Papers by Nidhi Subramanyam
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
This dissertation examines the governance of water infrastructure in the face of water scarcity a... more This dissertation examines the governance of water infrastructure in the face of water scarcity amidst rapid economic, demographic, and spatial expansion in Tiruppur, a small industrial city known for its knitwear exports in Tamil Nadu, India. Using a range of methods, including research in municipal, state, and industry archives, ethnography, and participatory action research, a richly detailed account of a hybrid waterscape is presented. This account follows the flows of water in the stages of infrastructure production, operation, and use across Tiruppur’s urban core and recently merged rural peripheries over time, and carefully traces the complex ways in which the state and multiple publics interact to produce and address differentiated experiences of water scarcity. The dissertation also interrogates how scale shapes state-society interactions and planning outcomes, where scale is defined as a combination of city size, secondary position in administrative hierarchies, and limited political-economic reach. The analysis of planning as governance is articulated in dialogue with literatures on public-private partnerships, the material politics of infrastructure, the politics of collective consumption, and political dynamics of access in hybrid waterscapes. In Tiruppur, elite publics, including local capitalists from the Gounder caste, organize through overlapping caste and business networks to partner with higher tiers of the state to produce water infrastructures and planning projects that serve their visions for Tiruppur as an export-oriented growth machine while providing them with unparalleled access to water. City level bureaucrats and planners are constrained by infrastructural and administrative norms governing water access that emerge from the city’s small scale and rural past, leading them to improvise by providing water through a range of non-piped sources. This, and the work of street-level bureaucrats, the “watermen,” who operationalize everyday water distribution, help produce Tiruppur’s hybrid waterscape. In contrast, non-elite publics who bear the unequal burdens of water scarcity in this hybrid waterscape are unable to organize and contest inequalities in access. In part, this is because their water access and experiences of scarcity are fragmented, shaped as they are by a finely differentiated socio-spatial structure produced by industrial restructuring in Tiruppur, which makes establishing stable material connections to the state difficult. The collective quiescence contributes to persistent, entrenched inequalities in water access despite successive, incremental expansions to municipal piped water infrastructures. Through the case of Tiruppur, this dissertation, thus, demonstrates that planners seeking to expand equitable access and ensure just, water-secure urban futures in rapidly growing small cities must be prepared to address particular socio-material legacies and attend to specific state-society dynamics that underlie governance.
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-usj-10.1177_00420980211065895 for Making Mangaung Metro: The pol... more Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-usj-10.1177_00420980211065895 for Making Mangaung Metro: The politics of metropolitan reform in a South African secondary city by Nidhi Subramanyam and Lochner Marais in Urban Studies
Urban Studies, 2022
Metropolitan reforms, which include the creation of unified metropolitan governments through muni... more Metropolitan reforms, which include the creation of unified metropolitan governments through municipal mergers and reclassification, are emerging as one strategy to address planning and service delivery challenges in the wake of increasing urbanisation across sub-Saharan Africa. Although metropolitanisation adds service area and mandates, well-functioning secondary cities that are part of a two-tier governance system in South Africa are pursuing metropolitanisation. The case of Mangaung, an early instance of secondary city metropolitanisation, is an opportunity to examine the motivations underlying these reforms, the politics involved and their impacts on urban governance. Mangaung’s political and administrative leadership pursued metropolitanisation to jump scale, attain greater political autonomy vis-à-vis other tiers of government, and obtain fiscal and technical resources available only to metropolitan municipalities in South Africa’s urban municipal hierarchy. Metropolitanisati...
Scholarship on community responses to land grabs for Special Economic Zones (SEZs) has overwhelmi... more Scholarship on community responses to land grabs for Special Economic Zones (SEZs) has overwhelmingly analysed cases of mobilization against SEZs or the subsequent trajectories of anti-dispossession struggles. We build on the role of the neoliberal broker state developed within this scholarship as well as theories on state and capital rescaling, and quiescence to power to explain the production of acquiescence to dispossession. Our in-depth case study of a large SEZ, the Mahindra World City (MWC) in Tamil Nadu, India, argues that acquiescence is produced in part by a multiscalar broker state that uses several intersecting strategies. These include threatening landowners with coercive eminent domain, facilitating market-based land acquisition by rescaled private capital that operates through a locally embedded network of brokers who persuade landowners, and utilizing the gains from brokerage to finance a populist welfare state that cushions the adverse impacts of dispossession. The u...
Canadian Journal of Bioethics, 2019
Les éditeurs suivront les recommandations et les procédures décrites dans le Code of Conduct and ... more Les éditeurs suivront les recommandations et les procédures décrites dans le Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors de COPE. Plus précisément, ils travaillent pour s'assurer des plus hautes normes éthiques de la publication, y compris l'identification et la gestion des conflits d'intérêts (pour les éditeurs et pour les auteurs), la juste évaluation des manuscrits et la publication de manuscrits qui répondent aux normes d'excellence de la revue. The editors follow the recommendations and procedures outlined in the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. Specifically, the editors will work to ensure the highest ethical standards of publication, including: the identification and management of conflicts of interest (for editors and for authors), the fair evaluation of manuscripts, and the publication of manuscripts that meet the journal's standards of excellence.
