July 1, 2025 • 65 mins
Society has yet to fully grapple with the administrative chaos that has ensued from the growth of the urban. One such city allows tremendous insight into the process of urbanization in the new millennium: Bengaluru. During the past two decades, Bengaluru’s real estate sector and infrastructure investments have exploded in a massive transformation that stimulated rapid urbanization and unbounded growth. The coedited collection of writings Chronicles of a Global City: Speculative Lives and Unsettled Futures in Bengaluru explores how people caught up in the whirlwinds of change—construction laborers, street vendors, gig workers—experience, struggle, strive, and speculate to make a livable city for themselves.
Several contributors to this book are gathered here in conversation:
Vinay Gidwani is professor of geography and global studies at the University of Minnesota and author of Capital Interrupted: Agrarian Development and the Politics of Work in India.
Hemangini Gupta is lecturer in gender and global politics and associate director of GENDER.ED at the University of Edinburgh. She is author of Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India and coeditor of Feminist Studies: An Introductory Reader.
Kaveri Medappa is a postdoctoral researcher in human geography at the University of Oxford.
Swathi Shivanand is assistant professor at the Department of Liberal Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences in Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India.
Michael Goldman is associate professor of sociology and global studies at the University of Minnesota and author of Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization.
Praise for Chronicles of a Global City:
“A nuanced investigation into the precise nature in which Bengaluru (and the global sphere) has embraced what the authors have dubbed 'speculative urbanism', a capital-led paradigm that has monopolised the imagination over public spaces and city-building.”
—Frontline Magazine
Chronicles of a Global City: Speculative Lives and Unsettled Futures in Bengaluru is available from University of Minnesota Press.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Vinay Gidwani (00:06):
Really, I mean, the city becomes like an onion,
and you get a completelydifferent sort of perspective as
you peel these layers away.
Hemangini Gupta (00:14):
The most marginalized actors in the city
provide the sort of financialcircuits and money and debt that
are necessary for this dream ofthe world city to survive.
Swathi Shivanand (00:26):
So I think that gamble that people are
taking, hoping for that dealthat's that'll set them up for
life is something that I thinkthe book does a fantastic job
capturing.
Kaveri Medappa (00:36):
The goalpost is always moving and you're always
chasing it, but you somehow arenever there.
Michael Goldman (00:43):
This one really tells an amazing array of
stories to make both academicand public knowledge kind of
arguments about what's happeningin our cities.
Vinay Gidwani (00:57):
Okay. Well, welcome listeners to this
podcast on Chronicles of aGlobal City. I am Vinay Gidwani.
I'm one of the coeditors of thisbook, and I am a professor of
geography and global studies atUniversity of Minnesota. And
before we proceed any further,I'm going to go around the room
(01:18):
and ask my collaborators tobriefly introduce themselves.
Hemangini Gupta (01:24):
Hi, everyone. So I'm Hemangini Gupta, and I
was the postdoc on this projectfrom 2017 to 2019. And I'm
currently a lecturer in genderand global politics at the
University of Edinburgh.
Michael Goldman (01:38):
Thanks, Emangiri. My name is Michael
Goldman. I am a professor at theUniversity of Minnesota as well
in sociology and global studies.I, have been doing research in
and around Bengaluru for morethan fifteen years, so this was
quite an exciting endeavor towork with a bunch of colleagues
and, local activists andstorytellers and agents of
(02:02):
change in the city itself. Andthis book is a wonderful product
from that experience.
Kaveri Medappa (02:09):
Hi, everyone. My name is Kaveri Medappa. I used
to be the research associate onproject from 2017 to 2018. I
currently work as a postdoctoralresearcher in human geography at
the University of Oxford.
Swathi Shivanand (02:25):
My name is Swathi Shivanand and I teach at
the Department of Liberal Artsat Manipal Academy Of Higher
Education. I currently stay inBangalore and have been
Bangorian for all my life. I'vebeen working on history and
urban history, urban studies,and Bangalore's not just home,
(02:47):
but also a site of study. Sothis project on which in which I
was a consultant was somethingthat triggered my interest again
in Bangalore. So I'm gratefulfor being able to be part of
this project.
Vinay Gidwani (03:02):
Great. Well, thank you all. As you probably
might imagine, we are scatteredacross the continents, and I
think it's perhaps a a mark ofhow Bengaluru as a city has
ramified itself across theworld. So I just want to say
something briefly about thebook's motivations, its genesis,
(03:26):
what it's trying to do. As manyknow firsthand, including those
who are part of thisconversation, Bangalore, which
is now Bengaluru, was once aquiet small city in Southern
India, known primarily for itsscientific and technical
institutions and public sectorenterprises.
(03:46):
Bengaluru has now rapidlytransformed by the advent of
software outsourcing, byeconomic reforms in India that
have led to deindustrializationand the shift to a service
sector based economy. And thesechanges have been reflected in
(04:07):
the dramatic growth of the realestate industry across cities in
India, but perhaps none morethan Bengaluru itself. So
Chronicles of a Global Citytries to stage the story of
Bengaluru's urban transformationthrough the lives of ordinary
people as well as the powerfulactors who have driven this
(04:32):
city's reinvention into anaspirationally world class city.
The volume, which I think isbest described as collaborative
ethnography, brings together amontage of 22 short chapters
written in an engaging andaccessible style and a striking
photo essay to explore thesocial and ecological
(04:55):
consequences of what we callspeculative urbanism, the
concept that anchors this bookand which owes, to a wonderful
article written in 2011 by oneof the coeditors of this book,
Michael Goldman, who's presentin this podcast. So the book
(05:16):
really tries to turn the city ofBengaluru inside out, narrating
the layered histories ofBengaluru's transformation
through the lives, as I said, ofordinary people as well as the
behind the scenes movers andshakers who have built and who
run the city.
(05:37):
It tries to move the spotlightaway, to a large extent from
just the urban elites and thenew middle class who are driving
these changes to explore howdiverse communities and actors
who are caught up in thewhirlwind of change in Bengaluru
from construction laborers,street vendors, domestic
(06:00):
workers, and delivery boys tosmall time property brokers,
petty landlords, and localpoliticians. How these diverse
set of actors experience,struggle, aspire, invent, and
strive to make a livable cityfor themselves. So with that, I
will pause and perhaps turn itover to Himangani Gupta to say
(06:27):
something about the story thatshe tells in this book and what
she finds interesting andexciting about the book itself.
Hemangini Gupta (06:36):
Thanks, Vinay. So maybe I'll take the second
question first in terms of whatI find interesting about the
book. So as Swati mentioned,having been born and brought up
in a city and then doingresearch there. So like Swati, I
also was born and brought up inBangalore. Doing research for
(06:57):
this book was reallytransformative in a way because
it really helped me to see thelayers of the city.
The odd thing about thisresearch project is that it
takes place just five minutesfrom where I was brought up and
from where my family has livedsince the early 1900s. As we did
research on this project, I wasable to understand sort of
migration into and out ofneighborhoods. I was able to see
(07:19):
how financial circuits animatethese neighborhoods. I was able
to understand local ecologies ofland and water and air and also
make connections between all ofthese different things. You
know, as a resident of a city,you often walk in a neighborhood
or you live somewhere and yousee the facades changing and you
know your neighborhood ischanging dramatically, but you
(07:40):
sort of see one one level of it.
And then when you begin to doresearch over sort of multi year
project like this one was, I wasable to see these invisible
histories come to life. So evennow, where I'm sitting recording
this podcast is just a fewminutes from many of our field
sites. And I feel that everytime I go back to those places
now, I will never quite see themin the same way. And so for me,
(08:01):
maybe it's just a reallypersonal story about what's
exciting about this project.It's the fact that it has shown
me a city I thought I knew verywell in a very different light.
And I feel like I won't quitesee it the same way after having
read this book. And I alsowanted to share a little bit
about the chapter that I wrotefor the book. It's informal
settlement that was in one ofour field sites, and it was
(08:24):
built on private land, and we'dbeen tracking it for a while.
And then one day, as we weredriving past, we noticed that it
had been totally razed to theground. We became interested in
what promises were made aboutthat land and what was going to
happen to that land.
What happened to all the peoplewho used to live there? Where
had they gone and where werethey now? And so over the next
year and some, we began to tryto track all of those residents.
(08:48):
And then we also found thatthere were other informal
settlements that had been raisedto the ground. And we discovered
that the local governmentofficials had promised to build
sort of modern apartmentcomplexes in place of those
informal settlements.
So one of the stories that wetell is of a place that we call
Kalanagar and of a person calledMani. So we managed to find Mani
(09:10):
who had now moved into a modernapartment complex in place of an
informal settlement where heonce lived. And so we went to
visit him in his new house. Andthat meeting is something that
has really stayed with me. Maniand his wife, and they have
three sons, they were all verykeen on moving into this new
apartment complex.
And they told us many times thatwhere they'd lived before had
(09:33):
stagnant water. It was alwaysflooding in the monsoon. There
were mosquitoes everywhere. Andso they very much wanted this
new building and they'd moved inhere. They'd paid also an
enormous price in many ways.
And so he explained to us thatthey've been given some
compensation money to navigatethe real estate market in the
area until the apartmentbuilding was built and he had to
(09:54):
pay a deposit and he had to payreally expensive rent because
it's such a competitive realestate market. And so
essentially he'd gone into debtwhile he was waiting for his new
house to be built. And so whenwe visited him, he'd moved in,
but he was also in debt and hewas happy. And his wife showed
us the new apartment and the newshelving in the kitchen. They
(10:15):
were very proud of it.
But he was also, I think, veryconscious of the fact that it
was barely big enough to containhis immediate nuclear family. So
he has three sons. And even aswe were doing the interview, the
boys kept coming in and out ofthe apartment because we
couldn't all fit in theretogether. And he said he was
still paying rent on a previousplace that he was using as
storage. So I think that momentwas very stark because it
(10:38):
reminded us that he wouldn't,for instance, when his sons got
married, they wouldn't be ableto bring their wives to live
with him and his family.
They wouldn't be able to raisetheir kids there. They wouldn't
just be able to build a sort offloor above their house because
this was an apartment complexand they couldn't do that. The
dream of living in a modernapartment building was something
that they held on to verystrongly. But when it finally
(10:59):
happened, it wasn't quiteeverything that they'd expected.
And so there was this mix offeeling of both, yes, this is
wonderful, we're here.
But also it's just disappointingin so many ways. And I think the
other thing that I would want tomention is how we found them at
all. So we weren't given anexact address for where they
were. We were just given ageneral locality. And so we
(11:19):
began walking around trying tofind money and where the
apartment complex might be.
And we turned a corner andsuddenly we found a street that
was just full of people on thestreet. There were people
talking to each other, playinggames on the street. There were
dogs. There were people just,you know, moving in and out of
an apartment. Somehow,instinctively, we felt this
might be where the informalsettlement once was.
(11:39):
And we were right. There werethese forms of relating to each
other and these forms ofsociality that people had that
couldn't almost be contained inthat modern apartment complex.
And they'd spilled onto thestreet and they'd sort of taken
over the street. And I thinkthat's something that probably
changed so much from when theymoved from that informal
settlement that was so denselyinterconnected to this more sort
(12:01):
of modern apartment complex. Andso that's a chapter in the book
that talks about what we calllow finance in terms of the ways
in which the most marginalisedactors in the city provide the
financial circuits and money anddebt that are necessary for this
dream of the world city tosurvive.
Vinay Gidwani (12:21):
What a great story, Imam Gini. Thank you for
sharing that with us. And Ithink it provides a wonderful
glimpse into the conundrums ofthe transformations that
Bengaluru is undergoing, butalso how ordinary people are
experiencing it and how theiraspirations are leavened by
(12:43):
disappointments. I'm going tonow perhaps invite Swati
Sivanand, who has severalchapters in the volume, to
perhaps reflect on forms ofeveryday or ordinary
speculation, which is one of thekind of pivotal aspects of the
book.
Swathi Shivanand (13:02):
Thank you, Vinay. Like Himagini says, the
way in which we've worked onthis book or on this project has
really transformed the way inwhich we've seen the city that
we've grown up in. I would beginwith something that is something
of a personal note. So, I livein one of the suburbs in
Bangalore, which is a smallneighbourhood with a middle
(13:23):
class neighbourhood. And when myparents built this house, they
built it to live in it and notnecessarily to earn rent from
it.
