ABSTRACT
The history of urbanisation in India can be traced to the country’s ancient kingdoms, where the movement of goods, royal power, and structured hierarchies defined spaces for human interaction, material and ideological productions, and social control. Historically speaking, cities and towns hold an ambivalent position within the Indian imaginary. Since the 1990s, India has adopted the paths of both neo-liberal economic development and democratic decentralisation. More than a century after Lord Ripon’s reforms were enacted by the colonial state, the Indian state enshrined the urban decentralisation process by including it in the historic 74th constitutional amendment of 1992, which came into effect in 1993. Eighteen years after the enactment of the 74th amendment, urban politics in general and urban local bodies in particular continue to suffer from huge democratic deficits.
