All posts by shekhar

Bombay Time: Clock Work in the Colonial City, 1870-1955

As a tribute to senior historian Professor Jim Masselos, the Department of History at the University of Mumbai, the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London and the University of Leicester hosted a conference of historians, scholars and researchers of the city at Mumbai University on 6-7 January 2017. Click here to download my presentation (PDF) on “Bombay Time: Turning Back the Clock, 1870-1955”.

Modern clocks and standard world time signify two of the great historical movements in the nineteenth century – globalisation and imperialism – whose connected histories were first articulated in the cities of colonial India and South Asia.

The theory of the “global city” originally described urban centres such as New York, London and Tokyo as key nodes in the flows of global capital, whose management clusters people and technology in urban centres. Much like these contemporary hubs, port cities such as Bombay, Calcutta and Madras were nodes in imperial networks of command and control which extended across South Asia during British rule. Early industrialisation in the 1860s and 1870s made urgent the coordination across expanding territorial and maritime frontiers opened up by new railway, telegraph and steamship networks across the Empire.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Bombay City had emerged as a crucial node and commercial gateway of the British Empire in western India and the Indian Ocean. Electrical transmission of precise time signals from observatories in colonial port cities made possible unprecedented, simultaneous communication across the subcontinent.

Continue reading Bombay Time: Clock Work in the Colonial City, 1870-1955

बॉम्बे टाइम: सत्ता, लोकसंस्कृती व अस्मिता, १८७०-१९५५

This is a Marathi translation of my talk and presentation “Bombay Time: Power, Public Culture & Identity, 1870-1955”

बॉम्बे टाइम: टर्निंग बॅक द क्लॉक, १८७०१९५५’ हे माझं सादरीकरण डाउनलोड करण्यासाठी इथं क्लिक करा. आमचे मित्र व मार्गदर्शक प्राध्यापक जिम मॅसेलोस यांच्या सन्मानार्थ मुंबई विद्यापीठाचा इतिहास विभाग, लंडन विद्यापीठातील ‘स्कूल ऑफ ओरिएन्टल अँड आफ्रिकन स्टडीज्’ (एसओएएस) आणि लाइकेस्टर विद्यापीठ यांनी इतिहासकार, अभ्यासक व संशोधकांची एक परिषद शुक्रवार ६ ते शनिवार ७ जानेवारी २०१७ या दिवसांमध्ये मुंबई विद्यापीठाच्या विद्यानगरी आवारामध्ये आयोजित केली होती. प्राध्यापक मंजिरी कामत, प्रशांत किदम्बीरेचल ड्वायर यांनी ही परिषद आयोजित केल्याबद्दल त्यांचे विशेष आभार.

रेल्वे, तारायंत्रं व वाफेवर चालणारी जहाजं यांचं जागतिक जाळं ब्रिटीशशासित भारतात आणि जागतिक पातळीवर १८७०१८८०च्या दशकांमध्ये पूर्ण झालं. या सर्व संदेशन व वाहतूक मार्गांदरम्यानच्या वेळेसंबंधित इशाऱ्यांचं संयोजन करणंही शक्य झालं, कारण अचूक रेखांशीय वेळ मद्रास व मुंबई अशा शहरांमधून एकाच वेळी त्यांच्या विस्तारीत भौगोलिक व समुद्री सीमांपर्यंत विद्युतमार्गे पाठवण्याचं काम निरीक्षणशाळा करत होत्या. पण शहरातील वेळमापन प्रमाणित करण्याच्या प्रयत्नांना नागरी पर्यावरणातील अनेक दृश्य व श्राव्य कालबाधित चिन्हांना सामोरं जावं लागलं: सार्वजनिक घड्याळं, कारखान्यांचे भोंगे, कार्यालयीन पाळ्या, रेल्वेची वेळापत्रकं, सूर्योदय व सूर्यास्त हे घटक होतेच; शिवाय या महाकाय उपखंडात पूर्वेकडे कलकत्त्यापासून ते पश्चिमेतील कराचीपर्यंत स्थानिक सौरवेळा तासाभरापेक्षाही अधिक अंतरानं बदलत्या होत्या.

Continue reading बॉम्बे टाइम: सत्ता, लोकसंस्कृती व अस्मिता, १८७०-१९५५

The Master of the Game: The Woman Who Wouldn’t Let Donald Trump Mumbai

Click here to download this presentation (PDF) which I gave in the South Asian Studies Programme (SASP) seminar series at the National University of Singapore (NUS). You can also download and listen to the podcast (MP3) on the NUS Asia Research Institute (ARI) website.

