Franken-Cities of Delhi and Shenzhen

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Our trip began with Mark Zuckerberg “forced to apologize to the world” for allowing Cambridge Analytica to mine Facebook users’ data and influence the US and other elections. It ended with the notice that “From July 1 Aadhaar to have face recognition facility too.” Aadhaar means “foundation” in English and refers to the 12-digit unique identity number issued to all Indian residents based on their biometric and demographic data. It turns out that we are the bits and pieces necessary to animate the Franken-city, where “bots” belch ugly comments into debate and Russians in virtual trench coats haunt our digital consciousness.

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Journey to the Northwest

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If Cyber City housed the National Capital Region’s elites and their high-culture status, the city’s middling aspirations have taken root just outside the northern edge of Old Delhi. On our final morning of field research, we traced the stubborn history of Delhi’s entrepreneurs on its first metro line. Older metro routes to get people, revolts against it. Placed on broad roads and convenient for construction. With changing technology and demands for metro they are taken tracks and station to people. So more risks in terms of construction. Cut through neighborhoods to build tracks. Red and yellow were first. To get away from politics of naming got exceptions to archaeological laws, land acquisition laws. Making money through real estate. 2010 women only. Indeed, the stations of the metro not only offer a sociology of the living city, but also comprise a catalogue of shifting allegiances, reminding us that Southasia stretches northwest from the capital region into Bangladesh and Afghanistan, hinting at the deep trade networks that once sutured the ancient civilizations of Eurasia and their redeployment toward the adhoc construction of the modern nation state, as well as the ways in which regional histories and cultures meet like opposing currents, creating whirlpools. Most often the whirlpools of everyday life are very small, like when a bathtub drains. But sometimes, maelstroms form and when the wind calms, the survivors wash ashore in another world.

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Happiness in the Franken-City

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It is tempting to claim that the Franken-city is the horrific manifestation of instrumental reason. Concocted in back alleys, where rats flourish and human children play, the Franken-city pumps fresh blood to its urban core and spits out desiccated bodies along its public transportation lines and logistics corridors. At the broken edges of the city, the prosthetic veins seem more dodgy and our compatriots live by picking through plastic bottles and accumulated debris, hoping to place their offspring in a downtown office building, where sararīman mine data in air-conditioned cubicles and die of overwork. After all, Frankestein’s experiments—much like our own forays into development—aimed to revive dead flesh, without questioning what might rise from the grave. He confesses, “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation…” And thus at the moment of his triumph, Frankenstein realizes his ultimate failure. “[N]ow that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.”

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Stations of Development, Heroes of the Franken-City

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On Friday morning, March 23,  we departed comfy rooms at India Habitat Centre after a sixth floor breakfast of dhal and yoghurt, fresh fruit and grains. Our caravan comprised three sports vehicles, each with five or six researchers and a driver. As we navigated the roundabouts of Delhi’s Diplomatic Enclave, we came upon thousands of students and teachers marching from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to India’s Parliament House in order to protest the suppression of sexual harassment claims against a JNU professor who was allegedly being protected from investigation by the university Vice Chancellor.

Our guide for the day Pranav Kuttaiah explained the importance of JNU and the students’ activism. For many young Indians, attending a public university is the first time that they meet people from other castes, regions, and classes. They then work together to achieve academic and personal goals, modeling alternative relationships to those dictated by tradition and inequality off campus. Consequently, public universities have been transformational spaces for Indian youth and for the country more generally. However, the Modi regime has decided to “grant autonomy” to JNU, a move which would lead to privatization of the world class institution. As in much of the world, India’s private universities have high class teachers and offer challenging curriculum, but only for the wealthy, hence the anger over the Modi regime’s decision which would simultaneously buttress unequal access to education as well as pre-empt opportunities for young people to experience social alternatives. Continue reading →

Origins of the Franken-City

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Friday afternoon, March 23, 2018, we walked Mehrauli. During our pre-walk briefing, Rohit Negi explained that Delhi’s urban villages were historic settlements engulfed by the expanding city; urban villages have allowed for migrants to take up residence in Delhi without receiving full municipal services. As in Shenzhen, the so-called urban village in Delhi is an artifact of legal loopholes—a space of exception that allows for flexible responses to the social problems endemic to global enclaves. Low-income housing is the most obvious fix, but Delhi urban villages also resolve such problems as food distribution, mom & pop entrepreneurialism, and medical care. As in Nantou and Shajing, Dongmen and Shenzhen’s middling enclaves on its outer district metro lines, in the urban villages of Delhi farmers have urbanized their settlements without explicit authorization by the state. In the contemporary Franken-city, the urban village exists at the whim of the government which can (in both Dehli and Shenzhen) use illegality as the excuse for expropriating land, evicting tenants, and masterplanning the city. Continue reading →

Franken-Cities of Delhi and Shenzhen

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On Friday morning, March 23, 2018, Partha Mukhopadhyay of the Centre for Policy Research,  had a powerpoint slide that asserted the rural is not a collection of farms. The assertion had me juxtaposing specific urban villages in Shenzhen and Delhi to think about how macro-stories converge even as our detailed, specific and constitutive micro-stories continuously repulse each other. Continue reading →

huaqiangbei pedestrian street, images of

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Yesterday I walked the Huaqiangbei pedestrian street, from Shennan Road through the Jiufang (九方) Mall and then deeper into the area, which nearly forty years ago was known as the Shangbu Industrial Park. Yes, come November, we’ll be celebrating (or not) the fortieth anniversary of Reform and Opening. That’s ten years longer than the Mao era. Indeed, for many in Shenzhen the reference that many have of “long ago” is now the 1980s. Impressions from my walk: traces of early manufacturing are scattered between the malls and towers, as is evidence of the shift from textiles and electronics to a focus on cell phones and IT.

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