Dr. Carol Upadhya, from the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore will be delivering a seminar titled "Speculating on Development: Provincial and Transnational Circuits of Accumulation in Andhra’s New Capital Region". 

Abstract:

During the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, circulating rumours about where the new state capital would be located led to intense speculative activity in land, driving up prices to unprecedented levels in the coastal districts. After the state government finally announced its decision about the capital location together with the land pooling scheme to acquire 35,000 acres of prime agricultural land to build the city, the real estate market became even more volatile. The logic of speculative accumulation has been reinforced by Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s desire to create a ‘world-class’, Singapore-style city on the banks of the Krishna River. Although these episodes of speculation in land reflect older practices of accumulation by Andhra regional capital, they are also impelled by the increasing entanglement of local real estate markets with transnational circuits of capital – a development that characterises urban development processes in other Indian cities as well. In this presentation, I draw on the unfolding story of Andhra’s capital city project to raise larger questions about changing modes of urbanisation and state planning in post-liberalisation India. 

About the Speaker:

Carol Upadhya, a social anthropologist, is Professor in the School of Social Sciences at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, India. Prof. Upadhya’s research focuses on social transformations in contemporary India, especially economic development and class formation, processes of social and spatial mobility, and the globalisation of Indian cities – themes on which she has published several articles. Recently she has worked on international migration, transnationalism, and regional diasporas. Prof. Upadhya is Co-director of the Provincial Globalisation programme and earlier anchored the Urban Research and Policy Programme at NIAS. She co-edited (with A.R. Vasavi) the volume In an Outpost of the Global Economy: Work and Workers in India’s Information Technology Industry (New Delhi: Routledge, 2008). Her anthropological monograph on the Indian software industry, Rebooting India: Work, Capital, and Class in an Offshore Economy, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press (New Delhi, 2016).