My seminar talk was held on Wednesday 9 November 2016 in Singapore, just as the final results were announced on U.S. Election Day, and Donald J. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to win the U.S. Presidential election. This seminar was chaired by Prof Annu Jalais.

This presentation was based on and develops an earlier talk on Donald Trump in Mumbai given at the workshop “Constructing Asia: Materiality, Capital & Labour in the Making of an Urbanising Landscape” organised at ARI on 12–13 May 2016 by Dr Malini Sur and Dr Eli Asher Elinoff, where I presented a talk on “Constructing Trump Tower Mumbai”.

poster

Mumbai’s real estate is amongst the most expensive per square foot anywhere in the world. Property developers and construction magnates dominate the city’s political economy and public culture, and are portrayed as sovereigns of its skyline, an imagined community whom city newspapers commonly refer to as “the builder-politician nexus”.

Builders’ unique appetites for risk make visible and channel the desires of millions for new and better futures (or to make things “great again”). Both real estate and politics are shadowy domains which demonstrate how money, time and space are sources of social power in the contemporary city. The games of language and number played with them favour those who can challenge norms, wait out long battles, and anticipate changes in the rules.

Rather than seeing those who play them as gamblers, populists or moral failures, we need to understand their business strategies as the materialisation of uncertainty. On the occasion of the U.S. Election Day, my talk will focus on the business of building a luxury high-rise Trump Tower in Mumbai and Donald Trump’s Indian apprentices and opponents, first on the disputed site of a charitable hospital and community housing trust, and later in an old textile mill compound.

This presentation is part of an ongoing ethnographic and archival project on the real estate speculation and property redevelopment in post-industrial Mumbai.

मुंबईत ‘ट्रम्प टॉवर’ बांधताना

This is a Marathi translation by Avadhoot of “When Donald Trump Came to Mumbai” published as the cover story in the fortnightly Parivartanacha Watsaru (16-31 August 2016). It was originally published in the the Economic & Political Weekly (EPW), Vol.51, Issue No. 23, 4 June 2016. You can download the PDF of the Marathi article here (from Parivartanacha Watsaru, 16-31 August 2016).

फोर्ब्स इंडिया’ या मासिकाच्या सप्टेंबर २०१४च्या अंकात प्रसिद्ध झालेल्या मुलाखतीत डोनाल्ड ट्रम्प यांनी खास त्यांनाच साजेल असं असभ्य विधान केलं होतं: “तुमच्याकडचं स्थावर मालमत्तेचं क्षेत्र अविश्वसनीयरित्या स्वस्त आहेमुंबई हे महान शहर आहे आणि तरीही तिच्या तुलनेतील इतर शहरांसारखी या शहराची किंमत लावलेली दिसत नाही. उलट दुय्यम महत्त्वाच्या शहरांपेक्षाही मुंबईची किंमत कमी ठेवलेली आहे. याचा अर्थ, गुंतवणूकदारांना इथं प्रगतीसाठी प्रचंड वाव आहे.” (श्रीवास्तव २०१४). अमेरिकी राष्ट्राध्यक्षपदासाठीच्या मोहिमेमध्ये त्यांनी ज्या थरावरून शेरेबाजी केली तेवढा मुंबईविषयीचा त्यांचा शेरा वादग्रस्त नव्हता, पण ट्रम्प यांची ही अतिशयोक्ती भारतात मोठी बातमी बनली. वास्तविक भारतामध्ये मुंबईतील घरबांधणी बाजारपेठ देशात सर्वांत महागडं आहे. भारताच्या राष्ट्रीय अर्थव्यवस्थेचं उदारीकरण १९९०च्या दशकामध्ये झालं, तेव्हा मुंबईतील महागड्या स्थावर मालमत्ता क्षेत्राविषयीच्या बातम्या नियमितपणे वर्तमानपत्रांच्या पहिल्या पानांवर प्रसिद्ध होत असत. अनेकदा मुंबईची तुलना भारतातातील दिल्ली, चेन्नई किंवा बंगलोर अशा समकक्ष शहरांऐवजी अधिक संपन्न लंडन किंवा न्यूयॉर्क अशा जागतिक शहरांशी होते.

Continue reading मुंबईत ‘ट्रम्प टॉवर’ बांधताना

Constructing Trump Tower Mumbai

This is a revised version of an essay first published as “When Donald Trump Came to Mumbai in the Economic & Political Weekly (EPW), Vol.51, Issue No. 23, 4 June 2016. You can download the PDF of the original article here. This was first presented as a paper at the workshop “Constructing Asia: Materiality, Capital and Labour in the Making of an Urbanising Landscape” at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 12–13 May 2016.

