Small Town Cultures

Role Name Affiliation

National
Coordinator

Subject Coordinator Professor Sujata Patel Dept. of Sociology, University of

Hyderabad

Paper Coordinator Dr. Ashima Sood Adjunct Professor, Woxsen School of

Business, Hyderabad
Dr. Surya Prakash Upadhyay
Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of
Technology Mandi

Content Writer Dr. Rohit Negi Assistant Professor, Ambedkar

University Delhi

Content Reviewer Dr. Surya Prakash Upadhyay Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of
Technology Mandi

Language Editor Dr. Surya Prakash Upadhyay Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of
Technology Mandi

Technical
Conversion

1
Module Structure

Module Title Section 1: Introduction

Section 2: Thinking beyond the Megacity
Section 3: Economy and world of work in
small towns
Section 4: Infrastructural cultures in
small towns
Section 5: Identities and forms of
subjugation
Section 6: Conclusion

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Description of the Module

Items Description of the Module

Subject Name Sociology

Paper Name Sociology of Urban Transformations

Module Name/Title Small Towns Cultures

Module Id 7.1

Pre-requisites None

Objectives This module provides a conceptual orientation to

and sketch of cultural dynamics in small town
India. The objective is to recognize the tremendous
diversity while also appreciating the more general
forces that give shape to life in small towns.
Currently, these towns are in the midst of rapid
change through their connections to the wider
world. In this process, social dynamics are also
being fundamentally recast.

Key words Small towns, culture, economy, infrastructure,

space

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Introduction

Let us begin with a simple thought experiment: what images come to mind when you encounter
the phrase ‘life in a small town’? Take a moment to reflect.

No doubt, a few of you would have conjured images of slow-paced idyllic life, the kind of
situation so beautifully described by R.K.Narayan in his collection of short stories about the
fictional town of Malgudi. You may have recollectedtree-lined streets, the railway station, whose
tranquility is only sporadically punctuated by the din of arriving trains, or the regional volleyball
tournaments that town-folk gather in mass to enjoy, given few other available sources of
recreation.

Others may have thought up images that are highly contrasting. To you, Pankaj Mishra’s
following words about a North Indian small town would have resonated strongly: “…hodgepodge
collection of buildings, wild grass and weeds unchecked everywhere. At the back of every
house…gigantic mounds of garbage” (1995, xiv). To this description may be added the supposed
parochialism of small town folk and their subversion of civic procedures in favour of what
Mishra, drawing on Thornstein Veblen, calls ‘predatory prowess’, or the capacity to corner public
resourcesthrough extra-legal means.

So how do we reconcile these two starkly differentworlds? One way forward is to consider small
towns as a highly differentiated category accounting for a variety of experiences. Indeed, it
would be hard to paint towns with diverse histories with the same brush. In what follows we
shall therefore understand ‘the small town’ as a heterogeneous concept at the level of form,
institutions and agents, but at the level of underlying urban processwe will identify and discuss
certain crosscutting dynamics. Before we move to these, however, it is important to develop the
analytical framework through which we argue contemporary urban processes and in particular,
small towns should be viewed.

Thinking beyond the Megacity

It would come as a surprise to casual observers that only 14 percent of India’s urban population
lives in the three metropolises (population greater than one crore), that is, Delhi, Mumbai and

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Kolkata, but about 50 percent is found in towns with less than five lakh population. The larger
cities though account for bulk of the political, cultural and academic interest in urban India.
Those of us from smaller cities and towns will no doubt relate to this domination, which is
refracted via popular media as an impulse to ‘escape’ to the bright lights of the big city. And yet,
we also unthinkingly undermine this agglomerative desire everyday through our discussions of
the overburdened infrastructures, excessive pollution and daily insecurities people face in the
metros. Regardless, it remains a truism that far less is written about small towns despite their
ubiquity than the handful of metros.

Sociologist Rowena Robinson (2013) believes this to be on account of the neat urban/rural
binary which dominates popular thought, leading to the tendency to take big cities as
representatives of urbanization at large. Take, for instance, geographer Mike Davis’ highly
influential work ‘Planet of Slums’ (2003), where he cites rapid urbanization in the Global South
to argue that conurbations like Lagos, Mumbai and Sao Paulo have displaced London, New York
and Paris as nodes of the urban world, but given widespread poverty this process has made these
cities progressively unlivable. No doubt, these are massively important cities and urban poverty
is a reality, but it is striking that Davis almost entirely misses the fact that the rate of urbanization
in countries like India is actually higher in smaller towns, where moreover, far less additional
growth leads to greater marginal impacts.

