Date and time
Rethinking Urban Development in India: Capital, Governance and the Politics of Urban Change Webinar
Dr Gaurav C. Garg (Ashoka University) in conversation with Dr Sumit Kumar (Manipal University Jaipur)
📅 16 November 2026
🕐 16:00 IST / 10.30 GMT
💻 Online via Zoom · Free
Why do urban plans in India so often fail? Why is the real estate market so hard to regulate? And is it right to assume that business always drives cities forward?
In his new book, Agents of Inertia (Cambridge University Press, 2026), historian Dr Gaurav C. Garg looks at how Calcutta went from one of Asia’s leading business centres to an economic backwater. He argues that the city’s own big businesses played a central part, resisting state-led investment in infrastructure from 1900 well into the 1960s. The book questions two common assumptions: that businesses chasing profit always serve society, and that capitalist cities are always driven to remake their built environment.
In this Scholar-to-Scholar Dialogue, Dr Sumit Kumar talks with Dr Garg about how that history relates to cities today.
The conversation centres on:
- the evolution, and the weakness, of urban democracy in India
- the role of capitalists in shaping Indian cities
- what “urban development” and “urban crisis” mean
- why urban plans so often fail
- concretisation, housing and the real estate market
- why the reputation of a city matters
The session runs for 60–75 minutes: 45 minutes of dialogue, then open Q&A.
It is for researchers, practitioners and students in history, geography, planning, political science and development studies.
This webinar is part of the RSA India Division, click here to find out more.