[Reader-list] Follow-up on the Blackberry story

[Inder Salim]

very good

understanding it further
here is following by Solomon Benjamin

http://world-information.org/wio/readme/992006691/1154964925

Either poverty must lose the fear of property, or property in fear of
poverty will destroy democracy[1]

If the ‘south’ and particularly their cities experience much higher
growth rates than those in the ‘north’, has Int. capital reconstituted
itself to invest and gain from these locations? Since real estate in
cities of the South and retail provides one of the highest returns,
how is land and its connected institutions sought to be framed to
facilitate such extraction?

This essay suggests that corporate led globalisation in rooting itself
in cities of the south, faces un-expected confrontation in what they
see as a new ‘Hydra’. What seemed like ‘messy, under-developed third
world’ environments (Figure 1: Sundramma’s house) turned out to be
increasingly beyond planning, assuming a life force of its own and
subverting a global ideal.

I borrow the term Hydra from two kinds of sources. The first use can
be found in ‘English media press’ among the elite to describe three
situations: an extensive and un-controllable underground economy; a
messy, chaotic and corrupt city hall centred politics and bureaucracy;
an all-pervasive un-authorized, non-conforming, un-planned, cancer
like slumming process which rapidly edges out ordered city growth and
subverts Master Planning. My second source is the use of the term by
Linebaugh and Rediker to describe the quest for alternatives in
16-18th Century Europe and the Americas.[2] They show how a ‘motley’
bunch of sea farers, slaves, convicts in being banished seek out
alternatives to define conceptions of property, and a way of life, and
in doing so, termed a ‘hydra’ to threaten establishment.

Today I see at least three aspects of the Hydra transforming what we
know of ‘property’, ‘democracy’, and the conceptually flawed trilogy
‘the Nation State-Market-civil society’. The New Hydras are severely
threatening in being shadows and stealth-like structures, capable of
eroding the ‘self’. In breaking down binaries, they encroach on other
binary/dualistic based conceptions.

The new Hydras encroach on ‘property’ and the economy: Perhaps on the
most structural level, the Hydra transforms notions of property. While
located in seemingly mainstream notions of property, these are
encroached upon in the forms of multiple tenures and claims that make
centralized control and surplus extraction increasingly impossible
(see figure 1-A: Street side Hydras). What emerges instead is a
complex of networked bazaar like small firm clusters. Thus emerging
diversity of tenure underpins and is at the same time shaped by an
increasingly sophisticated economy. This comes at a time when globally
connected big business (with the highest levels of government policy
making and legislative apparatus at their side) promote digital forms
of land title recording and a range of financial and institutional
architecture to reinforce exclusive property regimes (see Figure 2:
global-local networks in IT Campus development).

Globally connected Financial Institutions, in partnership with a range
of other players, invest in urban designed IT campus developments in
cities like Bangalore, Delhi, Bombay and Hyderabad with excellent
profits. A particular financial architecture around ‘Special Project
Vehicles’ (SPVs), and mechanisms such as Transfer of Development
Rights (TDR) facilitates urban renewal of central city areas and also
makes high returns to International capital possible. Real estate
profits accrue from a play of ‘digital titles’ intended for online
trading. The World Bank in partnership with India’s largest private
banks invest $ 1000 m in e-governance, and in particular, computerized
land titles. The digitisation of 20 million land records by the
Goverment of Karnataka designated as a World Bank ‘Best practice’,
reducing 1500 forms of land tenure to 256! This has allowed very large
real estate companies catering to the IT industry to access land
Bangalore, resulting in dramatic changes in land markets. An extension
of the concept is a GIS based digitising of titles in 57 towns and
secondary cities financed by the Asian Development Bank with back
office support by the personal funds of the CEO of India’s largest IT
company.

Contest comes from a Hydra secured by diverse tenure regimes inherent
within the ‘occupation and settlement’ process built around de-facto
titles. In some parts, customary tenure forms a further block against
this modernization ideal. These underpin incrementally developing
small-scale land developments that house mixed land use as well as
manufacturing and bazaar areas. The Hydra’s support comes from
‘regularization’ of occupied land and improvement of basic
infrastructure by municipal councils. The latter’s gains are revenue
and political clout, actions which strengthen and spur diverse tenure
regimes.

