Abstract

While planned industrial development has been central to the Indian economy since Independence, like many late industrialising countries India’s industrial growth has not reached its full potential. There has not been enough conceptual work focusing on post-industrial transformations in a global South context and what local economies emerge in these spaces. Our work focuses on a particular neighbourhood in Bangalore, and the two distinct types of trajectories that have emerged there. While some industrial neighbourhoods have witnessed well known consequences of deindustrialization such as the mills-to-malls trajectory of redevelopment (Lees, 2015), others have had distinct kinds of developments. One such example is Rajajinagar, an industrial suburb which was planned in 1949, in order to encourage local entrepreneurs to start small scale industries. Following economic liberalisation in 1991, a string of small scale industries that became unprofitable started transitioning into marriage halls. Other parts of the neighbourhood still have functioning small scale industries.