Patrimonio mundial. Sitios industriales y obra pública. “De lo local a lo universal”, 2022
How the disaster in Bhopal can inform a critical view of industrial heritage.
ABSTRACT: The form... more How the disaster in Bhopal can inform a critical view of industrial heritage.
ABSTRACT: The former Union Carbide factory at Bhopal, site of the chemical disaster, remains closed and contaminated since 1984. The old rendering plant is a visible reminder of the world’s worst disaster while the invisible, persistent chemicals in the soil and groundwater continue to occupy the city. The factory above and soil below connected through a toxic stream of leaching chemicals present a poetic afterlife of industrial monuments in India. The toxic waste of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy remains the most lasting legacy of the disaster where an uncertain number carry this contamination in their bodies while over half a million remain formally registered for medical support. In nasty ways, almost four decades since it ceased operation, the pesticide plant continues to produce chemicals, the company continues to occupy the land and the past continues to live violently in the present. The project to map India’s industrial heritage has enabled a renewed perspective of this historic site by placing it in relation with 400 diverse sites from across India. Lying beneath the surface of this map, often overshadowed by a significant architectural heritage and recurring themes in the memory of a shared industrial past are stories of normalization of disasters, erasure of narratives of pain & shame and festering wounds of environmental contamination. Like the construction of colonial railways that plunged regions into famines or the welfare projects such as dams, canals and irrigation work that tragically produced greater disasters while re-employing those who were suffering as workers, the negative heritage of our industrial past cannot be simply seen as a side effect of development but a moral obligation that maintains the modern industrial project in India. Stories of pollution and people, of pain and shame and of destruction and dispossession are excluded from the narrative of industrialization and perhaps for their absence, we continue recreate the colonial paradigm in the service of the nation till date.
In this context, what is needed to develop a shared view of industrial heritage? How does experience of sites of conscience such as former factory site of Union Carbide in Bhopal help build a critical understanding of heritage? This talk will discuss how study of industrial heritage in India connect us to questions of justice and citizenship.
KeywoRdS: Bhopal; industrial heritage; Union Carbide; pollution; environmental disaster.
National Report : Industrial Heritage in India 2018-2022
Report submitted to The International Committee for Conservation of Industrial Heritage (TICCIH) ... more Report submitted to The International Committee for Conservation of Industrial Heritage (TICCIH) on the State of Conservation of Industrial Heritage in India, 2018-2022. Contents 1. Sites at Risk 2. Actors and Networks 3. Present State of Conservation 4. Outreach Editors : Moulshri Joshi, Somya Johri Team & Support : Nivia Jain, Athira Tp, Vishnu K Suresh, SpaceMatters
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the n... more The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the night of December 2, 1984, the leak of lethal Methyl Isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India led to one of world's worst industrial disasters. Yet the city of Bhopal has been ambivalent towards the legacy of the disaster, with the neglected, rapidly deteriorating factory site being one of the only spatial markers of the tragedy in the city. We share here, as architects of the memorial commissioned in 2005 by the government, our experience in engaging with remembering and forgetting in the overwhelming context of Bhopal.
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the n... more The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the night of December 2, 1984, the leak of lethal Methyl Isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India led to one of the world's largest industrial disasters. Yet the city of Bhopal has been ambivalent towards the legacy of the disaster, with the neglected, rapidly deteriorating factory site being one of the only spatial markers of the tragedy in the city. We share here, as architects of the memorial commissioned in 2005 by the government, our experience in engaging with remembering and forgetting in the overwhelming context of sites like Bhopal.
Recent studies of the post-liberalisation Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical f... more Recent studies of the post-liberalisation Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical framework from contemporary urban sociology in the West, drawn from David Harvey, Manuel Castells and Saskia Sassen, among others. These studies show the contemporary city being shaped by global transnational capital—which accumulates wealth through dispossession—resulting in a clearing of the poor and marginal from central urban areas to the periphery, and replacing them with middle- and upper-class newcomers. Concomitantly, new jobs in these cities have shifted from industrial manufacturing to post-industrial services for large transnational firms connected through international networks of global capital. These theories suggest that in the neoliberal city the welfare state has receded, surrendering its role of protecting working-class housing and employment to the interests of transnational capital. We argue that by identifying processes that unfold in New York or Paris in New Delhi, these studies only capture a small part of the picture of urban transformation in contemporary India. In the case of New Delhi, we show how Economic Liberalisation has fundamentally restructured India’s capital city, producing a new iteration of the ancient metropolis, which we call the “Tenth Delhi”. However, the new order does not, for the most part, resemble the above-described Western-derived theories. Instead of jettisoning its poor, Delhi has become a magnet for the working classes from across India. There are now more migrants each year to Delhi than to any other Indian city. Instead of the periphery, or squatter settlements on the urban edge, the influx of migrants is found in the oldest settlements of the city, the so-called Lal Dora areas or “Urban Villages”, where new forms of rental housing have emerged. The cases of displacement and dispossession in Delhi are well documented, but little has been written about the more large-scale phenomena of “regularisation” where hundreds of the “Unauthorised” housing colonies that exist across the city have been formally regularised. Through a case study of one neighbourhood called Taimoor Nagar, which contains a patchwork of multiple types of spaces, populations and economic activities, this paper seeks to understand how things work at a small scale to explain a larger system, and to identify patterns that repeat across urban space in terms of spatial ordering, informal norms, economic relations and political change. We argue that capital-intensive dispossession has not been the primary form of urban transformation in post-Liberalisation New Delhi. The liberalisation of state control over spaces and types of economic activity and the expansion of democratically elected representation in this period has also been dramatically important. When most of the economy is unregulated, and most of urban space is unplanned, democratic politics mediates the relationship between urban citizens and the rule of law.