Trump in India

In an interview to Forbes India Magazine in September 2014, Donald Trump made a characteristically outrageous statement. “Your real estate is unbelievably cheap… Mumbai is a great city and yet it is not priced like other comparable cities. It is priced lower than cities that are less important. That gives investors a tremendous amount of growth potential” (Srivastava 2014). While not as controversial as his more recent slurs in his campaign for the U.S. presidency, Trump’s hyperbole nonetheless was big news in India, where Mumbai’s housing market is by far the most expensive in the country.

Since the liberalisation of the Indian national economy in the 1990s, Mumbai (then Bombay) had routinely made headlines for its pricy real estate, which is more often compared to more prosperous global cities like London or New York than to its peers in India such as Delhi, Chennai or Bangalore.

Trump’s value proposition perhaps made some sense from his perspective as a foreign investor, going by prevailing market exchange rates between the U.S. Dollar and Indian Rupee (around USD $1 = Rs 60-62). By most measures, the price of real estate in Manhattan in the same period was anywhere between $1,250-1,500 per square foot, whereas in prime areas in Mumbai in 2014 around Rs 40,000-50,000, or USD $650-$800.

This direct measure of course takes no account of the almost incommensurable differences in infrastructure and other aspects of both cities, or relative urban income levels and purchasing power parity (PPP) per unit of currency between the U.S. and India. In these terms, one business journalist estimated that the actual rate per square foot rate in Mumbai would be more in the range of USD $1,800-2,500 after adjusting for PPP – thus making Mumbai almost 50% more expensive for its average citizen than New York (Kaul 2014).

But beyond the calculations of economists and business journalists, Trump’s statement about how India’s most expensive city was “unbelievably cheap” begged a wider question about the political economy of urban real estate, indeed the very reason for his very first business visit to India in late 2014. What comprises the value of urban real estate?

Continue reading Constructing Trump Tower Mumbai

Broadcasting Revolution: “Quit India” & Underground Radio in WWII Bombay

This is the abstract for a workshop paper accepted for the international workshop The Indian Predicament: South Asia in World War II held in June 2016 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel organised by Dr Rotem Geva and Prof Dan Diner through their project Judging Histories: Experience, Judgement and Representation of World War II in an Age of Globalization.

 The Indian Predicament: South Asia in WWII

1942 marked a turning point during World War II in India and Asia, as in rapid succession the Japanese occupied and expelled the British from Malaya, Singapore and Burma, and within colonial India widespread rumours and panic ensued of an impending invasion and demise of the British Empire in India. In August 1942, following the failure of the imperial “Cripps Mission” to solicit nationalist support for the war campaign in exchange for post-war home rule, Gandhi and the Congress Party issued their final, militant call for the British to “Quit India” and for Indians to “Do or Die”.

Portrayed in post-war nationalist historiography as a heroic movement to end colonial rule, “Quit India” was in fact quickly and violently suppressed by a paranoid colonial state, at the height of its fear of internal rebellion and external attack. The “9th Augusters” including Gandhi, Nehru and other leaders, as well as thousands of Congress Party activists were jailed for the subsequent years of WWII until 1945, with significant consequences for post-war politics of Independence and Partition, and the history of anti-colonial nationalism.

Non-Congress politicians and parties such as Jinnah’s Muslim League used the subsequent years to offer competing visions of the future nation-state(s). Younger and radical nationalists like Aruna Asaf Ali, Rammanohar Lohia, and Achyut Patwardhan evaded arrest and internment by escaping underground or abroad, to continue their anti-colonial activities through clandestine and virtual means. While its leadership had disappeared soon after the call to “Quit India”, nationalist resistance and sabotage continued, a mass mobilisation conducted through new technologies of communication and the politicisation of everyday life during WWII in South Asia.

Wireless telecommunication and radio broadcasting grew rapidly prior to WWII in India, with the establishment of All-India Radio in 1936, the creation of the Government Department of Information and Broadcasting in 1941, and the proliferation of licensed and illegal radio transmission and listening sets during WWII. The formation and recruitment of Bose’s Indian National Army (INA) and Provisional Government of Free India in Southeast Asia was communicated to the masses in the sub-continent entirely via “enemy” broadcasts from Japan and Germany, and re-transmitted through amateur and illegal radio operators.

