Fringe areas of the metropolitan cities have become the most crucial sites of India's hi-tech services-driven new urban economy-as well as its complexities and contradictions. With global investments pouring in, new age smart cities, ultra-modern apartments and gleaming software technology parks have started sprouting up in the areas, once considered as rural outskirts of the big cities. But, conversion of agricultural lands has become controversial over livelihood vulnerabilities of the rural communities. Regional- and state-level political actors have a crucial arbitrating role at this...