Governing Gurgaon as a financial investment

Abstract

This article explores the spatialization of financial capitalism through an examination of the private governance of Gurgaon, Haryana, India, a city which has become something of an emblem of neoliberal real estate development. Gurgaon illustrates the processes through which financialized values, rationalities, and culture permeate urban governance and reshape urban space. The way that capital lands in Gurgaon—what is built, for whom, and how populations are both shaped and shape themselves around it—demonstrates what happens when the rationalities of finance govern urban spaces. The primary argument here is that Gurgaon demonstrates the ‘private acting like the public’—meaning, a private actor assuming the governance responsibilities of public actors while executing those responsibilities in the interest of finance. This form of governance includes the following dimensions: the assumption of the duties of local government by private actors such as real estate developers; the transformation of the built environment to both reflect the desires of investors and to include only certain populations; and a form of self-governance whereby the population takes it upon itself to transform in the reflection of financial values and financialized lifestyles. In short, governance power is delegated to private actors—here, real estate developers and investors—and the eventual result is the use of land and a social order that benefits financial instruments and investment. Crucially, though, Gurgaon’s experience also illustrates that this ‘permeation’ is a constant process and is not as simple as financialization landing and local government and geography receiving it. Local government and geographies shape financialization at the same time that their land and resources are financialized into globally traded assets.