “local”.. which I think she hinted at
the idea that something is distinctive.. she seems to say that this is this idea of closer
proximity of actors. Very interesting indeed and the paper shall be a very interesting read
once finished.
The presentation on Gurgaon by A. De and P. Chaudhury was interesting but a bit too much
of the “old” and the “new” and the enclave and the village, etc…They also insisted that even
though this binary does not always apply (very rich people in the “old” part of gurgaon),
distinctive minds sets persist. However, we met P. Chaudhury at the airport and the work is
based upon more than 200 interviews and forms part of her Ph.D which she plans to submit
in 6 months time. Would be interesting to hear her at this point of time.
The presentation by A. Mukherjee on the ADB UNHabitat partnership in Madhya Pradesh
was mostly descriptive and focused on water supply.
In discussion, A. Kundu made the following point (that also resonates with the presentation
on Punjab and what I have seen in prelim field work and all of yours probably) about the
indicators that show much lower coverage in terms of amenities in small towns as compared
to large towns. If we had BPL HH per size of towns, we will see there are many more in small
towns. However, governments notify slums when city government have funds for it, which
give the idea that slums exist only in large towns but likely that deprivation higher in small
towns. This needs to be taken into account in the analysis.
Session 3
Biraj Swain made an interesting presentation where she highlighted the increased role of
credit rating agencies in defining urban policies and programmes. Tracing the modalities in
which new programmes are implemented she alluded to the role of multilateral and bilateral
agencies and of late, the credit agencies in reshaping the institutional arrangements as well
as practices in both metros and small towns. She then moved on to the notion of ‘resistance’
in the case of Ratlam in MP which refused some loans conditions. Her presentation was
about the predatory financing conditions imposed in small towns (including the interesting
mention of very high consultancy fee) and arguing for trying to find innovative ways for
financing small towns. In today’s context, she argued that small towns do not even
understand the conditions imposed on them.
An interesting presentation followed by two researchers in Prayas on 10 towns in
Maharashtra. As they had 15 minutes they could not do justice to what seems an interesting
and field based work (we shall try to see more precisely what they have done). One
interesting point was the mention of conflicts between rural and urban local bodies around
the question of disposal of waste. Another one was the fact that they found out that the
change of status from rural to urban actually often aggravated problems.
Anil Kumar on district planning in Karnataka and Dharwad was a bit descriptive even though
he provided a historical background about municipal laws.
Session 4
Rakesh Gill’s key note paper was not of great interest for our project.
Abdul Shaban’s presentation on Malegaon was interesting since it was clearly rooted in
serious field work. He provided a very good historical background of the history of the city
and the various problems faced by it. A very interesting point that resonates with our project
is the question of the transformation of labour and the worsening of labour conditions for a
large number of workers (even though and he mentioned it that the liberalization of the cloth
market also created a class of entrepreneurs who is doing well). Also mentioned the very
serious concerns around pollution, illnesses… The discussion also mentioned that other
towns with Handloom industries like Malegaon have the same dynamics around labour.
Another comment was mentioning the importance of economics dynamics (and mentioned
that case of tourism shall also be seen in many States… indeed, very few presentations were
concerned by the economic changes as such). (While his ethnographic data was rich, I was
not sure of his conception of Malegoan as a city of Terror? In opening his presentation,
remarked the similarity between his and Marie Helen’s was that of ‘subalternity’. Are then
small town economic processes – like Tiruppur for instance = sub-altern = terror?? )
Prof M.N. Kharna’s presentation was more of a story (rather than an academic paper) but a
very interesting one of the case of Madhubani in Bihar and with a much grounded reading of
the historical changes (he is from this place and studied there 60 years ago…). He also
made the strong historical links between small towns and the political economy of Bihar.
Explained the economic strenghts of the city and the relationship with a dominant caste that
played a strong role (public library which he said was common in Bihar and secular
education institutions). … It would be really interesting to read the final paper as well as to
engage in discussions with him if we take up Bihar.
Session 5
Prof. Bhagat emphasized the following points:
 Small towns are to be understood as embedded systems – embedded in a regional
context. The influence of history is complex marked by continuities in some aspect
and discontinuity in others.
 There are problems with data but it gives an indication of the patterns of urbanization.
 Their study showed that poorest of the poor stay in small cities and their poverty
index is based on 35 indicators.
 An aspect that needs to be mapped is the governance of urbanization in small urban
centres – particularly the citizens’ relationship with parastatals and Panchayats. A key
issue here relates to that of local autonomy. Although urban is a State subject, it is
captured by the central government via schemes and financing mechanisms, He also
talked about the mayor in council system as a better model for deepening local
government democracy.
The presentation on Mugher by Sheema Fatima was interesting and disappointing at the
same time. Interesting because this sounds like a very good case study in Bihar of a thriving
economic place, connected with other small towns and she made the hypothesis that this
was due to a network of societies (with bazaars and towns being connected) that broke
down. Now, the town is in decline (which she did not describe) and cut from the other small
towns (by lack of transport I think). However, she did not go beyond this and led the
discussion to a very normative reading of Laloo Prasad and Nitish Kumar politics. However,
she says she will work on this case and may be we should find out. Confirms the very
interesting case of Bihar which seems to clearly have an old network of important urban
places that we could try to analyse.
