Negotiating Laws: Land Practices in the Process of City-Making in South India

Abstract

For two decades in India, strategic Master plans, as well as laws have been created to allow new forms of buildings and to attract private investments. Although research on the impact of those legislative initiatives on city-making processes is extensive, little attention has been paid to the use of those laws. Here, we present a new perspective by investigating the role and the strategies of stake-holders: How are the inhabitants, elected representatives, urban practitioners and governments using, producing, and negotiating those laws to obtain power and to structure their relationships? We argue that urban projects are the result of long processes of negotiation between actors at different levels and laws are tools to facilitate or constrain compromises. Each project is unique and the management of planning is constantly reformulated and renewed regarding the singularity of practices. Our aim is to examine land acquisition rules and land conversion schemes in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu in order to demonstrate the multiplicity and heterogeneity of practices that build those cities. Using ethnographic methodology, we look at the situation from below and observe micro-strategies. Rules are not just applied or contested by local stake-holders but are interconnected to social norms and local history.