We moved into this localitymaybe about fifteen, twenty
years ago. And that was thedream of a middle class
household to own a piece of landand to build a house and to live
(13:44):
in it. But as we've seen thislocality develop, I was amazed
at seeing how everybody wasbuilding for rent. Right. So,
it's not just a place for amiddle class household to build
a family, but also for us toearn something from it.
I never really analyzed it, butI just was just simply an
observation for a very long timethat I started working with all
(14:07):
of you in this project. Andparticularly the Karmicara
colony that or the worker'scolony that both Himalgini and
Kabi did some fantasticfieldwork in. That's when I
really began to see it in thissort of, in scrutinizing and how
the idea that land or a piece ofland just as small as 1,200
(14:30):
square feet is not simplysomething of an aspiration, but
is also something to speculateon through building. So a second
income or even maybe a primaryincome where you rent out a
floor, you rent out a room. Andreally, think that's what we saw
in this karmickerer colony, thatthat's what people are doing in
(14:51):
terms of speculating just ontheir small piece of land.
So, it doesn't necessarily needto be something that looks at
like, you know, high finance,etc. So, in that sense, what I'm
saying is echoes something thatHemangani says about low
finance. So, there are alwaysthis layer of speculative
urbanism, is deeply ordinary,deeply unremarkable, and yet it
(15:12):
is all around us. That'ssomething that the book really
does a fantastic job ofcapturing and really is
complemented by the sort of deepethnographic work that Kaviri
and Himangani have done. Andthat's really what I pick up on
when I write the chapters.
Either it could be on leakagesof affluence, which looks at the
(15:33):
contestation between a somewhatmiddle and middle class locality
and this large gated communitythat's just adjacent to it. I
think the other thing that theyreally speak about or they've
really done some great work onwas on looking at this new form
of urban occupation, which isthe small scale real estate
(15:53):
broker. I remember readingKaviri's notes in which she
talks about an interview thatshe's had with a small scale
real estate broker who's justwaiting
Kaveri Medappa (16:02):
for that one deal that
Swathi Shivanand (16:04):
will set him for life. I thought that was
just so fantastic, right? Likewe're just waiting for one deal.
It may be a receding horizon. Itmay never happen, but it's there
and you're always betting thatthis might happen.
So I think that gamble thatpeople are taking, hoping for
that deal that will set them upfor life is something that I
think the book does a fantasticjob capturing.
Vinay Gidwani (16:26):
Thank you, Swati. I think ordinary forms of
speculation and how thespeculative city that Bengaluru
has become also summonsspeculative subjects,
orientations that try to live,survive, and occasionally even
perhaps, thrive from thespeculative changes, upheavals
(16:48):
that are transforming Bengaluru.I know that there are many other
stories that you could discuss,and I hope we'll have an
occasion to come back to themlater in this podcast. But for
the time being, I'm going toinvite Kaveri Madhappa, who has
a wonderful striking chapter inthe book based, on her own
(17:10):
dissertation research, butKaveri was a pivotal part of
this project.
Kaveri Medappa (17:15):
As one of the research associates on the
project, I was very fortunate todo a lot of the field work,
especially in the core cityfield site. And as I think
Himangli put it so well insaying that you don't see the
city in the same way now thatwe've done this research. Even
while doing fieldwork inKarmicra Colony and then going
(17:40):
to RP Colony, you could see thedifferences. You could also see
the structural change in theeconomy as lived by, for
instance, the residents of RPColony who were the 60s and the
50s pastoral communities lookingafter their cows and goats and
then moving into this areabecoming industrial workers and
now their children are employedmostly in the new services
(18:04):
economy, mostly low paidservices economy jobs and also
how their lives are sofinancialised in terms of
depending on rent and rentalincome. And then you could also
see for me was to see thedifferences between Karmicarra
Colony and RP Colony and it'ssomething that this book touches
upon so much.
And what Narasim Murthy'schapter in this book also talks
(18:26):
about land, land as being aresource. The fact that
Karnikura Colony residents hadland sites allowed them to at
least build houses and now usethose houses as some sort of
protection against old age.There are no pensions, there are
no stable jobs and so you haveat least some sort of asset
(18:46):
based welfare going on inKarmicera Colony. But the same
thing when you see RP Colony andwhat happened to it, also an
informal settlement, despitebeing a notified slum, what
happened? Now they have multistorey buildings which they
cannot really make use of interms of getting credit or
trying to build up or using itas some form of protection for
(19:10):
the future.
And that's what ThingarSimurthy's chapter also talks
about so well about theconsequence of Dalits being
denied or deprived of landownership. The fieldwork took me
to places that I'd never beento. The Purvapur Field site, I
had never been to that part ofthe city despite having grown up
and having lived in it forthirty years. So it quite
(19:31):
incredible to see those placesand also to see the
transformations it wasundergoing. So yeah, the book's
very special to me.
It's also very special because Ican actually send a copy of this
book to my parents who areretired bankers who've never
been close to an academic book,and they say that they're really
enjoying reading it. So far inall my writing, this chapter
(19:52):
that I wrote for the book hasbeen probably the most enjoyable
piece of writing I have everdone. So thank you again for
inviting me to contribute tothis book. So this chapter, as
Vinay said, is based on my PhDresearch with gig workers in
Bangalore. So I studied mobilegig workers, so mostly Uber and
Ola drivers, cab drivers, andfood delivery workers in the
(20:13):
city of Bangalore.
And this was ethnographicresearch. And so whenever I
would go to meet the fooddelivery workers, would always
say, Madam, you must do this.And that is the only way you can
actually know what we gothrough. Shadowing was not
always possible because it's avery, very gendered occupation.
It's wholly male dominatedalmost.
And a lot of the men havemotorbikes where it's not
(20:36):
possible to sit billion becausethey need to keep their food
bags behind them. So to findfood delivery workers who are
willing to take me and who hadthose kind of motorbikes where
they could put the food bags infront and take me behind. It
took a bit of searching. AndAjay happened to be a long term
research participant. I met Ajayfirst when he was protesting
(20:59):
against Zomato because Zomatohad slashed its peace rates and
incentives.
And I kept meeting him. Iremember the second time I met
him, he had all theseaspirations. And it circles back
to what we were talking about interms of speculative
orientations. I asked him Iremember asking him, so how long
do you see yourself doing Zomatowork? And he said, five months,
six months max.
(21:19):
I'll clear off all my debts.I'll have some savings. And then
I'll start my own new business.And I said, what new business?
He said, oh, you don't know.
People have become so rich. Ihave a friend. He used to be a
Zomato worker. Now he has thiskebab shop. And he sells to
Zomato, you know.
So these were kind of theaspirations that he had and he
really trusted that working inZomato and working really hard,
(21:40):
you know. That was also thisother phrase that they used all
the time, food delivery workersand camp drivers, hard work. And
these are conversations inCanada. So they would use these
English phrases, hard work. Wewill do hard work and make
enough money to get out of thisand start our own business.
But of course, that was neverpossible. Six months later,
seven months later, he was stilldoing Zomato, he said, Five more
(22:01):
months. Just five more monthsand I still have some loans. And
that, I think, says so muchabout speculative lives and
speculative orientations. Thegoalpost is always moving and
you're always chasing it, butyou somehow are never there.
This one vignette that standsout for me from my day of
shadowing Ajay, he kept jumpinga lot of signals, going on the
(22:25):
wrong directions, etc, just tobe able to reach his destination
quicker. Because in Zomato andin all these app based forms of
work, you're paid by the numberof deliveries you do. So if you
hit a target, you get a littlebit of incentive. And there are
many there are multiplethresholds of targets. So he was
chasing targets all the time andhe was riding quite risky.
(22:48):
And so I asked him about thatand he said, you know, I have to
do this because otherwise I'mnever going to finish my
targets. And then we got to thepoint where he told me that he
hadn't paid insurance on thescooter. And I asked him, Why
haven't you paid insurance onthe scooter? Because you need
the scooter for your livelihoodand it's really risky if you
don't pay insurance, andespecially when riding like
this. And I made the mistake ofasking him, How much is your
(23:11):
insurance premium?
He said, 2,000. And I said, whydon't you save some money from
everyday's earnings? Save up topay your premium. And he was
like, wait, I'm going to giveyou some numbers. Okay.
So you keep adding those numbersand then you tell me if that's
possible. In the chapter, Iwrite about all the numbers he
tells me, which is basically hisloan installments, his loan
payments on his scooter, on hisphone, a lot of hand loans that
(23:36):
Himangani mentioned. Ajay wasalso extremely he's really
dependent on all thesevernacular architectures of
finance, so cheating payments,hand loans, etc. And he made me
add up all those numbers and thenumbers didn't add up. He was
living on a very, very smallmargin.
His costs were almost equal towhat he was earning. I think it
showed me how all thesediscourses that are circulating
(23:59):
in the media about how gigworkers earn so much money,
etcetera, should be reallycritiqued. And also how people
like Ajay, they got into theseforms of work because they were
promised very high incomes inthe beginning. These businesses
themselves are funded byspeculative investments. Back
then, they did not make anyprofits.
They were running huge losses,but they gave people like Ajay
(24:23):
very high remunerations in thebeginning. And then after a
couple of years started pullingback on these remunerations. And
that is why people like Ajay,their expenses now are more than
how much they can earn. But theykeep trying to match expenses to
their incomes by pushingthemselves for longer and longer
and longer. Even though Ajay wasstruggling, he did not leave
(24:46):
this job because that promisewas still alive.
He kept thinking, Okay, tomorrowmay be a better day, maybe next
week if I work a bit harder, ifI work a bit smarter, if I wait
at the right spots. So thatgamification, I think, hooks
people into these jobs that areextremely exploitative and can
also have very damagingimplications and repercussions
(25:10):
on one's own body and mentalhealth.
Vinay Gidwani (25:13):
Thank you, Kaveri. Yeah. I think it's an
amazing gripping chapter, and Ihope many of you who are
listening to this podcast willtake the opportunity to read it.
It's also wonderful to hear,Kaviri, that your parents are
actually able to pick up thebook and read it because really
that was the aspiration for thisbook. Right?
Because most academic books, areread by the usual suspects. And
(25:38):
we really wanted to try and puttogether a public facing book
that would be widely accessibleand bring some of the findings
of academic research to ageneral audience. And I think
the brief, when we set out towrite this to everyone, was
(26:00):
conceptually informedstorytelling. And I think that's
what we have really tried to doin the book. It remains to be
seen whether we succeeded, but Ithink that certainly was the
desire and the aspiration.
So that's wonderful. I justwanted to make some
clarifications in the podcastfor perhaps listeners who are
(26:21):
not as familiar with India. SoZomato, which Kaveri referred
to, right, is a food deliveryplatform, a platform business,
one of the many that has kind offlourished in India. The
government of India, forinstance, has been making some
(26:44):
rather big and ambitiouspronouncements about how the gig
economy is going to be theemployment generator that's
going to provide employment forIndia's youth. Unemployment in
India is a very major problem,and economic and political
conundrum for the country.
(27:05):
I also wanted to point out sinceKaveri very helpfully brought it
up that in terms of the researchdesign, right, we deliberately
chose two disparate sites inBengaluru. One is really kind of
in the core of the city, whichis Yashantapura and the two
colonies that we call KarmakaraColony and RP Colony. And the
(27:30):
other side, which is in on theperipheries of Bangalore, but
very quickly urbanizing, is it'sit's it's in Southeast
Bangalore, which we callPurvapur in the book. The
motivation here in erecting theresearch design in this manner
was to be cognizant of the factthat the processes of
(27:51):
urbanization that are happeningand the upheavals and outcomes
of these processes are perhapsdifferent in the core part of
the city and in the periphery.And in fact, I think our
findings bear that out.
There are obviously somesimilarities, but there are also
some fairly sharp differences.So I think that's an
(28:14):
illuminating aspect of the book.And finally, I'll say that this
aspect that Kaveri brought up,which is that Ajay's life, Ajay
who is the food delivery gigworker, it's a desperate
existence, right? He deals withcongestion, with pollution, with
rude clients, with canceledorders and so on. And at the
(28:38):
same time, there's a conundrum,right?
