Abstract
This chapter discusses the transformation of a village called Khora at the border of Delhi, Noida and Ghaziabad (both satellite towns of Delhi) to throw light on the peculiar form of capital accumulation happening over there. Khora has rapidly changed from being a sparsely populated village in 1971 with a total population of 656 to a census town in 2011 with a population of 189,410. While these are official census figures, the actual numbers living in Khora seem to be much more with newspaper and other media sources reporting around 1 million in 2013 calling it ‘Asia’s biggest labour colony’. Since the high-density development of Khora is essentially linked to the development of Noida, the author shows how accumulation in Khora is tied to the new town of Noida. Khora now is an intensely dense colony which is home to a labouring population ranging from factory workers, guards, domestic helps, auto-rickshaw drivers, rickshaw pullers, rag pickers, scrap dealers and collectors. One way to look at Noida, with the foreign investments and Export Processing Zones (EPZs) on one hand and places such as Khora on the other hand, is as a classic case of uneven development . The author also looks at the way in which spaces such as Khora themselves become nodes of accumulation for various classes ranging from the erstwhile owners of farm land to migrant workers and the ways in which the two modes of accumulation interact.
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Notes
- 1.
Initially, an acronym for New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (NOIDA), but now referring to the district itself.
- 2.
The term ‘labour colony’ is used by newspapers and a number of residents themselves. It does not refer to any administrative categorization.
- 3.
It is an administrative term differentiating agricultural land with settled land. There is no English counterpart.
- 4.
Ghaziabad used to come in Meerut District till 14.11.1976 when it was carved out as a separate district of Uttar Pradesh.
- 5.
It was confirmed in several interviews with Sardar Singh, Deshraj Singh, Balle Pehelwan and Balwinder Singh. Other initial developers were also from surrounding villages in Delhi such as Chilla and Khichripur (personal interview, Sardar Singh).
- 6.
Personal interview with Deshraj Singh Yadav on 24 May 2014. Bigha is a local measurement of land.
- 7.
Personal interview with Pramod Kumar Thakur, famous as ‘Udiya’ because he hails from Odisha. A number of other respondents also told me that the government was encouraging the poorer population ousted from Delhi to settle over there.
- 8.
Personal interview, Pramod Kumar Thakur.
- 9.
Personal Interview with Rishi Fauji on 12 May 2014.
- 10.
P.I., Rishi Fauji.
- 11.
Personal Interview with Vikram Yadav, Gram Vikas Adhikari, Khora, on 12 April 2013.
- 12.
Personal Interview with Deshraj Singh Yadav on 24 May 2014.
- 13.
Personal Interview with Sardar Singh Yadav on 20 May 2014.
- 14.
Personal Interview with Deshraj Singh Yadav on 24 May 2014.
- 15.
Interview conducted on 4 May 2014.
- 16.
‘Khora rots as Noida Ghaziabad disown colony’, The Times of India, Noida, 28 May 2001.
- 17.
‘Sadkon-galionkajaal: sab tootiphootibadhaal,’ Navbharat Times, Ghaziabad, 5 May 2011. ‘A network of roads and valleys: All dilapidated’.
- 18.
http://www.noidaauthorityonline.com/about-noida.html, accessed on 13 October 2013.
- 19.
Abdou Malik Simone (2007, p. 465) has written about how immediate peripheries of metropolises, usually occupied by devalued populations thrown away from central areas, are often considered as ‘problematic interstices’ between differentiated poles.
- 20.
Khora represents an undesirable space for Noida. I got extremely anxious responses from the town planners of Noida. A retired town planner asked me why I had chosen Khora as a case study as it would reflect badly on the image of Noida. He considers Khora as a clear case of state failure. The current chief town planner of Noida also got irritated on being questioned about Khora. He asked me angrily if I wanted to give solutions or increase their problems by asking about Khora.
- 21.
Personal interview with Sardar Singh Yadav on 20 May 2014.
- 22.
It needs to be stated that all those belonging to the Yadav caste are not referred to here as the dominant class involved in colonizing. We are specifically referring to the extended kinship networks of the three Yadav families that were there in Khora, who owned the land that was acquired by the Noida authority. There are a considerable number of migrants who also belong to the Yadav community who are working in factories or running small businesses of their own.
- 23.
A community spread over western and northern India, particularly Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.
- 24.
Personal Interview with Dharmapal Yadav conducted on 7 April 2014.
- 25.
Personal Interview with Rangpal Yadav conducted on 8 May 2014.
- 26.
The de jure pradhan of the area is Brajpal Singh Jatav, who has been an old servant of Kalu’s family. Kalu’s maternal grandfather owned a lot of land in Khora. Since he had no son to inherit his property, his daughter’s sons that is Kalu and his brothers claimed his property. Kalu supported him in the elections because the constituency of Khora had turned into a reserved seat in this election.
- 27.
Interview conducted on 2 May 2014.
- 28.
Interview conducted on 4 May 2014.
- 29.
Interview conducted on 13 May 2014.
- 30.
Interview conducted on 15 April 2014.
- 31.
David Harvey has argued that the violence associated with the accumulation of capital in the ‘primitive’ stages is very much part of the contemporary urban processes operative through dispossessing people from their means of production (Harvey 2005).
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Acknowledgment
This research was conducted as a part of a project called “Global Suburbanisms: Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century” housed at the CITY Institute, York University, UK.
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Dubey, S. (2017). Accumulation at Margins: The Case of Khora Colony. In: Mitra, I., Samaddar, R., Sen, S. (eds) Accumulation in Post-Colonial Capitalism. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1037-8_6
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