What is Public History Globally? Working with the past in the present, 2019
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the n... more The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the night of December 2, 1984, the leak of lethal Methyl Isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India led to one of world's worst industrial disasters. Yet the city of Bhopal has been ambivalent towards the legacy of the disaster, with the neglected, rapidly deteriorating factory site being one of the only spatial markers of the tragedy in the city. We share here, as architects of the memorial commissioned in 2005 by the government, our experience in engaging with remembering and forgetting in the overwhelming context of Bhopal.
My interview published in Indian Express (25 April 2019) on the design of Bonjour Indian Pavilion... more My interview published in Indian Express (25 April 2019) on the design of Bonjour Indian Pavilion by SpaceMatters and how a mobile pavilion captured the friendship between Indian and France. The pavilion design won the first prize in Arts & Culture category at the Archmarathon Awards 2019.
THE INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE INVENTORY OF INDIA
by Moulshri Joshi
A report on possibly the first inven... more THE INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE INVENTORY OF INDIA by Moulshri Joshi A report on possibly the first inventory of Industrial Heritage in India that documents 100 historic sites from across the country in an attempt to define the emerging concept and field of practice of Industrial Heritage in India.
Recent studies of the post-liberalisation
Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical
f... more Recent studies of the post-liberalisation Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical framework from contemporary urban sociology in the West, drawn from David Harvey, Manuel Castells and Saskia Sassen, among others. These studies show the contemporary city being shaped by global transnational capital—which accumulates wealth through dispossession—resulting in a clearing of the poor and marginal from central urban areas to the periphery, and replacing them with middle- and upper-class newcomers. Concomitantly, new jobs in these cities have shifted from industrial manufacturing to postindustrial services for large transnational firms connected through international networks of global capital. These theories suggest that in the neoliberal city the welfare state has receded, surrendering its role of protecting working-class housing and employment to the interests of transnational capital. We argue that by identifying processes that unfold in New York or Paris in New Delhi, these studies only capture a small part of the picture of urban transformation in contemporary India. In the case of New Delhi, we show how Economic Liberalisation has fundamentally restructured India’s capital city, producing a new iteration of the ancient metropolis, which we call the ‘‘Tenth Delhi’’. However, the new order does not, for the most part, resemble the above-described Western-derived theories. Instead of jettisoning its poor, Delhi has become a magnet for the working classes from across India. There are now more migrants each year to Delhi than to any other Indian city. Instead of the periphery, or squatter settlements on the urban edge, the influx of migrants is found in the oldest settlements of the city, the so-called Lal Dora areas or ‘‘Urban Villages’’, where new forms of rental housing have emerged. The cases of displacement and dispossession in Delhi are well documented, but little has been written about the more large-scale phenomena of ‘‘regularisation’’ where hundreds of the ‘‘Unauthorised’’ housing colonies that exist across the city have been formally regularised. Through a case study of one neighbourhood called Taimoor Nagar, which contains a patchwork of multiple types of spaces, populations and economic activities, this paper seeks to understand how things work at a small scale to explain a larger system, and to identify patterns that repeat across urban space in terms of spatial ordering, informal norms, economic relations and political change. We argue that capital-intensive dispossession has not been the primary form of urban transformation in post- Liberalisation New Delhi. The liberalisation of state control over spaces and types of economic activity and the expansion of democratically elected representation in this period has also been dramatically important. When most of the economy is unregulated, and most of urban space is unplanned, democratic politics mediates the relationship between urban citizens and the rule of law. Keywords Urban governance Law Informal economy Informal space Urban planning New Delhi Urban studies Urban politics India
Recent studies of the post-liberalisation Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical ... more Recent studies of the post-liberalisation Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical framework from contemporary urban sociology in the West, drawn from David Harvey, Manuel Castells and Saskia Sassen, among others. These studies show the contemporary city being shaped by global transnational capital—which accumulates wealth through dispossession—resulting in a clearing of the poor and marginal from central urban areas to the periphery, and replacing them with middle- and upper-class newcomers. Concomitantly, new jobs in these cities have shifted from industrial manufacturing to post- industrial services for large transnational firms connected through international networks of global cap- ital. These theories suggest that in the neoliberal city the welfare state has receded, surrendering its role of protecting working-class housing and employment to the interests of transnational capital.
We argue that by identifying processes that unfold in New York or Paris in New Delhi, these studies only capture a small part of the picture of urban transformation in contemporary India. In the case of New Delhi, we show how Economic Liberalisation has fundamentally restruc- tured India’s capital city, producing a new iteration of the ancient metropolis, which we call the ‘‘Tenth Delhi’’. However, the new order does not, for the most part, resemble the above-described Western-derived theories. Instead of jettisoning its poor, Delhi has become a magnet for the working classes from across India. There are now more migrants each year to Delhi than to any other Indian city. Instead of the periphery, or squatter settlements on the urban edge, the influx of migrants is found in the oldest settlements of the city, the so-called Lal Dora areas or ‘‘Urban Villages’’, where new forms of rental housing have emerged. The cases of displacement and dispossession in Delhi are well documented, but little has been written about the more large-scale phenomena of ‘‘regularisation’’ where hundreds of the ‘‘Unauthorised’’ housing colonies that exist across the city have been formally regularised.