Because as Kaiviri was pointingout, there's also kind of a
gamification of his life. Healmost sort of sees this as a
game, hope against hope thatsomehow, right, he will be able
to leverage his toil into abetter future. And I think this
(28:59):
is the kind of desire that drawsmany people like Ajay into the
gig economy in spite of dealingwith incredible hardships. With
that, I'm going to inviteMichael Goldman, who is one of
the co editors of the book, whohas worked in Bengaluru for a
very long time, not just in theareas that we discuss in the
(29:22):
book, but also in the northernpart of the city. I invite
Michael to share hiscontributions to the project.
He has a wonderful interviewwith two prominent activists in
the city, Bhargavi Rao and LeoSaldana. And in general,
Michael, perhaps say what youthink were the motivations of
(29:43):
the book and what you finddistinctive.
Michael Goldman (29:46):
Sure. Thanks, Vinay. Boy, I enjoyed all these
stories so much, and this is whywe got together. I think the one
of the motivations from the bookwas that the principal
investigators, the core group ofpeople, some of whom are right
here or all of them are righthere, the ones that were more
directly linked to the academy,you know, the university, we
(30:09):
publish scholarly articles fromour discrete projects that come
together, under the rubric of ofthis research project. But as
many of you know and listenersincluded, the academic
publications typically are asynthesis and an argument and an
(30:31):
analytics that typically, forwhich there's very little room
for stories, for for the livesof people, for the the
intricacies and the intimaciesthat come together to allow the
academic to come up with ananalytic argument about what's
happening, in this case, incities around the world.
(30:54):
So once we had published a wholerange of articles, we sat down
and realized that, like, most ofthe ethnographic research and
experiences and stories wereleft on the floor because, you
know, in a 8000 word article,you just have to get to the
point. And getting to the pointundermines the point, which was,
(31:15):
you know, what is the livedexperience, in this case of
Bengaluru and for some of us,more generally, in cities around
the world that are being what,some of us call financialized,
you know, such that the sup thepeople who live there have to
live under the sort of, tensespeculative environment like
Ajay, like so many of the peoplewho've just been introduced,
(31:37):
through these stories. So Ithink that so then we came
together, we decided to hireresearch, associates as well as
bring back the the scholars thatstarted this project, and we,
you know, summoned ourcollective spirit and say, okay.
Let's let's write short, pithystories, or chapters based on
(31:58):
the incredible stories thatwe've collected. So, the book
starts with like the one of thechief architects and the
financiers and the developersand as we move through the
story, we start off by byexplaining through their eyes
what their dream and fantasy isof the making of a global city.
(32:20):
What is the discourse that ispervasive such that there's a
catalyst for all this dramaticchange that affects everyone in
the city and in the countryside?So so one of the stories that we
learn is that the city hasbecome, unlike in other times in
history, itself an engine ofgrowth for the country. And this
(32:44):
we heard from, you know, fromelites in in government and in
business themselves and ininvestors. So our question was
really, well, how does thataffect everyday life and
governance of a city that isitself becoming, in a sense, a
factory for for wealthproduction? And how is that
(33:04):
wealth being produced?
So a couple things that that soas Emangidi talked about the
importance of understanding lowfinance, we see everything in
relational terms, of course, andso low finance is really the
undergirding of the element thatI studied, which was high
finance. So just as the folks inthe city are having to scramble
(33:27):
just to keep up with home, work,food, and such, you know, what
about the large scale investorsin the city? So that was the
element of this research projectthat I studied. One of the
elements of the stories thatwe're trying that we tried to
manage by listening to people'sexperiences is what gets
(33:49):
destroyed in the process ofcreating this kind of global
city. And it's not just aboutmoney.
It's also about a lot the thevitality of living and the
desire and the value of livingin a city where so much of the
joy comes from the non monetizedpart of the living in the city.
Okay. So but, of course, what Istudied, primarily was, high
(34:13):
finance. And so my question was,why would Wall Street firms be
interested in investing in avery complex place like
Bangalore, investing in theirairport or in the in the public
transit system or in theseluxury residential complexes,
office complexes. You know,interesting enough, just as
(34:34):
those office complexes grewbecause so many jobs had been
eliminated in North America andEurope as engineers were hired
more cheaply in India, the samecrisis was happening in the IT
sector, while we were studyingit.
That is, there was a lot of jobshedding and unemployment
(34:57):
because there were cheaper waysto produce software, in fact,
automatizing it. So there was alot of volatility that was going
on in the city. So why wouldinvestors come? And I'll just
tell one basically pivotal storywhere it became clear to us and
those of us who were doingresearch, but also by listening
(35:18):
to the stories of financiers,developers, bankers, and what
have you, is the two thousandeight, global financial crisis.
And what's sad about it, ofcourse, is just like what
happened in throughout Europeand in United States and around
the world was banks collapsed,developers collapsed, but also
(35:39):
average people lost theirhouses, because they couldn't
pay their mortgages, becausethey lost their jobs, etc.
What I found which was stunning,which was just one little
observation through interviewsand also research, was that
after the financial crisis wasprecisely when a lot of Wall
(36:01):
Street investors came to thecity. At the point at which
there was unemployment, lack ofspending, inability to finish
projects, that was particularlywhen what they themselves called
the vultures began to circle.You know, they themselves
explained to me and mycolleagues that this was an
opportunity. And so it's hard toexplain in a podcast, but it's
(36:25):
simple logic in Wall Streetbusiness model, which is
particularly when assets aredepressed, where they lose their
value, like office buildings,like stadiums, like housing
complexes, was precisely whenthey could come in and scoop it
up at a very, very low price andthen use their own financial
(36:46):
tools to invite middle classinvestors from Bangalore, India,
around the world to buy sharesin these housing stocks, to buy
shares in these office stocks.And with every dollar that gets
invested, a company likeBlackstone is able to pull out
that profit out of India.
So what we saw was tremendousamount of investment and a
(37:07):
tremendous amount, in a shortterm, tremendous amount of
profit leaving the city. Andit's not just Bangalore. You
know, it's not just India. Wecould sit you could tell similar
stories about Madrid, Barcelona,about Detroit, and that's also
an important punchline, which isI think you would you will fall
in love with the story like youmight fall in love with the
Charles Dickens novel or whathave you. But at the same time,
(37:30):
realize that it's a generalphenomenon.
It's not specific necessarily tothis one city.
Vinay Gidwani (37:38):
Yeah. No. Thanks, Michael. You know, before I go
on, I should point out that theperson in who many ways was the
architect behind this wholeproject and the book itself is
professor Carol Upadhya, aprofessor emerita at the
National Institute of AdvancedStudies in Bengaluru, an amazing
(38:00):
anthropologist, an amazingscholar, and one of the most
organized people I have met inmy life without whose
organizational acumen and reallykind of scholarly insights, this
book would have never beenpossible. In fact, I would say
(38:20):
the project itself would havenever taken off.
So thank you, Carol. Just wantto acknowledge your absolutely
indispensable contributions tothe book. I also wanted to
return briefly to something thatMichael mentioned that his
expertise has been in how HighFinance has participated in the
(38:44):
upheavals, particularly the kindof real estate economy that has
been such a crucial ingredientin Bengaluru's transformation.
And of course, Himangini'schapter then gives us a very
different perspective on theordinary circuits of credit and
(39:07):
finance that she calls lowfinance, which have transformed
the city willy nilly from below.And then somewhere in the middle
are these circuits that we wouldcall, I guess, regional finance.
These three different fine formsof finance which operate at
(39:28):
different geographic scales,sometimes intersecting,
sometimes not, have played asignificant role in the real
estate economy that has been oneof the hallmarks of Bangalore's
transformation. So I think oneof the distinctive contributions
(39:49):
of this book is to think aboutthe different scales and forms
of finance that have been partand parcel of Bengaluru's real
estate economy. We are only fiveof us here. There are many other
amazing contributors to the bookwho cannot be here. So I'd like
(40:12):
to turn it back to all of youand perhaps add anything that
you'd like to on what you findinteresting in some of the
chapters that we haven't beenable to perhaps talk about so
far.
Swati, you have this absolutelyamazing story. This is from your
dissertation work about Amber.It's a very poignant story of
(40:35):
how construction laborers who,in many ways, provide the bodily
platform for the the edificesand the high rises and the
apartment complexes that nowlitter Bangalore's landscape.
How they have essentiallyunderwritten Bangalore's success
(41:02):
story, quote unquote.
Swathi Shivanand (41:04):
Thanks, Vinay. This is really the other side of
the story that Michael wasnarrating to us. So, all of this
investment that's flowing intothe city has drawn in people
from what we've loosely calledthe countryside or the non
urbanized or the neglectedregions of Karnataka or
(41:25):
elsewhere in different of India.So, the construction sector is
one of the largest employers inthe country right now after
agriculture. So, one of the mostdominant forms of occupation in
cities now across India is thatof construction.
In my PhD, which looks at largerdiscourses of development, etc,
(41:46):
I was looking at migration toBangalore. I studied two sites
in Bangalore which wereinhabited by construction
workers who came from a regioncalled Hyderabad, Karnataka.
Here I met Amba who was one ofmy first interlocutors. Amba was
possibly about 60 years oldbecause many of these women
(42:08):
don't have the same sense oftime and chronology that we do
in terms of what year they camehere, they came to move to
Bangalore. So, it's mostly hazy.
And so we're not necessarilyable to locate the years that
they come. So, she was possiblyaround 60 and she'd been a
construction worker for at leasttwenty years and moved in
(42:31):
because her family, her husband,etc. Had accrued debts and it
was no longer possible to livethere to earn enough to look
after her three children. Solike many others she moved to
Bangalore and started work inthe construction industry. Women
in the construction industryoften are paid much lower than
(42:51):
men who are likely to be able tomove into the more skilled
domains of construction work.
In the story that I say, itstarts with Amber but also moves
on to a couple of other youngerpeople, younger men that I meet.
These are men who are between 18to 25, who've all come here to
make a quick buck in some ways,like Kaveri's story of Ajay.
(43:16):
These are individuals who wantto put in hard work, work for
some time, and then return tothe village or whatever money,
whatever they're able toaccumulate, they invest back in
the village, right? So, to buy apiece of agricultural land or to
rebuild a house because theyknow that their life in
Bangalore is unsustainable. It'snot that they've come here to
(43:38):
settle in Bangalore.
They will eventually have tomove back because it's just not
possible to live in Bangalore.With the rent, with all kinds of
things. So, it's never a homefor them. Amba is one such
person who is actually a raritybecause you don't actually see
women who are out of theworkforce, who are still living
in Bangalore. But she is able todo so because she has been
(44:00):
allotted a home by the KarnatakaSlum Development Board, which is
a government authority.
In the time that I was doingfieldwork, even though she was
out of work, was stitching thesepatchwork quilts and making some
money out of that while she hadher son who used to work in the
construction sector. So one ofthe things that she says, which
(44:21):
really stayed with me, so Iasked her, Is there no way that
you can find work? Because shewas out of the workforce. She
was not able to find work. So,she had to figure out ways to
earn her own money.
She got really angry with me andshe said, Do you think I don't
want to work? But the contractorsays, Even people that are
fitter than you, we're not ableto find work for them. How can
(44:43):
we find work for someone likeyou? And then she says, Do I not
have a body that needs to befed? If it is only young people
with their fit bodies whodeserve to live, what am I
supposed to do?
And I think that's reallysomething that we need to reckon
with. Here's a city that'sdrawing in desperate young
(45:04):
people, asking them to give upon their vitality in order to
build the city, right? Or inorder to service the city. And
it offers very little to them.So, they have to return to the
village or some notion of avillage completely depleted, but
(45:24):
having nothing to sustainthemselves or having very little
to sustain themselves in thevillage.
So I think there is somethinghere that moves beyond
speculative urbanism, but talksabout, refers to the unsettled
futures, the title in thecaption of the book, right?
Speculative lives and unsettledfutures. That is something for
us all to reckon with in termsof it's not just money coming
(45:47):
in, it's not just people comingin, but it's also the kind of
vitality that the city demandsfrom its workers. What really do
they get at the end of this, Idon't know, sacrifice perhaps?
Vinay Gidwani (46:02):
Thank you so much for that, Swati, because I I
think Ambar's story is movingprecisely because it also
provides a moral critique of thecity. And I think it gives us a
a way to perhaps acknowledge theunacknowledged debts that a city
has to the the this invisiblearmy of workers like Amba
(46:30):
without whom Bengaluru as weknow it wouldn't exist. So
thanks for sharing that. Kaveri,Himangini, are there other
aspects that you would like toforeground showcase for the
listeners?
