Paper short abstract:

The research unfolds the micro-politics of land and its tenacious effect on the ecological performance, a case of Bangalore city in India. It seeks to position the city’s urban history, the conflicts of land and water, in its evolution from a feudal agrarian community to capitalist global city.

Paper long abstract:

The complexity of Indian urban ecology, continue to characterize an apparition of rural setting. Land has been an enduring subject of contention in the exploration of urban history of these ecologies, the administration and control of which appropriated as a political entity prompted specific spatial practices. Land and its micro politics have deteriorated the condition of the urban ecological regimes transforming them to realms of economic rationalisation and hydraulic engineering science.

The symbiotic relationship between the ecological regimes of land, water and people has undergone a series of conflicts in its transformation to an urban setting gathering momentum during the colonial times, a governance model prompting a participatory mechanism to shift to a centralized mode. The paper raises questions on the trajectories of ecological, institutional and technological dimension of land and water governance resulting in ecological imbalances, unsustainability and inequity of natural resources and on the differences between an ecological approach and an engineering approach of land water management.

The study, on Bangalore city in India, seeks to position the city's urban history, the conflicts of land and kere (tank) systems, in its evolution from a feudal agrarian community to capitalist global city. The epiphenomenal or the passive stance to ecological systems perhaps urges an accurate understanding of current resource use regimes and a common property framework beyond a mere political decentralisation process. The discussion concludes by reckoning the vulnerability of urban ecologies, the regenerative capacities of landscapes of socio political processes and the dichotomies of the idea of decentralisation.