Critiquing this trend, two related arguments have been made more recently: first, that the
fascination with the ‘megacity’ needs to be problematized and research must attend to smaller
cities and towns (Bell and Jayne 2009, Robinson 2002, Scrase et al 2015), and second, that the
urban process—rather than cities per se—should be analytically privileged by urban scholars
(Angelo and Wachsmuth 2015). Rather than the nested view of urbanization implicit in
hierarchical categorization of cities, including the Indian Census that classifies them from Class I
to VI, the alternate approach is more interested in networked urbanity. The process and
connection-oriented view of the urban owes much to the work of French theorist Henri Lefebvre,
who, in the late 1960s, had already hypothesized what he called ‘planetary urbanization’, or the
reshaping of the world at large due to the expansion of the urban process. As a result, a variety of
contexts have been transformed via cycles of migration, movement of commodities, and

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extraction of natural resources that together nourish the urban process globally. An overarching
emphasis on the metros in this scenario seems hardly appropriate.

Let’s take two examples of this shift in perspective. There are many small towns in the peri-
urban fringes of large cities, which despite administrative independence behave like its satellites.
It then serves little value to engage in juridical thinking that gives the impression of autonomy
when the matter at hand is one of dependence. Further, even a small town like Banjar in Kullu
District of Himachal Pradesh contributes semi-skilled workers, fruits and vegetables to larger
cities like Chandigarh, while receiving materials like cement, iron, and consumer products in
return. In Census reports, Chandigarh and Banjar would be placed as part of different tables—
class I and VI respectively—and separated by intervening classifications, but in reality they are
simply differentiated nodes in the networked process of regional urbanization.

There is one last question that remains, that is, where exactly do we draw the line of smallness,
or, when is a settlement small? This question would be easily answered in conventional studies
by using let’s say Class IV to VI towns as per the Census, but to us it is a tricky matter since we
emphasize connections and have pointed out the problems with technical-sounding hierarchies.
We must therefore work with a qualitative framework, which means settlements that residents
and observers view through the prism of ‘the small’ and habitually contrast with the country’s
metros make our list. Sociologist Louis Wirth’s work also helps in thinking about a qualitative
framework. In his paradigmatic essay, ‘Urbanism as a Way of Life’ (1938), Wirth identified
certain core features of urban life. These were thinness (superficiality and transitory nature) of
relationships, high density of individuals and activities, and an extremely heterogeneous
population. While it is true that even back of the beyond towns are today more socially diverse
than before owing to circuits of migration, one can use Wirth’s ideas in a subjective manner to
establish a gradient of urbanity, and define smallness accordingly.

With this background and framework in place, we now move on to cultural dynamics in small
towns. It should be noted that we depart from the ‘superorganic’ idea of culture that sees it as an
autonomous causal entity, which is what people mean when they ascribe to ‘culture’ independent
powers (Smith 2000). We view it instead as habituated way of life or ‘common sense’ that
emerges from the historical interactions between people, their work and their environments (that

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is, culture as a product). Based on a review of recently produced literature, the following aspects
are seen to co-produce everyday experiences and subjectivities—or ‘culture’—in India’s
numerous small towns:

1. Economy and the world of work (what sustains a town?)

2. Infrastructural cultures (how do towns function?)

3. Representations and cultural production (how are towns talked about from outside and
within?)

4. Identities and forms of subjugation (who do people associate with and how?)

Economy and the world of work in small towns

For classical settlement geography literature, a town emerges as an administrative capital or

garrison, as central market allowing for the trading of regional agricultural produce, or at the
intersection of key transportation routes. Modernizing this framework, one can still see the state
apparatus, economic specialization, and transportation networks play a critical role in sustaining
the growth of contemporary small towns. What makes them different from larger cities is
perhaps the fact that many towns are much more dependent on a single industry or resource.
Take the case of Moradabad (Uttar Pradesh) that was—and in some measure, still remains—a
town renowned for brass-based handicrafts. Dindigul (Tamil Nadu), on the other hand, produces
lock and steel safes for the country. Harda in southern Madhya Pradesh is a classical ‘Mandi’ or
market town, especially for the buying and selling of wheat. Anand (Gujarat) contains entire
paraphernalia of activities connected to dairy production, while Munger (Bihar) contributes to
the larger world two things that straddle the licit-illicit divide: guns and tobacco. And finally,
Kolhapur in Maharashtra is sustained in good measure its distinctive style of footwear produced
there. In sum, while the paths these towns have traversed are varied, what’s common is that they
have carved a niche in the larger spatial division of labour.

