From bawazainab79 at gmail.com Sun Aug 2 11:56:23 2009 From: bawazainab79 at gmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 11:56:23 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] [Reader-list] On Delhi In-Reply-To: <537327.23275.qm@web57207.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <4A7414A5.8090504@ranadasgupta.com> <537327.23275.qm@web57207.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Dear Rana, Thanks for posting your piece on the reader-list. I read it a few days ago and was very disturbed. Your essay, coupled with a few experiences in the days preceeding to my reading of your essay, lead me to question the notion of "city". I want to initiate a discussion along this lines and on tangents related. On first reading of your piece, the picture of Delhi that I got was of this dark, gory, vulgar monster. The city appeared like this abyss, this morass, in which you just sink. I am not in denial of the incidents and some of the trends that you have described and explained in your piece. I am wondering about how we are constructing narratives of the city. The issue of how we narrate the city has been of particular concern to me in recent times because I think that the manner in which we describe the city and the experience of the city has serious repercussions for the city itself - dark, gory city and subsequently, the practice of the city as this dangerous space which you do not venture out in the nights or certain nooks and crannies of the city that you cannot go to because you perceive them to be dangerous. About 5 years ago, I had organized night walks during the month of Ramzaan in Bombay where we would walk in the night through areas like Dongri, Bhendi Bazaar, Nagpada, Foras Road and all the alleys and nooks that we otherwise don't visit. On two of the three walks I organized, the people who came told me how they have never visited Dongri earlier, even though they have been resident in the city for many years, because of the fear that Dongri is this place where people roam around with knives and swords and a riot happens at the drop of the hat. One reason for this perception of Dongri is the way in which the area has been projected in films, in writing and even in the narratives of the 1992-93 riots. I think about Delhi and how I used to hate being in Delhi during my initial visits. I was told that Delhi is a city of thugs and that everyone is out to loot you. My own behaviour towards auto drivers was subsequently conditioned by this perception. Delhi always appeared as this dangerous city in which I will be looted at any moment and so, I was always on my guard. At some point, as I frequently visited the city and lived in different neighbourhoods and areas, more out of compulsions and accidents rather than choice, and then I discovered my own Delhi - the hustle bustle at Tees Hazari bus stand and other bus stations where people are flowing in and out like water, the experience of refugee friends from Burma who hated the city and rightfully so for the attitude of the Delhiites towards them, the affluence of South Delhi, and a particular warmth and comfort of Old Delhi which really made me love the city despite all my antagonisms and anguish. It is these varied aspirations, and often times very contradictory and ambiguous desires and aspirations, that prevail among different people in the city that I am now seeking to know and narrate. I think back of my own writings on Bombay between 2003 and 2006 and how I have lost not only my words, but also my romance with the city following my move to Bangalore. I lived Bombay and loved it through the very mundane acts of living. I talked to people who had stories to tell that not only intrigued me about their lives, but also got me to think of the city, of aspiration, of desires and how people invest themselves in the city. After the move to Bangalore, my engagements in Bangalore with groups and individuals who were fighting about a city (perceived) to be lost and a city emerging from the ruins and the ghosts of the devastated present into a dark and dilapidated future, shaped a good deal of my own understanding of cities. I have subsequently lost my relationships with both Bangalore and Bombay. It is only now, through acts such as eating food with friends who live in rehabilitation housing and squatter settlements in Mumbai, listening to their everyday experiences of the city, that I am reconstructing my own self and my relationship with Bombay. The reconstruction is continuously confronted with anxities and fears about a city that is losing itself to "capital". And yet, the stories I come across each day, remind me that we are all invested in this capital and more so in the city. We are invested in the city through our emotions, aspirations, desires, hatred, anxieties and we are embedded in the capital, in different ways. I feel like owning a car now because I see that as the only way in which I can attain my freedom in Bangalore and move around the city at nights - a city with dismal public transport and with its citizens living in a certain fear of the night as a time in the life of the everyday city which is unsafe. I am invested in the trajectories of capital, in the city and the production and reproduction