Paper short abstract:

This paper demonstrates the manner in which 'urban planning', frequently positioned as a tool to exercise control over the market for land, and a modality to temper or prevent real estate speculation, ends up fueling it instead.

Paper long abstract:

In 2009-11 fifty-three villages in the northern periphery of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) opposed the State's order to be absorbed into the newly decreed Vasai-Virar City Municipal Corporation (VVCMC). The villagers organized themselves into a political party, fought municipal elections and succeeded in being represented in the Municipal Corporation; firm in their resolve to resist the move to declare this area 'urban'. These protests, which first began more than a quarter of a century ago, resolutely opposed multiple attempts by the State to impose a (urban) planning regime on this region.

The production of urban land is central to local and legislative politics in MMR where speculating in land fuels political power, and generates multiple resources. The surreptitious transfer of land-use, and extensive transactions involving land precedes the making of legislation that will regulate its use. However, the very enactment of these laws, in this instance, led to mass mobilization and protests against urbanization.

Why does the transformation towards becoming a city evoke determined opposition? How did the people of Vasai Virar resist state-led definitions of the 'urban' in India? And how has this movement - that has continued to be identified as a village-level agitation - gained support and salience over time? This paper is a contribution towards understanding citizenship in the periphery of the metropolis, in the wake of continuing attempts to impose planning regimes and re-scale urban processes.