All about Dr. Sushmita Pati’s Upcoming Book | Properties of Rent: Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi
April 6, 2022
We are happy to announce that NLSIU faculty member Dr. Sushmita Pati will soon be releasing her book titled ‘Properties of Rent: Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi.’
The book is scheduled for release in April 2022, and is being published by the Cambridge University Press.
Abstract
We live in cities whose borders have always been subject to expansion. What does such transformation of rural spaces mean for cities and vice-versa? This book looks at the spatial transformation of villages brought into the Delhi’s urban fray in the 1950s. As these villages transform physically; their residents, an agrarian-pastoralist community – the Jats – also transform into dabblers in real estate. A study of two villages – Munirka and Shahpur Jat – both in the heart of bustling urban economies of Delhi, reveal that it is ‘rent’ that could define this suburbanisation. ‘Bhaichara’, once a form of land ownership in colonial times, transforms into an affective claim of belonging, and managing urban property in the face of a steady onslaught from the ‘city’. Properties of Rent is a study of how vernacular form of capitalism and its various affects shape up in opposition to both state, finance capital and the city in contemporary urban Delhi.
Interview
Watch the author in conversation with our faculty member Dr. Atreyee Majumder, as they discuss various facets of the book and the research that went into compiling it.