Kaveri Medappa (46:45):
Yeah. I mean, all the all the chapters in the
in the book are so insightful.And also, I think one thing that
comes out from reading chaptersis the paradoxes and the
ironies. There are so manychapters that touch upon this as
well as the struggles, right?The struggles for space, be it
(47:09):
Carol's chapter where we meetDalit brokers who are sort of
vying for space in the periurban real estate market
becoming brokers themselves andsaying, you know, if the readies
can do it, if the upper castegroups can do it, why shouldn't
we be doing it?
(47:30):
Participating in the speculativeeconomy, but also struggles
against the commodification, thefinancialization of space and
infrastructure. You see Usha'schapter about the Bangalore
Metro. And it was shocking forme because, you know, again,
going back to what Hemangiri andSwati and all of us have been
speaking about, we've lived inBangalore, we've been using
(47:53):
infrastructure, but tounderstand the background of how
it actually works, what theirplan for monetization is and
what their plan for financialsustainability is, which is
basically to make retail spacesinside and outside the metro
stations. That was really,really shocking and concerning.
And yeah, it was it's somethingthat would, I think, stay with
(48:17):
me whenever every time I takethe metro and I will be talking
about that with people who arevery happy about the metro and
talk about how amazing it is inBangalore.
The other chapter that I wantedto briefly refer to, again, I
can go on about the strugglesbecause we know about SJK, which
Swati is going to probably talkabout in a bit. Narasimurthy,
(48:40):
the chapter with Narasimurthyand slum dwellers struggles for
space in big cities likeBangalore. Vinay's chapter,
street vendors, and how theyclaim space and the ironies of
that, right, like when thestreet vendor who is part of the
organizing, well, he's part ofthe union says, We've been here
(49:01):
longer than these middle classresidents have been, and yet we
are the ones who have becomeencroachers of space now. Yet we
are the ones who are supposed toleave. So I think the book does
such a fantastic job of showingthese paradoxes.
And for me, one chapter thatreally stood out in terms of
showcasing these paradoxes andsomewhat of a dark humor was
(49:24):
Priyanka's chapter on thegoddess of the lake, right? When
you read that whole chapterabout how this goddess Tugalama
has been brought to the PurvaPur Lake to contain the ferocity
of the water, to contain theabundance of water. And here we
(49:45):
are in 2022, 2023 when thatresearch was done, when
Dugalamma has to be moved outbecause that lake is full of
sewage water and it's formingand combusting on its own. And
how in to bathe Dukalangma or toservice her or to worship her.
(50:05):
Now we need to put a bore well.
So these paradoxes and againwhat Leo and Bhargavi say in
their chapter with Michael,interviewing with Michael about
the paradoxes, ITBT city, thisis a city known for its
scientific temperament,etcetera. And yet we have manual
scavengers getting into pitfallsand dying, yet we have such an
(50:29):
unscientific way of dealing withwater, the needs of water, of
sanitation. So I think for me,it was these paradoxes and these
ironies and struggles that makethis book such a wonderful book
to read and to understand thecity a bit more intimately.
Vinay Gidwani (50:50):
Thank you, Kaveri. One of the points that
you ended on, which is that howBengaluru, which is sometimes
called the Silicon Valley OfAsia, is really turned into
something of an ecologicaldisaster. It's a city that was
once amply provisioned by waterthrough an intricate system of
(51:16):
human made lakes and channels.And Bengaluru, as some of you
may know, is situated on aplateau. It's at an elevation of
approximately 3,000 feet.
This intricate system that wasbuilt over decades was
absolutely critical in providingand and and did a great job of
(51:37):
providing for, Bengaluru's,water needs. Presently, because
of the unfettered growth thatBangalore has, witnessed, water
is, increasingly piped up fromthe Kaveri River uphill at great
cost and doesn't necessarilyfurnish the city's water needs.
(51:59):
But one of the ecologicalparadoxes of Bangalore now is
that because this system oflakes and channels has been
decimated, sometimes in manycases built over, we have this
paradoxical situation whereBangalore can simultaneously
(52:19):
experiences flooding and waterscarcity recurrently. So it's a
real illustration of how anaspirational global city model
can produce these speculativeecologies, which can be
tremendously damaging. I wantedto also point out before we
(52:43):
forget that the book has shortbut very insightful forwards, a
forward and an afterward.
A foreword by the historianJanaki Nayar, who's a renowned
historian and has written aniconic book on Bangalore's
development, and afterward bythe geographer Malini
(53:03):
Ranganathan, who really kind offoregrounds the caste dynamics
of urban transformation in thecity. I think we're nearing the
end, so I'd like to give anopportunity to Hema Angani to
take us towards the close andhighlight some other aspects
that she would like listeners tobe mindful of.
Hemangini Gupta (53:26):
Thanks, Vinay. So I will say that there are
several chapters in the bookthat really puncture this
imaginary of the world city,which is something that planners
and bureaucrats and governmentofficials in Bangalore have long
held very close. You know, andthe implicit promise, I think,
of the world city is that it canenable access to a modern middle
(53:47):
class life to a greater numberof people. Right? And so through
many chapters, we really look athow there are intricate cast
networks that enable people tosort of build the resources
necessary to participate in thatworld city dream, but also for
caste oppressed people that canreally prevent them from having
access to what is necessary toenter that imagination.
(54:10):
Whether it's looking atagricultural sites on the city's
periphery or looking at sitesvery much in the center of the
city, I think that what the bookdoes very well is to puncture
this idea that the world cityimaginary is something that is
enabling to a large number ofpeople. So I do want to mark
that through the book. Yeah. Andthen I was wondering, Swati, if
(54:31):
at this point you want to comein to also talk about other ways
in which this world cityimaginary has been punctured
through organizing and so on.And then maybe I can just say a
bit after that about some of thephotography and multimodal work
that came alongside the project.
Swathi Shivanand (54:47):
Thanks, Himanshu. I just wanted to not
miss this aspect of organizingthat's been taking place in the
city. So, none of this has goneuncontested, the sort of high
finance, state speculation, andthe exploitation of waves and
waves of migrant workers,etcetera. So, in that context, I
(55:10):
wanted to talk about thisparticular chapter on the slum
rights movement, which I thinknearly everybody in the book has
done interviews with respect tothe slum rights movement. This
is a chapter based on aninterview with Narasimha Murti,
who is the convener of somethingcalled Slam Janandhu Vana
(55:30):
Karnataka, which translates topeople's rights movement, slum
people's rights movement.
There are many things thatNarasimha Muthi draws our
attention to, but I want to talkabout two things. In our
conversation, he talks aboutevictions. And for anyone
familiar with informalsettlements and state violence
(55:52):
against informal settlements,evictions is the mode through
which states violence againstinformal settlements takes
place. So, talks about evictionsand that s been one of the sort
of organizing impetus for peoples rights movements including
slum rights movements acrossIndia. And here he but he was
(56:14):
referring to something calledsomething like market led
evictions.
And I thought that was thereally intriguing part. And so
in my interview with him, Iprobed further to figure out
what he meant by evictions,because essentially when he said
evictions, it was when Dalithouseholds were being bought out
(56:36):
of their houses through what arelegal purchases, right? So,
Dalit households in slums,etcetera, have been allocated
land by the state, but the landgrows into real estate gains
value. And so they, so they endup selling it and perhaps move
(56:59):
out of this sort of primelocation or something that
something that's become realestate. So he characterized it
as market led.
He characterized it asevictions, which was essentially
how which is essentially aforced phenomenon. Right? But he
was talking about a market ledeviction. And I thought that was
(57:20):
really interesting for us to payattention to in terms of how
gentrification may be takingplace through legal means, but
are perceived when looked atthrough a rights perspective is
perceived as a forced emphasis.The second thing that I thought
he that he really emphasized wason this.
(57:43):
So, for a very long time, what'shappened is that the slums
rights movements have oftenasked for ownership of the land.
Right. And when I was ajournalist back in 02/1926, I
covered some of these movements,of these protests and evictions,
etcetera. And so, I was familiarwith some of the things that he
(58:05):
was saying. But I think there'sbeen in the, for about eighteen,
nineteen years since I was ajournalist, there's been a
movement in articulation amongwithin the slam rights movement.
And which is not just that aredemanding for a right to own a
piece of land, but also a rightto speculate. Right. So, it's
(58:29):
not simply that we wantownership of the land and that
the state must give it to usbecause we deserve it, because
we are laboring for the city,we're building the city. So that
is, of course, a primaryargument. But they're also
saying that we need this right.
We don't want you to give usmulti storey flats and multi
storey buildings because thatdoes not allow us the space to
(58:51):
expand. Right? So we cannot goon to build how build more
rooms, more flats, more and usethat to earn rent. So, or use
that to earn income. So there isalso an added element to this
(59:11):
demand for a right to own apiece of land in the city, which
is the right to speculate.
And I thought that was a reallyfantastic sort of argument that
he was making from a rightsperspective to be able to
speculate. See, if everyone inthe city is able to speculate,
middle class people arespeculating, if corporate
finances are speculating, iflarge construction industries
(59:34):
are speculating, why do I nothave a right to speculate? And I
think that was that wassomething that, again, a moral
critic, but also a moral claimon the city.
Vinay Gidwani (59:45):
Yeah. Thank you so much for foregrounding that
very important aspect of thebook. And I should point out
that, you know, what we think isone of the distinctive aspects
of the book is that it it bringstogether the voices of
activists, public intellectuals,and scholars. Really, I mean,
the city becomes like an onion,and then you peel away the
(01:00:07):
layers. Right?
And you get a completelydifferent sort of perspective on
the city as you peel theselayers away. As Kaveri and
Himongini were pointing out atthe outset, a city that felt
intimately familiar becomesunfamiliar, almost almost
(01:00:29):
strange in an unexpected,unsettling way. And I think in
the best of ways, that's whatscholarship really tries to
achieve, right, to estrange andperhaps defamiliarize what seems
commonsensical, what seems youknow, what what's as given.
(01:00:50):
What's what's taken for granted.So I think this book does that
in in an understated way throughstorytelling.
But nevertheless, I think thethe point is to generate lessons
for understanding urbantransformations happening in
other parts of the world wheresimilar processes are perhaps
(01:01:17):
playing out in historically andgeographically specific singular
ways. Right? So structuralforces that perhaps share
similarities, nevertheless, playout in particular ways in in in
in specific locations. So thebook has, obviously, certain
(01:01:42):
stories that are grounded, citedin the specific location of
Bengaluru, but nevertheless, asMichael Goldman was pointing
out, offers, generalizableinsights, lessons that we can
take away and carry away. Soperhaps, Himangini, I'll give
(01:02:02):
you the last word, and then wecan conclude this podcast.
But I would invite, listeners ifyou've been intrigued, if you
feel so moved to read the bookand to really participate in the
stories.
Hemangini Gupta (01:02:18):
Thanks, Vinay. So the cover of the book is a
montage of four photographs bythe photographer Pierre Hoser.
Pierre also has a beautifulphoto essay in the book called
Life in the Speculative City.And Pierre worked with the
project for many, many years andhas worked with Michael before
that on other projects in thecity. And I think his
(01:02:39):
photographs really animate theproject in incredible ways.
Two things worth mentioning arethat Pierce photographs often
work through a sort of panelingwhere he will focus on like one
panel of something much larger.And it's often people in that
panel that he will draw yourattention to through his
photographs. So that what mighthave been a huge construction
site, he'll suddenly bring toyour attention the fact that
(01:03:01):
there are four constructionworkers in the central panel who
are in very dangerous positions,building what you might have
even missed as part of a muchlarger scaffolding. And then he
also works through juxtapositionby reminding you and by framing
his photographs so that you seetwo elements that don't seem
congruent at all, but are infact very much a part of the
city. So you'll see, forinstance, huge tracts of
(01:03:22):
agricultural land that areframed by these new apartment
buildings that have been builton what was formerly
agricultural land.
Or you'll see a lake and in theforeground you'll see some of
the sort of the dead life, thedead aquatic life from that
lake. So these juxtapositionsare very, very pronounced and
they really draw your attentionto them. People would come to us
(01:03:42):
when they saw Pierre with hiscamera. They would want to be
photographed or they would wantto chat. And so it was wonderful
to come to a field site and notfeel like you had to approach
people who might be reluctant,but instead you would have
people coming to you wanting totalk and to share and to sort of
engage the camera in veryinteresting ways.