of space in the city in ways such as these. I apologize if my thoughts are too rambling and not totally coherent. But I am really thinking about whether we have lost the romance with the city and whether the loss is really real and whether now is a moment when we think about cities and how we tell stories. And I don't mean to ask this question in a sense of drawing any binaries between the dark, vulgar capitalist city and the mundane, everyday life of the city laced with figures and characters who are either beyond the reach of capital or who will be put to death by the noose of capital. I am really asking for a serious rethinking of narratives and how these narratives lead us to not only tell the city, but also to imagine and practice the city and for our own relationships with our own cities (whether these are places or non-places or homes or destinations or spaces of demolition, eviction, violence ...). ... Still thoughtful, (mildly nostalgic about my Tees Hazari bus station which is my relationship with Delhi), and in a spirit of conversation, Zainab -- Zainab Bawa Ph.D. Student and Independent Researcher Gaining Ground ... http://zainab.freecrow.org http://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories-of-the-internet/transparency-and-politics -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090802/92c4d2bf/attachment.html From bawazainab79 at gmail.com Mon Aug 3 20:53:22 2009 From: bawazainab79 at gmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 20:53:22 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] [Reader-list] On Delhi In-Reply-To: <65be9bf40908030043r5a9ec7e2tba7dabc5b1107a7f@mail.gmail.com> References: <4A6FFCEF.90205@ranadasgupta.com> <3ef603b70907290338n186e9077iae894bf724fed429@mail.gmail.com> <65be9bf40907290441t50fcf5aan650d4f5f76494293@mail.gmail.com> <4A7194A8.70200@ranadasgupta.com> <65be9bf40907300837o7c532fadx92608edbc143d2a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A7416D8.9070501@ranadasgupta.com> <65be9bf40908030043r5a9ec7e2tba7dabc5b1107a7f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Dear Pheeta, Taha and all, Thanks for continuing the conversation. A few things which come to my mind and I will put them down as I am still thinking: I think there are a few crises that we are facing today, one of them that I can immediately think of is a crises of conceptual handles - do old concepts and categories apply to our present conditions? Even when we think of class, does class exist in the same manner today as Marx spoke of? What class do I bracket a poor landlord and a rich tenant? What class does the municipal clerk belong to given that he also runs a cinema hall in some suburb of Mumbai on land that he was given as a gift? Or for that matter, figures such as junior municipal officers who run chit funds and are involved in complicated financial circuits? How does the category of class account for the several figures I meet each day who imbibe in them more roles than one and who are involved with the city in ways more than one? I think the second crises is that of our understanding of capital and its relationship with the city. And here, I think Taha's point is very valuable - how do we narrate land and money? Are land and money vulgar, naked and ruining the city? I am surrounded by talks of speculation each day. People talk of homes, of assets, of value and of property in various ambiguous ways. My friends from rehab colonies ask me: Is the house where you live in yours or have you rented it? I answer: I lived in a rented apartment. They say: Really? You should just go and get your own place. I say: How can I? EMIs are very expensive to pay and bank loans are like highway robberies. They say: Still, you should manage. It is very important to have your own place. Here, the interpretation of house as place causes me to think about land, about property and all those related categories and then also about the relationships between real estate, land, property, cities and people. I also think about the notion of justice that is implicit in Rana's piece and the implications that our understanding of justice and of law have not only for the city, but also for practice and for theoretical formulations. About a year ago, I began to sit in on the hearings of a land acquisition case in the Karnataka High Court. The case was filed by tenant traders against the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation (BMRC). Some of the traders had been served with notices for vacating the properties they had occupied and some of the other traders were part of the case because they feared that significant chunks of their properties would be acquired if the metro is constructed overground on their road. In the beginning, I was agitated during each hearing because the case would not proceed and it appeared that the traders were most likely to lose the case. But as the hearings proceeded, we found that the judges were as confused about new legalities, about institutions such as BMRC which are both public and private, and about the status of such public-private institutions. In the subsequent hearings, the judges would openly articulate their confusions. But even as they articulated their confusions, they kept gesturing to each of the