Some other towns have less industrial and a more contingent economic base: Siliguri (West
Bengal) is strategically located at a bottleneck between ‘mainland’ India and the northeast. Rae

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Bareli (UP) has seen disproportionate growth and activity simply because it is one of a handful
of VIP parliamentary constituencies in India. Meanwhile, much capital finds its way to
Malappuram in Kerala and fuels its healthy economy in the form of remittances from migrant
workers in the Gulf countries.

In the era of globalization, the increased flow of capital into these towns, and the growth of the
so-called middle class, has led to their recasting as spaces of conspicuous consumption.
Shopping malls, multiplex theatres and new restaurant chains have reached towns across the
country. LED televisions, smart mobile phones and laptops are available on street corners across
the breadth of the country, and have led to a veritable revolution in communication. A report
prepared by a private consultant for the Confederation of Indian Industry showed that non-
metros had higher rate of growth of demand for most non-essentials like cheese, chocolates and
packaged rice.

If we take Karl Marx’s ideas about the close relationship between material life—especially
production—and cultural forms seriously, then it should follow that each of these towns’
specialized economy has influenced the way in which people relate with each other and with the
wider world. It should also follow from Marx’s other precepts that communities are internally
divided, and that there is some amount of contestation and politics in support of various groups’
attempts towards local hegemony.

In this manner, economic history, formal politics, and struggles over ideological domination
interact to shape the distinctive ‘way of life’ of a given town. Ethnographic approaches are best
suited to illuminate these complexities, and thankfully some very remarkable ones have been
written about small towns. Sharad Chari’s work (2004) on the knitwear-producing town of
Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu shows the process through which working class men from the Gounder
caste with a rural background came to wield power and dominate the industry and the town’s
politics. Chari calls theirs a form of ‘fraternal capital’, or networks glued by an articulation of
shared history and put to use to exert centralizing power in an otherwise highly dispersed
industry. The vital importance of caste, otherwise seen as a uniquely cultural construct, in the
sphere of the economy of small towns has also been shown in great detail in the work of Barbara
Harriss-White, especially as part of her longitudinal study of the town of Arni, also in Tamil
Nadu. Here, a changing economic base from agriculture and allied activities to silk

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manufacturing has seen the entrenchment of a class of capitalists who have perpetuated their
domination through their caste networks in a form of political economy that has been termed
‘corporatist’ (Basile and Harriss-White 2009).

In the somewhat different context of the company town of Bhilai, Jonathan Parry (2008) finds a
link between employees’ position in the rigid administrative hierarchy, and their worldview. In
this way a town, which, on the surface, purports a Nehruvian socialism-inspired egalitarianism in
reality has given birth to differentiated cosmopolitanisms: widely varied access to the world of
opportunities and images, and consequent self-identifications.

While several small towns display tremendous flexibility in adapting to the shifting dynamics of
the larger economy, their dependence on one or the other economic activity also places them in a
vulnerable situation given the vagaries of a capitalist economy. Take the case of the string of
towns in the Midwestern United States that were linked to automobile manufacturing (centred in
Detroit) and were therefore highly specialized in the production of a specific component (e.g.
rubber in Akron and glass in Toledo). But as the auto-sector moved away from the region to
places like Mexico, East and South Asia through the 1990s, these towns witnessed an economic
nosedive. The region is in fact today known as the ‘Rust Belt’.

Infrastructural cultures in small towns

The Oxford English Dictionary describes ‘infrastructure’ as “the basic physical and

organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society”. It should be

apparent that these include roads, railways, communication networks, health and educational
services, and mechanisms for the supply of safe water and the disposal of waste disposal. These
are precisely the things small town residents are most likely to bemoan. It is easy to see why:
very often the economies of scale for infrastructures do not work out for such settlements, while
they also lose out to larger cities since the demanding electorate is smaller (Prasanna 1993). It is
conspicuous that recent reports celebrating the mofussil town as new sources of demand for so
many commodities have little to say about these disparities.