In many ways, I think thisproject has been committed to
(01:04:02):
sort of public scholarship, bothin terms of how we presented the
research through the exhibition,but also this book itself.
Vinay Gidwani (01:04:09):
Well, I'm just going to conclude it on that
wonderful note. Yes. Pierre'sphotographs, I think, are really
a striking supplement to thebook. And I just want to
conclude by thanking the amazingHimangini Gupta, Kaveri Medappa,
Swati Shivanand, and MichaelGoldman, and all the other
(01:04:31):
incredible people who are notpresent in this podcast, for the
wonderful, lively, and deeplyinsightful and often, poignant
chapters that, are part andparcel of this book. And I hope,
and I invite you once again to,pick up a copy and read
(01:04:52):
Chronicles of a Global City.
I think, you will find it worthyour time. So thank you for
listening to us, and, bye bye.
Really, I mean, the city becomes like an onion,
and you get a completelydifferent sort of perspective as
you peel these layers away.
Hemangini Gupta (00:14):
The most marginalized actors in the city
provide the sort of financialcircuits and money and debt that
are necessary for this dream ofthe world city to survive.
Swathi Shivanand (00:26):
So I think that gamble that people are
taking, hoping for that dealthat's that'll set them up for
life is something that I thinkthe book does a fantastic job
capturing.
Kaveri Medappa (00:36):
The goalpost is always moving and you're always
chasing it, but you somehow arenever there.
Michael Goldman (00:43):
This one really tells an amazing array of
stories to make both academicand public knowledge kind of
arguments about what's happeningin our cities.
Vinay Gidwani (00:57):
Okay. Well, welcome listeners to this
podcast on Chronicles of aGlobal City. I am Vinay Gidwani.
I'm one of the coeditors of thisbook, and I am a professor of
geography and global studies atUniversity of Minnesota. And
before we proceed any further,I'm going to go around the room
(01:18):
and ask my collaborators tobriefly introduce themselves.
Hemangini Gupta (01:24):
Hi, everyone. So I'm Hemangini Gupta, and I
was the postdoc on this projectfrom 2017 to 2019. And I'm
currently a lecturer in genderand global politics at the
University of Edinburgh.
Michael Goldman (01:38):
Thanks, Emangiri. My name is Michael
Goldman. I am a professor at theUniversity of Minnesota as well
in sociology and global studies.I, have been doing research in
and around Bengaluru for morethan fifteen years, so this was
quite an exciting endeavor towork with a bunch of colleagues
and, local activists andstorytellers and agents of
(02:02):
change in the city itself. Andthis book is a wonderful product
from that experience.
Kaveri Medappa (02:09):
Hi, everyone. My name is Kaveri Medappa. I used
to be the research associate onproject from 2017 to 2018. I
currently work as a postdoctoralresearcher in human geography at
the University of Oxford.
Swathi Shivanand (02:25):
My name is Swathi Shivanand and I teach at
the Department of Liberal Artsat Manipal Academy Of Higher
Education. I currently stay inBangalore and have been
Bangorian for all my life. I'vebeen working on history and
urban history, urban studies,and Bangalore's not just home,
(02:47):
but also a site of study. Sothis project on which in which I
was a consultant was somethingthat triggered my interest again
in Bangalore. So I'm gratefulfor being able to be part of
this project.
Vinay Gidwani (03:02):
Great. Well, thank you all. As you probably
might imagine, we are scatteredacross the continents, and I
think it's perhaps a a mark ofhow Bengaluru as a city has
ramified itself across theworld. So I just want to say
something briefly about thebook's motivations, its genesis,
(03:26):
what it's trying to do. As manyknow firsthand, including those
who are part of thisconversation, Bangalore, which
is now Bengaluru, was once aquiet small city in Southern
India, known primarily for itsscientific and technical
institutions and public sectorenterprises.
(03:46):
Bengaluru has now rapidlytransformed by the advent of
software outsourcing, byeconomic reforms in India that
have led to deindustrializationand the shift to a service
sector based economy. And thesechanges have been reflected in
(04:07):
the dramatic growth of the realestate industry across cities in
India, but perhaps none morethan Bengaluru itself. So
Chronicles of a Global Citytries to stage the story of
Bengaluru's urban transformationthrough the lives of ordinary
people as well as the powerfulactors who have driven this
(04:32):
city's reinvention into anaspirationally world class city.
The volume, which I think isbest described as collaborative
ethnography, brings together amontage of 22 short chapters
written in an engaging andaccessible style and a striking
photo essay to explore thesocial and ecological
(04:55):
consequences of what we callspeculative urbanism, the
concept that anchors this bookand which owes, to a wonderful
article written in 2011 by oneof the coeditors of this book,
Michael Goldman, who's presentin this podcast. So the book
(05:16):
really tries to turn the city ofBengaluru inside out, narrating
the layered histories ofBengaluru's transformation
through the lives, as I said, ofordinary people as well as the
behind the scenes movers andshakers who have built and who
run the city.
(05:37):
It tries to move the spotlightaway, to a large extent from
just the urban elites and thenew middle class who are driving
these changes to explore howdiverse communities and actors
who are caught up in thewhirlwind of change in Bengaluru
from construction laborers,street vendors, domestic
(06:00):
workers, and delivery boys tosmall time property brokers,
petty landlords, and localpoliticians. How these diverse
set of actors experience,struggle, aspire, invent, and
strive to make a livable cityfor themselves. So with that, I
will pause and perhaps turn itover to Himangani Gupta to say
(06:27):
something about the story thatshe tells in this book and what
she finds interesting andexciting about the book itself.
Hemangini Gupta (06:36):
Thanks, Vinay. So maybe I'll take the second
question first in terms of whatI find interesting about the
book. So as Swati mentioned,having been born and brought up
in a city and then doingresearch there. So like Swati, I
also was born and brought up inBangalore. Doing research for
(06:57):
this book was reallytransformative in a way because
it really helped me to see thelayers of the city.
The odd thing about thisresearch project is that it
takes place just five minutesfrom where I was brought up and
from where my family has livedsince the early 1900s. As we did
research on this project, I wasable to understand sort of
migration into and out ofneighborhoods. I was able to see
(07:19):
how financial circuits animatethese neighborhoods. I was able
to understand local ecologies ofland and water and air and also
make connections between all ofthese different things. You
know, as a resident of a city,you often walk in a neighborhood
or you live somewhere and yousee the facades changing and you
know your neighborhood ischanging dramatically, but you
(07:40):
sort of see one one level of it.
And then when you begin to doresearch over sort of multi year
project like this one was, I wasable to see these invisible
histories come to life. So evennow, where I'm sitting recording
this podcast is just a fewminutes from many of our field
sites. And I feel that everytime I go back to those places
now, I will never quite see themin the same way. And so for me,
(08:01):
maybe it's just a reallypersonal story about what's
exciting about this project.It's the fact that it has shown
me a city I thought I knew verywell in a very different light.
And I feel like I won't quitesee it the same way after having
read this book. And I alsowanted to share a little bit
about the chapter that I wrotefor the book. It's informal
settlement that was in one ofour field sites, and it was
(08:24):
built on private land, and we'dbeen tracking it for a while.
And then one day, as we weredriving past, we noticed that it
had been totally razed to theground. We became interested in
what promises were made aboutthat land and what was going to
happen to that land.
What happened to all the peoplewho used to live there? Where
had they gone and where werethey now? And so over the next
year and some, we began to tryto track all of those residents.
(08:48):
And then we also found thatthere were other informal
settlements that had been raisedto the ground. And we discovered
that the local governmentofficials had promised to build
sort of modern apartmentcomplexes in place of those
informal settlements.
So one of the stories that wetell is of a place that we call
Kalanagar and of a person calledMani. So we managed to find Mani
(09:10):
who had now moved into a modernapartment complex in place of an
informal settlement where heonce lived. And so we went to
visit him in his new house. Andthat meeting is something that
has really stayed with me. Maniand his wife, and they have
three sons, they were all verykeen on moving into this new
apartment complex.
And they told us many times thatwhere they'd lived before had
(09:33):
stagnant water. It was alwaysflooding in the monsoon. There
were mosquitoes everywhere. Andso they very much wanted this
new building and they'd moved inhere. They'd paid also an
enormous price in many ways.
And so he explained to us thatthey've been given some
compensation money to navigatethe real estate market in the
area until the apartmentbuilding was built and he had to
(09:54):
pay a deposit and he had to payreally expensive rent because
it's such a competitive realestate market. And so
essentially he'd gone into debtwhile he was waiting for his new
house to be built. And so whenwe visited him, he'd moved in,
but he was also in debt and hewas happy. And his wife showed
us the new apartment and the newshelving in the kitchen. They
(10:15):
were very proud of it.
But he was also, I think, veryconscious of the fact that it
was barely big enough to containhis immediate nuclear family. So
he has three sons. And even aswe were doing the interview, the
boys kept coming in and out ofthe apartment because we
couldn't all fit in theretogether. And he said he was
still paying rent on a previousplace that he was using as
storage. So I think that momentwas very stark because it
(10:38):
reminded us that he wouldn't,for instance, when his sons got
married, they wouldn't be ableto bring their wives to live
with him and his family.
They wouldn't be able to raisetheir kids there. They wouldn't
just be able to build a sort offloor above their house because
this was an apartment complexand they couldn't do that. The
dream of living in a modernapartment building was something
that they held on to verystrongly. But when it finally
(10:59):
happened, it wasn't quiteeverything that they'd expected.
And so there was this mix offeeling of both, yes, this is
wonderful, we're here.
But also it's just disappointingin so many ways. And I think the
other thing that I would want tomention is how we found them at
all. So we weren't given anexact address for where they
were. We were just given ageneral locality. And so we
(11:19):
began walking around trying tofind money and where the
apartment complex might be.
And we turned a corner andsuddenly we found a street that
was just full of people on thestreet. There were people
talking to each other, playinggames on the street. There were
dogs. There were people just,you know, moving in and out of
an apartment. Somehow,instinctively, we felt this
might be where the informalsettlement once was.
(11:39):
And we were right. There werethese forms of relating to each
other and these forms ofsociality that people had that
couldn't almost be contained inthat modern apartment complex.
And they'd spilled onto thestreet and they'd sort of taken
over the street. And I thinkthat's something that probably
changed so much from when theymoved from that informal
settlement that was so denselyinterconnected to this more sort
(12:01):
of modern apartment complex. Andso that's a chapter in the book
that talks about what we calllow finance in terms of the ways
in which the most marginalisedactors in the city provide the
financial circuits and money anddebt that are necessary for this
dream of the world city tosurvive.
Vinay Gidwani (12:21):
What a great story, Imam Gini. Thank you for
sharing that with us. And Ithink it provides a wonderful
glimpse into the conundrums ofthe transformations that
Bengaluru is undergoing, butalso how ordinary people are
experiencing it and how theiraspirations are leavened by
(12:43):
disappointments. I'm going tonow perhaps invite Swati
Sivanand, who has severalchapters in the volume, to
perhaps reflect on forms ofeveryday or ordinary
speculation, which is one of thekind of pivotal aspects of the
book.
Swathi Shivanand (13:02):
Thank you, Vinay. Like Himagini says, the
way in which we've worked onthis book or on this project has
really transformed the way inwhich we've seen the city that
we've grown up in. I would beginwith something that is something
of a personal note. So, I livein one of the suburbs in
Bangalore, which is a smallneighbourhood with a middle
(13:23):
class neighbourhood. And when myparents built this house, they
built it to live in it and notnecessarily to earn rent from
it.
We moved into this localitymaybe about fifteen, twenty
years ago. And that was thedream of a middle class
household to own a piece of landand to build a house and to live
(13:44):
in it. But as we've seen thislocality develop, I was amazed
at seeing how everybody wasbuilding for rent. Right. So,
it's not just a place for amiddle class household to build
a family, but also for us toearn something from it.
I never really analyzed it, butI just was just simply an
observation for a very long timethat I started working with all
(14:07):
of you in this project. Andparticularly the Karmicara
colony that or the worker'scolony that both Himalgini and
Kabi did some fantasticfieldwork in. That's when I
really began to see it in thissort of, in scrutinizing and how
the idea that land or a piece ofland just as small as 1,200
(14:30):
square feet is not simplysomething of an aspiration, but
is also something to speculateon through building. So a second
income or even maybe a primaryincome where you rent out a
floor, you rent out a room. Andreally, think that's what we saw
in this karmickerer colony, thatthat's what people are doing in
(14:51):
terms of speculating just ontheir small piece of land.