contesting parties to produce evidences in particular directions so that they may be able to pronounce a judgment. My experience of these sittings has caused me to re-think the notion of justice. In certain circumstances, the court may not be a dispenser of justice, but that the judges act as arbitrators. What makes their arbitration acceptable and legitimate is our belief that they are operating on the basis of the constitution and other sources of law that we accept as legitimate, absolute and neutral. Yet, the decision of the judges is not final and binding. In the case of land and property, it appears that even after the dispensation of justice and arbitration, there are numerous factors which create/impede the articulation and fulfillment of claims by various claimants. While judgments have been issued on this particular case of the tenant traders, the traders have not given up. They continue to expand their networks of outreach in order to fulfill their claims. I think a final point for today's amblings takes from the above and concerns our own understanding of change and transformation. Certain narratives produce the understanding of change and transformation in terms of a revolution, the film Rang De Basanti comes to my mind here. But the question is whether a revolution is the only means of attaining change and transformation? I think here of Asef Bayat's interesting account of quiet revolution of the ordinary. Bayat talks of how the 1970s revolution in Iran was not, contrary to popular thinking, an expression of outrage of the poor. The poor in fact had their likes for the Shah and they did not necessarily identify with the revolution partly because they did not see how the revolution would serve their daily needs. I also think of Solomon Benjamin's recent piece in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR) on "occupancy urbanism", AbdouMaliq Simon's writing on the "periphery" in the Sarai Frontiers Reader - I continue to probe what change and transformation mean and how they are achieved? There will perhaps be no clear cut answer, but then surely, there will not be one answer only. .... Zainab On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 1:13 PM, Taha Mehmood <2tahamehmood at googlemail.com>wrote: > Dear Rana and Dear All, > > Please forgive me for not making myself clear. > > The point is perhaps, not just limited to real estate, or necessarily > to your text alone but perhaps my reference was to a broader issue - > > Which perhaps relates to creation of narratives about city like Delhi. > > The point being why in the last many decades we, the reader are > prompted to approach the idea of Delhi through what seem like a ready > made stock of characters and stock notions? > > Land being just one of them. > > Let me take this opportunity to expand my thoughts concerning > representation of the idea of Delhi. > > Let me also suggest that there is of course nothing wrong in re-using > previously used, previously crafted stock of characters or notions, > that is perhaps indicative of smart thinking, but I wonder if there > can be novel ways of describing a city, other than by simply deploying > seemingly typecast notions and figures like- clogged roads, the figure > of L'enfant terrible, DDA/ Property Dealer nexus, Nouveau riche and > the figure of a cynical journalist etc > > There seems to be no dearth of literature on Delhi in the public > domain which does not seem to have previously relied on these > typification. > > I wish to re-visit these types, more so, in order to think and > reflect as to why is it that there seems to be rather limited range of > descriptions of the Capital city? I am sure there are more than 'n' > number of ways to read the idea of Delhi? > > Why, for instance, the notion of insight or a suggestion towards an > uncanny element which must be a normative attribute of any form of > writing; seems to be conspicuous by its absence from recent > literature on cities like Delhi? Although I do not know whether this > should be normatively included in any and every form of writing on big > cities. > > For the time being, though, let's leave these questions aside and let > us re-visit some of the above mentioned notions, one by one, to > ascertain for ourselves, how different people, belonging to different > eras which were seemingly unconnected through time and space have > attempted to create a memory for us, towards an idea of Delhi. > > 1. Clogged Roads- > > 1.i . A popular travelogue from Lonely Planet series describes the > Roads of Delhi as thus- > > In a densely populated city such as Delhi, even road space is at a > premium, not just for traffic but also for everything else....[which > is ] shared by bicycles, cycle rickshaws, scooters, motor cycles, auto > rickshaws, carts drawn by horses, bullocks, or the odd, camels, cars, > taxis, vans, trucks, buses, and an occasional elephant. > > [ Horton, P, Plunkett, R and Finlay, H. 2002 Lonely Planet. Getting > around- Metro p. 81] > > 1.ii. When Mark Tully writes, No full stops in India, he describes the > roads of Delhi in 1991, as thus- > > ...the streets of Delhi are nevertheless clogged up Japanese designed > cars and scooters...for the less affluent there are only decrepit, > outdated and fuel inefficient buses quite in capable of providing an > efficient service even if the roads were cleared of them. > > [as cited in Waugh,D 2000. Geography an Integrated Approach p.619] > > > 1.iii. While writing Twilight In Delhi in 1940, Ahmed Ali, tells the > story of Mir Nihal a merchant of Delhi who is grappling with loss of > power post 1857 seige of the city by the British. Ahmed Ali decides to > use the following words, to describe an event thus giving us a view > how these Delhi roads could have appeared.