Such de-facto landscapes, highly agile and transformative of local
society in economy and politics, come into being where information
shaping the market of land is driven by the potential of change: of
inter-connected home based manufacturing and of municipal upgrading of
basic infrastructure, both actions which increase efficiency and by
way of settlement, new social connections.

The new Hydras encroach on democracy: Linebaugh re-enters our world
when we see the location of fluid de-facto property being located in a
building block of mainstream ‘democracy’: municipal politics. Not only
are political party structures increasingly authoritarian but they are
today susceptible to ‘capture’ by globally empowered and invested big
business. Not surprisingly, this also makes space for those city
builders enamoured with the mega and the large - seeming ways to make
cities globally competitive! For this range of actors - the business,
bureaucratic and political elite - what is deeply threatening is the
opaqueness of municipal politics and its driving political economy of
small business. Hardly conducive to centralized control, it is little
wonder that national headquarters of political parties and their
appointed provincial chiefs, backed by elite ‘civil society’ and the
World Bank, press for ‘transparency and accountability’ reforms aimed
at local government. Little on corporate accountability though! The
response of the Hydra here is municipal democracy. However, in a
situation of polarized power structures, such a democracy relies on
stealth, on internal bureaucratic conventions, and interventions
accentuating multiple forms of tenure to reinforce political and
economic constituency.

The new Hydra encroaches on city building: the Hydra, located in
municipal government and rooted in the materiality of land, location
and economy, anchors the day-to-day process of city building. This
process contrasts conceptions of city building located in the
conceptual framework of the ‘nation state’ or then the ‘market’. In
these latter conceptions, the driving force is of the grand plan: one
posed for equity and the other posed for efficiency. Either extreme
poses centralized controls bound to break down when we consider local
narratives of how areas come into being and those of wider city
transformation. As urban terrain turns increasingly contested and
conflict ridden, the distinction between normative planning and
politics sets the stage to introduce the concept of ‘civil society’.
Perhaps this is posed to strengthen the binary with a replacement of a
trilogy of the ‘nation state-market - civil society’. Closer
inspections of ‘civil society’ turn out to be little other than elite
congregations.

New institutional and legal framework for mega land acquisition makes
available huge tracts of land in Bangalore’s periphery to construct IT
campuses. In central city areas, urban renewal focused SPVs and TDRs
open up space for Malls and Multiplexes designed over huge urban
territory. Little wonder that the CEOs of India’s largest real estate
firms and globally connected Financial Institutions press the central
government to implement such frameworks in the more globally connected
cities, posing these as a pre-requisite for ‘global competitiveness’.
Many of the changes came about under the new governance model of the
Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF) - headed by the city’s IT honchos
supported by the then Chief Minister. Seen as a ‘supply side’ reform,
they also framed the ‘citizen-centric’ Jannagraha and PROOF (a
citizens campaign to promote transparency and accountability in local
government)as the ‘demand side’. The head of Bangalore’s and now
India’s famous ‘civil society movement’ makes an ardent plea for
framing of digital rather than analogue land titles. Contest comes
from the Hydra of municipal councils across party lines, the lower
bureaucracy, and poorer residents resisting attempts to impose fines
and increased user charges. The Hydra’s support in municipal democracy
is critical. Local councils encourage occupation and extension of
village and town areas. In central city areas, older forms of
municipal licensing and tenancy payments help establish claims. The
Hydra’s support: Municipal councils’ ‘messy’ and opaque politics and
administrative procedures.

These, not surprisingly, take on the responsibility to address what
has been discussed before: A de-generative cancer-like politics
afflicting cities like a Hydra. The imaginary of the global city is
powerfully seductive to a variety of groups driven by various
interests. For many within ‘civil society’, the way forward is for
land management to be framed in digital records, GIS based online
monitoring ‘un-authorized hawkers’ and non-conforming land use, and
reigning in the politics within Municipal Government via the agenda of
‘transparency and accountability’. Central also are attempts to
increase high-level bureaucratic control over elected municipal
government via city commissioners and ‘citizen charters’. City
building becomes strangely conflictual over control of territory,
amalgamation into super large complexes of Malls and Multiplexes.
These mega complexes are partnerships of administrator led Municipal
Government and big business. Most important in ways to contain the
Hydra, they combine newer legal and regulatory structures that not
just provide access to cheap institutional finance, but dissolve
claims over location to emphasize corporate control. The bustling
bazaars selling look-a-likes and also other daily consumption goods
helps a counter encroachment to root. In doing so, reinforcing the
Hydra to carve out autonomous political and economic space.