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In this scenario, it is common to find the emergence of panoply of mechanisms of service
provisioning outside of the formal state or private sector, and infrastructure therefore becomes a

fascinating window into these social worlds (Angelo and Hentschel 2015). Such ‘needs driven’

practices may involve forms of community-based provisioning, informal vendors (who

sometimes straddle the state-community divide), and even clandestine connections (Allen et al
2006). For instance, extra-legal forms are a widespread means of accessing electricity, and
individuals like Loha Singh, the whimsical protagonist of the documentary Katiyabaaz [2014]
set in Kanpur, use creative ways to tap into state power networks and engage in a cat-and-mouse
game with the authorities.

Such relationships with technologies are so common in India that there is an entire cultural
economy in place that is popularly called jugaad, or frugal innovation to fulfill infrastructural
gaps (Rai 2015). These are, in the words of Senegalese urban theorist AbdouMaliq Simone,

creative competencies that help people achieve concrete ends and “derive maximal outcomes

from a minimal set of elements” (2004, 411). For example, during the predictably long power

outages, a jugaad entrepreneur will hook up a car battery to charge people’s mobile phones,

which are now a more or less universal acquisition. All of this means that informality, in the

words of urban theorist Ananya Roy, is a ‘mode of urbanization’ (Roy 2005) in cities of the

Global South. What Roy means is that such assembly of urban services should not be considered
exceptional and provisional, which in time would give way to properly formal ones, but
underpins the urban process in a fundamental way.

In addition, new forms of civic and associational lives are also borne through the self-
provisioning of infrastructures. At one end of the scale are formally organized collectives such as
the Residents Welfare Associations (RWAs), which are particularly omnipresent in middle-class
neighbourhoods and organize around services such as waste collection and security. At the other

end are hastily convened, “loose knit and ephemeral social formations…[focused on] getting

things done, of lending a measure of stability and confidence to precarious environments”

(Simone 2001) that are more familiar to the urban poor. In these spaces, the compulsions of life,

10
impermanence of habitation, and often the unlicensed nature of activities make it difficult to
engage formal avenues of collective organizing. In some cases, these collectives persist and
expand their sphere of work, thereby creating new place-based communities beyond networks of
kinship that define villages and new migrations.

Urban scholars have remarked on the high degree of influence middle-classes possess over the
local state, which they have successfully wielded to corner a disproportionate share of public

services, a move also known as ‘elite capture’ (Kundu 2011). The results are disturbing: while

public education and health systems suffer from lack of resources and administrative will, a
parallel and privatized system has emerged across small towns, which is foreclosed to those with
limited means. Existing urban inequalities are consequently generationally reproduced via
infrastructures as the differential allocation of skills and well-being.

Moreover, at the intersections of precarious infrastructures and ecological vulnerabilities lie

dormant but life-threatening risks. From the cyclone-hit coastlines of Andhra Pradesh and
Odisha, to the floodplains of Bihar and Assam, and the seismically active fault lines of the
Western Himalayas, hundreds of small towns across the country are disaster-prone. The general

absence of town planning and preparedness—to the extent they exist, are restricted to the larger

cities—makes these sites particularly vulnerable, as was seen in Uttarkashi in 1991, when a mid-

intensity earthquake leveled almost the entire town. Thus the jugaad allows small town to
function ultimately fails to overcome deeper structural inequalities and ecological
susceptibilities.

Representations and cultural production

‘Chhote chhote shehron se khaali bore dupehron se, hum to jhola utha kar chale’ [from small

towns and boring afternoons, we pack our bags and leave]. So goes a song from the popular
Bollywood film Bunty and Babli [2005], whose protagonists do exactly as they promise and
build a career using their small town street-smart ways to swindle everyone from foreign tourists

to the government. While these individuals look to escape the town to experience the ‘new’, in

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi [2008], residents are seen to engage elements of modernity in situ via

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consumption and new lifestyles, speaking to the changing cultural landscape. Shanghai [2012] in
turn questions what it considers an uncritical celebration in small towns of all things modern.

