A hmedabad/ GIFT City

Abstract

Ahmedabad is India's seventh largest city, and host to a cluster of some prominent academic and industrial institutions. From its establishment in 1411, its sultans pioneered a legacy of fine architecture in mosques, temples, and traditional neighborhoods. That trend today is exemplified in modernist buildings by Louis Kahn, Le Corbusier, and Charles Correa among others. In the mid‐twentieth century it was a thriving industrial town, but in the fast urbanizing trend of the twenty‐first century it faced an unprecedented challenge with the decline of its textile mills. The fortunes of these mill workers, whose subsequent unemployment turned them into informal workers, became less closely linked to the financial upswing following economic liberalization, which disproportionately benefited the elites. In keeping with the growing disparity, public investment in urban infrastructure and in beautification projects became more salient and politically profitable. This also caused public and private institutional goals to blur at the boundaries, and governance to shift away from visible and transparent institutions, which were accountable to ordinary citizens, to more joint arrangements between private for‐profit institutions and governmental bodies, which were less transparent in their operations. These new institutional forms, for example those in the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project and the GIFT City, have become instruments of public decision, exerting control over Ahmedabad's budgets, and therefore manifestations of elite capture of public resources.