Cities as locations of the Hydra pose the question of hybridity of
property central to its politics and economy. Hybridity also seems
central to help understand contemporary forms of globalisation, and
move away from conceptually defunct binaries. Such hybridity of
property gives globalising cities like Bangalore particular
distinctions.

[1] Peter Linebaugh, Public Lecture at “Contested Commons/Trespassing
Publics: A Conference on Inequalities, Conflicts and Intellectual
Property” 6th - 8th January 2005 in New Delhi, India. Sarai/CSDS
/Alternative Law Forum

[2] Linebaugh P., Rediker M., The Many-Headed Hydra Verso New York 2000



Solly Benjamin is an independent researcher operating out of Bangalore
and also part of a recently group called CASUMm. He has been looking
at issues of urbanism, its politics, economy, and issues of land.

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 7:11 PM, Patrice Riemens <patrice at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> from the BytesforAll list
> (start from bottom up)
>
> ---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
> Subject: Re: [bytesforall_readers] Shekhar Kapur: A Blackberry addict
> discovers grassroots enterprise in India
> From:    "Vickram Crishna" <v1clist at yahoo.co.uk>
> Date:    Tue, September 14, 2010 14:57
> To:      bytesforall_readers at yahoogroups.com
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> John, Fred, Lee, and of course everyone else who finds this story such
> good fun:
>
> There is some sort of essential disconnect in the way money works (today, and
> for an exceptionally long time, perhaps rivalling the age of civilisation
> itself). Mr Kapur may have paid the two boys, say, by sending them to
> school, or
> some other form of goods or service meeting some need of theirs he could have
> elicited by more discussion between the three of them, instead of giving them
> money. We would then have found ourselves in even more of a dilemma. For if
> money does not flow, then our economic measuring systems refuse to accept
> that
> value has been created or exchanged.
>
>
> In years gone by, this hardly mattered, since there were no 'transparent'
> economic measurements. Indeed, rulers prided themselves on being above such
> things - that was part of the privilege of being born noble, or grabbing it
> through the exercise of violence, instead of being a ~moneygrubbing~
> peasant or
> trader. Now that most of the world is democratic, we are all above such
> things,
> and take pride in both ruling and knowing something about money.
>
> Today, in fact, the world's economic wheels are greased by sophisticated
> measuring systems. Tiny eddies in money flows create global panics, and
> worthy
> seminars are organised in response where many wise things are said. What
> we fail
> to measure is that value is being created and exchanged in many places,
> but not
> being measured at all. Knowledge is being created and shared between many
> small
> groups of people, but we have no way of finding out about it, except when
> someone chooses to blog his 'eureka' experience (which wasn't even possible
> until this decade). Therefore, we fail to assign a monetary value to it,
> thereby
> condemning vast swathes of the world to grinding hopeless poverty. This is
> nowhere more evident than in India, not even in parts of Africa, from where
> heartrending photographs of kwashiokor-ridden children keep getting
> circulated.
>
>
> In India, we have the dilemma of a thriving economy, vibrating and
> growing, full
> of enterprise and globally important companies, even several among the
> world's
> richest individuals, some of whom are first-generation wealthy, while all
> around
> us the overwhelming majority of the people are caught in the jaws of 'chronic
> poverty', with very little to genuinely call hope that this will change in
> any
> foreseeable near term.
>
>
>
> I may not have 'qualified' as an economist, but I do enjoy the writings of
> Paul
> Krugman, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz, all three of whom have (in receding
> order) been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, which must count for
> something. All variously complain about the disconnect between 'real'
> value and
> our perceptions of it, and what is more, our manner of dealing with it.
>
>
> I have no idea when someone will start listening, and start fixing the
> structural problems.
>
>
> Vickram
> http://communicall.wordpress.com
> http://vvcrishna.wordpress.com
>
>
>>
>>From: john.lawrence <john.lawrence at undp.org>
>>To: bytesforall_readers at yahoogroups.com
>>Cc: fredericknoronha at gmail.com; jhai-development at googlegroups.com
