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Water scarcity has become a permanent feature in Himalayan cities. Despite the recurrent events of the water crisis in Himalayan cities, the relationship between urban space and water scarcity has not received sufficient attention in the urban studies literature in India. Water scarcity is rooted both in the water infrastructure inherited during the precolonial and colonial periods meant for the population of that time and the resulting racial exclusionary practices. In the context of countries like India, or what we collectively call Southern Urbanisation, whenever there is a water crisis, the water infrastructure built during the colonial period is blamed solely for the crisis without considering the historicity of the production of these infrastructures within the urban space. Colonialism is a significant factor in understanding urbanisation in the Indian context, it is still prominent, even more so in the context of mountain urbanisation in India, where many new urban centers like Shimla, Darjeeling, and Murry emerged as the new centers of colonial domination in the second half of the nineteenth century. The urban space of the region is both a socio-temporal space produced through colonialism and a geographically contingent place. Therefore water scarcity needs to be analysed by combining these two factors. In this paper, I will contextualise water scarcity in the context of Himalayan urbanisation where the production of urban space is intertwined with the case of Shimla. The case study of the spatial development of Shimla shows how the urban space in Himalaya and its relationship with water scarcity require a separate field of inquiry within urban studies in the global south.

This intervention seeks to revivify democratic thinking in political geography, through foregrounding and pluralising its material and temporal dimensions. At the same time, it speaks to a renewed centrality and relevance of infrastructure and infrastructural projects in political discourse. The contributions included here demonstrate how an infrastructural lens can offer new insights into democratic spaces, practices, and temporalities, offering more expansive versions of what it means to act politically. Specifically, these contributions intervene in existing geographical debates by bringing to the fore four underexplored dimensions of democratic governance: (im)materiality, connectivity, performativity, and temporality. In doing so, it develops a research agenda that broadens and regenerates thinking at the intersection of socio-spatial theory and democratic action and governance. ; Previous title: Intervention: Democratising infrastructure