Vikasanam: The Expansionist Choreography of Space-Making in Kerala

Abstract

Urban situations in Kerala delink people from places. They rearticulate them to vikasanam that works through expansions and exclusions. In Edachira, there is a progressive alienation from the immediate ecology because the physically immediate spaces become conduits of investments of all kinds. The assemblage of neo-liberal choreography works through rhetoric of future and protocols of ‘smartness’. Geographies and beings must get smart in order to be included in the discourse of utopia. But the irony is that the inclusions characteristically usurp the utopias and literally eviscerate places. The chapter is about the trajectories of vikasanam, smartness, cities, inclusions, eviscerations, people, as well as of rivers and hills.