So, it doesn't necessarily needto be something that looks at
like, you know, high finance,etc. So, in that sense, what I'm
saying is echoes something thatHemangani says about low
finance. So, there are alwaysthis layer of speculative
urbanism, is deeply ordinary,deeply unremarkable, and yet it
(15:12):
is all around us. That'ssomething that the book really
does a fantastic job ofcapturing and really is
complemented by the sort of deepethnographic work that Kaviri
and Himangani have done. Andthat's really what I pick up on
when I write the chapters.
Either it could be on leakagesof affluence, which looks at the
(15:33):
contestation between a somewhatmiddle and middle class locality
and this large gated communitythat's just adjacent to it. I
think the other thing that theyreally speak about or they've
really done some great work onwas on looking at this new form
of urban occupation, which isthe small scale real estate
(15:53):
broker. I remember readingKaviri's notes in which she
talks about an interview thatshe's had with a small scale
real estate broker who's justwaiting
Kaveri Medappa (16:02):
for that one deal that
Swathi Shivanand (16:04):
will set him for life. I thought that was
just so fantastic, right? Likewe're just waiting for one deal.
It may be a receding horizon. Itmay never happen, but it's there
and you're always betting thatthis might happen.
So I think that gamble thatpeople are taking, hoping for
that deal that will set them upfor life is something that I
think the book does a fantasticjob capturing.
Vinay Gidwani (16:26):
Thank you, Swati. I think ordinary forms of
speculation and how thespeculative city that Bengaluru
has become also summonsspeculative subjects,
orientations that try to live,survive, and occasionally even
perhaps, thrive from thespeculative changes, upheavals
(16:48):
that are transforming Bengaluru.I know that there are many other
stories that you could discuss,and I hope we'll have an
occasion to come back to themlater in this podcast. But for
the time being, I'm going toinvite Kaveri Madhappa, who has
a wonderful striking chapter inthe book based, on her own
(17:10):
dissertation research, butKaveri was a pivotal part of
this project.
Kaveri Medappa (17:15):
As one of the research associates on the
project, I was very fortunate todo a lot of the field work,
especially in the core cityfield site. And as I think
Himangli put it so well insaying that you don't see the
city in the same way now thatwe've done this research. Even
while doing fieldwork inKarmicra Colony and then going
(17:40):
to RP Colony, you could see thedifferences. You could also see
the structural change in theeconomy as lived by, for
instance, the residents of RPColony who were the 60s and the
50s pastoral communities lookingafter their cows and goats and
then moving into this areabecoming industrial workers and
now their children are employedmostly in the new services
(18:04):
economy, mostly low paidservices economy jobs and also
how their lives are sofinancialised in terms of
depending on rent and rentalincome. And then you could also
see for me was to see thedifferences between Karmicarra
Colony and RP Colony and it'ssomething that this book touches
upon so much.
And what Narasim Murthy'schapter in this book also talks
(18:26):
about land, land as being aresource. The fact that
Karnikura Colony residents hadland sites allowed them to at
least build houses and now usethose houses as some sort of
protection against old age.There are no pensions, there are
no stable jobs and so you haveat least some sort of asset
(18:46):
based welfare going on inKarmicera Colony. But the same
thing when you see RP Colony andwhat happened to it, also an
informal settlement, despitebeing a notified slum, what
happened? Now they have multistorey buildings which they
cannot really make use of interms of getting credit or
trying to build up or using itas some form of protection for
(19:10):
the future.
And that's what ThingarSimurthy's chapter also talks
about so well about theconsequence of Dalits being
denied or deprived of landownership. The fieldwork took me
to places that I'd never beento. The Purvapur Field site, I
had never been to that part ofthe city despite having grown up
and having lived in it forthirty years. So it quite
(19:31):
incredible to see those placesand also to see the
transformations it wasundergoing. So yeah, the book's
very special to me.
It's also very special because Ican actually send a copy of this
book to my parents who areretired bankers who've never
been close to an academic book,and they say that they're really
enjoying reading it. So far inall my writing, this chapter
(19:52):
that I wrote for the book hasbeen probably the most enjoyable
piece of writing I have everdone. So thank you again for
inviting me to contribute tothis book. So this chapter, as
Vinay said, is based on my PhDresearch with gig workers in
Bangalore. So I studied mobilegig workers, so mostly Uber and
Ola drivers, cab drivers, andfood delivery workers in the
(20:13):
city of Bangalore.
And this was ethnographicresearch. And so whenever I
would go to meet the fooddelivery workers, would always
say, Madam, you must do this.And that is the only way you can
actually know what we gothrough. Shadowing was not
always possible because it's avery, very gendered occupation.
It's wholly male dominatedalmost.
And a lot of the men havemotorbikes where it's not
(20:36):
possible to sit billion becausethey need to keep their food
bags behind them. So to findfood delivery workers who are
willing to take me and who hadthose kind of motorbikes where
they could put the food bags infront and take me behind. It
took a bit of searching. AndAjay happened to be a long term
research participant. I met Ajayfirst when he was protesting
(20:59):
against Zomato because Zomatohad slashed its peace rates and
incentives.
And I kept meeting him. Iremember the second time I met
him, he had all theseaspirations. And it circles back
to what we were talking about interms of speculative
orientations. I asked him Iremember asking him, so how long
do you see yourself doing Zomatowork? And he said, five months,
six months max.
(21:19):
I'll clear off all my debts.I'll have some savings. And then
I'll start my own new business.And I said, what new business?
He said, oh, you don't know.
People have become so rich. Ihave a friend. He used to be a
Zomato worker. Now he has thiskebab shop. And he sells to
Zomato, you know.
So these were kind of theaspirations that he had and he
really trusted that working inZomato and working really hard,
(21:40):
you know. That was also thisother phrase that they used all
the time, food delivery workersand camp drivers, hard work. And
these are conversations inCanada. So they would use these
English phrases, hard work. Wewill do hard work and make
enough money to get out of thisand start our own business.
But of course, that was neverpossible. Six months later,
seven months later, he was stilldoing Zomato, he said, Five more
(22:01):
months. Just five more monthsand I still have some loans. And
that, I think, says so muchabout speculative lives and
speculative orientations. Thegoalpost is always moving and
you're always chasing it, butyou somehow are never there.
This one vignette that standsout for me from my day of
shadowing Ajay, he kept jumpinga lot of signals, going on the
(22:25):
wrong directions, etc, just tobe able to reach his destination
quicker. Because in Zomato andin all these app based forms of
work, you're paid by the numberof deliveries you do. So if you
hit a target, you get a littlebit of incentive. And there are
many there are multiplethresholds of targets. So he was
chasing targets all the time andhe was riding quite risky.
(22:48):
And so I asked him about thatand he said, you know, I have to
do this because otherwise I'mnever going to finish my
targets. And then we got to thepoint where he told me that he
hadn't paid insurance on thescooter. And I asked him, Why
haven't you paid insurance onthe scooter? Because you need
the scooter for your livelihoodand it's really risky if you
don't pay insurance, andespecially when riding like
this. And I made the mistake ofasking him, How much is your
(23:11):
insurance premium?
He said, 2,000. And I said, whydon't you save some money from
everyday's earnings? Save up topay your premium. And he was
like, wait, I'm going to giveyou some numbers. Okay.
So you keep adding those numbersand then you tell me if that's
possible. In the chapter, Iwrite about all the numbers he
tells me, which is basically hisloan installments, his loan
payments on his scooter, on hisphone, a lot of hand loans that
(23:36):
Himangani mentioned. Ajay wasalso extremely he's really
dependent on all thesevernacular architectures of
finance, so cheating payments,hand loans, etc. And he made me
add up all those numbers and thenumbers didn't add up. He was
living on a very, very smallmargin.
His costs were almost equal towhat he was earning. I think it
showed me how all thesediscourses that are circulating
(23:59):
in the media about how gigworkers earn so much money,
etcetera, should be reallycritiqued. And also how people
like Ajay, they got into theseforms of work because they were
promised very high incomes inthe beginning. These businesses
themselves are funded byspeculative investments. Back
then, they did not make anyprofits.
They were running huge losses,but they gave people like Ajay
(24:23):
very high remunerations in thebeginning. And then after a
couple of years started pullingback on these remunerations. And
that is why people like Ajay,their expenses now are more than
how much they can earn. But theykeep trying to match expenses to
their incomes by pushingthemselves for longer and longer
and longer. Even though Ajay wasstruggling, he did not leave
(24:46):
this job because that promisewas still alive.
He kept thinking, Okay, tomorrowmay be a better day, maybe next
week if I work a bit harder, ifI work a bit smarter, if I wait
at the right spots. So thatgamification, I think, hooks
people into these jobs that areextremely exploitative and can
also have very damagingimplications and repercussions
(25:10):
on one's own body and mentalhealth.
Vinay Gidwani (25:13):
Thank you, Kaveri. Yeah. I think it's an
amazing gripping chapter, and Ihope many of you who are
listening to this podcast willtake the opportunity to read it.
It's also wonderful to hear,Kaviri, that your parents are
actually able to pick up thebook and read it because really
that was the aspiration for thisbook. Right?
Because most academic books, areread by the usual suspects. And
(25:38):
we really wanted to try and puttogether a public facing book
that would be widely accessibleand bring some of the findings
of academic research to ageneral audience. And I think
the brief, when we set out towrite this to everyone, was
(26:00):
conceptually informedstorytelling. And I think that's
what we have really tried to doin the book. It remains to be
seen whether we succeeded, but Ithink that certainly was the
desire and the aspiration.
So that's wonderful. I justwanted to make some
clarifications in the podcastfor perhaps listeners who are
(26:21):
not as familiar with India. SoZomato, which Kaveri referred
to, right, is a food deliveryplatform, a platform business,
one of the many that has kind offlourished in India. The
government of India, forinstance, has been making some
(26:44):
rather big and ambitiouspronouncements about how the gig
economy is going to be theemployment generator that's
going to provide employment forIndia's youth. Unemployment in
India is a very major problem,and economic and political
conundrum for the country.
(27:05):
I also wanted to point out sinceKaveri very helpfully brought it
up that in terms of the researchdesign, right, we deliberately
chose two disparate sites inBengaluru. One is really kind of
in the core of the city, whichis Yashantapura and the two
colonies that we call KarmakaraColony and RP Colony. And the
(27:30):
other side, which is in on theperipheries of Bangalore, but
very quickly urbanizing, is it'sit's it's in Southeast
Bangalore, which we callPurvapur in the book. The
motivation here in erecting theresearch design in this manner
was to be cognizant of the factthat the processes of
(27:51):
urbanization that are happeningand the upheavals and outcomes
of these processes are perhapsdifferent in the core part of
the city and in the periphery.And in fact, I think our
findings bear that out.
There are obviously somesimilarities, but there are also
some fairly sharp differences.So I think that's an
(28:14):
illuminating aspect of the book.And finally, I'll say that this
aspect that Kaveri brought up,which is that Ajay's life, Ajay
who is the food delivery gigworker, it's a desperate
existence, right? He deals withcongestion, with pollution, with
rude clients, with canceledorders and so on. And at the
(28:38):
same time, there's a conundrum,right?
Because as Kaiviri was pointingout, there's also kind of a
gamification of his life. Healmost sort of sees this as a
game, hope against hope thatsomehow, right, he will be able
to leverage his toil into abetter future. And I think this
(28:59):
is the kind of desire that drawsmany people like Ajay into the
gig economy in spite of dealingwith incredible hardships. With
that, I'm going to inviteMichael Goldman, who is one of
the co editors of the book, whohas worked in Bengaluru for a
very long time, not just in theareas that we discuss in the
(29:22):
book, but also in the northernpart of the city. I invite
Michael to share hiscontributions to the project.
He has a wonderful interviewwith two prominent activists in
the city, Bhargavi Rao and LeoSaldana. And in general,
Michael, perhaps say what youthink were the motivations of
(29:43):
the book and what you finddistinctive.
