Rethinking Participation: Water, Development and Democracy in Neo-Liberal Bangalore
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-21-2012
Publication Source
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
Abstract
This paper focuses on the discursive notion of participation central to two discourses, democracy and development. The contemporary rhetoric of development not only opens up the market for the economic progress of developing nations, but also demands a change in the political structure to facilitate the process. Thus, democracy is recruited as collateral for development, which theoretically improves the participation of the target population. However, my ethnography in Bangalore—the Silicon Valley of India—shows that the new middle class is partaking of development projects to reclaim participation solely for democracy. As a ‘reassemblage’, participation is employed to reconfigure democracy and development along different political axes. I present a public water supply project to describe the boundaries between the two discourses, arguing that they are drawn internally rather than externally.
Inclusive pages
520-545
ISBN/ISSN
ISSN 0085-6401; eISSN 1479-0270
Volume
35
Issue
3
Peer Reviewed
yes
Keywords
Governance, citizenship, water, NGOs, information technology, middle class, urban poor, state, international donor agencies, Bangalore
eCommons Citation
Dasgupta, Simanti, "Rethinking Participation: Water, Development and Democracy in Neo-Liberal Bangalore" (2012). Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Faculty Publications. 93.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/soc_fac_pub/93
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