ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

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The Politics of Urban Mega-projects in India

Income Employment Linkages in Chennai’s IT Corridor

Mega infrastructure projects such as industrial parks and special economic zones are increasingly seen as a means to jump-start urban economies in India. This paper contributes to understanding the politics of urban mega-projects by examining the quality of local economic linkages of an information technology park, located in what is popularly referred to as the "IT corridor" in Chennai. Based on a survey of employees in software firms and support services for IT parks along the corridor, the paper maps patterns of employment creation, new consumption and mobility patterns of those employed in the IT parks and implications for the quality of urban development.

This paper is based on a study supported by the EU-funded Chance2Sustain Programme through the French Institute of Pondicherry. We gratefully acknowledge the fi eld assistance provided by Sumirtha Gandhi, Supriya Gandhi, Aditi Samant Singhar, Rosmi Jose, Manjari Shankar and Pradyot Bharadwaj in the course of this study. We thank Ashima Sood, Aurelie Varrel, Eric Denis and Loraine Kennedy for useful discussions that helped shape this paper, and the anonymous referees for their remarks and suggestions. The paper also benefi ted from comments in the course of a presentation made at the International Conference on Sustainable and Inclusive Urban Development in India, organised by the Institute for Human Development, and the University of Florida on 1–3 August 2015, held in New Delhi.

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