Mr. Shashank.Deora will present his pre-synopsis as per the details:

Date: Friday, 9th January 2026

Time: 1400 - 1530 hrs.

Venue: C-TARA Conference Room No.1

Title: Infrastructuring of an urban space: Material transformations and aesthetics around a lake’s watershed in Mumbai

Supervisor: Prof. Pankaj Sekhsaria

RPC Members: Prof. N C Narayanan and Prof. Himanshu Burte

Abstract:

The complexities of urban expansion and transformations around lakes and ponds in India and in the cities of the Global South render the urban space around them socially inequitable and ecologically unsustainable. Much of the social science literature on this subject, from Political economy and political ecology, analyses these geographical spaces through the global tenets and theories, such as that of capitalism. While generating useful insights, this literature does not significantly engage with the non-humans or highlight the role they play in shaping these urban spaces. The assemblage approaches rooted in Science and Technology Studies (STS) have attempted to address this gap. The assemblage approaches, however, do not inquire into the long-term shaping or emergence of urban spaces. To address the challenges of urban expansion and transformations around lakes and ponds and to develop an in-depth understanding of the associated complexities, it is essential to comprehend the long-term emergence of these spaces. To analyse the long-term emergence of the spaces around urban lakes and ponds, I take an STS infrastructure studies approach. Although it is used primarily to study sociotechnical systems around infrastructures, the infrastructure studies perspective in Science and Technology Studies (STS) is well equipped to study such long-term shaping or emergence. Therefore, in this research, I extend the infrastructural lens to study the long-term emergence of the urban space around a lake in Mumbai. I employ a performative understanding of infrastructure to study the long-term emergence of Powai Lake’s watershed in Mumbai. The transformations around a lake are connected significantly to the changing hydrological flows from their upstream into the lake, which can be studied by focusing on the lake’s watershed. To account for the significant role of non-humans also in this inquiry, I consider a symmetrical distribution of agencies among humans and non-humans. The long-term emergence of Powai Lake’s watershed reveals its transformations from a rural hinterland to a prime location in Mumbai. There are luxurious residential and commercial structures upstream of the lake. These structures create a dominant aesthetic around Powai Lake’s watershed, that of a fusion of pristine nature, represented by the lake and biodiversity in the lake’s vicinity, and the modern world-class urban, represented in the luxury urban structures. However, this is not the only way to understand Powai Lake’s watershed. There are other alternative configurations or alternative realities that remain marginalised, but are nonetheless asserted. I capture two such alternative realities: (i) Powai Lake’s watershed as home to Adivasi residents and (ii) Powai Lake’s watershed as a degraded ecosystem. These three realities explored in this dissertation have their associated infrastructural work that sustains them. However, the dominance of one reality over others indicates significant ontological politics. This ontological politics is also a way to understand the social and ecological complexities of the urban transformations around Powai Lake’s watershed. To make the urban expansion and transformations around lakes and ponds socially equitable and ecologically sustainable, it is imperative to explicate and accommodate the multiple realities around them.