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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Beyond Kolkata: Rajarhat and the Dystopia of Urban Imagination

Beyond Kolkata: Rajarhat and the Dystopia of Urban Imagination

Dey, Ishita
Sen, Suhit K.
Samaddar, Ranabir

Paperback

Series: Cities and the Urban Imperative

EconomicsGeneral Racism & Ethnic StudiesGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 113866037X
ISBN13: 9781138660373
Publisher: Routledge India
Published: Jan 21 2016
Pages: 304
Weight: 0.78
Height: 0.64 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

This book examines the politics behind, and the socio-economic and ecological repercussions of, the making of a new township, variously called New Town, Megacity or Jyoti Basu Nagar, in Rajarhat near Kolkata. Conceived by the West Bengal state government in the mid-1990s, in pandering to the vision of urban planners of creating a hi-tech town beyond an unruly, crowded Kolkata, and feeding the hunger of realtors and developers, the city is built on the foundations of coercive, even violent, land acquisition, state largesse and corruption - and at the cost of erasing a self-sufficient subsistence economy and despoiling a fragile environment. Yet, after its completion and departure of construction labour, the new town appears as a necropolis, a ghost city, that belies its promised image of an urban utopia, even as the displaced locals lead a precarious, mobile existence as 'transit labour', engaged in odd and informal jobs.　　

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