Through a case study of one neighbour- hood called Taimoor Nagar, which contains a patch- work of multiple types of spaces, populations and economic activities, this paper seeks to understand how things work at a small scale to explain a larger system, and to identify patterns that repeat across urban space in terms of spatial ordering, informal norms, economic relations and political change. We argue that capital-intensive dispossession has not been the primary form of urban transformation in post- Liberalisation New Delhi. The liberalisation of state control over spaces and types of economic activity and the expansion of democratically elected representation in this period has also been dramatically important. When most of the economy is unregulated, and most of urban space is unplanned, democratic politics mediates the relationship between urban citizens and the rule of law.
In this paper, we show that democratic politics produces order in situations where legal regulati... more In this paper, we show that democratic politics produces order in situations where legal regulation and state planning often exist on the books but not on the ground. Our findings are based on a grounded, multi-disciplinary field study conducted in a one-square mile site in New Delhi, Taimoor Nagar, which contains a wide range of formal and informal economic activity, legal and unauthorized housing, and planned and unplanned spaces. Based on interviews, survey data and mapping, we have found significant overlaps between economic informality and unplanned space.
In December 1984 there was a gas leak from the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. ... more In December 1984 there was a gas leak from the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. As many as 25,000 deaths have been attributed to the disaster and officially more than 500,000 were injured. After the disaster the factory site was abandoned, partly heavily contaminated, and till this day causing an on-going disaster. As well as a physical legacy, it constitutes a source of contested memories and reminders of a difficult past. The authors of this paper are preparing a research project on the memorialization of the Bhopal gas tragedy, critically examining dominant methods of preservation, conservation, interpretation and management of the industrial remains. The objectives are to outline crossdisciplinary and trans-discursive concepts through inclusive management of contested heritage sites, based theoretical platforms seeking to overarch the boundaries between museum, heritage and conservation discourses. For more than a quarter of century survivors have waged a struggle for compensation and economic rehabilitation, for health care and clean water, for environmental remediation and legal retribution. They have also demanded commemoration of the tragedy along with the preservation of the industrial remains of the factory. Construction of heritage should take into account the active participation of local people, but in Bhopal this is difficult to define. The long drawn out struggle between the state and activists has fragmented society into multiple survivor groups, activists, supporters, deniers and a larger population that remains largely untouched but still affected by the tragedy through its association with their city. The paper discusses why methods like oral history, field observation and archival studies have to be rethought in a complex case like Bhopal, where the conflict still is alive, the availability of historical sources are unsecure, and the role of the researcher is highly sensitive. Through analyzing the contested heritages of Bhopal the paper will explore its relevance for inclusive heritage management in general.
In December 1984 there was a gas leak from the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. ... more In December 1984 there was a gas leak from the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. As many as 25,000 deaths have been attributed to the disaster and officially more than 500,000 were injured. After the disaster the factory site was abandoned, partly heavily contaminated, and till this day causing an on-going disaster. As well as a physical legacy, it constitutes a source of contested memories and reminders of a difficult past. The authors of this paper are preparing a research project on the memorialization of the Bhopal gas tragedy, critically examining dominant methods of preservation, conservation, interpretation and management of the industrial remains. The objectives are to outline crossdisciplinary and trans-discursive concepts through inclusive management of contested heritage sites, based theoretical platforms seeking to overarch the boundaries between museum, heritage and conservation discourses. For more than a quarter of century survivors have waged a struggle for compensation and economic rehabilitation, for health care and clean water, for environmental remediation and legal retribution. They have also demanded commemoration of the tragedy along with the preservation of the industrial remains of the factory. Construction of heritage should take into account the active participation of local people, but in Bhopal this is difficult to define. The long drawn out struggle between the state and activists has fragmented society into multiple survivor groups, activists, supporters, deniers and a larger population that remains largely untouched but still affected by the tragedy through its association with their city. The paper discusses why methods like oral history, field observation and archival studies have to be rethought in a complex case like Bhopal, where the conflict still is alive, the availability of historical sources are unsecure, and the role of the researcher is highly sensitive. Through analyzing the contested heritages of Bhopal the paper will explore its relevance for inclusive heritage management in general.
Patrimonio mundial. Sitios industriales y obra pública. “De lo local a lo universal”, 2022
How the disaster in Bhopal can inform a critical view of industrial heritage.
ABSTRACT: The form... more How the disaster in Bhopal can inform a critical view of industrial heritage.
ABSTRACT: The former Union Carbide factory at Bhopal, site of the chemical disaster, remains closed and contaminated since 1984. The old rendering plant is a visible reminder of the world’s worst disaster while the invisible, persistent chemicals in the soil and groundwater continue to occupy the city. The factory above and soil below connected through a toxic stream of leaching chemicals present a poetic afterlife of industrial monuments in India. The toxic waste of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy remains the most lasting legacy of the disaster where an uncertain number carry this contamination in their bodies while over half a million remain formally registered for medical support. In nasty ways, almost four decades since it ceased operation, the pesticide plant continues to produce chemicals, the company continues to occupy the land and the past continues to live violently in the present. The project to map India’s industrial heritage has enabled a renewed perspective of this historic site by placing it in relation with 400 diverse sites from across India. Lying beneath the surface of this map, often overshadowed by a significant architectural heritage and recurring themes in the memory of a shared industrial past are stories of normalization of disasters, erasure of narratives of pain & shame and festering wounds of environmental contamination. Like the construction of colonial railways that plunged regions into famines or the welfare projects such as dams, canals and irrigation work that tragically produced greater disasters while re-employing those who were suffering as workers, the negative heritage of our industrial past cannot be simply seen as a side effect of development but a moral obligation that maintains the modern industrial project in India. Stories of pollution and people, of pain and shame and of destruction and dispossession are excluded from the narrative of industrialization and perhaps for their absence, we continue recreate the colonial paradigm in the service of the nation till date.