- > > The procession passed, one long unending line of generals, and the > governors and the tommies, and the native chiefs and their retinues, > and soldiery like a slow unending line of ants. > > [Ali, A. 1994. Twilight in Delhi. p 105] > > 2. The figure of L'enfant terrible. aka Bade baap ki bigri hui aulaad. > > 2.i. Sanjeev Nanda appears to one, like a postmetropolis version of > Duryodhana. Duryodhana a mythical character whose pride was > instrumental in the creation of Inderprastha (Delhi ) in the first > place. He was also the one, by the way, who snatched the city from its > 'rightful' owners. Thus turning the then Delhi into a lawless city. > Duryodhana's father was blind to his follies and in the end had to pay > a price for this neglect. > > Like Inderprastha is often described as that which was imagined by an > Asur architect called Maya, so does subsequent descriptions of the > city seems to rely on prevalence of surreal structures. But we deviate > here...therefore we come back to this character of Bade baap ki bigri > hui aulaad aka Baba logs aka L'enfant terrible! > > Apart from Duryodhana, I can think of Aurangzeb, we may call him as an > erstwhile inhabitant of the city, who also had scant regard for the > rules and regulations of the day and was rather interested in doing > what he thought 'fit' . In an urban context what he did was no > different from what people in power do now to Delhi which is to > demolish, erase and subsequently construct. Maybe if some future > historian were to write a text on the history of urban Delhi then we > may have more material to quote from. > > However it does not comes as a surprise that when Mohsin Hamid, for > instance, writes about Lahore in his Moth Smoke, he chooses the name, > Aurangzeb aka Ozi to represent decadence. Ozi by the way, was also > involved in a hit and run accident in 1998 in Lahore, like Nanda in > 1999 in Delhi, and he escapes law by coercing someone less fortunate > than him to take the blame, like Nanda through his family tries to > influence the key witness. > > 2.ii. Then in post Independence India we had Suresh Kumar. > > SK, as we all know, was the son of the Defense Minister of India. > Although SK was not exactly killing people but yes, like Nanda, he > appears as a public hazard in the eyes of quite a few. I, of course > refer to the infamous sex scandal which came to fore when Surya > Magazine broke the story. > > Journalist Rajinder Puri, who in 1978, was the then campaign in charge > of Janta Party had this to write about the incident- > > -A defense ministers son, in a defense dealers car, related papers in > the backseat of the car and the car was used for a romantic rendezvous > - was it right that the son of the defense minister should be so > careless about affairs which could imperil the nations security ? That > set me off !- > > [ http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/specials/proj_tabloid/puri.shtml ] > > 2.iii And who can forget Sanjay Dutt aka Sanju Baba but he belongs to > Bombay doesn't he, so what!! for Delhi did we not have Sanjay Gandhi > aka Sanjay Baba to haunt our collective imagination. > > In what Harsh Sethi cogently describes as an anthropology of power, > Raj Thapar has this to write about Sanjay Baba in All These Years- > > -Sanjay, the son, was so deep in the game of governance, if he > wielded so much power over his mother, the story was far more > terrifying that we had ever thought. Indira had over the last three > years, given in to him in small ways, we had thought. > > [ Thapar, R. 1991. All These Years: a memoir. p. 399 ] > > There's also a section in the book where Raj Thapar writes about a > small but significant incident which leads Nehru to ask Indira about > her son's involvement in alleged incidents of car lifting from the > diplomatic enclave which comes under the purview of Lodhi road police > station. > > During his day, as we all know that Sanjay was deeply passionate about > a range of interests- like borrowing farm lands from friends from > Gurgaon to play spanner-spanner-in-the-works , or fly planes at > fantastically low levels so that, being the dutiful husband he was, he > could assist his wife by drying all the clothes hung in the backyard. > And Yes, when he was free during evenings, he would easily drop by > Trukman Gate in his Ford Jeep to evangelize about vasectomy to the > illiterate hordes of Islam. > > And now! during the elections, we had to sit patiently when HIS son, > blessed be his soul, Varun, started to evangelize on the fine art of > plucking hands out of illiterate hordes of Islam if they were to > behave improperly. > > It seems, In Delhi, every now and then, we pay homage to a myth, which > not