HOW can we imagine our common futures in cities? Is it possible to create cities that provide space for all to realize their interests and with respect to nature? Does the idea of urban commons hold the possibility of creating such a future?

Both urban commons and urban futures are open categories imbued with political overtones. The term common/commoners connote different meanings such as ‘typical’, ‘confirming to rule’, normal, ordinary, and ‘belonging to all’. The paradoxical tendencies of normalization, homogenization, control as well as possibilities of sharing, collaboration and openness that can benefit all, are inherent in the meaning of the term. Similarly, a list of terminologies is in circulation about our urban futures such as sustainable cities, equitable, and smart cities. The idea of smart cities for example, is dominantly conceptualized as a futuristic technological city, ordered by a homogenous grid that can be monitored and disciplined. Alternatively, a smart city could be imagined as a city of freedom where multiplicity of activities and actors can flourish.

While the idea of urban commons holds a promise for creating a just and equitable city, its potential lies in the political possibility of building our cities where multiple tendencies can flourish. A city is inhabited by people with competing interests and needs and it manifests as contestation over the claims to the city’s land, water, and built environment. Who has the right to the city’s land and infrastructure? Who are the legitimate users of our parks, streets, and lakes? In these struggles the rhetoric of commons and legality are often mobilized to enclave nature and protect it from some groups in society, as exemplified by the collective action to defend lakes and parks in our cities. The elite and middle class often appropriate the role of custodians of nature, which is to be protected from the riff-raff and poorer groups in society.¹ The urban commons conceptualized as a homogenous resources or a city with a singular future may be exclusionary.

An understanding of commons as threshold spaces² provides an opening for reclaiming the commons for creating city spaces where multiple tendencies can flourish. The urban commons is not an apriori object,³ but a constructed space, constituted through everyday interaction of individuals and groups who come together for a shared purpose or interest. Its production is geared towards achieving a political effect.⁴ As threshold spaces, commons can facilitate the flows of inside and outside. The flow of people and ideas made possible by threshold spaces allow for collaborative work and creativity to thrive. Threshold spaces have the potential to erode boundaries, albeit slowly, to connect and compare adjoining areas.

 

The dense and diverse market spaces and mixed land use neighbourhoods in our cities are such threshold spaces, but which are discarded as ‘informal’, ‘illegal’ and unplanned. Moving beyond the binary lens of viewing the city, we can recognize how the practices associated with constituting such spaces are not simply about the organization of activities in space, but more crucially about disrupting and destabilizing the tendencies to enclave, as exemplified by the two examples discussed in this paper. The openness of spatial architecture, and the culture of work in the two spaces, shapes knowledge and innovation generated as a common resource, creating opportunities for including new members into the network.

Retrieving objects that are discarded as waste, inhabitants of a small town and a metropolitan city contoured in this essay, innovate through learning and experimenting on the job and through collaborative work. In the process, they recreate value and destabilize the dominant idea of property as solely individual property rights. They generate knowledge in response to the problems they face in their everyday life improvising on existing designs and their own creation too is open to poaching.

 

The spatial practices of small-town entrepreneurs in Tiruchengode illustrate how the commons are shared spaces; it is through sharing information and collaborative work that they incrementally innovate on the job. Tiruchengode, a small town in the South Indian state of Tamilnadu, originated as a centre of weaving. Over the years, the town entrepreneurs moved from weaving and repairing an ox cart, to establish workshops to re-engineer or sometime reconstruct heavy tonnage vehicles and assemble mobile rig units.

With little capital, entrepreneurs incrementally innovated/improvised in response to demand or the ground realities in places that they travelled for work. Mobilizing their tacit knowledge of metals and wood, together with technical skills acquired through ‘do it yourself’ experiments, Tiruchengode’s entrepreneurs managed to innovate and capture a sizeable share of the market in lorry re-engineering and bore well assembly in different Indian states and some among them began catering to an international market.

The story of Paranthaman, Thaman and Veliangiri,⁵ the third generation and second-generation entrepreneurs from a family of metal and wood craftsmen, exemplify the experiences of several others in the town. Ponnusamy Asari, the father of Thaman and Veliangiri, was one of the first three entrepreneurs to set up a lorry repair workshop in the town.