My paper will focus on “Congress Radio” illegal broadcasting from late 1942 to early 1945, based on ongoing research in the wartime police and intelligence archives in Bombay/Mumbai. “Congress Radio” regularly transmitted wartime news and rumours, speeches, songs and poetry with a distinctly radical content, while constantly evading detection or interception by police and military wireless censors both within and outside the city. Studying both the radio intercepts in Marathi, Hindi and Gujarati, and police testimonies of radio operators, engineers and their collaborators, my paper will demonstrate how this emerging field of political communication and popular discourse shaped the everyday experience and understanding of WWII in South Asia beyond the nationalist mythology of “Quit India”.

Education, Society & Science in Modern India

I taught this course for doctoral students in the Graduate School in Science Education at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, in the fall semester of 2015.

Click here to download the full course syllabus as a PDF. All the course readings listed below are available to download on Google Drive.

About the Course

This graduate course is designed to expose doctoral students to the history and sociology of modern science education in colonial and post-colonial India, with a focus on ideas and institutions, concepts and thinkers, and major debates in this emerging field.

The seminar will meet twice per week for four months, and is spread over three units or themes of five weeks each on 1. “Colonialism & Modernity”, 2. “Nation & State” and 3. “Education, Policy & Society”.

Participants shall take turns writing three 500-600 word review/discussion papers on the assigned readings for prior circulation via the mailing list, as well as to lead discussion in that day’s seminar session.

The main requirement is a long essay or research paper of 5,000-6,000 words, comprising a literature review, social, demographic or other data with a theoretical argument on education, science and society in India. Rough drafts are due mid-way in the term.

All seminar participants are expected to complete close reading of assigned texts in advance in every session, and be prepared to participate in person and online via the course mailing list.

Continue reading Education, Society & Science in Modern India

Happy Birthday, Mr Commissioner

Published in Mumbai Mirror as “Happy Birthday, Mr MC” on 2 July 2015.

It is a year of missed anniversaries in Mumbai. The downpour which shut down the city on 19 June 2015 not only forced the Shiv Sena to cancel its Golden Jubilee celebrations, but to answer for more than two decades running a municipality larger than many state governments. While the ruling party must indeed be held to account, another, much older, anniversary that passed unnoticed should help explain why India’s oldest and wealthiest civic body remains such a mess. In 150 years there has been hardly any structural change in the institutions of municipal government in Mumbai.

Arthur Travers Crawford, first Municipal Commissioner of Bombay (1865-71)
Arthur Travers Crawford, first Municipal Commissioner of Bombay (1865-71)

On 1 July 1865, the first “Municipal Commissioner for the Town and Island of Bombay”, Arthur Trawers Crawford, was appointed by the Government of Bombay, along with the predecessor to today’s municipal Corporators – a body of “Justices of the Peace”. The city until then was a swampy archipelago focussed on trading, where government was minimal and ad-hoc. JPs had scant powers over policing and conservancy, to collect taxes, or keep the streets drained and swept. Funds were vested in three commissioners answering directly to government, a “triumvirate” which often worked at cross-purposes.

While moving the new Act of 1865 for a single “Chief Executive” for Mumbai along with Sir Jamshetji Jeejeebhoy in the Governor’s Council, its co-sponsor Walter Cassels commented that “the town does not want municipal officers with the pen of a ready writer, but with brooms that sweep clean”. Crawford set about his task with zeal – laying out streets and markets, improving sanitation and water supply. The JPs soon complained they had no power over his purse strings. Much like today’s appointees, Crawford was then transferred, the “man at the top” whose “head must roll”.

Continue reading Happy Birthday, Mr Commissioner

हॅपी बर्थडे, कमिशनर साहेब

Marathi translation by Avadhoot of “Happy Birthday, Mr MC” originally published in Mumbai Mirror on 2 July 2015. 

मुंबईसाठी हे वर्ष वर्धापनदिन, जयंती वगैरेंसारखे अनेक दिवस चुकवणारं ठरलं. १९ जून २०१५ रोजी झालेल्या पावसाने शहर बंद पाडलं आणि शिवसेनेला आपला सुवर्ण महोत्सवी समारंभ रद्द करावा लागला. कित्येक राज्य सरकारांपेक्षाही मोठ्या असलेल्या इथल्या महानगरपालिकेवर गेली दोन दशकं शिवसेनेचीच सत्ता होती, त्यामुळे पावसाने शहर बंद पडल्यावर पक्षाला अनेक प्रश्नांनाही सामोरं जावं लागलं. भारतातील ही सर्वांत जुनी महानगरपालिका एवढ्या अनागोंदीमध्ये का आहे, याचं एक उत्तर सत्ताधारी पक्षाच्या अकार्यक्षमतेमध्ये आहेच, पण त्याहूनही तपशीलवार उत्तर हवं असल्यास विस्मरणात गेलेल्या एका जयंती दिवसाची दखल घ्यावी लागेल. मुंबईच्या महानगरपालिका प्रशासनातील विभागांमध्ये गेल्या दीडशे वर्षांत क्वचित रचनात्मक बदल झालेले आहेत.