In this context, what is needed to develop a shared view of industrial heritage? How does experience of sites of conscience such as former factory site of Union Carbide in Bhopal help build a critical understanding of heritage? This talk will discuss how study of industrial heritage in India connect us to questions of justice and citizenship.
KeywoRdS: Bhopal; industrial heritage; Union Carbide; pollution; environmental disaster.
National Report : Industrial Heritage in India 2018-2022
Report submitted to The International Committee for Conservation of Industrial Heritage (TICCIH) ... more Report submitted to The International Committee for Conservation of Industrial Heritage (TICCIH) on the State of Conservation of Industrial Heritage in India, 2018-2022. Contents 1. Sites at Risk 2. Actors and Networks 3. Present State of Conservation 4. Outreach Editors : Moulshri Joshi, Somya Johri Team & Support : Nivia Jain, Athira Tp, Vishnu K Suresh, SpaceMatters
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the n... more The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the night of December 2, 1984, the leak of lethal Methyl Isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India led to one of world's worst industrial disasters. Yet the city of Bhopal has been ambivalent towards the legacy of the disaster, with the neglected, rapidly deteriorating factory site being one of the only spatial markers of the tragedy in the city. We share here, as architects of the memorial commissioned in 2005 by the government, our experience in engaging with remembering and forgetting in the overwhelming context of Bhopal.
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the n... more The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the night of December 2, 1984, the leak of lethal Methyl Isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India led to one of the world's largest industrial disasters. Yet the city of Bhopal has been ambivalent towards the legacy of the disaster, with the neglected, rapidly deteriorating factory site being one of the only spatial markers of the tragedy in the city. We share here, as architects of the memorial commissioned in 2005 by the government, our experience in engaging with remembering and forgetting in the overwhelming context of sites like Bhopal.
Recent studies of the post-liberalisation Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical f... more Recent studies of the post-liberalisation Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical framework from contemporary urban sociology in the West, drawn from David Harvey, Manuel Castells and Saskia Sassen, among others. These studies show the contemporary city being shaped by global transnational capital—which accumulates wealth through dispossession—resulting in a clearing of the poor and marginal from central urban areas to the periphery, and replacing them with middle- and upper-class newcomers. Concomitantly, new jobs in these cities have shifted from industrial manufacturing to post-industrial services for large transnational firms connected through international networks of global capital. These theories suggest that in the neoliberal city the welfare state has receded, surrendering its role of protecting working-class housing and employment to the interests of transnational capital. We argue that by identifying processes that unfold in New York or Paris in New Delhi, these studies only capture a small part of the picture of urban transformation in contemporary India. In the case of New Delhi, we show how Economic Liberalisation has fundamentally restructured India’s capital city, producing a new iteration of the ancient metropolis, which we call the “Tenth Delhi”. However, the new order does not, for the most part, resemble the above-described Western-derived theories. Instead of jettisoning its poor, Delhi has become a magnet for the working classes from across India. There are now more migrants each year to Delhi than to any other Indian city. Instead of the periphery, or squatter settlements on the urban edge, the influx of migrants is found in the oldest settlements of the city, the so-called Lal Dora areas or “Urban Villages”, where new forms of rental housing have emerged. The cases of displacement and dispossession in Delhi are well documented, but little has been written about the more large-scale phenomena of “regularisation” where hundreds of the “Unauthorised” housing colonies that exist across the city have been formally regularised. Through a case study of one neighbourhood called Taimoor Nagar, which contains a patchwork of multiple types of spaces, populations and economic activities, this paper seeks to understand how things work at a small scale to explain a larger system, and to identify patterns that repeat across urban space in terms of spatial ordering, informal norms, economic relations and political change. We argue that capital-intensive dispossession has not been the primary form of urban transformation in post-Liberalisation New Delhi. The liberalisation of state control over spaces and types of economic activity and the expansion of democratically elected representation in this period has also been dramatically important. When most of the economy is unregulated, and most of urban space is unplanned, democratic politics mediates the relationship between urban citizens and the rule of law.
What is Public History Globally? Working with the past in the present, 2019
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the n... more The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the night of December 2, 1984, the leak of lethal Methyl Isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India led to one of world's worst industrial disasters. Yet the city of Bhopal has been ambivalent towards the legacy of the disaster, with the neglected, rapidly deteriorating factory site being one of the only spatial markers of the tragedy in the city. We share here, as architects of the memorial commissioned in 2005 by the government, our experience in engaging with remembering and forgetting in the overwhelming context of Bhopal.
My interview published in Indian Express (25 April 2019) on the design of Bonjour Indian Pavilion... more My interview published in Indian Express (25 April 2019) on the design of Bonjour Indian Pavilion by SpaceMatters and how a mobile pavilion captured the friendship between Indian and France. The pavilion design won the first prize in Arts & Culture category at the Archmarathon Awards 2019.
THE INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE INVENTORY OF INDIA
by Moulshri Joshi
A report on possibly the first inven... more THE INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE INVENTORY OF INDIA by Moulshri Joshi A report on possibly the first inventory of Industrial Heritage in India that documents 100 historic sites from across the country in an attempt to define the emerging concept and field of practice of Industrial Heritage in India.
