National Institute of Advanced Studies

Indian Institute of Science Campus

Bangalore-560012

Microsoft Teams Presentation

OPEN DEFENSE OF THESIS

Title: Transition from Village to Town: A Study of Two Settlements in Punjab

Candidate: Ms. Ankita Rathi

         School of Social Sciences

Advisor:  Prof. Narendar Pani

Date:  Thursday, July 30, 2020

Time:  11:30 am

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Abstract:

Recent trends and studies on South-Asian urbanisation suggests that the process of urbanisation is not only confined to the conceptual and territorial boundaries of the ‘city’ but also extends into rural areas, urban villages and small towns. They illustrate the critical role of the rural and agrarian changes in the contemporary process of urbanisation occurring in geographies beyond the ‘city’. The prevalent studies on urbanisation, due to their metro and city-centric approaches have typically assumed the rural to be ‘peripheral’, that is gradually subsumed by the planetary process of urbanisation and globalisation. Using the case study of two settlements Patran and Dhur located in the Patiala district of Punjab, this thesis illustrates the diverse ways in which the rural and its agrarian dynamics affects the differential transition of the two settlements. The study focusses on agrarian changes driven by local communities and the state-led development strategy of reforming agriculture through land, technology and market. This, in turn, showcases the diverse ways in which agrarian regimes of land, caste and capital facilitate the making and unmaking of a non-metro small urban center and the persistence of agriculture and the rural. Thus, the two case studies show that agrarian transition and urbanisation in India are mutually interlinked processes that coproduce each other.

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