This book asks why ‘global Indians’ have failed to demand fair and equal cities for all citizens

Its primary identity formed by the topos of the world-class city, Dubai and its iconic towers have been the setting of more than fifty movies from Hollywood, Bollywood, and beyond. Bollywood thriller Sarkar 3, for instance, displaces the locus of corruption from the titular strongman in Mumbai to landgrab crime boss “Sir” (Jackie Shroff) living in exile amid the skyscrapers and high-end luxuries of Dubai. As the camera luxuriates on Sir’s long-distance wheeling-dealing and his moll Theba (Fiza Ali) circling around him, the setting amid the world-class skyline and superelite amenities of Dubai tells us everything we need to know about both of them as the money and power behind a massive slum redevelopment scheme in Mumbai, mobilized through the phone at Sir’s ear.

Crime novelist Ravi Subramaniam similarly deploys an opening heist in the “largest and possibly most exquisitely designed luxury mall” in Dubai as a world-class thumbnail to quickly establish the transnational stakes of diamond-market corruption and Mumbai property speculation. It turns out the Wafi Mall spectacle is neither terrorism (the shoppers’ assumption) nor robbery (the investigators’ assumption); instead, it was the momentary emergence into visibility of an ongoing transnational struggle over money, power, and Mumbai land. Mobilised as a spectacle,...

Read more