A globally distributed Disney movie; an India-made series viewable on Amazon.com the world over; transnational brands and local franchises branded with transnational markers; local chains and the anonymous glass-and-metal design of urban malls the world over: the Garuda Mall in central Bangalore is at once a local icon and meeting point and a blazon of the city’s world-class ambitions. It is also, like many of of the projects of developer Uday Garudachar and his company Maverick Holdings, rife with accusations of bribery, drainage encroachment, violation of the terms of its private/public partnership agreement, and the other corruption plots that typically accompany ‘world-class’ developments. 1  Such narratives are especially fraught when the company owner has aspirations for public office: Garuda is also an aspiring rightwing politician—a member of the BJP that has contested elections in north India, so far unsuccessfully. Like many developers in India and elsewhere, Maverick works closely with local authorities (the BBMP in Bangalore) while drawing on equity from a range of global private investors; they are equally adept at making allies in the local slum communities their projects will displace. And, like the activists who oppose their practices and fight with them over property rights and the proper use of public land and public funds, they wield their own corruption narratives nearly as effectively. Slum-dwellers living adjacent to the massive Maverick construction site for ‘Garuda Center’ in Koramangala, Bangalore, speak with envy of the residents relocated to new housing the construction, and argues that it is not a land grab but a good deal; the foreman of the site speaks glowingly of his boss and the job he has. However, according to local activists, the new tenements are abysmal products of a corrupt deal; the land was illicitly converted from a slum that grew on common grazing lands; the deal went through because of discrimination against the Dalit-majority population; and the foreman is a corrupt Dalit leader bought out by the developer.