>>Sent: Mon, 13 September, 2010 15:15:41
>>Subject: Re: [bytesforall_readers] Shekhar Kapur: A Blackberry addict
> discovers
>>grassroots enterprise in India
>>
>>
>>Fred, thanks for a classic vignette which captures elegantly what so much of
>>standard `development' misses... we all have these stories (mine concerns a
>>broken lens in my prescription glasses, fixed so quickly and perfectly in a
>>grubby bazaar backroom and at such an amazingly  low price that I took it to
>>several New York opticians to see if they could find anything wrong with
> it, and
>>none could)...but along with those like myself who suffer from a chronic
> western
>>development ailment, I wonder about the policy implications;     informal
>>sectors are alive and kicking worldwide,  but how should employment
> policies
>>deal with this vibrant and spontaneous brilliance among so many young
>>entrepreneurs, especially given the numbers (and needs) of those that
> dont' have
>>these competencies? the skills are amazing, and seldom formally taught... to
>>meddle in that tenuous chain of informal learning is often to destroy it,
> and
>>trying to `clone' the example is also fraught with issues, not the least of
>>which may be to threaten the proprietary comparative advantage of  the
>>relatively rare resource... ! So what should governments do... just keep
> hands
>>off?  try to facitlitate platforms where such skills can be picked up ?
> offer
>>awards for `best neighborhood services?'...
>>kind regards, John
>>
>>John E S Lawrence  (UNDP consultant)
>>Adjunct Professor, School of International & Public Affairs
>>Columbia University, New York, and
>>former Deputy Director, and Principal Technical Adviser
>>Social Development Division, Policy Bureau,
>>UN Development Program, New York.
>>
>>
>>
>>Lee Thorn wrote:
>>
>>
>>>"From Blackberry repair to social change that works"
>>>
>>>Fred N., your story of the two young men repairing your Blackberry is
> absolutely
>>>wonderful!  Now, if all the folks like these two village young people
> who have
>>>great entrepreneurial ability, self-taught technical skills and
> perseverance
>>>networked together ... then the world changes for good!  And not a
> moment too
>>>soon.
>>>
>>>
>>>We at Jhai Foundation just had a similar experience in Laos.  We were
> working
>>>with villagers to put in an integrated telemedicine/education/livelihood
>>>ICT-enabled project in Phon Kham village, the village in which we put
> the first
>>>pedal-powered computer back in 2002.  We were stuck.  Nothing was
> happening.  We
>>>Jhai 'experts' could come up with nothing that helped.
>>>
>>>
>>>The villagers decided to take matters in their own hands.  Leaders from
> Phon
>>>Kham Women's Association and the eight village Parents' Association had a
>>>meeting with the district governor on their own.  They together
> redefined the
>>>project so that consensus could be reached. It is now a Parents'
> Association
>>>project with leadership from Phon Kham villagers, especially the women.
>>>
>>>
>>>Villagers are doing their own room renovation.  They are doing their own
>>>fundraising.  And they are doing their own sustainability training with
>>>accomplished people we introduced them to, from the capital, Vientiane,
> and from
>>>a progressive village in Thailand just across the Mekong River.
>>>
>>>And what is Jhai doing?  We're sharing some equipment designed in India
> and the
>>>US and assembled in Laos.  We are representing our donors so that they
> have full
>>>accountability on their money.  And we are watching in awe.
>>>
>>>
>>>Once the villagers succeed, they say they will tell all of Laos about their
>>>model.
>>>
>>>The key in both cases, I think, is exactly what you said, Fred.  There
> is a lot
>>>of very valuable knowledge and entrepreneurial ability in very poor
> places.  We
>>>need to trust that and find that and help get these stories around.
>>>
>>>
>>>And I believe the next step will be for folks like your new friends to
> work with
>>>and to cross-train with other folks in unlikely places.  This will allow
> the
>>>best synergy to occurs. There are plenty examples of this synergy in
> India and
>>>in places like Brazil and in movements like those for telecentres in South
>>>America.  I believe once this synergy includes the poorest, brilliant
>>>entrepreneurs,, it is unstoppable.  .  .
>>>
>>>And I am sure it will be great fun!
>>>
>>>yours, in Peace,
>>>
>>>Lee Thorn
>>>Chair, Jhai Foundation
>>>http://www.jhai.org
>>>
>>>
>>>Lee Thorn
>>>Chair, Jhai Foundation
>>>www.jhai.org    .
>>>
>>>yours, in Peace,
>>>
>>>Lee
>>>
>
>
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