Hydraulic City

Abstract

Interlude. Jharna (Spring)-191 6. DISCONNECTION-193 Interlude. Miracles-219 conclusion-223 Notes-239 References-265 Index-289 Contents This page intentionally left blankx-Preface patient pressure. Nevertheless, hydraulic proj ects continue to reanimate the city in an always incomplete effort to make environments predictable and reliable. As we enter times beyond the grasp of human history, we now need to confront the very real possibility that modernist modes of hydraulic government may no longer be sufficient for stabilizing our worlds. 8 Indeed, in his life, Akbar would realize that despite ruling over much of the Indian subcontinent, he could not control its waters as effectively. In the late sixteenth century, Akbar deci ded to move his capital from Agra to Fatehpur Sikri so that he could live closer to the Sufi saint Salim Chisti. The capital city, specially constructed for the purpose, took fifteen years to build. Constructed out of red sandstone, its royal durbars, large columns, and impressive gates together are believed to compose one of the finest examples of Mughal architecture. Yet just fourteen years after it was completed, this fine city had to be abandoned when its nearby lakes suddenly dried up. Salman Rushdie recounts the event in his novel The Enchantress of Florence:The destruction of Fatehpur Sikri had begun. . . . Slowly, moment by moment, retreating at a man's walking pace, the water was receding.[The emperor] sent for the city's leading engineers but they were at a loss to explain the phenomenon. . . . Without the lake the citizens who could not afford Kashmiri ice would have nothing to drink, nothing to wash or cook with, and their children would soon die. . . . Without the lake the city was a parched and shriveled husk. The water continued to drain away. The death of the lake was the death of Sikri as well.Without water we are nothing. Even an emperor, denied water, would swiftly turn to dust. Water is the real monarch and we are all its slaves. "Evacuate the city," the emperor Akbar commanded. (Rushdie 2008, 344-45) Ac know ledg mentsThis research on Mumbai's water took me home to a world I did not know. Like many in Mumbai, I had for a long time lived in the city without needing to be conscious of the tremendous work of its social and material infrastructures. Through fieldwork, I learned of the extraordinary quotidian labor of employees of the city's hydraulic engineering department and those that live in the city's auto-constructed settlements, just to make water appear every day in city taps. And so it is with this more mundane book. Its appearance as a discrete thing conceals the generosity and work that has been invested in it by many others, just to make it appear in the world.As residents, friends, and experts of the city I love, I would like to thank

The Quest for Water, Rights and Freedoms: Informal Urban Settlements in India

“…For example, in the state of Maharashtra, in which Mumbai is located, the development of informal settlements is governed by the Maharashtra Slum Areas (Improvement, Clearance and Redevelopment) Act of 1971 (Government of Maharashtra, ), which makes provision for ‘improvement works’ that include ‘laying of water mains, sewers and storm water drains’ and ‘provision of urinals, latrines, community baths, and water taps’. The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), by contrast, stipulates that settlers who cannot provide documentation proving that they were resident in their location prior to the year 2000 are not eligible for basic services or for compensation when their homes are bulldozed (Graham et al ., ; Björkman, ; Anand, ). Similar policies govern urban informal development in Delhi and Faridabad, meaning that most settlers do not receive basic services, nor are they compensated when they are displaced, because they typically lack formal documentation even though they may have resided in their location prior to the cut‐off dates (Murthy, ; Doshi, ).…”

Evictions as infrastructural events

“…Such studies have urged researchers to document the entanglements and coconstitution of the technological and the social, rather than "purifying" them into separate domains (Latour, 1993, p. 5) -that is, analyzing technology as exterior to "society." This is an approach that has inspired significant research that demonstrates that the design, scope, and gaps in infrastructural provision -understood as a tangible and durable form of biopolitics -make, remake, and unmake urban citizenship (Amin, 2014;Anand, 2017;Bjorkman, 2015;Von Schnitzler, 2017).…”

“…The analytic path that we follow in this article is to approach evictions as inframaking and as bundles of material and socio-technical relations (Carse, 2017, p. 891;Lancione, 2017aLancione, , p. 1016Lancione & McFarlane, 2016). To understand the evictees' resistance to being rendered abject and their struggles to maintain dignity is also to document how the evicted piece together often unstable, yet vital socio-technical assemblages for basic life processes and camp life (Anand, 2017;Picker & Pasquetii, 2015;Simone, 2004).…”

Keep off the grass! New directions for geographies of yards and gardens

“…For instance, just over 10 years ago, geographer Bruce Braun () synthesized varying geographic perspectives on these “more than human urban geographies”:

We have begun to see city spaces beyond the country/city and nature/city dichotomies that have allowed the city to be seen as the antithesis of nature. The rapidly growing literature on urban nature has allowed cities to be conceived anew, as ‘hybrid’ spaces, and as local‐global spaces, but also as spaces in which ethical and political consideration extends beyond the bounds of the human (p. 647).

Such investigations have only proliferated since then, intersecting with broader conversations about contradictions in the politics of sustainability, resilience, and capitalism (Krueger & Gibbs, , Heynen, McCarthy, Prudham, & Robbins, ); the publics and politics of infrastructures (Anand, ; Karvonen, ); developing relational approaches attentive to relationships circulating in, through, and beyond urban environments (Amin & Thrift, ); and emerging climate politics, socio‐ecological transformations, and the Anthropocene (Braun, ; Clark & Yusoff, ). This more than human turn within geography provides an essential backdrop for thinking through yards and gardens—spaces inherently entangled as one interface between people and their more than human surroundings.…”