Abstract
Interest in interactions between rural and urban areas in Asia has begun to resurface after a gap of nearly two decades. The modes of inquiry, the theoretical concerns, and the analytical repertoire of the new generation of researchers are, however, distinct from those of the previous generations, who located their questions mainly in debates around what was perceived to be the big transition in agriculture. Researchers of earlier generations were primarily concerned with the social and cultural implications of agrarian surpluses seeking new venues for investments in cities. In contrast, the present generation of scholars is concerned with the ways in which transnational investments are implicated in the spatial expansion of cities, production of mobile populations in rural areas, and reconfiguring “citizenship.” Against this backdrop, this chapter describes the lives of young men from families with strong ties to the agricultural land around Hyderabad, a rapidly globalizing city in south India. As this land is technically considered “rural,” its conversion into urban private property is subject to a number of regulations. The young men, in this case, had earned substantial amounts of money during the post reforms real estate boom by deploying their tacit knowledge of local histories, and the intricacies of land records and regulations to find pathways for land-use conversion. Yet, since the global economic downturn of 2008, “local” attempts of these young men to reimagine a future as urban citizens have crashed. Based on an exploration of this experience, this chapter argues for an agent-centric approach to the study of rural-urban interactions, as opposed to an approach that views the rural and the urban as two distinct bounded areas.
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Notes
- 1.
All names of individuals in this chapter are changed to protect the identity of the informants.
- 2.
World Bank-commissioned studies have shown that there is a marked increase in registered urban mortgages in India due to the computerization of land records. Yet, some of this increase could simply be attributed to the reduction of stamp duty, which lowers the costs of such transactions (Deininger and Goyal 2010). In other words, capitalization of landed property is subject to a variety of influences other than clear titles.
- 3.
The case of Hyderabad Urban Development Authority’s (HUDA) master plan illustrates this well. HUDA developed its first master plan in 1977. This plan was revised in 1983. Since then, while the city has grown enormously, HUDA has not been able to pass its new master plans into legislation. However, hundreds of Government Orders altering the master plan have been issued by the state government, with the result that nobody in the government knows precisely which rule applies to which situation.
- 4.
City governments in India have an elected body headed by the mayor and an executive that is run by the commissioner, who is a senior officer usually of the Indian Administrative Services (IAS)—a nationally recruited cadre of officers. The IAS has traditionally been a corps of officers who defer to seniority and line hierarchy. In other words, the municipal commissioner, although he may not be technically subservient to the revenue officials, and is answerable to the Urban Development Ministry, he or she would, in practice, defer to a senior official of the IAS cadre in matters related to administration.
- 5.
The 74th Constitutional Amendment Act 1992 concerning urban local bodies came into effect in India in 1993.
- 6.
The Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission is a nationwide program which invites city governments to submit comprehensive development plans that are then evaluated by an expert committee and granted central funds. The Mission pumps in much-needed infrastructure funds but has also received widespread criticism as one of its evaluation criteria is a set of mandatory reforms regarding governance and local laws.
- 7.
For a review of the literature on positive links between secure property rights and long-term investments on land, labor supply participation, and women’s empowerment, see Besley (1995).
- 8.
Traditionally, the upper caste Brahmins and the intermediate caste Reddys have been custodians of land records in villages in Andhra Pradesh. The Scheduled Castes and the Other Backward Classes are both categories of population annunciated in the Constitution of India. The classification of an individual as belonging to any of these groups indicates a lack of social privilege and entitles him or her to concessions in education, employment, and welfare programs.
- 9.
In the process, the Nizam State had also lost some of its territory to neighboring states.
- 10.
The Endowments Board is the government agency which is the custodian of all Hindu religious properties. The Waqf Board is the Islamic counterpart of the Endowments Board. Created in 1956 in Hyderabad by a central legislation, the Waqf Board is the custodian of lands dedicated for public purposes in Islam.
- 11.
The panchayat is the local unit of democratic governance at the village level. The panchayat is an elected body headed by a sarpanch.
- 12.
The Urban Land Ceiling Act 1976 prohibits any single individual to own more than 1,000 square meters of vacant urban land property. Despite its laudable intention of breaking land monopoly, the Urban Land Ceiling Act has, in reality, resulted in large numbers of land parcels being classified as agricultural lands, thereby becoming exempt from the law. Much of this land has remained locked into agricultural production, are thus rural, and therefore, unavailable for urban development until recently.
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Acknowledgments
The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Urban Research and Policy Program of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India in carrying out this research.
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Maringanti, A. (2013). Rural Youths as Real Estate Entrepreneurs in Globalizing Hyderabad. In: Bunnell, T., Parthasarathy, D., Thompson, E. (eds) Cleavage, Connection and Conflict in Rural, Urban and Contemporary Asia. ARI - Springer Asia Series, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5482-9_3
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