Of ‘Paradise’ and its underbelly: Spaces of power in the everyday of a gated enclave in Urban India

Abstract

This article is set in a gated enclave of the new elite in Mysuru (formerly Mysore) city in the state of Karnataka in South India. Mysuru is a growing information technology centre that it is also undergoing urban transformation which includes international style fortified neighbourhood developments suitable for this class of highly qualified, globally mobile wealthy professionals predominantly engaged in the information technology sector. Residents in the neighbourhood seem to live in a world of their own, where they set their own rules and enforce their own sanctions. They have chosen to stay there to segregate themselves from the world outside. Ensconced in their comfortable high walled enclosures, they nevertheless allow the entry of a much polarized lower class into their homes as workers for various services, for sheer need of sustaining the grandeur of their daily lives. The neighbourhood association has become a powerful corporate and a potent tool for expression of everyday power. Using participant observation, interviews, narrative lore and other qualitative measures, the article probes the psyche of the new elite, their interaction with service classes, and the dynamics of power in the enclave. Narrating one incident as the prism that deflects several strands in the complex web of relationships, I have demonstrated the power of the residents’ welfare association as experienced, expressed and enacted in the everyday in that domain. I have argued that this power gets augmented through the fortification and essentially draws from ownership and control over spatial arrangements.