The dispossession of rural communities from their lands, livelihoods, and constitutional rights t... more The dispossession of rural communities from their lands, livelihoods, and constitutional rights to allow for the planning of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) has elicited contrasting responses of opposition and acquiescence across different regions in India. This thesis proposes that differences in the nature of state action at various scales impacts community’s assessment of SEZ policy, and the possibilities for action, thereby causing differential responses. Using the case of Mahindra World City SEZ in Tamil Nadu, I apply the proposed framework to demonstrate that community acquiescence was in part, a result of persuasion by a subnational and local state-capital partnership acting through the threat of coercion at the local scale. Other conditions that explain acquiescence include contextual parameters such as the nature of state-society relations in the region, a fragmented community that prevented the collective mobilization of affected groups, and no history of local protest.
Water Policy, 2020
This paper investigates how progress towards meeting the sustainable development goal of providin... more This paper investigates how progress towards meeting the sustainable development goal of providing universal and equitable access to drinking water for all is distributed across the spectrum of urban settlements. The study measures how urban local governments (N = 3,547) in a rapidly urbanizing country, India, have increased their coverage of water supply to households between 2001 and 2011. I use theories on multilevel governance of urban services to develop a multilevel linear regression to model the city- and state-level factors associated with growth in water supply coverage. The results show that 68% of cities and towns have recorded water coverage growth, but the extent of this progress is unequally distributed across cities in different states and between cities of different sizes. Small cities and towns, which house over two-thirds of India's urban population, have recorded significantly lower water coverage growth rates as have cities in low-income states. These finding...
Urban Studies, 2022
Metropolitan reforms, which include the creation of unified metropolitan governments through muni... more Metropolitan reforms, which include the creation of unified metropolitan governments through municipal mergers and reclassification, are emerging as one strategy to address planning and service delivery challenges in the wake of increasing urbanisation across sub-Saharan Africa. Although metropolitanisation adds service area and mandates, well-functioning secondary cities that are part of a two-tier governance system in South Africa are pursuing metropolitanisation. The case of Mangaung, an early instance of secondary city metropolitanisation, is an opportunity to examine the motivations underlying these reforms, the politics involved and their impacts on urban governance. Mangaung's political and administrative leadership pursued metropolitanisation to jump scale, attain greater political autonomy vis-à-vis other tiers of government, and obtain fiscal and technical resources available only to metropolitan municipalities in South Africa's urban municipal hierarchy. Metropolitanisation was no panacea for Mangaung's governance challenges, however, since it did not resolve the underlying weaknesses in municipal capacity or the regional economy, nor did it address the spatial legacies of apartheid that produced a sprawling metropolitan service area. As other South African secondary cities contemplate metropolitanisation, we recommend revising municipal structures and mandates and strengthening administrative capacities and economies in secondary cities.
ABSTRACT In May 2013, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo launched the "START-UP NY" polic... more ABSTRACT In May 2013, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo launched the "START-UP NY" policy in order to jumpstart the Upstate New York economy. START-UP NY (SUNY Tax-free Areas to Revitalize and Transform UPstate NY) transforms State University of New York (SUNY) and private college campuses into tax-free areas in order to attract and retain high-tech businesses and startups, venture capital, and investments with the goal of promoting entrepreneurialism and job creation in the Upstate region. This brief examines some of the basic provisions of the program, discusses how START-UP NY differs from the past Empire Zone program, and offers suggestions for improvement.
Since the late 2000s, there has been an increasing scholarship on the coping and adaptation strat... more Since the late 2000s, there has been an increasing scholarship on the coping and adaptation strategies adopted by the urban poor in the global South in response to climate-related risks such as flooding. More recent work has also examined the role of specific factors such as social capital, income, tenure security, and quality of housing in affecting adaptive capacities and shaping coping strategies towards urban floods at the household and community levels. However, most of this knowledge is based on cases from megacities despite a majority of urban population growth projected to take place in smaller cities in Asia and Africa. This poster attempts to contribute to this gap by examining coping and adaptation to flooding risks in Kalyan-Dombivali and Navi Mumbai – two mid-sized, satellite cities located on the peripheries of Mumbai in western India. In this poster, we examine and articulate the differences between risk perception and coping by residents in old and new informal settlements, gaps between community expectations and municipal disaster management responses, and recommend opportunities for effective adaptation through a more integrated approach.
the Netherlands. His academic interests are in the inter-disciplinary analyses of water policy an... more the Netherlands. His academic interests are in the inter-disciplinary analyses of water policy and institutions, urbanization and ruralurban transformations, water rights and irrigation reform. His research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals like Water Policy, Water International, Environment and Urbanization and Mountain Research and Development.
