There has been a recent interest in expanding the focus of deindustrialisation studies to the cities of the Global South. Bangalore, with its long legacy of state sponsored industrialisation, as well as a substantial shift in its economy following economic liberalisation in 1991, presents itself as a suitable case to examine the impacts of industrial transformation. We study the decline of the engineering economy in one of Bangalore’s earliest planned industrial suburbs, Rajajinagar, to understand how industrial restructuring at the city and national scale has affected and reconfigured local economies. Using this case study, we make two main theoretical contributions: one, we bring out shifts at a neighbourhood scale that go beyond the existing literature on neoliberal transformations in Bangalore as well as other Indian cities. Two, the case also allows us to assess the limitations of deindustrialisation as a framework to analyse these changes, and we suggest a modified framework, that of ‘industrial destabilisation’.

This paper is part of a series of policy papers made possible by the support of the Rockefeller Foundation to the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore. Draft for Review Only. Do not cite or quote.

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Population Class I Cities & Towns (million) Estimated Population (million) Estimated Investment (2021-2031) >10 74 88 100 2.9 Population (million 2011) Density (persons/ sq. km.) Key issues Naya Raipur (2000) Greenfield capital city for Chhattisgarh ~237 0.1 million 632 Long gestation, large public investment in land and infrastructure, weak economic base Lavasa (2000) Privately planned new tourist town ~28 < 0.001 na Challenges with land acquisition, environmental clearances and financing Amaravati (2014) Greenfield capital for Andhra Pradesh ~218 0.1 na Ambitious plan for new capital abandoned 5 years after extensive land pooling. Major lenders pulled out from the project. *Full citations and data sources in Annex 1. Name Significance Size (sq. km.) Population (million 2011) Density (persons/ sq. km.