An insight into various problems and challenges that displaced people face throughout their lives. Rehabilitation and resettlement of displaced persons pose major challenges for the government and citizens....this book has lucidly interfaced the theories revolving around urban policies and development by studying the Sabarmati River Front Development (SRFD) and the people of Ahemdabad.
The book informs “new urban politics”- a policy shift in urban governance that challenges the notion of the city as a place for redistributive justice by appealing to entrepreneurial capital, through two mutually inclusive concepts….This book can also be read as a people’s history of development in Gujarat, whose characteristics have been replicated in large-scale development projects all over India…It is a gleaming of entrepreneurial urbanism, marking a shift from social urbanism.
This is a valuable book that grapples with differing narratives of development, resistance and community present in the SFRD project. Chatterjee’s work is most powerful when she challenges homogenous narratives of resistance and lends a theoretical gaze to the aftermath of resettlement. Her account, though at times dense, also importantly links theory exchange between the Global North and the Global South, demonstrating how the SFRD is not just about a riverfront community in Ahmedabad, but about global urban displacement.
“Chatterjee’s book is an ambitious project for providing a comprehensive theory of contemporary urban transformation, in short compass…. Chatterjee’s strength lies in showing how urban exploitation destroys the landscapes and lifescapes of labor but “reproduces the landscapes and lifescapes of accumulation”.”
This book is recommended for whoever is interested in urban development or non-secular urban governance and especially for students, as Chatterjee provides, apart from her own interesting analysis, her lucid readings of crucial theories and concepts…her book is a creative and politically important theoretical undertaking and should find a broad audience in this capacity.
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