Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how railway re-development in colonial Delhi gave rise to a politics of planning between state agencies.It shows how the boundaries between ‘railway space’ and ‘city space’ were constantly shifting, as were those between the local authorities and central government.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at how the development of railway infrastructure in Delhi fuelled a politics of planning in which the city was envisaged as a space of movement. Focusing on the construction of railway lines and the re-development of Delhi railway station at the very end of the nineteenth century, I explore the ways in which urban planning became a site for competing visions of urban circulation and political jurisdiction. A central part of the 1899 plan for the city railway station drawn up by the Delhi Municipality was the division of railway traffic into goods and passengers. This was premised on particular notions of 'good' and 'bad' circulation - terms defined largely in terms of the city's commercial interests. However, as I show, the Municipality's attempt to regulate the railway sometimes led them into conflict with the Government of India, representing regional railway companies who saw circulation in terms that stretched at a spatial scale far beyond Delhi. Such conflicts highlighted the somewhat uncertain boundaries of 'Delhi space' and 'railway space' on the one hand and state authorities like the Municipality and central government authority on the other.