The village as urban infrastructure: Social reproduction, agrarian repair and uneven urbanisation

Abstract

This paper draws from research conducted in Gurgaon, a city which has been transformed from agricultural hinterland to a bustling metropolis over the course of the past 30 years. The aim of this paper is to expand debates on the uneven geographies of urbanisation in India by reconsidering marginalised urban neighbourhoods as infrastructural nodes, wherein the complex and contested work of reproducing urban life is carried out. Extending scholarship on urban infrastructure, social reproduction and heterodox Marxist political economy, this paper highlights the subaltern processes decay and repair which underpin Gurgaon’s rapid urbanisation.