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We look at Alappad in coastal South India’s Kerala and suggest the spatiality of power as a useful analytic to critique the trend towards nationalistic developmentalism. Recent recognition of the urban beyond metro cities is increasingly framed as a policy-heavy developmentalism. Here, central agencies, think tanks and non-governmental organisations reinforce this form of liberal perspectives, but also, such frames are reinforced by international collaborative projects with researchers of progressive ideological positions seeking to simplistically bring back the welfare state with little understanding of power structures on the ground. Here, groups termed at risk and marginal in line with ideas of southern epistemologies emphasise their political agency as particular constellations and varied material realms. To counter these ideas, we focus on the spatialities associated with various material practices. Without this, attempts to provincialise development in contexts such as Alappad are essentialising and de-politicising.