Recent studies of the post-liberalisation
Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical
f... more Recent studies of the post-liberalisation Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical framework from contemporary urban sociology in the West, drawn from David Harvey, Manuel Castells and Saskia Sassen, among others. These studies show the contemporary city being shaped by global transnational capital—which accumulates wealth through dispossession—resulting in a clearing of the poor and marginal from central urban areas to the periphery, and replacing them with middle- and upper-class newcomers. Concomitantly, new jobs in these cities have shifted from industrial manufacturing to postindustrial services for large transnational firms connected through international networks of global capital. These theories suggest that in the neoliberal city the welfare state has receded, surrendering its role of protecting working-class housing and employment to the interests of transnational capital. We argue that by identifying processes that unfold in New York or Paris in New Delhi, these studies only capture a small part of the picture of urban transformation in contemporary India. In the case of New Delhi, we show how Economic Liberalisation has fundamentally restructured India’s capital city, producing a new iteration of the ancient metropolis, which we call the ‘‘Tenth Delhi’’. However, the new order does not, for the most part, resemble the above-described Western-derived theories. Instead of jettisoning its poor, Delhi has become a magnet for the working classes from across India. There are now more migrants each year to Delhi than to any other Indian city. Instead of the periphery, or squatter settlements on the urban edge, the influx of migrants is found in the oldest settlements of the city, the so-called Lal Dora areas or ‘‘Urban Villages’’, where new forms of rental housing have emerged. The cases of displacement and dispossession in Delhi are well documented, but little has been written about the more large-scale phenomena of ‘‘regularisation’’ where hundreds of the ‘‘Unauthorised’’ housing colonies that exist across the city have been formally regularised. Through a case study of one neighbourhood called Taimoor Nagar, which contains a patchwork of multiple types of spaces, populations and economic activities, this paper seeks to understand how things work at a small scale to explain a larger system, and to identify patterns that repeat across urban space in terms of spatial ordering, informal norms, economic relations and political change. We argue that capital-intensive dispossession has not been the primary form of urban transformation in post- Liberalisation New Delhi. The liberalisation of state control over spaces and types of economic activity and the expansion of democratically elected representation in this period has also been dramatically important. When most of the economy is unregulated, and most of urban space is unplanned, democratic politics mediates the relationship between urban citizens and the rule of law. Keywords Urban governance Law Informal economy Informal space Urban planning New Delhi Urban studies Urban politics India
Recent studies of the post-liberalisation Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical ... more Recent studies of the post-liberalisation Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical framework from contemporary urban sociology in the West, drawn from David Harvey, Manuel Castells and Saskia Sassen, among others. These studies show the contemporary city being shaped by global transnational capital—which accumulates wealth through dispossession—resulting in a clearing of the poor and marginal from central urban areas to the periphery, and replacing them with middle- and upper-class newcomers. Concomitantly, new jobs in these cities have shifted from industrial manufacturing to post- industrial services for large transnational firms connected through international networks of global cap- ital. These theories suggest that in the neoliberal city the welfare state has receded, surrendering its role of protecting working-class housing and employment to the interests of transnational capital.
We argue that by identifying processes that unfold in New York or Paris in New Delhi, these studies only capture a small part of the picture of urban transformation in contemporary India. In the case of New Delhi, we show how Economic Liberalisation has fundamentally restruc- tured India’s capital city, producing a new iteration of the ancient metropolis, which we call the ‘‘Tenth Delhi’’. However, the new order does not, for the most part, resemble the above-described Western-derived theories. Instead of jettisoning its poor, Delhi has become a magnet for the working classes from across India. There are now more migrants each year to Delhi than to any other Indian city. Instead of the periphery, or squatter settlements on the urban edge, the influx of migrants is found in the oldest settlements of the city, the so-called Lal Dora areas or ‘‘Urban Villages’’, where new forms of rental housing have emerged. The cases of displacement and dispossession in Delhi are well documented, but little has been written about the more large-scale phenomena of ‘‘regularisation’’ where hundreds of the ‘‘Unauthorised’’ housing colonies that exist across the city have been formally regularised.
Through a case study of one neighbour- hood called Taimoor Nagar, which contains a patch- work of multiple types of spaces, populations and economic activities, this paper seeks to understand how things work at a small scale to explain a larger system, and to identify patterns that repeat across urban space in terms of spatial ordering, informal norms, economic relations and political change. We argue that capital-intensive dispossession has not been the primary form of urban transformation in post- Liberalisation New Delhi. The liberalisation of state control over spaces and types of economic activity and the expansion of democratically elected representation in this period has also been dramatically important. When most of the economy is unregulated, and most of urban space is unplanned, democratic politics mediates the relationship between urban citizens and the rule of law.
In this paper, we show that democratic politics produces order in situations where legal regulati... more In this paper, we show that democratic politics produces order in situations where legal regulation and state planning often exist on the books but not on the ground. Our findings are based on a grounded, multi-disciplinary field study conducted in a one-square mile site in New Delhi, Taimoor Nagar, which contains a wide range of formal and informal economic activity, legal and unauthorized housing, and planned and unplanned spaces. Based on interviews, survey data and mapping, we have found significant overlaps between economic informality and unplanned space.
