ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores and explains the peculiar conundrum that has been unfolding in Indian urban centres over the past two decades, wherein a vigorous deployment of participatory norms, institutions and innovations has occurred in consonance with depoliticisation, centralisation and corporatisation of governance; the privatisation of basic services; and exclusions from access to urban resources. It focuses on how the compulsions of marketisation of services, distilled down into cities via political equations between the centre and the states, subsequently articulate with and transform the existing institutions of representation such as elected councils of urban local bodies. The book explores the ‘demand’ side of reforms’ partnerships, examining new forms, meanings and practices of citizenship as reflected in emerging middle-class mobilisations and discusses the implications of the Community Participation Law in the light of these ‘new politics’.
