Megaprojects, mirages and miracles: territorializing the Delhi–Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) and state restructuring in contemporary India

Large-scale inter-city infrastructure projects are proliferating across the Global South as industrial policy-makers have used spatial planning to purposefully transform regions’ economic and urban geographies. The Make in India policy and its promotion of industrial development corridors is emblematic of these trends, and this paper explores the relationship between this emergent national spatial vision and the subnational governance restructuring necessary for its implementation. We present primary research surrounding the implementation of the Delhi–Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) in Gujarat, and demonstrate that megaprojects present challenges that require subnational governments to act in altered ways. They must be adept in the assembly and delivery of significant parcels of land, and in handling any political fallout this generates. They must also make new arrangements and acquire competences to meet ‘scaled up’ developmental ambitions. Finally, they need to harness the legitimating power that corridors represent through their promises of connection, integration and growth. The Government of Gujarat has enthusiastically embraced the concept of the DMIC, turning spatial planning into a series of externally marketed infrastructure investment opportunities. In pushing its pro-growth agenda, it has overwritten earlier institutions focused on small-scale industrial development, but has not resolved underlying contradictions around land acquisition, or building consensus in support of its entrepreneurial vision. By focusing on this ‘limiting case’, we highlight the crucial role of the subnational state in implementing infrastructure-led development, and the importance of building a contextually rich understanding of its responses to the scaled-up demands megaprojects place upon it.