My current research investigates the growing trend in Indian cities to prioritize private automobile transportation to move from one place to another. I do much of my research on Bengaluru (formerly known as Bangalore) – the large Indian metropolis in south-central India inhabited by about 10 million people and their (more than) 6 million vehicles. Growth in automobiles on Bengaluru’s streets and on other Indian city streets is a visible part of the trend towards an auto-centric transportation system.
In recent years, traffic congestion with streets choked with private automobiles has become a daily experience. The popular discourse in Bengaluru, as experienced through the English-language media or in middle-class drawing rooms, equates congestion with the rising population of vehicles on the road. The solution to the problem, according to this discourse, lies in changing the circumstances in which private automobiles travel around the city without actually questioning the fundamentally unjust nature of auto-centricity in the transport paradigm in the city. This research has been sponsored by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
Related Publications
- Installing Automobility: Emerging Politics of Streets and Mobility in Indian Cities, MIT Press, 2020
- Regime of Congestion: Technopolitics of Mobility and Inequality in Bengaluru, India, Science as Culture, 29(3), 2020.
- Who will Decongest Bengaluru? Politics, Infrastructures, & Scapes. Mobilities, 10, 2: 310-25, 2015.
Associates
Yogi Joseph, PhD student, Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University
Sreelakshmi Ramachandran, PhD student, Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University
Suvedh Jaywant, PhD student, Urban Planning, McGill University
Jacob Baby, PhD student, Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University
Craig Townsend, Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University
Madhav G. Badami, School of Urban Planning, McGill University
Sarah Turner, Geography, McGill University
Rutul Joshi, CEPT University
Funding
