Diganta Das

National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
diganta.das@nie.edu.sg

India is urbanizing. The state is determined to create modern India through city centric strategies, making ways for high-tech enclave developments, installation of smart infrastructures and attracting the right people and industries. In the post-1991 liberalization of Indian economy, sub-national states are increasingly becoming more active in attracting investments by projecting their cities as magnets for foreign investments. Hyderabad has been able to attract investments from high-tech industries due to the state governments’ effort to project it as a high-tech destination by creating Cyberabad – a 52 square kilometer knowledge enclave. The making of Cyberabad also led to evicting farmers from 17 villages disposing them from their land livelihoods. With the backdrop of state’s strategies of accumulation of land by dispossessing farmers, this chapter examines the ways farmers’ resisted the high-tech development process, showed resiliency and reworked their livelihood due to the sudden sociotechnical transformation of space. Examining through empirical events, this chapter, will emphasize (re) making of people’s everyday spaces by the dispossessed farmers beyond the state’s powerful planning of making it a high-tech, smart space.

Reviewers:
1. Anto Mohsin
2. Stephen Healy