the myth of Rama but that of Duryodhana. To keep his memory alive > a son has to be sacrificed in the public consciousness. His fall has > to become a fable. > > It escapes me that what's so transformative or alluring or symbolic > about this character that it needs to be mentioned, analyzed and > written about again and again, every time one has to write about > Delhi? > > 3. DDA/ Property Dealer nexus. > > 3.i. Who can forget Dibakar Banerjee's excellent film on urban > transformations around Delhi called- Khosla ka Ghosla, which was > released in 2006? > > The film was about Delhi, about the change in housing sector, about > the promise of a new wealth and the desire to fulfill a long cherished > dream of possessing land, of owning and building a house. And the film > was a story of lives of all those characters which were caught in this > conundrum. > > Did the character of Kishan Khorana, not signify- the corruption, the > impropriety, the obscene wealth, the (ab)use of power, the way is > which these lands are coerced from owners? Did the character Asif > Iqbal not point towards the methods or processes which are employed to > acquire legitimacy of land? > > [ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0466460/plotsummary ] > > But was it any new or was it an old story excellently told? > > 3.ii. Or for that matter one could think of an eminently forgettable > cinematic text like Jugaad, which was directed by Anand Kumar and > released in 2009. > > The film story revolves around municipal corporation of Delhi's > inspired 'sealing drive' and how an advertising agency owner tries to > find his way through a maze of characters involving property dealers, > corrupt MCD officials, to reclaim the land where his agency one stood. > > [ http://www.imdb.com/news/ni0677187/ ] > > 3.iii. At one level real estate for housing is a simple game. It > relates to the stock. Demand versus Supply. If there more demand and > less supply. There's bound to be speculation. Various people will > enter the speculative market hoping to make a quick buck. > > Consider this piece on Delhi's housing situation 25 years ago. > Reading an essay written by Arun Kumar in EPW in 1982 on the eve of > Asian Games in Delhi and then juxtaposing it stuff written on > contemporary Delhi one is left with a feeling as if nothing much > happened in all these years. That the city has not evolved. One > wonders if that is the case? > > - Delhi along with other urban centers of the country have been > experiencing a phenomenal boon in real estate prices since 1977. In > the capital city the increase has been particularly steep. > notwithstanding the existence of DDA, an official agency charged with > the planned development of the Union Territory- > > Later in the essay Arun Kumar adds, > > DDA seems to be bending its rules to favor builders... in fact it is > believed, that most conglomerates of brokers, builders and financiers > in Delhi are overextended and are unable to make full payments to the > DDA for the purchase made in previous years. > > [ Kumar, A. 1982. Economic and Political Weekly. Real Estate as > Business. p 1984 ] > > 4. Nouveau riche > > 4.i. For someone like, Sumanta Banerjee Nouveau riches of India about > SIX years ago, in 2003 stood for, a 'small transparent cocoon'. > Commenting on the then state of affairs, she says, 'that small > transparent cocoon of the Indian Big Rich is bursting at the seams, > with Ferrari's and BMW's, farm houses and malls, exclusive townships > and wine picnics, mega bashes and show biz weddings. > > It's an incestuous world of a symbiotic relationship, between demands > for luxury goods, and five star privileges, by a minuscule portion of > India, and their supply by the handful of rich manufacturers and > producers who are everlastingly creating newer and newer demands. > > [ Banerjee, S. 2003. Economic and Political Weekly. Better 'Nouveau' > than Never. p 5145-5146 ] > > 4.ii Charles W Pratt. reviewing a Naipaul's book in The Rotarian in > 1991 almost EGIHTEEN years ago has this to offer- > > -Because of industrialization, and the green revolution in rural > areas, a new class of Nouveau riche persons are emerging, and these > persons are exposed to the first time to university education, > comfortable urban life, stylish living, and western influences- > materialistic comforts...At the moment things are chaotic here. > > [ Pratt,C.W. Mar 1991. The Rotarian. Vol. 158. No. 3. p.4 ] > > 4.iii. An article contributed by Local Self Government Institute > Bombay describes the 'new' recipients of redistribution wealth in > 1978- > > The nouveau riche in the country are generally exhibitionists. One can see > them > in the posh residential colonies of New Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta > > > [ Quarterly journal of the Local Self-Government Institute (Bombay).