Ponnusamy moved to Tiruchengode from a neighbouring town in the early forties when the town’s weaving units were expanding and the demand grew for repairing ox carts and wagons that catered to the weaving units. Hailing from a family of carpenters and with a sound knowledge of metals, Ponnusamy initially set up a workshop to repair the iron wheel of wooden carts and forge iron parts for axle and suspension for the wagons. The mechanization of weaving in the fifties created new opportunities for both workshop owners and workers to servicing or repairing the loom, a skill they learnt on the job. In 1955, Ponnusamy started to assemble cars using second hand materials. The first vehicle, which he made for himself, was an old van that he converted into a minibus using the second hand chassis of a Ford car or Bedford van, with Perkins four-cylinder engines, and local material.⁶

 

The opening up a road connecting Sangagiri with Namakkal, in the late fifties, catalyzed the start of lorry re-engineering units in the town.⁷ Ponnusamy Asari shifted to lorry bodybuilding works in the sixties and for which he sourced second hand spare parts and wood from a local scrap yard to rebuild the body. In the sixties, he owned the largest workshop in town and employed all his five sons, along with migrants from neighbouring towns and villages, both from his caste and other castes,⁸ who went on to start their own workshops over time. According to Ponnusamy Asari’s son Thaman, the director of Paranthaman Engineering Works, his father learned the technical skills from the workshops that repaired and serviced weaving machines and from his experience of working with metal in his family. My observations and conversations with workshop owners revealed their intricate understanding of structural principles of a vehicle or a building and intricate knowledge of wood and metals.

 

While Ponnusamy’s four sons moved into the lorry re-engineering business, his eldest son Thaman diversified into making customized parts for lorry re-engineering and subsequently, started the towns first rig assembly unit. Acquiring skills as an intern in a lathe workshop, Thaman set up his own lathe workshop with the support of his family when he was fourteen. Thaman developed customized prototypes for his father’s and brothers’ workshops. When the demand for his customized spare parts increased, he floated a new company – the Paranthaman Engineering Works. He experimented with the customized manufacture of pistons and piston rods from cast iron and steel.

The Paranthaman Engineering Works specialized in the repair of rear axles of a lorry or a mobile rig unit that tended to break under the load of excess weight. While repairing a mobile rig unit, Thaman found that a small modification of the rear suspension system and replacement of a part in the axle could strengthen the design of the axle. Subsequently, in 1982, mobilizing loan capital from his friends and selling off his land and house, he started the Paranthaman Rock Drill to manufacture rigs, which marked the start of the bore well assembly and manufacturing units in the town. The emerging demand for servicing or repairing the pneumatic borewell drilling vehicles opened up new opportunities for Thaman to improve the design of the piston and engine to conserve oil consumption. With the help of his son, who was knowledgeable in reverse engineering, the father-son duo built efficient pneumatic machines for mobile rig units.

Thaman’s son Parantham, a mechanical engineering dropout, went on to build a hydraulic rig along with his father and established the Paranthaman Hydraulic Unit in the early nineties. What started as a holiday project to help his father has now developed into a business with an inter-national presence. Mobilizing his technical skills of reverse engineering, together with his networks in the engineering college, site supervisors and suppliers, the father-son team improvised on an existing design to build a hydraulic rig. The PRD has now expanded its business overseas to countries in Africa, Latin America, Middle East, Malaysia and Australia. As with the rigs that they have now been making for over thirty years, increasingly working with complex technologies introduced elsewhere, they have learnt to dismantle them and re-engineer on site.

 

The demand for rig assembly units catalysed the growth of new lorry bodybuilding industries in the town and outside. The mushrooming of lorry bodybuilding and bore well rig servicing workshops, in turn, led to the development of trades in new as well as second hand spare parts and tools. With the expansion of lorry bodybuilding workshops, a division of labour emerged among entrepreneurs, who now specialize in sixteen different activities.

Thaman and Velliangiri’s company are the learning and experimental sites for several mechanics and labourers in the repair of drive axles, who have now moved on to set up their own workshops in the town and further reworked the design of chassis and the axle. The entrepreneurs built their reputations in lorry re-engineering, on their maintenance skills, and the guarantees they provide for the chassis of heavy tonnage vehicles that the main companies do not. A teashop in one of the workshop sites was where I met mechanics, drivers, and labourers and with whose help I contacted their owners. Having a stereotypical understanding of small-town economies, I was often surprised by mechanics who spoke of their work experience in Zambia, Kenya and Dubai. Most of them who now have their own workshops started their careers with Parathaman Engineering or Velliangiri Engineering Works in the town.

