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Urban Utopias pp 19–36Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Impossibility of World-Class Slum-Free Indian Cities and the Fantasy of ‘Two Indias’

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology ((PSUA))

Abstract

A Žižekian critique of ideology is applied to the elite visions of making ‘world-class’ and ‘slum-free’ Indian cities. This reveals both the impossibility of this utopia (or dystopia) and how it is covered over by the fantasy of one India holding the ‘Shining’ or ‘Rising’ India back. Thus, the reason for why ‘India can’t plan its cities’ is transferred from the structural contractions of contemporary capitalist urbanization and placed onto the ‘risk averse’ or backward mentalities of the ‘other India’.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Technology and Society Studies, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands

    Tara van Dijk

  2. Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Rotterdam, Netherlands

    Tara van Dijk

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  1. Tara van Dijk
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Tereza Kuldova

  2. Department of Political Science, Maharajas College, Kerala, India

    Mathew A. Varghese

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van Dijk, T. (2017). The Impossibility of World-Class Slum-Free Indian Cities and the Fantasy of ‘Two Indias’. In: Kuldova, T., Varghese, M. (eds) Urban Utopias. Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47623-0_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47623-0_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47622-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47623-0

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