In December 1984 there was a gas leak from the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. ... more In December 1984 there was a gas leak from the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. As many as 25,000 deaths have been attributed to the disaster and officially more than 500,000 were injured. After the disaster the factory site was abandoned, partly heavily contaminated, and till this day causing an on-going disaster. As well as a physical legacy, it constitutes a source of contested memories and reminders of a difficult past. The authors of this paper are preparing a research project on the memorialization of the Bhopal gas tragedy, critically examining dominant methods of preservation, conservation, interpretation and management of the industrial remains. The objectives are to outline crossdisciplinary and trans-discursive concepts through inclusive management of contested heritage sites, based theoretical platforms seeking to overarch the boundaries between museum, heritage and conservation discourses. For more than a quarter of century survivors have waged a struggle for compensation and economic rehabilitation, for health care and clean water, for environmental remediation and legal retribution. They have also demanded commemoration of the tragedy along with the preservation of the industrial remains of the factory. Construction of heritage should take into account the active participation of local people, but in Bhopal this is difficult to define. The long drawn out struggle between the state and activists has fragmented society into multiple survivor groups, activists, supporters, deniers and a larger population that remains largely untouched but still affected by the tragedy through its association with their city. The paper discusses why methods like oral history, field observation and archival studies have to be rethought in a complex case like Bhopal, where the conflict still is alive, the availability of historical sources are unsecure, and the role of the researcher is highly sensitive. Through analyzing the contested heritages of Bhopal the paper will explore its relevance for inclusive heritage management in general.
In December 1984 there was a gas leak from the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. ... more In December 1984 there was a gas leak from the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. As many as 25,000 deaths have been attributed to the disaster and officially more than 500,000 were injured. After the disaster the factory site was abandoned, partly heavily contaminated, and till this day causing an on-going disaster. As well as a physical legacy, it constitutes a source of contested memories and reminders of a difficult past. The authors of this paper are preparing a research project on the memorialization of the Bhopal gas tragedy, critically examining dominant methods of preservation, conservation, interpretation and management of the industrial remains. The objectives are to outline crossdisciplinary and trans-discursive concepts through inclusive management of contested heritage sites, based theoretical platforms seeking to overarch the boundaries between museum, heritage and conservation discourses. For more than a quarter of century survivors have waged a struggle for compensation and economic rehabilitation, for health care and clean water, for environmental remediation and legal retribution. They have also demanded commemoration of the tragedy along with the preservation of the industrial remains of the factory. Construction of heritage should take into account the active participation of local people, but in Bhopal this is difficult to define. The long drawn out struggle between the state and activists has fragmented society into multiple survivor groups, activists, supporters, deniers and a larger population that remains largely untouched but still affected by the tragedy through its association with their city. The paper discusses why methods like oral history, field observation and archival studies have to be rethought in a complex case like Bhopal, where the conflict still is alive, the availability of historical sources are unsecure, and the role of the researcher is highly sensitive. Through analyzing the contested heritages of Bhopal the paper will explore its relevance for inclusive heritage management in general.
What is Public History Globally? Working with the Past in the Present, 2018
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the n... more The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is irrevocably linked to the city of Bhopal in public perception. On the night of December 2, 1984, the leak of lethal Methyl Isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India led to one of the world's largest industrial disasters. Yet the city of Bhopal has been ambivalent towards the legacy of the disaster, with the neglected, rapidly deteriorating factory site being one of the only spatial markers of the tragedy in the city. We share here, as architects of the memorial commissioned in 2005 by the government, our experience in engaging with remembering and forgetting in the overwhelming context of sites like Bhopal.
The Industrial Heritage Inventory attempts to report on what exists in India under the loosely de... more The Industrial Heritage Inventory attempts to report on what exists in India under the loosely defined term 'industrial heritage'. For several years there has been no TICCIH national report from India. This is partly due to the newness of the concept. Heritage practitioners are only beginning to take stock of our modern scientific and technological heritage. Knowledge and documentation lies distributed across many fields and many places. Disciplines and formal sources are secondary to the living memory of the industrial culture. The inventory brings together 100 sites from across India. It is the first of a four-part volume supported by SpaceMatters and edited by Moulshri Joshi and team across 5 years.
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ABSTRACT: The former Union Carbide factory at Bhopal, site of the chemical disaster, remains closed and contaminated since 1984. The old rendering plant is a visible reminder of the world’s worst disaster while the invisible, persistent chemicals in the soil and groundwater continue to occupy the city. The factory above and soil below connected through a toxic stream of leaching chemicals present a poetic afterlife of industrial monuments in India. The toxic waste of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy remains the most lasting legacy of the disaster where an uncertain number carry this contamination in their bodies while over half a million remain formally registered for medical support. In nasty ways, almost four decades since it ceased operation, the pesticide plant continues to produce chemicals, the company continues to occupy the land and the past continues to live violently in the present.
The project to map India’s industrial heritage has enabled a renewed perspective of this historic site by placing it in relation with 400 diverse sites from across India. Lying beneath the surface of this map, often overshadowed by a significant architectural heritage and recurring themes in the memory of a shared industrial past are stories of normalization of disasters, erasure of narratives of pain & shame and festering wounds of environmental contamination. Like the construction of colonial railways that plunged regions into famines or the welfare projects such as dams, canals and irrigation work that tragically produced greater disasters while re-employing those who were suffering as workers, the negative heritage of our industrial past cannot be simply seen as a side effect of development but a moral obligation that maintains the modern industrial project in India. Stories of pollution and people, of pain and shame and of destruction and dispossession are excluded from the narrative of industrialization and perhaps for their absence, we continue recreate the colonial paradigm in the service of the nation till date.
In this context, what is needed to develop a shared view of industrial heritage? How does experience of sites of conscience such as former factory site of Union Carbide in Bhopal help build a critical understanding of heritage? This talk will discuss how study of industrial heritage in India connect us to questions of justice and citizenship.
KeywoRdS: Bhopal; industrial heritage; Union Carbide; pollution; environmental disaster.
