Will not speed by: Contestations around India’s first high-speed rail project

Focusing on three core issues of cost, land and governance, this essay illuminates the politics of both making and resisting mega projects such as India’s proposed high-speed railway networks. Using as case study the bullet train that is meant to run from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, it reveals how such large infrastructural initiatives hoping to link multiple social, economic and political geographies pose distinct challenges for local communities to cope with their consequences and resist marginalization. Equally, it explores how such projects perpetuate vulnerabilities and uncertainties not just for the impacted groups but also for the state trying to implement them.