‎ - > Page 20 > by Local Self-Government Institute (Bombay), All-India Institute of > Local Self-Government - Political Science - 1978 ] > > 5. The figure of a cynical journalist. > > 5.i In 1983 -Jaane Bhi Do Yaroon- was released, where the trope a > cynical journalist was used both in an ironical manner by the presence > of two cynically naive photo-journalists who wanted to expose an > instance of builder/politician nexus related to an urban development > project and their calculative editor who makes a bargain in the end > with the very builders/politicians who she was supposed to expose. But > of course this was related to Bombay and not Delhi. > > > 5.ii Then in 1986, just three years later, a film called, New Delhi > Times was released which had Shashi Kapoor playing the character of an > oxymoronically cynical yet hopeful journalist called, Vikas Pande. In > New Delhi Times, Vikas's job was to hold the proverbial mirror to a > rapidly degrading Delhi political and social elite. He is > disillusioned in the end because the power elite do little to back him > up. > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > The point being what do these stock descriptions mean to us? What is > this idea of a city that we are asked to conjure or to interpret? Why > does it appear as if we are persuaded to consume this dominant notion > about the city? What makes extremely perceptive professional writers, > repeat stock notions about Delhi decade after decade after decade by > re-packaging perhaps a torpidity of imagination as a novelty'? > > Does writing about Delhi in a particular manner by using readily > available - types- not reduce, a remarkable city to, 'a predictable > city'? > > Warm regards > > Taha > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> > -- Zainab Bawa Ph.D. Student and Independent Researcher Gaining Ground ... http://zainab.freecrow.org http://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories-of-the-internet/transparency-and-politics -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090803/b165476d/attachment-0001.html From anant_umn at yahoo.co.uk Tue Aug 4 09:34:23 2009 From: anant_umn at yahoo.co.uk (anant maringanti) Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009 12:04:23 +0800 Subject: [Urbanstudy] [Reader-list] On Delhi In-Reply-To: References: <4A6FFCEF.90205@ranadasgupta.com> <3ef603b70907290338n186e9077iae894bf724fed429@mail.gmail.com> <65be9bf40907290441t50fcf5aan650d4f5f76494293@mail.gmail.com> <4A7194A8.70200@ranadasgupta.com> <65be9bf40907300837o7c532fadx92608edbc143d2a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A7416D8.9070501@ranadasgupta.com> <65be9bf40908030043r5a9ec7e2tba7dabc5b1107a7f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <8d5106ed0908032104y2157ad7bgdf51985c9e9127c@mail.gmail.com> 2009/8/3 Zainab Bawa > I think there are a few crises that we are facing today, one of them that I > can immediately think of is a crises of conceptual handles - do old concepts > and categories apply to our present conditions? Even when we think of class, > does class exist in the same manner today as Marx spoke of? Zainab, If you are asking whether we can take an essay by Engels on the English factory working class and learn from it how hawkers in Mumbai live - the answer is of course not. But what are you concluding from that ? That the way in Engels wrote about class cannot teach us anything about how to think about or write about hawkers at VT or the way they navigate the urban terrain ? Concepts and categories are not ever available as prefabricated objects. They are constellations of ideas, they bear all sorts of scents, traces and tentacles. You have to work with them to appreciate them, reshape them and allow them to shape your thinking. To me what you describe above as 'crisis' - is a problem of intellectual currency. Marx is not included in Vogue 2009 winter collection. He hasnt been for some years. May be he will be on the cover page next year. I cannot tell. I would be curious to know. But it doesnt feel like anything remotely like a crisis where class has become an irrelevant concept. To some extent what Taha is pointing to is precisely this. Writers have to work with available tropes to make sense to readers and yet aspire to transcend those very tropes. What intellectual, aspirational, emotional resources the writer mobilizes to do that may vary from writer to writer - but isnt city writing as much about discovering the city as it is to be discovered by the city? Revealing oneself so that the city reveals itself. ? The generations of writers and film makers that Taha documents worked from within tropes of the city as the site of corruption and degradation an imagination of Indian cities as inefficient, corrupt, bloated, resource consuming. In the post war period, they located indian cities in a sort of diagram framed by colonialism as one axis and feudalism as another axis. There is a strange ideological continuum here from the World Bank to Chinese Communist Party. In that spectrum urban writers and creative artists responded in a number of ways ...from the peculiar jeena yahaan marna yahaan kind of resignation to lets go back to the village...from inciting revolution to modeling ideal citizens. Taha identifies an important trope. This identification only confirms what Gyan Prakash from one end and the World Bank from the other end have said - within Indian nationalist imagination cities have been seen as 'bad'. There is a decisive shift occurring now. I am not convinced by this line of thought. Identification of trope is only the beginning of the story. What did the writers and artists do with