Contents
1. Sites at Risk
2. Actors and Networks
3. Present State of Conservation
4. Outreach
Editors : Moulshri Joshi, Somya Johri
Team & Support : Nivia Jain, Athira Tp, Vishnu K Suresh, SpaceMatters
by Moulshri Joshi
A report on possibly the first inventory of Industrial Heritage in India that documents 100 historic sites from across the country in an attempt to define the emerging concept and field of practice of Industrial Heritage in India.
Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical
framework from contemporary urban sociology in the
West, drawn from David Harvey, Manuel Castells and
Saskia Sassen, among others. These studies show the
contemporary city being shaped by global transnational
capital—which accumulates wealth through
dispossession—resulting in a clearing of the poor and
marginal from central urban areas to the periphery,
and replacing them with middle- and upper-class
newcomers. Concomitantly, new jobs in these cities
have shifted from industrial manufacturing to postindustrial
services for large transnational firms connected
through international networks of global capital.
These theories suggest that in the neoliberal city
the welfare state has receded, surrendering its role of
protecting working-class housing and employment to
the interests of transnational capital. We argue that by
identifying processes that unfold in New York or Paris
in New Delhi, these studies only capture a small part of
the picture of urban transformation in contemporary
India. In the case of New Delhi, we show how
Economic Liberalisation has fundamentally restructured
India’s capital city, producing a new iteration of
the ancient metropolis, which we call the ‘‘Tenth
Delhi’’. However, the new order does not, for the most
part, resemble the above-described Western-derived
theories. Instead of jettisoning its poor, Delhi has
become a magnet for the working classes from across
India. There are now more migrants each year to Delhi
than to any other Indian city. Instead of the periphery,
or squatter settlements on the urban edge, the influx of
migrants is found in the oldest settlements of the city,
the so-called Lal Dora areas or ‘‘Urban Villages’’,
where new forms of rental housing have emerged. The
cases of displacement and dispossession in Delhi are
well documented, but little has been written about the
more large-scale phenomena of ‘‘regularisation’’
where hundreds of the ‘‘Unauthorised’’ housing
colonies that exist across the city have been formally
regularised. Through a case study of one neighbourhood
called Taimoor Nagar, which contains a patchwork
of multiple types of spaces, populations and
economic activities, this paper seeks to understand
how things work at a small scale to explain a larger
system, and to identify patterns that repeat across
urban space in terms of spatial ordering, informal
norms, economic relations and political change. We
argue that capital-intensive dispossession has not been
the primary form of urban transformation in post-
Liberalisation New Delhi. The liberalisation of state
control over spaces and types of economic activity and
the expansion of democratically elected representation
in this period has also been dramatically important.
When most of the economy is unregulated, and most
of urban space is unplanned, democratic politics
mediates the relationship between urban citizens and
the rule of law.
Keywords Urban governance Law Informal
economy Informal space Urban planning New
Delhi Urban studies Urban politics India
We argue that by identifying processes that unfold in New York or Paris in New Delhi, these studies only capture a small part of the picture of urban transformation in contemporary India. In the case of New Delhi, we show how Economic Liberalisation has fundamentally restruc- tured India’s capital city, producing a new iteration of the ancient metropolis, which we call the ‘‘Tenth Delhi’’. However, the new order does not, for the most part, resemble the above-described Western-derived theories. Instead of jettisoning its poor, Delhi has become a magnet for the working classes from across India. There are now more migrants each year to Delhi than to any other Indian city. Instead of the periphery, or squatter settlements on the urban edge, the influx of migrants is found in the oldest settlements of the city, the so-called Lal Dora areas or ‘‘Urban Villages’’, where new forms of rental housing have emerged. The cases of displacement and dispossession in Delhi are well documented, but little has been written about the more large-scale phenomena of ‘‘regularisation’’ where hundreds of the ‘‘Unauthorised’’ housing colonies that exist across the city have been formally regularised.
Through a case study of one neighbour- hood called Taimoor Nagar, which contains a patch- work of multiple types of spaces, populations and economic activities, this paper seeks to understand how things work at a small scale to explain a larger system, and to identify patterns that repeat across urban space in terms of spatial ordering, informal norms, economic relations and political change. We argue that capital-intensive dispossession has not been the primary form of urban transformation in post- Liberalisation New Delhi. The liberalisation of state control over spaces and types of economic activity and the expansion of democratically elected representation in this period has also been dramatically important. When most of the economy is unregulated, and most of urban space is unplanned, democratic politics mediates the relationship between urban citizens and the rule of law.
ABSTRACT: The former Union Carbide factory at Bhopal, site of the chemical disaster, remains closed and contaminated since 1984. The old rendering plant is a visible reminder of the world’s worst disaster while the invisible, persistent chemicals in the soil and groundwater continue to occupy the city. The factory above and soil below connected through a toxic stream of leaching chemicals present a poetic afterlife of industrial monuments in India. The toxic waste of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy remains the most lasting legacy of the disaster where an uncertain number carry this contamination in their bodies while over half a million remain formally registered for medical support. In nasty ways, almost four decades since it ceased operation, the pesticide plant continues to produce chemicals, the company continues to occupy the land and the past continues to live violently in the present.
