Dholera 'rooted' in post-2002 Gujarat riots legacy of breaking down communities

Dholera "smart" city

By A Representative
In one of the sharpest critiques of the Government of India’s (GoI’s) proposal to come up with 100 smart cities, a senior UK scholar on urban development has said that Gujarat's Dholera, which GoI proposes to develop as a model concept for other smart cities to follow, is nothing but a “new urban utopia” of post-colonial India.
Ayona Dutta, associate professor at the University of Leeds, involved in studying urbanization in India, has said, Dholera, proposed on 903 sq km land in Ahmedabad district, to be twice the size of Mumbai, reflects nothing but “large-scale expulsion of those that cannot fit into its smart city-based ‘high-tech strand of developmental utopianism’.”
Dutta, in her research paper, “New urban utopias of postcolonial India: ‘Entrepreneurial urbanization’ in Dholera smart city, Gujarat”, said, as against earlier “planned cities” like Chandigarh, Bhubaneshwar and Gandhinagar, Dholera symbolizes “a new trend in city building in India” which, instead of addressing existing social exclusions, “actually reinforces long-standing social inequalities.”
According to Dutta, Dholera is composed of “large-scale privatized residential neighbourhoods, commercial and business districts, a ‘private’ city at a gargantuan scale, producing a ‘new urban colonialism’.” In fact, it has been “planned in the image of a global Gujarat that rejects its local identity rooted in Gandhian principles.”
Thus, Dutta underlines, while making a break from cities like Gandhinagar, Gujarat capital, there is a need to understand how its concept was developed “in a larger context of a Gujarat reeling after the 2002 communal riots and the breaking down of communities, neighbourhoods and trust.”
Pointing out that none of the narratives on Dholera refer to “local history or the diversity of its social, cultural, religious or material landscapes” which exists in the region, Dhutta says, “Dholera fails to make connections with the postmodern realities of a plural India struggling to maintain communal relations.”
In fact, said Dutta, “Neither the plans nor videos of Dholera, nor the speeches of Narendra Modi, nor the lectures of Amitabh Kant, refer to actually existing Dholera, which remains as an absent presence, giving the impression of an empty backdrop, a tabula rasa – the perfect landscape in waiting for the smart city.”
Pointing towards the “roadblocks” Dholera faces amidst agitation against the special investment region (SIR) proposed on its 903 sq km land for building smart city led by Jameen Adhikar Andolan Gujarat (JAAG), Dutta says, quotes “several official reports” on flood assessment and biodiversity “that are potentially more concerning for the state.”
One of the reports, for instance, underlines “the high risk of flooding in Dholera, which means that it would cost over INR700 crore to do the necessarily engineering works for flood mitigation.” Then, Dholera is proposed on “the blackbuck habitat and would therefore lead to irreversible loss of biodiversity.”
Dutta concludes, “Dholera is the new urban utopia, whose fault lines are drawn in its very conceptualization, whose bottlenecks are written into the speed of its delivery and whose materialization as smart city requires the active dispossession of marginalised citizens.”

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

From colonial mercantilism to Hindutva: New book on the making of power in Gujarat

By Rajiv Shah Professor Ghanshyam Shah ’s latest book, “ Caste-Class Hegemony and State Power: A Study of Gujarat Politics ”, published by Routledge , is penned by one of Gujarat ’s most respected chroniclers, drawing on decades of fieldwork in the state. It seeks to dissect how caste and class factors overlap to perpetuate the hegemony of upper strata in an ostensibly democratic polity. The book probes the dominance of two main political parties in Gujarat—the Indian National Congress and the BJP—arguing that both have sustained capitalist growth while reinforcing Brahmanic hierarchies.

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

UP tribal woman human rights defender Sokalo released on bail

By A Representative After almost five months in jail, Adivasi human rights defender and forest worker Sokalo Gond has been finally released on bail.Despite being granted bail on October 4, technical and procedural issues kept Sokalo behind bars until November 1. The Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) and the All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP), which are backing Sokalo, called it a "major victory." Sokalo's release follows the earlier releases of Kismatiya and Sukhdev Gond in September. "All three forest workers and human rights defenders were illegally incarcerated under false charges, in what is the State's way of punishing those who are active in their fight for the proper implementation of the Forest Rights Act (2006)", said a CJP statement.

Would breaking idols, burning books annihilate caste? Recalling a 1972 Dalit protest

By Rajiv Shah A few days ago, I received an email alert from a veteran human rights leader who has fought many battles in Gujarat for the Dalit cause — both through ground-level campaigns and courtroom struggles. The alert, sent in Gujarati by Valjibhai Patel, who heads the Council for Social Justice, stated: “In 1935, Babasaheb Ambedkar burnt the Manusmriti . In 1972, we broke the idol of Krishna , whom we regarded as the creator of the varna (caste) system.”

May the Earth Be Auspicious: Vedic ecology and contemporary crisis in Ashok Vajpeyi’s poetry

By Ravi Ranjan* Ashok Vajpeyi, born in 1941, occupies a singular position in contemporary Hindi poetry as a poet whose work quietly but decisively reorients modern literary consciousness toward ethical, ecological, and civilizational questions. Across more than six decades of writing, Vajpeyi has forged a poetic idiom marked by restraint, philosophical attentiveness, and moral seriousness, resisting both rhetorical excess and ideological simplification.

Search This Blog