Contrastingly, in Gangs of Wasseypur [2012] quirky characters inhabit the Wasseypur town in
Jharkhand, engaged in decades of warfare centered on coal, land and, more than anything else,

pride. In Ishqiya [2010], two on-the-run petty criminals find themselves in Gorakhpur’s world of

intrigue, where a outwardly simple woman coaxes them into fighting her battles, while
Manorama Six Feet Under [2007] sees a junior engineer in a fictional small town in Rajasthan,
who moonlights as a writer of pulp thrillers, embarking on an investigative project where he
encounters several unlikely foes in the underbelly of a seemingly boring town. Overall,
Bollywood representations of small towns are symptomatic of the paradox that we had identified

at the very beginning of the module—in popular imagery these spaces are either unexciting

backwaters or a hub of unsophisticated criminalities.

As is discernible from the contemporariness of all of the above listed films, this turn to small
town culture as fodder is rather new. Previous to that, while mofussil India made up a sizable
share of the audience for Bollywood fare, it was rarely made its subject (with several notable
exceptions, of course). More importantly, small towns are not just material but also themselves
significant sources of cultural production today. Some of the most popular artists, actors, and
musicians trace their origins to non-metros. World-renowned sculptor Subodh Gupta, for
instance, spent much of his life in and around Patna. According to artist Charu Choyal, artists in

smaller towns “live a secluded life, which is better for creativity. [They] are not influenced by

critics”1, while virtual exhibits and transactions make up for the thinness of local market.

Despite Bollywood’s dynastic ways, several famous actors and filmmakers from small towns

have managed to make it big in Mumbai. Kangana Ranaut, one of the most famed actors right
now, is from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh and learnt the ropes in Chandigarh, while Sushant

1http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-02-03/news/36721330_1_indian-artists-abstract-
artist-first-biennale

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Singh Rajput and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, are from Patna and Muzaffarnagar respectively. These
success stories have fueled many more dreams, and acting schools have opened in faraway towns
to channel the interest. In turn, the simplification and decentralization of filmmaking and sound
recording technologies have further enabled individuals in faraway places to participate in the
creative industries (Pathak-Shelat and DeShano 2013). At the very least, these changes have
enabled the launch of music and video industries, however nascent, in small towns. Take the case
of the Punjabi music industry, which is highly dispersed and numerous albums are produced in

the state’s small towns, but their market is now worldwide thanks to the sizeable Punjabi

diaspora. Many artists have even crossed over into popular mediums like Indian pop and
Bollywood. The Bhojpuri film and music industry based in Bihar is similarly popular while also
being at once rooted and global, consumed as it is by migrants throughout India and diasporic
communities in places like Fiji and the Caribbean (Manuel 2009).

As in the arts and entertainment, small towns have challenged the erstwhile hegemony of the
metros in sports. M.S. Dhoni, the most successful Indian cricket captain ever, traces his journey
as a cricketer to the town of Ranchi. Other cricket stars like Harbhajan Singh (Jalandhar) and
Ravinder Jadeja (Rajkot) have also blazed the trail for youngsters from off-the-grid. The towns
of Bhiwani and Shahabad in Haryana have produced several world-class boxing and hockey stars

respectively. Imphal (Manipur) stands out as a nursery for various sports as well—Thoiba Singh

and Kothajit Singh (hockey), and Mary Kom and Devendro Singh (boxing) have emerged from

there. India’s most famous modern footballer, Bhaichung Bhutia, is from the even smaller town

of Tinkitam in Sikkim. Former India cricket captain Kapil Dev has talked about the resentment
he encountered from his compatriots from established centres like Mumbai in his early days, but
it is unlikely that such feelings persist, given the widespread representation of small town men
and women now.

In sum, while corporate honchos and business analysts have turned to the small town as a rising
consumer for various commodities, including cultural ones, the processes identified and
discussed in this section seem to suggest much more is afoot. They allude to the broadening of
the nucleus of cultural production, if not its displacement, towards what were hitherto its
peripheries.

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Identities and forms of subjugation

Despite material and livelihood shifts, Indian villages continue to be defined by the resilience of
historical patterns of discrimination, particularly along lines of caste and gender. The former is
built into space through practices of segregation and disparities in ownership of land and access
to common resources, while patriarchy remains entrenched at the scale of social reproduction,

that is, the (extended) family unit. On caste, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s following words expressed

during the Constituent Assembly debates in 1948 still ring true: “What is a village but a sink of

localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness and communalism?” It was therefore no

surprise that Ambedkar saw in cities the promise of freedom from these chains of subjugation.

