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- Convenors:
-
Jaideep Gupte
(University of Sussex)
Dennis Rodgers (Graduate Institute, Geneva)
- Discussant:
-
Alpa Shah
(LSE)
- Location:
- Room 213
- Start time:
- 30 July, 2016 at
Time zone: Europe/Warsaw
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
Urban transformation in South Asia has not meant prosperity for all. With the state unable to cope, security is being delivered by private, informal and extralegal agents. This panel explores how public order and security are conceptualised and delivered in the cities of South Asia
Long Abstract:
South Asia is urbanising rapidly, but this transformation has not meant prosperity for all. In India a staggering 37% of urban households live in one room or are homeless, while in Pakistan the infrastructure deficit implies only 1% of wastewater is treated before dumping and cities are only able to clear half of the solid waste generated in them. These urban spaces are also increasingly violent. With municipalities and city police forces unable to cope, increasingly service provision and security are being sought from and delivered by private, informal and extralegal agents.
In this context, we know relatively little about whether the socio-political, economic or spatial and material parameters of the environment in which the urban poor live somehow pre-dispose the poor to physical insecurity. Drawing on a range of academic disciplines, this panel will aim to fill this gap by exploring the changing meanings of safety and security across cities in contemporary South Asia, and unpack how these meanings differ by gender and age, between public-private, and formal-informal spaces. An equal importance will be placed on the historical trajectories of urban planning and policing in order to highlight the processes of social segregation and ghettoisation that are often sustained by legislation. By doing this, we aim to problematize the paradigm of modern and safe 'charter cities', and be forward looking to envision how the presence of violence and the nature of security provision shape the role urban spaces play in social and economic growth processes in South Asia.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the changing face of security in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The past decade has seen a decline in gangsters, the 'mastan', and the further party politicisation of urban life.
Paper long abstract:
Urban Bangladesh has seen radical change over the past decade. From being dominated by entrepreneurial gangsters, often known locally as mastan, it is now more explicitly controlled by wings of the ruling party. In many ways party figures have simply replaced the gangsters at lower levels, mediating access to work and services, operating extortion networks and illegal businesses. But this party politicisation of urban life has also brought a greater degree of stability to the social order, improving experiences of security. This presentation will make these arguments through recent ethnographic research from a large, and infamous, market place at the centre of Dhaka. It will sketch the rise and fall of a prominent local gangster, and examine the significance of party politics today.
Paper short abstract:
Patna was the crime capital of India until Nitish Kumar's accession to power in 2005. His rule is seen as having led to a "miracle", and the city is now peaceful and secure. This paper explores how this was achieved, highlighting intended and unintended consequences of the policies implemented.
Paper long abstract:
Patna, Bihar, was notoriously an extremely insecure city during the 1990s and early 2000s, to the extent that it was frequently referred to as the "crime capital" of India. The accession to power of Nitish Kumar in 2005 is widely perceived as having led to the city undergoing a 'miracle', and it is now considered peaceful and secure. Drawing on participatory research conducted in four Patna slums in 2011-12, this paper explores how this was achieved through policies specifically aimed against organized crime as well as the implementation of highly differentiated patterns of general policing in the city. The former included banning gambling as well as targeted attacks against kidnapping gangs, while the latter has included the regular patrolling of events such as religious festivals or rapidly responding to conflicts over access to water in slums - both of which constituted major caste and communal flashpoints - ignoring land conflicts, and limiting the mobility of youth. While these policies have unquestionably reduced certain forms of violence - including in particular the kidnappings that notoriously affected the middle and upper classes in the city - they have also had unintentional consequences, including increasing and intensifying domestic and alcohol-related violence in slums. These however do not spill over to the rest of the city and remain contained within slums, and therefore do not impact on the city's middle class or political elite, suggesting that a highly iniquitous regime of urban governance has emerged as a result of the Patna 'miracle'.
Paper short abstract:
This paper offers an in-depth analysis of the role of the elites in the infrastructural reform measures of an internationally-driven police reform program in Dhaka City and its impact on the partyarchy public order of the transitional state-Bangladesh.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the role of the state elites, international actors (donors), and civil society organisations (CSOs) in the reform process of police in the capital city of Dhaka to understand the nature of obstruction, inertia and resistance for reform. The conceptual premise for this research is built upon how the power relations among the different state elite actors of a transitional state—that is historically evolved due to their involvements in nation-state formation processes and is inspired by the idea of Partyarchy (Coppedge, 1994)-led patronage network and neo-patrimonial elitism—have influenced the international donor-initiated Police Reform Programme (PRP) in Bangladesh. The empirical analysis of this paper concentrates on two major components of the PRP— (a) establishing model police stations in Dhaka City and (b) capacity development of Dhaka Met Police in surveillance and intelligence policing. In the analysis, the attempt is made to unpack the patterns of domestic elite convergences/divergences that have facilitated and obstructed the reform measures for Bangladesh Police through infrastructural developments in selective sectors. This analysis informs the security provisions in the existing partyarchy public order in Bangladesh. This chapter manifests a major argument that an externally assisted police reform does not autonomously contribute in the elite convergence process for a new public order. Instead, in a strong partyarchy state like Bangladesh, the patron-client relations between the elites shape the convergence to carry forward the reform in policing, hence, the reform process reproduces the order of the partyarchy state.
Paper short abstract:
The paper studies policing challenges associated with fragmentation of jurisdiction between different layers of authority. By focusing on the unique disposition of centrally-governed railway spaces in the city, it explores the impact and outcomes that this holds for the city, the railway system and its users.
Paper long abstract:
Existence of multiple layers of governance (federal/regional/local) and consequently, of policing, are often sites with contested or taut balances of access, control and power. Railway spaces are particularly challenged here, harbouring a utility known widely for its enhanced public access and use, and a technology that is inherently rigid, land-bound and continuous. From its colonial inception, as the railway interfaced with the local and regional as also sped away from them, its related policing challenge has attempted to ease itself into territorial and jurisdictional fragmentation such as those under the District Police, Government Railway Police (GRP) and the Railway Police Force (RPF). This has been a forever uncomfortable arrangement, as indicated by the long drawn history of discord between the GRP and the RPF regarding authority and accountability.
What does this mean for the city? A lot. As the case of Mumbai indicates, this tangled jurisdiction has on the one hand allowed for the city to slip in (though precariously) and claim the railway's resources for shelter and commerce, but has also confounded the grave inadequacy of response to railway accidents along these suburban lines, which claim hundreds of lives every year. Through a qualitative study of particular railway vicinities, the study unravels some of these. It also traces various people's initiatives and vigilante trends that have stepped in to interface the resulting governance and accountability crisis (limited not just to policing), and observes critically how these reveal economic, social and spatial dynamics amidst a supposedly coherent constituency of commuters.