Final Year Project

Project Title

Who Runs the Cities? Colonial & Post Colonial Bureaucracies in South Asia

Description

The city is at the centre of many development narratives. However, narratives/discourses on most cities in South Asia are often around deepening inequality, real-estate geopolitics, and environmental crises—citing ineffective management as the root cause of all problems. This project attempted to understand bureaucracies in the post-colonial city, how they emerged from their colonial antecedents, how administrative structures evolved from colonial times, what colonial practices are still an integral part of these administrative structures, and whether they hinder or aid city management. For this purpose, we presented a historical view of the colonial city in terms of administrative structure, how it came to exist in its current state, and what city-bureaucracies have stood for in the colonial and post-colonial world. Questions such as, were the city-management systems merely a system to effectively manage resources, or have these systems ever impacted the economy, society, and religious life of residents there discussed through examples of three major cities – Mumbai, Delhi, and Calcutta, with a general discussion on city-bureaucracies.