The Digitalising Periphery: E-commerce and global warehousing in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region

Abstract

The coming of a digital revolution in the global south has transformed metropolitan peripheries into strategic sites of global economic activities and rapid urban growth. Bhiwandi, a long neglected peripheral municipality of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), has transformed recently through the simultaneous spatial reach of digital infrastructures and significant growth of industrial and commercial activity. The easing of land use regulations and its strategic locations across national and international transport corridors has seen the rise of Bhiwandi as the key global and regional warehousing destination. From Amazon to Flipkart to Nyka cosmetics – all major global e-commerce companies now compete for warehousing space in Bhiwandi. The present paper, in this regard, attempts to understand, (a) the changes in the national economic, local and municipal land use policies which enabled Bhiwandi to emerge as strategic warehousing site in India, (b) the transformations in digital infrastructure and connectivity that enabled the location of e-commerce warehouses far from their customer and client base, and (c) the local and global networks of warehousing enterprises and landowners in the periphery who further reinforced the localization of warehouses by triggering policy changes in their favour. Using policy analysis at national, regional, municipal, and local levels; and interviews with key stakeholders, we argue that Bhiwandi presents us with the evidence of a digitalising periphery that rides the wave of land use transformations and resultant socio-economic change in the region.