Properties of Rent

Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi

• Author(s): Sushmita Pati,
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Pages: 324
• ISBN_10: 1009082051
  ISBN_13: 9781009082051
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Social Science / Sociology / General , Political Science / Public Policy / City Planning & Urban Development , Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social , Political Science / Public Policy / Economic Policy , Political Science / General ,

Description:... We live in cities whose borders have always been subject to expansion. What does such transformation of rural spaces mean for cities and vice-versa? This book looks at the spatial transformation of villages brought into the Delhi's urban fray in the 1950s. As these villages transform physically; their residents, an agrarian-pastoralist community - the Jats - also transform into dabblers in real estate. A study of two villages - Munirka and Shahpur Jat - both in the heart of bustling urban economies of Delhi, reveal that it is 'rent' that could define this suburbanisation. 'Bhaichara', once a form of land ownership in colonial times, transforms into an affective claim of belonging, and managing urban property in the face of a steady onslaught from the 'city'. Properties of Rent is a study of how vernacular form of capitalism and its various affects shape up in opposition to both state, finance capital and the city in contemporary urban Delhi.