This conclusion resonates with Louis Wirth’s views on urbanism around increased heterogeneity,

backed further by German theorist Georg Simmel, who noted the domination of anonymity over
social bonds in the city. Simmel was ambivalent about the implications of this development,

since to him individuals unmoored from deeper emotional attachment turn blasé and calculative

in the city (1903 [1950]). Ambedkar, with his understanding of Indian village, however, seems to

accept the German’s empirical assertions but reject his moral conclusions: it was for precisely the

reasons Simmel distrusted urban life that Ambedkar took considered it potentially emancipatory.

All three of these thinkers though were working with an ideal type of a city—implicitly with an

imaginary of a metropolis—but what about the small town? How are older forms of subjugation

negotiated in spaces that straddle anonymity and familiarity? And what new identities emerge at
these interstices?

Some commentators like Chandrabhan Prasad see in towns more liberal attitudes and

possibilities of civic engagement that transcend caste (2014). Others, however, note caste’s

resilience, and are therefore less sanguine about these possibilities: Manu Joseph talks about the

paradox that he describes as ‘city setting but village mentalities’ (2013). This is a complex issue,

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and one should stay clear of superficial verdicts. More engaged and, possibly, longitudinal
studies are best suited to throw light on these changes.

Certainly, urban areas, even smaller ones, afford more chances of upward mobility given a
greater array of economic opportunities. Moreover, the village-level hegemony of certain
(feudal) families is harder to reproduce at the scale of the town, though as Harris-White and

Chari’s work cited above shows, caste alliances remain important. Even in a metropolis like

Delhi, the work of caste is immense. In her study of the city’s waste networks, Kaveri Gill (2009)

points to the caste-based division of labor, where a particular Schedule Caste community
(Khatik) has managed to create a near monopoly over the more valued parts of the chain
(kabadi), while individuals from other diverse and marginalized groups are locked into the low-
paying circuits of wet waste. Similarly, a study on the town of Chanderi (Madhya Pradesh)
showed high degree of spatial segregation on caste lines despite a general improvement in the
quality of life (Sharma 2003).

Still, there are far more institutional and market spaces that allow for the mixing of populations
and, even if temporary and conditional, suspension of caste identifications in small towns
relative to rural contexts. Students in colleges and universities get to experience radically
different ways of relating to people with whom they would otherwise not have interacted as an
equal. In the ubiquitous dhabas, injunctions around food break down, while policies of
affirmative action allow lower caste individuals to gain entry intothe bureaucracy and formal
politics.

Relations between religious communities and their own internal identities are yet another highly
contentious matter. A recent turning point in this process were the events leading and subsequent
to the demolition of the Babri Masjid [mosque] in 1992. The town of Ayodhya, the purported
birthplace of Lord Rama, was the epicentre of this politics and has forever etched its place in
Indian history as an instance of communal polarization. During that period, several other small
towns like Badaun, Aurangabad, Hazaribagh and Hubli were also caught in the grip of violence.

Since then, the spatiality of Muslim urban populations changed dramatically: larger number of
Muslims now cluster in specific neighbourhoods, which leads to heightened social segregation.
A recent volume (Gayer and Jaffrelot 2012) shows the causes and outcomes of this shift in cities

15
like Bhopal, Cuttack and Calicut. While it may lend an immediate sense of security to an
embattled minority, segregation produces new forms of insecurity bred by loss of interaction,
stereotyping and distrust in the long term. For instance, after the riots in Western UP in 2013,
Muslims who ran from the violence in mixed villages sought refuge in the few Muslim-majority
towns in the region such as Kairana. Today, the overall regional geography is stark: most
villages are almost exclusively Hindu, while Kairana is a de facto Muslim ghetto.

As for the hold of patriarchy over gender relations, the situation is once again more far from
ideal. There is of course unevenness to all of this: in general, northern states display a far greater

violent reaction to women’s mobility than the south and northeast. Take for example the town of

Rohtak in Haryana, where women face multiple barriers at home and outside as they step into the
world of higher education and professional work. The town received nationwide attention in
2014 when a 16-year old girl, Nikita, committed suicide after prolonged stalking by a local man.

Contradictions—participation in the ‘modern’ world, but also high degree of forced restrictions—

sit uneasily in such towns, and are revealed in the poignant words of her father: “I understand the

value of education. Nikita scored 97 per cent marks in her last examination. The only restriction
was that they could not go out with friends for a movie or anything. That we do not allow in

villages like ours” (quoted in Bhardwaj 2014). Despite these challenges, many women are

everyday changing the prevailing norms in towns across the country.