The project to map India’s industrial heritage has enabled a renewed perspective of this historic site by placing it in relation with 400 diverse sites from across India. Lying beneath the surface of this map, often overshadowed by a significant architectural heritage and recurring themes in the memory of a shared industrial past are stories of normalization of disasters, erasure of narratives of pain & shame and festering wounds of environmental contamination. Like the construction of colonial railways that plunged regions into famines or the welfare projects such as dams, canals and irrigation work that tragically produced greater disasters while re-employing those who were suffering as workers, the negative heritage of our industrial past cannot be simply seen as a side effect of development but a moral obligation that maintains the modern industrial project in India. Stories of pollution and people, of pain and shame and of destruction and dispossession are excluded from the narrative of industrialization and perhaps for their absence, we continue recreate the colonial paradigm in the service of the nation till date.
In this context, what is needed to develop a shared view of industrial heritage? How does experience of sites of conscience such as former factory site of Union Carbide in Bhopal help build a critical understanding of heritage? This talk will discuss how study of industrial heritage in India connect us to questions of justice and citizenship.
KeywoRdS: Bhopal; industrial heritage; Union Carbide; pollution; environmental disaster.
Contents
1. Sites at Risk
2. Actors and Networks
3. Present State of Conservation
4. Outreach
Editors : Moulshri Joshi, Somya Johri
Team & Support : Nivia Jain, Athira Tp, Vishnu K Suresh, SpaceMatters
by Moulshri Joshi
A report on possibly the first inventory of Industrial Heritage in India that documents 100 historic sites from across the country in an attempt to define the emerging concept and field of practice of Industrial Heritage in India.
Indian metropolis have largely followed a theoretical
framework from contemporary urban sociology in the
West, drawn from David Harvey, Manuel Castells and
Saskia Sassen, among others. These studies show the
contemporary city being shaped by global transnational
capital—which accumulates wealth through
dispossession—resulting in a clearing of the poor and
marginal from central urban areas to the periphery,
and replacing them with middle- and upper-class
newcomers. Concomitantly, new jobs in these cities
have shifted from industrial manufacturing to postindustrial
services for large transnational firms connected
through international networks of global capital.
These theories suggest that in the neoliberal city
the welfare state has receded, surrendering its role of
protecting working-class housing and employment to
the interests of transnational capital. We argue that by
identifying processes that unfold in New York or Paris
in New Delhi, these studies only capture a small part of
the picture of urban transformation in contemporary
India. In the case of New Delhi, we show how
Economic Liberalisation has fundamentally restructured
India’s capital city, producing a new iteration of
the ancient metropolis, which we call the ‘‘Tenth
Delhi’’. However, the new order does not, for the most
part, resemble the above-described Western-derived
theories. Instead of jettisoning its poor, Delhi has
become a magnet for the working classes from across
India. There are now more migrants each year to Delhi
than to any other Indian city. Instead of the periphery,
or squatter settlements on the urban edge, the influx of
migrants is found in the oldest settlements of the city,
the so-called Lal Dora areas or ‘‘Urban Villages’’,
where new forms of rental housing have emerged. The
cases of displacement and dispossession in Delhi are
well documented, but little has been written about the
more large-scale phenomena of ‘‘regularisation’’
where hundreds of the ‘‘Unauthorised’’ housing
colonies that exist across the city have been formally
regularised. Through a case study of one neighbourhood
called Taimoor Nagar, which contains a patchwork
of multiple types of spaces, populations and
economic activities, this paper seeks to understand
how things work at a small scale to explain a larger
system, and to identify patterns that repeat across
urban space in terms of spatial ordering, informal
norms, economic relations and political change. We
argue that capital-intensive dispossession has not been
the primary form of urban transformation in post-
Liberalisation New Delhi. The liberalisation of state
control over spaces and types of economic activity and
the expansion of democratically elected representation
in this period has also been dramatically important.
When most of the economy is unregulated, and most
of urban space is unplanned, democratic politics
mediates the relationship between urban citizens and
the rule of law.
Keywords Urban governance Law Informal
economy Informal space Urban planning New
Delhi Urban studies Urban politics India
We argue that by identifying processes that unfold in New York or Paris in New Delhi, these studies only capture a small part of the picture of urban transformation in contemporary India. In the case of New Delhi, we show how Economic Liberalisation has fundamentally restruc- tured India’s capital city, producing a new iteration of the ancient metropolis, which we call the ‘‘Tenth Delhi’’. However, the new order does not, for the most part, resemble the above-described Western-derived theories. Instead of jettisoning its poor, Delhi has become a magnet for the working classes from across India. There are now more migrants each year to Delhi than to any other Indian city. Instead of the periphery, or squatter settlements on the urban edge, the influx of migrants is found in the oldest settlements of the city, the so-called Lal Dora areas or ‘‘Urban Villages’’, where new forms of rental housing have emerged. The cases of displacement and dispossession in Delhi are well documented, but little has been written about the more large-scale phenomena of ‘‘regularisation’’ where hundreds of the ‘‘Unauthorised’’ housing colonies that exist across the city have been formally regularised.
Through a case study of one neighbour- hood called Taimoor Nagar, which contains a patch- work of multiple types of spaces, populations and economic activities, this paper seeks to understand how things work at a small scale to explain a larger system, and to identify patterns that repeat across urban space in terms of spatial ordering, informal norms, economic relations and political change. We argue that capital-intensive dispossession has not been the primary form of urban transformation in post- Liberalisation New Delhi. The liberalisation of state control over spaces and types of economic activity and the expansion of democratically elected representation in this period has also been dramatically important. When most of the economy is unregulated, and most of urban space is unplanned, democratic politics mediates the relationship between urban citizens and the rule of law.
The inventory brings together 100 sites from across India. It is the first of a four-part volume supported by SpaceMatters and edited by Moulshri Joshi and team across 5 years.