1 - The City as Rumour: Aspirations and Strategizing in Delhi's Rural Belt

Presentation Abstract
Scholars have lately described the myriad ways in which the urban process pulls in places and people geographically removed from the city via resource extraction for its metabolism and through the promise of economic and social mobility respectively. In villages like Ghummanhera on Delhi’s rural belt, for instance, locals travel to the city for education or employment, while calibrating the changing value of land with its potential to earn a bonanza or lead to the loss of historical livelihoods depending on the terms on which it changes hands. Property, in other words, is the hinge around which much of Delhi’s rural belt is seen to turn in both academic and everyday worldviews.

The city and property, however, are also discursive entities that take unexpected and often fantastical forms that nonetheless compel villagers to act in the present. The rumour of the city is even more critical in contexts like Ghummanhera where planning instruments limit commercial activities and the property market is therefore relatively less frenzied.
 
This paper shows how local residents view the city through a mosaic of calculations. It is at once a composite of opportunities and a secreter of unpleasant materials, even as they draw on individual and collective tactics to engage in ways that promise pathways to a desirable future in the face of multiple unknowns. The paper draws on engaged practice that includes oral history research, in-depth interviews, and public interactions from 2018 to 2023.