Development, Prosperity and Aspirations: A Narrative from the Peri-Urban Areas of Noida

Urban development at city periphery as a unique process of urbanisation, manifests in distinctive spatial and socio-economic characteristics. The emergence of settlement types—an admixture of rural and urban characteristics—functionally transient between agrarian and non-agrarian economy with pervasive change in land uses and attendant livelihood sources, retreating mode of rural social norms and advancing urban way of life are remarkably obvious in peri-urban landscape of large Indian cities. The resultant socio-economic challenges for peri-urban inhabitants often create chasm between promised development agenda and their aspirations. Delving into the socio-economic transformations on account of land appropriation by the State government for urban and industrial development and ramifications of land negotiations in five peri-urban villages of Noida—this study reveals the discordant side of urbanisation benefitting urban at the cost of rural, and administrative processes which remain oblivious to the aspirations of those whose lands provided the grounds of this development agenda.