The flipside to restrictive life for women in towns like Rohtak is a hypermasculine culture that is
internalized by men. This culture is highly performative: young men must look, dress and behave
in specific well-defined ways or they risk being considered effeminate and therefore worthy of

derision. They must in particular be seen to be ‘in control’ in their relations with women, which

translates to a certain kind of patronizing tolerance at best, and violent suppression at worst

(Derné 2002). It is also tied with an entire economy that includes gyms and food supplements

(Baas 2015), steroids and drugs, and particular kinds of motorcycles and cars. It should be added
that while this is certainly the dominant frame, it is not the only one, and a more useful way to

16
understand male lives in small towns might be through a pluralizing move, that is, considering

prevalent ‘masculinities’ (Ahmed 2006).

The evidence points to the fact that previously existing modes of domination have retooled but at
the same time, experimentations related to gender roles and sexualities, often surreptitious, are
underway. Much has been made of the live-in relationship portrayed in the film Shuddh Desi
Romance [2013], set in Jaipur, but that is merely one example of the changing times. Novel
forms of identifications and interpersonal relationships are generally on the rise in small towns.

Conclusion

This module, on small town culture, argued that the subject should be considered through a
dynamic lens. It began with the hypothesis that there is no universal culture that unites small
towns. What we observe are cultures: of work, of different forms of engagement with
infrastructures that scaffold everyday life, of how people think of themselves and relate with
each other, and of arts, entertainment and recreation. As readers would have noticed, this module
does not consider a static condition that small towns are supposed to embody. There are instead a
variety of underlying processes more extensive than a settlement per se, and extend to regional,
national or sometimes, even planetary scales. Through migration and remittances, production of
commodities for the market, consumption of things brought in from elsewhere, and cultural give
and take, places have become intricately connected to each other. What lends singularity to a

given locality is the conjunctural ‘throwing together’ (Massey 2005) of the various forces and

agents.

More recently in India, this has generally involved the way, first, state policy and, lately,
amplified processes of globalization have found their way to specific urban areas. Their
intersections produce a highly uneven landscape of development: some towns are booming while
others are locked into stagnation. Certainly in the former but even in others, much change is
underway under the surface. Increased lower caste mobility and loosening of strict patriarchal
norms are being seen but so are attempts towards continued subjugation by the dominant classes.
Religious polarization, written into the streets and neighbourhoods of small towns, has widened
in the last three decades. Still, these towns are sites of all manner of creative experimentations,

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the results of which can be seen in their larger contribution to the nation’s cultural economy.

These are interesting times in small town India and students of urbanism have a ringside view.

References

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Perspectives on an emerging field. Environment and Urbanization15(1): 135-148

Ahmed SMF (2006) Makingbeautiful: Male workers in beautyparlors. Men and Masculinities

9(2): 168-185

Angelo H and Hentschel C (2015)Interactions with infrastructure as windows into social worlds:

A method for critical urban studies. City19 (2): 306-312

Angelo H and Wachsmuth D (2015) Urbanizing urban political ecology: A critique of

methodological cityism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies 39 (1): 16-27

Baas M (2015) Muscles, masculinity and middle classness. In Jacobsen KA (ed) Routledge

Handbook of Contemporary India (pp 444-456).Oxford: Routledge

Basile E and Harriss-White B (1999) The politics of accumulation in small-town India.IDS

Bulletin 30(4): 31-38

Bell D and Jayne M (2009) Small cities? Towards a research agenda. International Journal of

Urban and Regional Studies 33 (3): 683-699

Bhardwaj A (2014) Walk the line: In Rohtak, the streets are a hostile space for young women.

Indian Express 21 September

Chari S (2004) Fraternal Capital: Peasant-Workers, Self-Made Men, and Globalization in

Provincial India. Delhi: Permanent Black

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Davis M (2004) Planet of slums: Urban involution and informal proletariat. New Left Review 26

March-April: 5-34.

