ABSTRACT
Global History of the New Town Through what we have discussed we can already form an idea of the larger pre-history of the new town. We have seen how Kolkata was problematised, how expansion of the city became the leitmotif in discussions of rulers, administrators, town planners, architects, and social scientists, and how this coincided with the emergence of new technologies of production and governance, and that of a class of new professionals. We have also seen how the most advanced form of capital called for primitive and brutal methods to become operational. Thus, land grab, wheeling and dealing, coercion, deployment of a type of political machinery called the party, administrative fiat, physical violence — all these became the route through which people were dispossessed. We have also briefly discussed how old special kinds of townships such as company town or industrial town had paved the way for the policy to create the ‘New Town’ — a city, yet not a city, urban space, yet a disembodied space. Finally, we also referred to the fact that the characteristically neo-liberal, self-satisfied style of life called for new life modes, one of which was to be achieved through the creation of the new town as both generic and brand form of this life. However, this relational view of the origins of the new town will not be adequate unless we devote some more time to see how the creation of a new town in Rajarhat is only in the order of things, given the way such new spaces have come up in various parts of the world, and cities in India have been in transition in the last 30 years to accommodate neo-liberal economics and style of living.