Munger is interesting for the following reasons: (i) it is embedded in a network of market
places; (ii) well connected by river but connectivity by road and train is limited. Decline in
river transportation may be a factor contributing to its isolation; (iii) largely Muslim capitalists
who fled around the partition. Her presentation suggested flight of capital but did not touch
on how the economic changed thereafter – she jumped into Nitish kumar’s plan for
urbanization. (iv) From her presentation, it seemed that this comes under Gaya municipality,
which is one of well off municipalities due to Japanese funded Buddhist tourism. Questions
that are of interest which may resonate with Porto novo is that of the reasons for decline.
A. Shaban made a presentation using Economic Census data (1990 and 2005). His maps
were not so clear and it is a preliminary paper (he said the paper will be finished in a month).
Once ready, I think Mainak shall read it (for methodology). My reading is as compared to S.
Lall, he sees agglomeration of economies as well as dispersal of industries that he reads as
labour informalization, subcontracting and diseconomies of scale. One comment was that
this process of subcontracting can be seen in the glass industry in Firozabad and a lot of
subcontracting has moved towards Faridabad and Delhi.
A. Miya made a presentation of the work of the NGO she works for (part of Aga Khan’s
group) in improving housing in Vapi. She mentioned the issues of safety that incremental
housing raise.
Session 6. We had to leave and cannot say much except that the beginning of the
presentation on Meghalaya was very interesting about the issues of parallels channels of
governance which the author did detail (customary laws, autonomous district councils
supposed to protect customary laws but leading to conflicts, ‘normal’ governance structure).
The Meghalaya case is interesting particularly from the legal pluralism perspective and this
presentation can be built into a larger study on law in perspective with reference to land
(common property resources?)
Subaltern Urbanization
After my presentation, some questions about : (i) do we include ribbon development in our
reading of urbanization process, (ii) methodoloy of sampling to test the hypothesis of
diversity, (iii) mention of the uniqueness of Kerala due to the ‘rural – urban’ continuum, (iv) a
technical question on GIS (will get this guy in touch with Eric).
About the theoretical background:
1. It might be simpler and richer to not theorize about the nature of urbanization but to
ground the theory after field work results and simply make the hypothesis of
“diversity”
2. Slightly more nasty (I do not mean it in a bad way): we need to dissect the concept
before using it and clearly subaltern refer to the question of class and we need to
understand this aspect of the process
3. May be we can use the term subaltern for some specific places but not for all the
processes we will uncover. I think this is really relevant and we might need to discuss
this.
4. The main comments were made by Ashwini Kumar and he really felt we were using
the term in a very loose manner for a set of reasons:
a. We get no sense of the historical lineage of the concept which is traced to
Gramsci. If you trace subaltern to Gramsci then you cannot deal with the
question hegemony without articulating it to the structure of the state. In the
manner in which we (or I more precisely in this specific seminar) use subaltern
for place did not at all discuss the relationship between ‘territory’ and ‘state’
(thinking about it, may be this critic is a relevant one for us and we need to
see how we see territory in relations to state structure and politics).
We need to ground our narrative in post-colonialism - post-colonialism is the theoretical
mooring for many of the Indian subaltern studies). He said that he got no sense from the
presentation of the post-modernist/post-colonial grounding that exists in subaltern studies.
(The use of the term sub-altern in the non-military sense is traced to Gramsci and some
suggest that he used it in lieu of proletariat especially in his prison diaries. Sub-altern has
been used in post colonial studies in different ways – one as a reference to subjects without
any agency in the context of a hegemonic power. Spivak uses it in a more specific term and
her critique of post-colonial use of the term sub-altern is that the term is used to refer to
everything that has limited access to or no access to hegemonic power. In other words it is
used to refer to all forms of oppression or as a space of differences which in Spivak’s view is
a misuse of the term subaltern. Homibaba, uses the term in the context of power relations in
society. The bottom line is that from the presentation he did not get any sense of power
analysis – why subaltern is attributed to these territories that were mentioned, when there are
places in the north east which are totally cut off from the State. I feel that the presentation,
particularly created so much excitement also because of its content – if I remember it
correctly, whilst we showed data from the census to justify why a study of smaller urban
centres were necessary and how urban processes are diverse, at this stage it was difficult to
co-relate the dynamics that the subaltern critics are alluding to (perhaps the study is still at
an early stage to show in quantitative terms the dominance of the metros or the power
dynamics (not sure if this is what was intended)
b. So our use is loose and even dangerous.
c. Someone else went into the same space as him and mentioned the
importance of the process of class formation in Gramsci’s work (missing in our
presentation).
What I understand is that applied to places would require to think about what we can say
about a number of processes for instance ‘what is a territory’ (may be use the Sack definition
of territory as a political construct). Also, the term ‘subaltern cosmopolitanism’ is used by
Santos (2002) in his book on Towards a New Legal Common Sense. He uses the terms to
refer to counter hegemonic practices (movements, subversive urbanization etc; in the context
of neoliberal urbanization). The term is used in conjunction and at places interchangeably
with cosmopolitan legality to distinguish these processes from normative understandings of
law, equality and difference.