Derné S (2005) The (limited) effect of cultural globalization in India: Implications for culture

theory. Poetica33(1): 33-47

Gayer L and Jaffrelot, C (2012) Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation.New

York: Columbia University Press

Gill K (2009) Of poverty and plastic: Scavenging and scrap trading entrepreneurs in India’s

urban informal economy. New Delhi: Oxford University Press

Joseph M (2013) City setting, but village mentalities. New York Times 2 January

Kundu D (2011) Elite capture in participatory urban governance. Economic and Political Weekly

46(10): 23-25

Massey D (2005) For Space. London: Sage

Manuel P (2009) Transnational Chowtal: Bhojpuri folk song from North India to the Caribbean,

Fiji and beyond. Asian Music 40(2): 1-32

Mishra P (1995) Butter chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in small town India. New Delhi: Penguin

Parry J (2008) Cosmopolitan values in a Central Indian steel town. In Werbner P (ed)

Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism (pp 325-344). New York: Berg

Pathak-Shelat M and DeShano C (2013) Digital youth cultures in small town and rural Gujarat,

India.New Media and Society 16(6): 983-1001

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Prasanna S (1993) Infrastructure planning problems in small and medium towns.IIM Bangalore

Research Paper 35

Rai A (2015) The affect of Jugaad: Frugal innovation and postcolonial practice in India’s mobile

phone ecology. Environment and Planning D 33(6): 985-1002

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Urban and Regional Research 26(3): 531-554

Robinson R (2013) Culture of small-town India. In RN Sharma and RSSandhu (eds) Small Cities

and Towns in Global Era: Emerging Changes and Perspectives (pp 70-83).Jaipur: Rawat

Publications

Scrase TJ et al (2015) Beyond the metropolis: Regional Globalization and town development:

An introduction.South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies38(2): 216-229

Sharma KL (2003) The social organization of urban space: A case study of Chanderi, a small

town in Central India. Contributions to Indian Sociology 37(3): 405-427

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The Free Press

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Environment and Resources 33: 167-185

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Smith N (2000) Socializing culture, radicalizing the social. Social and Cultural Geography 1(1):

25-28

Wirth L (1938) Urbanism as a way of life.American Journal of Sociology 44(1): 1-24

Self Assessment (True/False)

1. Small towns are largely unchanging and remain mired in a timeless culture

2. All men benefit from patriarchy prevalent in small towns

3. Tiruppur is a bustling industrial town specializing in the manufacturing of knitwear

4. Remittances from migrants have become an increasingly important source of small town

economy

5. Georg Simmel considered cities to be spaces that encourage the formation of deep emotional

bonds

6. Caste is no longer an important element of lives in small towns

7. In his book, Mike Davis was extremely optimistic about the future of cities in the Global

South

8. In Katiyabaaz, the protagonist followed official procedure to procure electricity connections

9. In mainstream urban studies, cities and the urban process are considered the same

10. PankajMishra and R.K. Narayan represent small towns in highly contrasting ways

11. Spatial segregation along religious lines in small towns has decreased since the 1990s

12. Louis Wirth and Dr. Ambedkar’s views, though made in different contexts, are convergent

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Answers

1F 2F 3T 4T 5F 6F 7F 8F 9T 10T 11F 12T

Point to Ponder

How to places retain their uniqueness while also being subject to similar general circumstances?

Did you Know

1. Moradabad was created by the Mughals and named after Emperor Shah Jahan’s son (Murad

Baksh)

2. Despite its small size, the town of Dehradun boasts of a number of state institutions with a
long history such as the Indian Military Academy, the Forest Research Institute, Survey of
India, and the Wildlife Institute of India. After Uttarakhand was carved out of Uttar Pradesh,
Dehradun became the capital of the new state.

3. Like Bhilai, several other industrial towns were built during Jawaharlal Nehru’s reign as

India’s Prime Minister. These were modeled on Soviet towns of a similar type, and included

Rourkela, Durgapur, and Bokaro. Many new towns have also been builtsince the 1950s for
administrative purposes, including Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar and Naya
Raipur.

4. MS Dhoni earned his living as ticket collector in the Indian Railways network while playing
cricket in Kharagpur before he made it to the national team. Thereafter he rose in fame fairly
sharply, and smartly capitalized it to become one of the highest earning sportspersons in the
world.

Multimedia

1. Watch Neil Brenner’s talk about the concept of ‘planetary urbanization’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXhwDwPzH2Y

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2. Here’s an interview with the actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui on his journey from a small town to

make it big in Bollywood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIkjpdFHurA

3. Sundar Popo is credited with starting what is called Chutney music, or the fusion of
Bhojpuri and Caribbean influences. His song Rampersad can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z93ILbKbxa4

4. Neilson’s report prepared for the CII, referenced in the module, can be accessed at

http://goo.gl/cGjtpv

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