Michael Goldman (29:46):
Sure. Thanks, Vinay. Boy, I enjoyed all these
stories so much, and this is whywe got together. I think the one
of the motivations from the bookwas that the principal
investigators, the core group ofpeople, some of whom are right
here or all of them are righthere, the ones that were more
directly linked to the academy,you know, the university, we
(30:09):
publish scholarly articles fromour discrete projects that come
together, under the rubric of ofthis research project. But as
many of you know and listenersincluded, the academic
publications typically are asynthesis and an argument and an
(30:31):
analytics that typically, forwhich there's very little room
for stories, for for the livesof people, for the the
intricacies and the intimaciesthat come together to allow the
academic to come up with ananalytic argument about what's
happening, in this case, incities around the world.
(30:54):
So once we had published a wholerange of articles, we sat down
and realized that, like, most ofthe ethnographic research and
experiences and stories wereleft on the floor because, you
know, in a 8000 word article,you just have to get to the
point. And getting to the pointundermines the point, which was,
(31:15):
you know, what is the livedexperience, in this case of
Bengaluru and for some of us,more generally, in cities around
the world that are being what,some of us call financialized,
you know, such that the sup thepeople who live there have to
live under the sort of, tensespeculative environment like
Ajay, like so many of the peoplewho've just been introduced,
(31:37):
through these stories. So Ithink that so then we came
together, we decided to hireresearch, associates as well as
bring back the the scholars thatstarted this project, and we,
you know, summoned ourcollective spirit and say, okay.
Let's let's write short, pithystories, or chapters based on
(31:58):
the incredible stories thatwe've collected. So, the book
starts with like the one of thechief architects and the
financiers and the developersand as we move through the
story, we start off by byexplaining through their eyes
what their dream and fantasy isof the making of a global city.
(32:20):
What is the discourse that ispervasive such that there's a
catalyst for all this dramaticchange that affects everyone in
the city and in the countryside?So so one of the stories that we
learn is that the city hasbecome, unlike in other times in
history, itself an engine ofgrowth for the country. And this
(32:44):
we heard from, you know, fromelites in in government and in
business themselves and ininvestors. So our question was
really, well, how does thataffect everyday life and
governance of a city that isitself becoming, in a sense, a
factory for for wealthproduction? And how is that
(33:04):
wealth being produced?
So a couple things that that soas Emangidi talked about the
importance of understanding lowfinance, we see everything in
relational terms, of course, andso low finance is really the
undergirding of the element thatI studied, which was high
finance. So just as the folks inthe city are having to scramble
(33:27):
just to keep up with home, work,food, and such, you know, what
about the large scale investorsin the city? So that was the
element of this research projectthat I studied. One of the
elements of the stories thatwe're trying that we tried to
manage by listening to people'sexperiences is what gets
(33:49):
destroyed in the process ofcreating this kind of global
city. And it's not just aboutmoney.
It's also about a lot the thevitality of living and the
desire and the value of livingin a city where so much of the
joy comes from the non monetizedpart of the living in the city.
Okay. So but, of course, what Istudied, primarily was, high
(34:13):
finance. And so my question was,why would Wall Street firms be
interested in investing in avery complex place like
Bangalore, investing in theirairport or in the in the public
transit system or in theseluxury residential complexes,
office complexes. You know,interesting enough, just as
(34:34):
those office complexes grewbecause so many jobs had been
eliminated in North America andEurope as engineers were hired
more cheaply in India, the samecrisis was happening in the IT
sector, while we were studyingit.
That is, there was a lot of jobshedding and unemployment
(34:57):
because there were cheaper waysto produce software, in fact,
automatizing it. So there was alot of volatility that was going
on in the city. So why wouldinvestors come? And I'll just
tell one basically pivotal storywhere it became clear to us and
those of us who were doingresearch, but also by listening
(35:18):
to the stories of financiers,developers, bankers, and what
have you, is the two thousandeight, global financial crisis.
And what's sad about it, ofcourse, is just like what
happened in throughout Europeand in United States and around
the world was banks collapsed,developers collapsed, but also
(35:39):
average people lost theirhouses, because they couldn't
pay their mortgages, becausethey lost their jobs, etc.
What I found which was stunning,which was just one little
observation through interviewsand also research, was that
after the financial crisis wasprecisely when a lot of Wall
(36:01):
Street investors came to thecity. At the point at which
there was unemployment, lack ofspending, inability to finish
projects, that was particularlywhen what they themselves called
the vultures began to circle.You know, they themselves
explained to me and mycolleagues that this was an
opportunity. And so it's hard toexplain in a podcast, but it's
(36:25):
simple logic in Wall Streetbusiness model, which is
particularly when assets aredepressed, where they lose their
value, like office buildings,like stadiums, like housing
complexes, was precisely whenthey could come in and scoop it
up at a very, very low price andthen use their own financial
(36:46):
tools to invite middle classinvestors from Bangalore, India,
around the world to buy sharesin these housing stocks, to buy
shares in these office stocks.And with every dollar that gets
invested, a company likeBlackstone is able to pull out
that profit out of India.
So what we saw was tremendousamount of investment and a
(37:07):
tremendous amount, in a shortterm, tremendous amount of
profit leaving the city. Andit's not just Bangalore. You
know, it's not just India. Wecould sit you could tell similar
stories about Madrid, Barcelona,about Detroit, and that's also
an important punchline, which isI think you would you will fall
in love with the story like youmight fall in love with the
Charles Dickens novel or whathave you. But at the same time,
(37:30):
realize that it's a generalphenomenon.
It's not specific necessarily tothis one city.
Vinay Gidwani (37:38):
Yeah. No. Thanks, Michael. You know, before I go
on, I should point out that theperson in who many ways was the
architect behind this wholeproject and the book itself is
professor Carol Upadhya, aprofessor emerita at the
National Institute of AdvancedStudies in Bengaluru, an amazing
(38:00):
anthropologist, an amazingscholar, and one of the most
organized people I have met inmy life without whose
organizational acumen and reallykind of scholarly insights, this
book would have never beenpossible. In fact, I would say
(38:20):
the project itself would havenever taken off.
So thank you, Carol. Just wantto acknowledge your absolutely
indispensable contributions tothe book. I also wanted to
return briefly to something thatMichael mentioned that his
expertise has been in how HighFinance has participated in the
(38:44):
upheavals, particularly the kindof real estate economy that has
been such a crucial ingredientin Bengaluru's transformation.
And of course, Himangini'schapter then gives us a very
different perspective on theordinary circuits of credit and
(39:07):
finance that she calls lowfinance, which have transformed
the city willy nilly from below.And then somewhere in the middle
are these circuits that we wouldcall, I guess, regional finance.
These three different fine formsof finance which operate at
(39:28):
different geographic scales,sometimes intersecting,
sometimes not, have played asignificant role in the real
estate economy that has been oneof the hallmarks of Bangalore's
transformation. So I think oneof the distinctive contributions
(39:49):
of this book is to think aboutthe different scales and forms
of finance that have been partand parcel of Bengaluru's real
estate economy. We are only fiveof us here. There are many other
amazing contributors to the bookwho cannot be here. So I'd like
(40:12):
to turn it back to all of youand perhaps add anything that
you'd like to on what you findinteresting in some of the
chapters that we haven't beenable to perhaps talk about so
far.
Swati, you have this absolutelyamazing story. This is from your
dissertation work about Amber.It's a very poignant story of
(40:35):
how construction laborers who,in many ways, provide the bodily
platform for the the edificesand the high rises and the
apartment complexes that nowlitter Bangalore's landscape.
How they have essentiallyunderwritten Bangalore's success
(41:02):
story, quote unquote.
Swathi Shivanand (41:04):
Thanks, Vinay. This is really the other side of
the story that Michael wasnarrating to us. So, all of this
investment that's flowing intothe city has drawn in people
from what we've loosely calledthe countryside or the non
urbanized or the neglectedregions of Karnataka or
(41:25):
elsewhere in different of India.So, the construction sector is
one of the largest employers inthe country right now after
agriculture. So, one of the mostdominant forms of occupation in
cities now across India is thatof construction.
In my PhD, which looks at largerdiscourses of development, etc,
(41:46):
I was looking at migration toBangalore. I studied two sites
in Bangalore which wereinhabited by construction
workers who came from a regioncalled Hyderabad, Karnataka.
Here I met Amba who was one ofmy first interlocutors. Amba was
possibly about 60 years oldbecause many of these women
(42:08):
don't have the same sense oftime and chronology that we do
in terms of what year they camehere, they came to move to
Bangalore. So, it's mostly hazy.
And so we're not necessarilyable to locate the years that
they come. So, she was possiblyaround 60 and she'd been a
construction worker for at leasttwenty years and moved in
(42:31):
because her family, her husband,etc. Had accrued debts and it
was no longer possible to livethere to earn enough to look
after her three children. Solike many others she moved to
Bangalore and started work inthe construction industry. Women
in the construction industryoften are paid much lower than
(42:51):
men who are likely to be able tomove into the more skilled
domains of construction work.
In the story that I say, itstarts with Amber but also moves
on to a couple of other youngerpeople, younger men that I meet.
These are men who are between 18to 25, who've all come here to
make a quick buck in some ways,like Kaveri's story of Ajay.
(43:16):
These are individuals who wantto put in hard work, work for
some time, and then return tothe village or whatever money,
whatever they're able toaccumulate, they invest back in
the village, right? So, to buy apiece of agricultural land or to
rebuild a house because theyknow that their life in
Bangalore is unsustainable. It'snot that they've come here to
(43:38):
settle in Bangalore.
They will eventually have tomove back because it's just not
possible to live in Bangalore.With the rent, with all kinds of
things. So, it's never a homefor them. Amba is one such
person who is actually a raritybecause you don't actually see
women who are out of theworkforce, who are still living
in Bangalore. But she is able todo so because she has been
(44:00):
allotted a home by the KarnatakaSlum Development Board, which is
a government authority.
In the time that I was doingfieldwork, even though she was
out of work, was stitching thesepatchwork quilts and making some
money out of that while she hadher son who used to work in the
construction sector. So one ofthe things that she says, which
(44:21):
really stayed with me, so Iasked her, Is there no way that
you can find work? Because shewas out of the workforce. She
was not able to find work. So,she had to figure out ways to
earn her own money.
She got really angry with me andshe said, Do you think I don't
want to work? But the contractorsays, Even people that are
fitter than you, we're not ableto find work for them. How can
(44:43):
we find work for someone likeyou? And then she says, Do I not
have a body that needs to befed? If it is only young people
with their fit bodies whodeserve to live, what am I
supposed to do?
And I think that's reallysomething that we need to reckon
with. Here's a city that'sdrawing in desperate young
(45:04):
people, asking them to give upon their vitality in order to
build the city, right? Or inorder to service the city. And
it offers very little to them.So, they have to return to the
village or some notion of avillage completely depleted, but
(45:24):
having nothing to sustainthemselves or having very little
to sustain themselves in thevillage.
So I think there is somethinghere that moves beyond
speculative urbanism, but talksabout, refers to the unsettled
futures, the title in thecaption of the book, right?
Speculative lives and unsettledfutures. That is something for
us all to reckon with in termsof it's not just money coming
(45:47):
in, it's not just people comingin, but it's also the kind of
vitality that the city demandsfrom its workers. What really do
they get at the end of this, Idon't know, sacrifice perhaps?
Vinay Gidwani (46:02):
Thank you so much for that, Swati, because I I
think Ambar's story is movingprecisely because it also
provides a moral critique of thecity. And I think it gives us a
a way to perhaps acknowledge theunacknowledged debts that a city
has to the the this invisiblearmy of workers like Amba
(46:30):
without whom Bengaluru as weknow it wouldn't exist. So
thanks for sharing that. Kaveri,Himangini, are there other
aspects that you would like toforeground showcase for the
listeners?
Kaveri Medappa (46:45):
Yeah. I mean, all the all the chapters in the
in the book are so insightful.And also, I think one thing that
comes out from reading chaptersis the paradoxes and the
ironies. There are so manychapters that touch upon this as
well as the struggles, right?The struggles for space, be it
(47:09):
Carol's chapter where we meetDalit brokers who are sort of
vying for space in the periurban real estate market
becoming brokers themselves andsaying, you know, if the readies
can do it, if the upper castegroups can do it, why shouldn't
we be doing it?
(47:30):
Participating in the speculativeeconomy, but also struggles
against the commodification, thefinancialization of space and
infrastructure. You see Usha'schapter about the Bangalore
Metro. And it was shocking forme because, you know, again,
going back to what Hemangiri andSwati and all of us have been
speaking about, we've lived inBangalore, we've been using
(47:53):
infrastructure, but tounderstand the background of how
it actually works, what theirplan for monetization is and
what their plan for financialsustainability is, which is
basically to make retail spacesinside and outside the metro
stations. That was really,really shocking and concerning.
