Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in MumbaiIn Hydraulic City Nikhil Anand explores the politics of Mumbai's water infrastructure to demonstrate how citizenship emerges through the continuous efforts to control, maintain, and manage the city's water. Through extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Mumbai's settlements, Anand found that Mumbai's water flows, not through a static collection of pipes and valves, but through a dynamic infrastructure built on the relations between residents, plumbers, politicians, engineers, and the 3,000 miles of pipe that bind them. In addition to distributing water, the public water network often reinforces social identities and the exclusion of marginalized groups, as only those actively recognized by city agencies receive legitimate water services. This form of recognition—what Anand calls "hydraulic citizenship"—is incremental, intermittent, and reversible. It provides residents an important access point through which they can make demands on the state for other public services such as sanitation and education. Tying the ways Mumbai's poorer residents are seen by the state to their historic, political, and material relations with water pipes, the book highlights the critical role infrastructures play in consolidating civic and social belonging in the city. |
Other editions - View all
Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai Nikhil Anand No preview available - 2017 |
Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai Nikhil Anand No preview available - 2017 |
Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai Nikhil Anand No preview available - 2017 |
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activists administration Alka Anand Ananya Roy Anku Anthropology Asha Asha’s Ashok Sukumaran Biopolitics Bombay chapter chaviwallas citizens citizenship city councilors city engineers city’s water city’s water infrastructure claims colonial Culture dams demand documents Duke University everyday fieldwork forms Global Global South groups Gupta housing human hydraulic engineer India Jogeshwari leakage leaks liberal living manage Marathi marginalized material meters Mithi Mithi River mobilize monsoon Mumbai Mumbai’s water neoliberal NGOs numbers Patankar pipes plumbers Political Ecology politicians populations postcolonial practices Premnagar Premnagar’s residents pressure produce projects public system Rafiq bhai recognized reforms regimes relations schedule settlements settlers Shiv Sena slum Smita social state’s stories structures technologies told University Press urban valves Vishnu water connections water department water distribution water network water problems water scarcity water services water supply water system women workers World Bank