The combination of increase in frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events due to climate ch... more The combination of increase in frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events due to climate change, and increase in surface water run-off due to rapid urbanization is exacerbating the risk of flooding in many cities in the global South. The urban poor residing in informal settlements are particularly vulnerable to the damaging impacts of flooding as they lack access to basic urban services and infrastructure that increase coping capacity. The global discourse on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation has stressed the importance of integrating the perceptions and needs of communities at risk in policies to better address development deficits that contribute to vulnerabilities. This paper critically examines how flooding risk reduction unfolds at the grassroots level through the cases of Navi Mumbai and Kalyan-Dombivali –satellite cities on Mumbai’s periphery– to highlight the barriers for pro-poor, communitybased adaptation through decentralized disaster governance ...
Once a thriving industrial center, the City of Buff alo, New York, has experienced declines in it... more Once a thriving industrial center, the City of Buff alo, New York, has experienced declines in its population and economic base since the 1950s. The situation reached a boiling point in the early 2000s when the City found itself on the brink of fi scal insolvency. To prevent bankruptcy, the State of New York installed a fi nancial control board to oversee Buff alo's fi nances. The Control Board took drastic measures, which included a wage freeze, City-wide hiring freeze, reducing the workforce and cutting essential services. Despite recording fi scal success, the Control Board can be criticized for not focusing enough on structural issues like poverty and demographics, which impact the long-term sustainability of Buff alo's fi scal health. This study, which is informed through multiple perspectives and an analysis of the City's fi nances, including a brief look at the larger Erie County area, reveals that the City endured challenging economic periods, which severely curt...
In May 2013, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo launched the "START-UP NY" policy in order to jum... more In May 2013, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo launched the "START-UP NY" policy in order to jumpstart the Upstate New York economy. START-UP NY (SUNY Tax-free Areas to Revitalize and Transform UPstate NY) transforms State University of New York (SUNY) and private college campuses into tax-free areas in order to attract and retain high-tech businesses and startups, venture capital, and investments with the goal of promoting entrepreneurialism and job creation in the Upstate region. This brief examines some of the basic provisions of the program, discusses how START-UP NY differs from the past Empire Zone program, and offers suggestions for improvement.
New Global Studies
The majority of people across the world now live in cities, and Asia has risen once again on the ... more The majority of people across the world now live in cities, and Asia has risen once again on the world stage. There is excitement about the former, as cities are commonly perceived as crucibles for both economic development and positive change. There is a great deal of anxiety generated by the second, especially in the " West, " which sees itself as losing ground. Daniel Brook's A History of Future Cities provides a narrative that allays this anxiety by rolling out a comforting comparative narrative of four giant hybrid non-Western cities (St Petersburg, Shanghai, Bombay [now Mumbai] and Dubai) that were founded to impersonate the West, but over time created a hybrid modernity that shaped citizens who then led respective hinterlands and countries out of Eastern darkness. Dubai is not fully a part of this narrative arc but it is the city yet-to-be, in line with the vision of the urban as the place where democratic vistas for change are nurtured and let loose. Brook uses...
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Papers by Nidhi Subramanyam
The analysis of planning as governance is articulated in dialogue with literatures on public-private partnerships, the material politics of infrastructure, the politics of collective consumption, and political dynamics of access in hybrid waterscapes. In Tiruppur, elite publics, including local capitalists from the Gounder caste, organize through overlapping caste and business networks to partner with higher tiers of the state to produce water infrastructures and planning projects that serve their visions for Tiruppur as an export-oriented growth machine while providing them with unparalleled access to water. City level bureaucrats and planners are constrained by infrastructural and administrative norms governing water access that emerge from the city’s small scale and rural past, leading them to improvise by providing water through a range of non-piped sources. This, and the work of street-level bureaucrats, the “watermen,” who operationalize everyday water distribution, help produce Tiruppur’s hybrid waterscape. In contrast, non-elite publics who bear the unequal burdens of water scarcity in this hybrid waterscape are unable to organize and contest inequalities in access. In part, this is because their water access and experiences of scarcity are fragmented, shaped as they are by a finely differentiated socio-spatial structure produced by industrial restructuring in Tiruppur, which makes establishing stable material connections to the state difficult. The collective quiescence contributes to persistent, entrenched inequalities in water access despite successive, incremental expansions to municipal piped water infrastructures. Through the case of Tiruppur, this dissertation, thus, demonstrates that planners seeking to expand equitable access and ensure just, water-secure urban futures in rapidly growing small cities must be prepared to address particular socio-material legacies and attend to specific state-society dynamics that underlie governance.