And yeah, it was it's somethingthat would, I think, stay with
(48:17):
me whenever every time I takethe metro and I will be talking
about that with people who arevery happy about the metro and
talk about how amazing it is inBangalore.
The other chapter that I wantedto briefly refer to, again, I
can go on about the strugglesbecause we know about SJK, which
Swati is going to probably talkabout in a bit. Narasimurthy,
(48:40):
the chapter with Narasimurthyand slum dwellers struggles for
space in big cities likeBangalore. Vinay's chapter,
street vendors, and how theyclaim space and the ironies of
that, right, like when thestreet vendor who is part of the
organizing, well, he's part ofthe union says, We've been here
(49:01):
longer than these middle classresidents have been, and yet we
are the ones who have becomeencroachers of space now. Yet we
are the ones who are supposed toleave. So I think the book does
such a fantastic job of showingthese paradoxes.
And for me, one chapter thatreally stood out in terms of
showcasing these paradoxes andsomewhat of a dark humor was
(49:24):
Priyanka's chapter on thegoddess of the lake, right? When
you read that whole chapterabout how this goddess Tugalama
has been brought to the PurvaPur Lake to contain the ferocity
of the water, to contain theabundance of water. And here we
(49:45):
are in 2022, 2023 when thatresearch was done, when
Dugalamma has to be moved outbecause that lake is full of
sewage water and it's formingand combusting on its own. And
how in to bathe Dukalangma or toservice her or to worship her.
(50:05):
Now we need to put a bore well.
So these paradoxes and againwhat Leo and Bhargavi say in
their chapter with Michael,interviewing with Michael about
the paradoxes, ITBT city, thisis a city known for its
scientific temperament,etcetera. And yet we have manual
scavengers getting into pitfallsand dying, yet we have such an
(50:29):
unscientific way of dealing withwater, the needs of water, of
sanitation. So I think for me,it was these paradoxes and these
ironies and struggles that makethis book such a wonderful book
to read and to understand thecity a bit more intimately.
Vinay Gidwani (50:50):
Thank you, Kaveri. One of the points that
you ended on, which is that howBengaluru, which is sometimes
called the Silicon Valley OfAsia, is really turned into
something of an ecologicaldisaster. It's a city that was
once amply provisioned by waterthrough an intricate system of
(51:16):
human made lakes and channels.And Bengaluru, as some of you
may know, is situated on aplateau. It's at an elevation of
approximately 3,000 feet.
This intricate system that wasbuilt over decades was
absolutely critical in providingand and and did a great job of
(51:37):
providing for, Bengaluru's,water needs. Presently, because
of the unfettered growth thatBangalore has, witnessed, water
is, increasingly piped up fromthe Kaveri River uphill at great
cost and doesn't necessarilyfurnish the city's water needs.
(51:59):
But one of the ecologicalparadoxes of Bangalore now is
that because this system oflakes and channels has been
decimated, sometimes in manycases built over, we have this
paradoxical situation whereBangalore can simultaneously
(52:19):
experiences flooding and waterscarcity recurrently. So it's a
real illustration of how anaspirational global city model
can produce these speculativeecologies, which can be
tremendously damaging. I wantedto also point out before we
(52:43):
forget that the book has shortbut very insightful forwards, a
forward and an afterward.
A foreword by the historianJanaki Nayar, who's a renowned
historian and has written aniconic book on Bangalore's
development, and afterward bythe geographer Malini
(53:03):
Ranganathan, who really kind offoregrounds the caste dynamics
of urban transformation in thecity. I think we're nearing the
end, so I'd like to give anopportunity to Hema Angani to
take us towards the close andhighlight some other aspects
that she would like listeners tobe mindful of.
Hemangini Gupta (53:26):
Thanks, Vinay. So I will say that there are
several chapters in the bookthat really puncture this
imaginary of the world city,which is something that planners
and bureaucrats and governmentofficials in Bangalore have long
held very close. You know, andthe implicit promise, I think,
of the world city is that it canenable access to a modern middle
(53:47):
class life to a greater numberof people. Right? And so through
many chapters, we really look athow there are intricate cast
networks that enable people tosort of build the resources
necessary to participate in thatworld city dream, but also for
caste oppressed people that canreally prevent them from having
access to what is necessary toenter that imagination.
(54:10):
Whether it's looking atagricultural sites on the city's
periphery or looking at sitesvery much in the center of the
city, I think that what the bookdoes very well is to puncture
this idea that the world cityimaginary is something that is
enabling to a large number ofpeople. So I do want to mark
that through the book. Yeah. Andthen I was wondering, Swati, if
(54:31):
at this point you want to comein to also talk about other ways
in which this world cityimaginary has been punctured
through organizing and so on.And then maybe I can just say a
bit after that about some of thephotography and multimodal work
that came alongside the project.
Swathi Shivanand (54:47):
Thanks, Himanshu. I just wanted to not
miss this aspect of organizingthat's been taking place in the
city. So, none of this has goneuncontested, the sort of high
finance, state speculation, andthe exploitation of waves and
waves of migrant workers,etcetera. So, in that context, I
(55:10):
wanted to talk about thisparticular chapter on the slum
rights movement, which I thinknearly everybody in the book has
done interviews with respect tothe slum rights movement. This
is a chapter based on aninterview with Narasimha Murti,
who is the convener of somethingcalled Slam Janandhu Vana
(55:30):
Karnataka, which translates topeople's rights movement, slum
people's rights movement.
There are many things thatNarasimha Muthi draws our
attention to, but I want to talkabout two things. In our
conversation, he talks aboutevictions. And for anyone
familiar with informalsettlements and state violence
(55:52):
against informal settlements,evictions is the mode through
which states violence againstinformal settlements takes
place. So, talks about evictionsand that s been one of the sort
of organizing impetus for peoples rights movements including
slum rights movements acrossIndia. And here he but he was
(56:14):
referring to something calledsomething like market led
evictions.
And I thought that was thereally intriguing part. And so
in my interview with him, Iprobed further to figure out
what he meant by evictions,because essentially when he said
evictions, it was when Dalithouseholds were being bought out
(56:36):
of their houses through what arelegal purchases, right? So,
Dalit households in slums,etcetera, have been allocated
land by the state, but the landgrows into real estate gains
value. And so they, so they endup selling it and perhaps move
(56:59):
out of this sort of primelocation or something that
something that's become realestate. So he characterized it
as market led.
He characterized it asevictions, which was essentially
how which is essentially aforced phenomenon. Right? But he
was talking about a market ledeviction. And I thought that was
(57:20):
really interesting for us to payattention to in terms of how
gentrification may be takingplace through legal means, but
are perceived when looked atthrough a rights perspective is
perceived as a forced emphasis.The second thing that I thought
he that he really emphasized wason this.
(57:43):
So, for a very long time, what'shappened is that the slums
rights movements have oftenasked for ownership of the land.
Right. And when I was ajournalist back in 02/1926, I
covered some of these movements,of these protests and evictions,
etcetera. And so, I was familiarwith some of the things that he
(58:05):
was saying. But I think there'sbeen in the, for about eighteen,
nineteen years since I was ajournalist, there's been a
movement in articulation amongwithin the slam rights movement.
And which is not just that aredemanding for a right to own a
piece of land, but also a rightto speculate. Right. So, it's
(58:29):
not simply that we wantownership of the land and that
the state must give it to usbecause we deserve it, because
we are laboring for the city,we're building the city. So that
is, of course, a primaryargument. But they're also
saying that we need this right.
We don't want you to give usmulti storey flats and multi
storey buildings because thatdoes not allow us the space to
(58:51):
expand. Right? So we cannot goon to build how build more
rooms, more flats, more and usethat to earn rent. So, or use
that to earn income. So there isalso an added element to this
(59:11):
demand for a right to own apiece of land in the city, which
is the right to speculate.
And I thought that was a reallyfantastic sort of argument that
he was making from a rightsperspective to be able to
speculate. See, if everyone inthe city is able to speculate,
middle class people arespeculating, if corporate
finances are speculating, iflarge construction industries
(59:34):
are speculating, why do I nothave a right to speculate? And I
think that was that wassomething that, again, a moral
critic, but also a moral claimon the city.
Vinay Gidwani (59:45):
Yeah. Thank you so much for foregrounding that
very important aspect of thebook. And I should point out
that, you know, what we think isone of the distinctive aspects
of the book is that it it bringstogether the voices of
activists, public intellectuals,and scholars. Really, I mean,
the city becomes like an onion,and then you peel away the
(01:00:07):
layers. Right?
And you get a completelydifferent sort of perspective on
the city as you peel theselayers away. As Kaveri and
Himongini were pointing out atthe outset, a city that felt
intimately familiar becomesunfamiliar, almost almost
(01:00:29):
strange in an unexpected,unsettling way. And I think in
the best of ways, that's whatscholarship really tries to
achieve, right, to estrange andperhaps defamiliarize what seems
commonsensical, what seems youknow, what what's as given.
(01:00:50):
What's what's taken for granted.So I think this book does that
in in an understated way throughstorytelling.
But nevertheless, I think thethe point is to generate lessons
for understanding urbantransformations happening in
other parts of the world wheresimilar processes are perhaps
(01:01:17):
playing out in historically andgeographically specific singular
ways. Right? So structuralforces that perhaps share
similarities, nevertheless, playout in particular ways in in in
in specific locations. So thebook has, obviously, certain
(01:01:42):
stories that are grounded, citedin the specific location of
Bengaluru, but nevertheless, asMichael Goldman was pointing
out, offers, generalizableinsights, lessons that we can
take away and carry away. Soperhaps, Himangini, I'll give
(01:02:02):
you the last word, and then wecan conclude this podcast.
But I would invite, listeners ifyou've been intrigued, if you
feel so moved to read the bookand to really participate in the
stories.
Hemangini Gupta (01:02:18):
Thanks, Vinay. So the cover of the book is a
montage of four photographs bythe photographer Pierre Hoser.
Pierre also has a beautifulphoto essay in the book called
Life in the Speculative City.And Pierre worked with the
project for many, many years andhas worked with Michael before
that on other projects in thecity. And I think his
(01:02:39):
photographs really animate theproject in incredible ways.
Two things worth mentioning arethat Pierce photographs often
work through a sort of panelingwhere he will focus on like one
panel of something much larger.And it's often people in that
panel that he will draw yourattention to through his
photographs. So that what mighthave been a huge construction
site, he'll suddenly bring toyour attention the fact that
(01:03:01):
there are four constructionworkers in the central panel who
are in very dangerous positions,building what you might have
even missed as part of a muchlarger scaffolding. And then he
also works through juxtapositionby reminding you and by framing
his photographs so that you seetwo elements that don't seem
congruent at all, but are infact very much a part of the
city. So you'll see, forinstance, huge tracts of
(01:03:22):
agricultural land that areframed by these new apartment
buildings that have been builton what was formerly
agricultural land.
Or you'll see a lake and in theforeground you'll see some of
the sort of the dead life, thedead aquatic life from that
lake. So these juxtapositionsare very, very pronounced and
they really draw your attentionto them. People would come to us
(01:03:42):
when they saw Pierre with hiscamera. They would want to be
photographed or they would wantto chat. And so it was wonderful
to come to a field site and notfeel like you had to approach
people who might be reluctant,but instead you would have
people coming to you wanting totalk and to share and to sort of
engage the camera in veryinteresting ways.
In many ways, I think thisproject has been committed to
(01:04:02):
sort of public scholarship, bothin terms of how we presented the
research through the exhibition,but also this book itself.
Vinay Gidwani (01:04:09):
Well, I'm just going to conclude it on that
wonderful note. Yes. Pierre'sphotographs, I think, are really
a striking supplement to thebook. And I just want to
conclude by thanking the amazingHimangini Gupta, Kaveri Medappa,
Swati Shivanand, and MichaelGoldman, and all the other
(01:04:31):
incredible people who are notpresent in this podcast, for the
wonderful, lively, and deeplyinsightful and often, poignant
chapters that, are part andparcel of this book. And I hope,
and I invite you once again to,pick up a copy and read
(01:04:52):
Chronicles of a Global City.
I think, you will find it worthyour time. So thank you for
listening to us, and, bye bye.
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.