 

The open architecture of the workshop clusters facilitates the easy flow of information and collaborative work. It is not uncommon to find a new entrepreneur sharing space with an established workshop owner. Very often, different teams working on a lorry share the same physical space, which led to different tenure arrangements over the use of space. The entrepreneurs and traders in Tiruchengode form a community of practice in which there is a regular flow of business information and know-how. They collectively developed their skills through trial and error, by mimicking and modifying already existing designs, to suit their needs and fostered a culture of sharing space, information, business and other resources. This constant trip to improvise and innovate is a common story in the town.

The commons are spaces where the meaning of property and value are recreated. The town entrepreneurs of Tiruchengode, as well as in other places such as Ghaffar Market in New Delhi, recreate value from what is discarded as waste and redefine property and boundary in their everyday practices. The Ghaffar Market is known in the city as a site for repair, reuse and trades in electronic items, particularly mobile phones. It attracts clientele not only from the city but also from other parts of India. The spatial organization of activities at this market reminds one of Benjamin’s metaphor of ‘neighbourhood as a factory’.

 

The front shops that are in full view to the onlookers, hide the complex sharing arrangements over space, information and clientele between various actors connected to the mobile repair and reassembly chain. Artefacts and bodies seamlessly move through the main streets and narrow gullies in the back, onto back-offices hidden in basements, making one wonder if they are part of a fast-paced video game. The logic of this organization is not easily apparent to a visitor.

Youth from different social and economic background, and from both big cities and small towns, find space to learn technical skills and set up their trade. As one moves through the market, one can see entrepreneurs standing in front of their shops with display boards of jail breaking, unlocking, and mobile accessories. Just as the town entrepreneurs of Tiruchengode, they acquired their technical skills while sharing space or working on the site. It is chance encounters in market spaces that open up new opportunities for the youth working in this market.

Often operating with a table and chair or standing in front of a 3’x3’ cabin, the shop front repairers are linked to various repair shops in the labyrinthine back alleys that are hidden from view. The daily rental rates of a table or a spot where they stand vary depending on the relationship between shop owners and mobile repairers. The multiple tenure forms over the use of space, common to places such as Karol Bagh and Tiruchengode, enable actors with different scales of trade and access to capital to find a place in the market and enter trade.

 

A frequent question that one encounters while buying a spare part is whether you want to purchase a ‘copy’, ‘original’ or a duplicate. The copy and the original distinction bring to fore the blurred boundaries of property, particularly between a branded and an unbranded phone. The various components that make up a mobile phone or a computer are manufactured in different batches and at different sites. Each batch carries a label. However, not all labelled components from a batch are used to manufacture branded phones. Those components that are not used in a branded phone are circulated as a ‘copy’ via organized distributors, wholesalers and retailers and is valued at one-third the price of an original. The categorization of artefacts (either in part or whole) as waste thus starts from the first stage of assembling ‘branded’ phones. What is categorized as waste in one stage finds its use in another stage.

In the life cycle of a mobile phone, the whole or parts of the artefacts categorized as ‘waste’ in one stage is recreated as it passes through multiple hands and sites. The process of selection of labelled components from a particular batch that would go into the phones circulated as ‘branded’ sifts similar components into different categories and which in turn creates differential values and property. Because of the presence of batch number and the IMEI number (in case of mother board), the copied artefacts are also covered for service under the warranty period.⁹ Very often the copies also get circulated under the same brand name.

According to traders and manufacturers interviewed in Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi, big brands are aware of the copies in circulation but do not actively oppose it as it allows the circulation of the brand name. The boundary of waste/useful component as well as original/copy is blurred right from the time of assembly and first round of circulation of mobile phones.

 

The unlabelled components manufactured alongside the same batch of labelled component goes into the repair stream or in the making of local phones. Ghaffar Market traders source their components from second-hand markets and parts discarded by retail traders are sold by hawkers. The service centres in the city rely on Ghaffar Market’s repair shops due to availability of spare parts for different models. Locally assembled non-branded phones either in the market or outside in Hong Kong or Shenzhen, are sold for a price as low as 800 rupees per piece. Mobilizing their diaspora networks in Hong Kong and Delhi, these trader-assemblers negotiate trade in India and China. The copy, the labelled and the unlabelled also gets mixed in the making of local phones.