Arthur Travers Crawford, first Municipal Commissioner (1865) आर्थर ट्रॉवर्स क्रॉफर्ड, पहिले शहर महागरपालिका आयुक्त (१८६५)

तत्कालीन मुंबई सरकारने १ जुलै १८६५ रोजी पहिले ‘म्युनिसिपल कमिशनर फॉर द टाउन अँड आयलँड ऑफ बॉम्बे’ (मुंबई शहर व बेट महागरपालिका आयुक्त) आर्थर ट्रॉवर्स क्रॉफर्ड यांची नियुक्ती केली. शिवाय आता नगरसेवक म्हणून ओळखल्या जाणारे सदस्य– ‘शांततेचे न्यायदूत’ही याच दिवशी नियुक्त करण्यात आले. तोपर्यंत या बेटरूपी शहराचा प्रशासकीय कारभार त्या त्या कामापुरता आणि अतिशय अल्प हस्तक्षेप करणारा होता. पोलीस प्रशासन व मच्छिमारी आणि नाविक व्यवहार असोत की रस्ते स्वच्छ व सुके ठेवण्यासाठीची कार्यवाही असो, यांपैकी कशासंबंधीही पुरेसे अधिकार न्यायदूतांकडे नव्हते. प्रशासकीय निधी तीन आयुक्तांच्या अखत्यारित येत असे आणि हे प्रशासकीय ‘त्रिकूट’ अनेकदा एकमेकांच्या विरोधी जाणाऱ्या कारणांसाठी कार्यरत राहायचं.

Continue reading हॅपी बर्थडे, कमिशनर साहेब

Seize the DP, Don’t Scrap It

Published in Mumbai Mirror as “Don’t Scrap the DP, Seize It” on 22 April 2015.

The first draft of the 2014-2034 Development Rules and Plan for Greater Mumbai were published online and in print by the BMC three months ago. Since then, an apparent profusion of errors has proved its undoing – many of which were themselves mis-reported. At first the media exposed some genuine but minor bloopers, which the BMC quickly corrected. But soon news came daily, and in the rush to outdo each other, editors failed to verify the alleged mis-marking of roads proposed through building societies, vanished heritage buildings, and commercial and residential zoning. Reporters did not seem to know that the BMC has limited planning authority in areas under the Collector, MMRDA or MbPT. Headlines were based on misunderstandings of terms like “permissible use”, “public purpose”, and the difference between “R-C” and “C-R”.

While technocratic lingo is not easily decoded, the BMC should have intervened more in the media, especially after journalists abandoned their responsibility to check the DP before reporting “errors”. They could have pointed out that many of these roads were already proposed in DP 1991 but never built, that Banganga and GPO were never shown as hospitals, and that Azad Maidan Police Station is indeed inside the Esplanade Court. Instead they issued a gag order to their planners. In the meantime, some Corporators proudly claimed that they opposed the draft DP from the moment it was published by their own agency, the BMC. Our elected representatives should have instead taken part in its preparation from the time they were elected in 2012, when land-use mapping for DP 2034 began.

The media and political uproar was welcome in some ways. Until recently, hardly anyone who was not an architect or engineer knew what the DP was. Most citizens will still have not seen their local sheet of DP 1991, by which we may remain governed for years to come. What is sad is that while the urban planning process has now been irreversibly democratised, nobody now wants to own the next DP. NGOs who had organised public consultations with the BMC in 2013-4 to demystify the planning process and input on the draft have since opposed it. When last week the BMC claimed that the few thousand complaints received until then were not enough to justify “dumping” the DP, a few shifted to attack mode, engulfing the BMC with objections to force the CM’s hand.

The DP’s “scrapping” is being hailed across the ideological spectrum from political parties to heritage activists, builders to environmentalists. Their political victory is an economic disaster for the city. Until a new DP is drafted, accepted and framed, Greater Mumbai remains governed by DP 1991, a tattered patchwork of rules and policies first conceived more than thirty years ago. It is this policy framework that sustains the city’s famous builder-politician nexus. With no new DP, housing redevelopment across Mumbai – in the lurch for years – will remain stalled, while projects such as the coastal road, Metro 2 and 3 (including the symbolic car shed at Aarey) and opening up NDZs will now be implemented without reference to any wider design and planning considerations. This is a policy vacuum which even the most ardent free-marketeer would abhor, and is no reason to celebrate.