Producing New India: Periodising India's Infrastructure-led Extended Urbanisation

Abstract

New highway corridors are being implanted at various scales—local, metropolitan, regional, and interregional—often bypassing existing routes and opening new speculative frontiers for urban land markets. This article periodises the different stages of highway construction in India during the neo-liberal era. It finds how this state-led infrastructure expansion fosters new territorial imaginaries of nationhood, citizenship, and environmentalism. As infrastructure-led urbanisation continues to remain a dominant trend, this article calls for increased attention to the socio-spatial differentiation, struggles and environmental impacts arising from this highway-driven fossil urbanism.