ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the struggle over air in the whirlwind-development of the megacity, focusing especially on the slums of Delhi and Mumbai. It suggests that the modernization of India's economy and the massive urban development of its megacities, the urban political and social struggles for the city are being expressed and reproduced through the governance of air. It shows how these issues orbit around a politics of comfort, a kind of domesticity redolent of a colonial and cultural imperialism of atmosphere, aesthetics and sanitation. Colonial city air was an atmosphere perpetual and growing. Air grew close with the proximity of its people crammed into too much space as air began to be thought of in terms of population security and sanitation. A primary concern was the survival of disease and air borne threatening microbes within broader histories of climate and its relationship to health and race.
