The politics of entrepreneurial embedded ‘VIP urbanism’ in Bengaluru: Elite practices and agency problem

Abstract

The cities in India have emerged as highly contested space of ‘geographical and institutional’ reconfiguration and reproducing urban neoliberal policy experiments such as place-marketing, public–private partnership, and local boosterism projects producing new forms of ‘urban entrepreneurialism’ (Smitha, 2017a; Sudhira, 2017). In fact, a variety of neoliberal reforms were introduced in the national context are translated into entrepreneurial planning and policy-induced evictions, displacement and resettlement articulated through various redevelopment projects such as metro rail projects, flyovers and roads in the local context. The urban policies are embedded in the dynamic confluence of economic elites and interest at one hand and reconfiguring local politics on the other. Under these circumstances, realigned institutional practices and regulatory regimes with diverse actors, alliances and organisations are forged with competing hegemonic visions and developmental models (Harvey, 1989; Jessop, 2002; Brenner and Theodore, 2022a). The city government in Bengaluru is increasingly networking with urban elites such as corporate echelons, real estate and land developers, non-governmental organisations and private investors to develop public spaces of daily interactions and practices which are carefully planned to bolster urban image. Such elite coalitions of corporate, public–private and local government have been wielding their collective power and lobbied for changes in various mega- local developmental projects. These elite practices eventually have led to overriding, manipulating and destabilising municipal government and planning instruments. As a result, new forms of polarisation intensifying inequalities at different spatial scales continue to proliferate in the city. Illustrating the case of Bengaluru, the study demonstrates how these non-political entities influence the municipal governance. Clearly, a transition towards ‘entrepreneurial urbanism’ signifying a scenario of ‘less government’ and ‘more corporate’ advocating that cities must be ‘run in a more business-like manner’. The study draws an attention to the spatial dimension of the role of ‘agency’ while critically assessing urban governance.