Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.

Accepted Paper:

Political strategies and agendas for development: the case of Kot Lakhpat, 1963-1974  
Anushay Malik (Lahore University of Management Sciences)

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the development of the industrial area in Kot Lakhpat in Lahore between 1963 and 1974, to show that employer and worker strategies, and not just the planners imagined ideals, decided the outcome of these developmental plans.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will focus on the development of a planned industrial area, specifically, on the space around Kot Lakhpat in the south of Lahore. Kot Lakhpat and its neighbour, the Township project, were supposed to entice local industrialists to set up shop and get government assistance in both, setting up their industries, and building worker housing nearby. This seemed like a great plan on paper, but the reality was that industrialists appeared to have used this as an excuse to shift sections of production to Kot Lakhpat and hire only temporary labour so as to limit the problem of an increasingly militant and well organised workforce.

Partially, the development of this area was seen as a necessity in order to deal with the chaos that Partition had left in its wake. Large parts of the Walled City had been destroyed in fires. The spaces of colonial nostalgia were pockmarked by makeshift shelters erected by refugees and their families. Frequently referred to as 'plague spots' the rhetoric that developed was that these areas needed to be moved to the boundaries of the city. However, the strategies used by workers in Kot Lakhpat included allying with workers in the north of Lahore and setting up unions across the industries in that area, in order to exert pressure on their industrial owners. The planners dream of seeing an orderly, legible and clean area that was subject to official control was not, therefore, something that could be realised.

Panel P47
Landscapes of development in (late colonial and post-1947) South Asia: a historical re-examination
  Session 1