Assemblers interviewed in Delhi cited the examples of Micromax, and some of the well known Chinese brands like the present day Xiomi, each of which started with using the unused/rejected components of larger brands in the initial stages and subsequently, started to circulate under their own brand names. The original, copy, and duplicate can be intermeshed in the same equipment – raising questions about the conception of property especially intellectual property, and values attributed to artefacts of a similar kind. The introduction of an IMIE number and India-China trade restricted the space available for re-engineering of phones at this market.

 

The value is thus shaped by labels (category) and time, by the ideas of ‘newness’ and ‘in thing’. The auction of a new batch of exported mobile phones is an important event at Karol Bagh. The assembly as well as trade in mobile phone is organized around a hierarchical chain of actors – exporters, distributors, wholesale traders, and retailers. Distributors source mobile phones from exporters, in containers of 8000 pieces each and sell it to wholesalers. The distributors auction the phones and Karol Bagh is one of the sites where these auctions are conducted.

The wholesale and retail price of a mobile phone is determined by the time cycle of new consignments. The premium on any brand of phone is based on its perception of ‘newness’ or ‘cutting edge technology’. The traders who are able to win the auction in the first round extract a higher profit during the first two weeks of release, when they sell the new models at a premium. Subsequently, the unsold phones are sub-auctioned or distributed to retailers, but at progressively declining prices until the next consignment arrives at the market.

As the value of the phone manufactured in the same batch declines with time, there is a rush among trader to bid in the first round. Monetary value is eroded with time, and wholesalers sell the products at a much cheaper price before the arrival of the second container. Retail traders source in bulk and mobile phones that are sourced in the third or fourth container are either sold at throwaway prices or dismantled for use of parts at a later stage.

The practices of Tiruchengode entrepreneurs and Karol Bagh’s mobile traders illustrate the possibility of constituting the commons as shared spaces and as spaces of collaboration to redefine the meaning of value, property, and boundary. The economic and physical spaces at both places were constituted with porous boundaries. Commoning practices move beyond the narrow agenda of surplus generation and individuality to emphasize a collective project of co-producing value and property. In the process of co-producing such spaces, actors in the two spaces learnt their skills and innovated through sharing and collaboration.

As much as they mimic and modify other designs, their designs too can be improvised and altered continuously, blurring the boundaries of individual property. The two spaces, like a painting without a frame, enables the creation of different genres and themes of painting. This is where the contour and configuration of political spaces becomes critical.

 

Expanding the boundaries or redrawing the boundaries is a multi-faceted project that questions the ways in which we produce our city spaces, our thinking and generating knowledge. This project is not only about collective action of defending lakes or parks, but more about destabilizing the boundary through a multifaceted process, including ways of reading the physical and economic spaces of the city. The project of commons for a transformative urban future is also about new ways of producing knowledge on the city. Whether it is physical space or intellectual space, the authorship culture dominates and which in fact, has served as a potential tool to exclude and capture material and symbolic resources affecting a majority of urban inhabitants.

 

Footnotes:

1. M. Ranganathan in a webinar presentation on ‘Confronting Caste: Caste and the City’ (2020) argues how ecological commons is mobilized to exclude the poor, who are seen as encroachers: https://youtu.be/43JahA9DsS8. See also R. D’Souza, ‘Contested Governance of Wetlands in Bangalore’, Jindal Journal of Public Policy 3(1), 2018, pp. 71-80.

2. S. Stravides, Common Space: The City as Commons. Zed Books, London, 2016.

3. M. Korinberger and C. Borche, Urban Commons: Rethinking the City. Routledge, London, 2015.

4. S. Stravides, 2016, op. cit.

5. B. Raman, Field Notes, June to September 2011 and May 2012, Suburban Project.

6. Yann Tastevin, From Ox-Carts to Borewell Rigs: Maintenance, Manufacture and Innovation in Tiruchengode, Suburbin Project Report, 2015.

7. B. Raman, ‘Practices of the City and Projections of a Transparent Plan’, SARAI Reader 9, Projections, CSDS, New Delhi, 2013.

8. B. Raman, ‘Patterns and Practices of Spatial Transformation in Non-Metros: The Case of Tiruchengode’, Economic and Political Weekly 49(22), 31 May 2014, pp. 46-54.

9. Interview with mobile repairer M. Yusuf, Mobile Store, Mobile Repair, Ritche Street, Chennai, 2013.