Infrastructure imaginaries, past, present, and future: living with the urban flood in Guwahati, India

Abstract

Understandings of what urban flood infrastructure is and how it ought to operate have changed over time and differed within cities. This article considers changing narratives and practices of flood mitigation in Guwahati, India, showing the limits of modern infrastructure. Instead, we find heterogeneous technologies, actors, and relations working to guide unpredictable waters through the “proper” drains through patching, adjusting, and shifting mobile technologies. Drawing on recent conceptualizations of a “modest imaginary,” we suggest that these practices might be shaped by, and help us understand, an alternative imaginary of how the world works and, therefore, what infrastructure can(not) do.