it ? That cannot be judged from within the trope. To do so is like taking one piece of a jigsaw puzzle and trying to judge the entire shape. On a hunch, though I would say that by and large, regional language literatures have been a lot more assertive in seeing cities as avenues for liberation. Those writers had much less guilt about their own location to deal with. In any case, I am glad that these emails landed in my mail box - I am not subscribed to sarai reader. The point to me is not whether or not the city is dark and depressing. Rather, if a writer renders a dark impression of the city, the question to ask is precisely what aspirations is he or she enlisting - what possible worlds is he or she conjuring up? anant -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090804/f049a3c8/attachment.html From veena at doccentre.net Wed Aug 5 14:11:38 2009 From: veena at doccentre.net (veena) Date: Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:11:38 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Bangalore Platform on Climate Change meeting @ CED, August 7, 2009 Message-ID: <1249461698.2133.47.camel@cedban8.doccentre.net> dear Friend, This is to invite you to the third in a series of discussions we have been having on Climate Change in the context of Bangalore. in solidarity, Veena Bangalore Platform on Climate Change * The Good Life in a low-carbon lifestyle: cultural and ethical issues for urban Bangalore by Siddhartha, Fireflies Ashram * Urban Waste: issues in generation and disposal in the time of Climate Change by Dr. Hoysala Chanakya, Centre for Sustainable Technologies, IISc * The Way Forward: Working groups discussion on Transportation, Carbon Footprint of Bangalore and any other. Date and Time: August 7, 2009 (Friday); 4 to 7pm Venue: Centre for Education and Documentation, Domlur RSVP: send mail to priya at doccentre.net or call 9341248784 For directions: http://www.doccentre.net/About/ced-map.pdf Centre for Education and Documentation No.7 , 8th Main , 3rd Phase Domlur 2nd stage, Bangalore 560071 Phone:(080)25353397 Email: cedban at doccentre.net The Bangalore Platform is an open civic space for reflection and action through greater understanding of the science, policy and ethical issues in the context of Climate Change -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090805/e87e5f23/attachment.html From bharati at chintan-india.org Thu Aug 6 07:29:32 2009 From: bharati at chintan-india.org (Bharati Chaturvedi) Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 07:29:32 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Op-ed In-Reply-To: <1FC09EA0-698E-4E15-BA7A-1B7A0E4A8DBD@sarai.net> References: <1FC09EA0-698E-4E15-BA7A-1B7A0E4A8DBD@sarai.net> Message-ID: <5AD47A72-50E6-4938-8B51-7BE0FAD62E01@chintan-india.org> Dear All, The recession has hit a range of people, including recyclers who have been impacted severely by the drop in global scrap prices. Here is an op-ed I wrote in yesterday's New York Times on this. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/opinion/05chaturvedi.html?_r=1 Chintan-the organization I work with in Delhi-has also done a detailed report which is on our home page (www.chintan-india.org) and I can also send it to you, if you like. I am curious to learn about any other information on informal labour and the economic downturn that you may have. Best, Bharati From elkamath at yahoo.com Thu Aug 6 09:14:23 2009 From: elkamath at yahoo.com (lalitha kamath) Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2009 20:44:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Graduate stud opp to work with historians on urban colonial India Message-ID: <429056.12891.qm@web53601.mail.re2.yahoo.com> From: Richard Harris Is there a good, potential graduate student out there who is interested in urban-colonial India? Together with Robert Lewis, at the University of Toronto, I am doing research on the social geography of Bombay and Calcutta around the turn of the twentieth century. Among other things, Robert and I are making extensive use of the decennial censuses, especially for 1901. We are looking to take on a graduate student, probably M.A. but possibly Ph.D., to work with us on this. The ideal student would have some background in urban geography, urban history, or urban studies; some experience with Indian libraries and archives; and/or experience in the use of large databases. Of course we don't necessarily expect to find someone who fits all those criteria! We would be able to supervise a student for a degree in Geography (U. of Toronto or McMaster) or History (McMaster). The preferred start date would be September 2010. If you know of a suitable student, please ask them to get in touch with Robert or me, at one of the following email addresses. harrisr at mcmaster.ca lewis at geog.utoronto.ca Or pass this message on to anyone you think may be interested. Thank you. Richard Harris Richard Harris, Professor, School of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University http://www.science.mcmaster.ca/geo/faculty/harris/index.html H-Urban: http://www.h-net.org/~urban/ (including logs & posting guidelines) Posting Address: h-urban at h-net.msu.edu / mailto:h-urban at h-net.msu.edu (Click) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090805/0778ea15/attachment.html From elkamath at yahoo.com Thu Aug 6 12:23:28 2009 From: elkamath at yahoo.com (lalitha kamath) Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2009 23:53:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: Destructive Construction - Photo argumentation Invite - Aug 8 Bangalore Message-ID: <799155.4615.qm@web53610.mail.re2.yahoo.com> ----- Forwarded Message ---- From: Kshithij Urs Subject: FW: Destructive Construction - Photo argumentation Invite Dear Friends, Greetings from ActionAid Karnataka We are happy to invite you to a unique photo argumentation - Destructive Creation Portraits of people who are giving way for a new Bangalore that questions the current path of urbanization in India with a specific focus on Bangalore . A set of 163 photographs profiling the lives of struggling humans, inanimate concrete structures and cut down trees in the new hegemonic dispensation processwill be on display at the event. All the photographs have been captured by Esha, an ActionAid fellowship holder. A concept note of the whole process that I’ve written will be sent to you in the next mail. The objective of the event is to highlight the fact that the model of Bangalore that contemporary actions are leading to is self destructive both socially and economically however successful it may be presented. As an alternate it will suggest for the strengthening of a democratic process of growth that is informed by both theimmediate and long term needs of an ecologically sound and socially progressive city. D.K Chowta,the former head of Karnataka Chitrakala Parishatwill inaugurate & Suresh Kumar,the honorable Minister of Law and Urban Development, GOK will be the chief guest VenkatappaArt Gallery. Kasturba Road . Bangalore 8th of August at 10.30 AM In addition the following eminent persons with significant achievements in their fields will present their views and interact with the audience and media representatives each day at 11 AM. 9 August 2009, 11 AM Prof. P.V Nanjaraj Urs Historian and Writer 10 August 2009, 11 AM Nandana Reddy Eminent Trade Union leader And founder, The Concerned for Working Children 11 August 2009, 11 AM Banjagere Jayaprakash Well known Writer and Activist Jayaramraj Urs IAS Secretary Department of Kannada and Culture, GOK We will be happy to have you at the event and to have you share your views about Bangalore as it was, as it is, and as it should be. Warmly, Kshithij Urs ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090805/db463a13/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 44064 bytes Desc: image001.jpg Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090805/db463a13/attachment-0001.jpe From esg at esgindia.org Thu Aug 6 23:05:12 2009 From: esg at esgindia.org (ESGINDIA) Date: Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:05:12 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] [Fwd: Source: PTI Centre sets-up panel on proposed EIA notification changes] Message-ID: <4A7B1450.7020605@esgindia.org> Indopia August 6,2009 Print Source: PTI Centre sets-up panel on proposed EIA notification changes New Delhi, Aug 6 (PTI) The Centre has set up a six member-panel to consider suggestions and objections to the proposed controversial amendments to Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification, 2006 which exempts expanding or modernising industries from critical regulatory and oversight mechanisms for three years. An official in the Environment Ministry said the panel headed by J M Mauskar, Additional Secretary in the ministry, and complete its task within three months.The government is facing flak from several environmentalists, social activists, social action networks and NGOs for the proposed amendments to the EIA Notification - 2006 which they alleged"give undue benefits to the industry"."The most unconstitutional feature of the proposed amendment is that it does away with critical regulatory and oversight mechanisms for three years.This is sought to be done by extending to applicants a relief in the form of'self certification'that merely requires them to declare their projects cause no additional pollution and thus open the gateway for self regulation,"Leo F Saldanha of the Environment Support Group, Bangalore said.If notified it would end the environmental clearance system in the country, he alleged. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: esg.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 348 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090806/68b34cbd/attachment.vcf From bawazainab79 at gmail.com Sat Aug 8 12:27:36 2009 From: bawazainab79 at gmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Sat, 8 Aug 2009 12:27:36 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] [Reader-list] On Delhi In-Reply-To: <8d5106ed0908032104y2157ad7bgdf51985c9e9127c@mail.gmail.com> References: <4A6FFCEF.90205@ranadasgupta.com> <3ef603b70907290338n186e9077iae894bf724fed429@mail.gmail.com> <65be9bf40907290441t50fcf5aan650d4f5f76494293@mail.gmail.com> <4A7194A8.70200@ranadasgupta.com> <65be9bf40907300837o7c532fadx92608edbc143d2a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A7416D8.9070501@ranadasgupta.com> <65be9bf40908030043r5a9ec7e2tba7dabc5b1107a7f@mail.gmail.com> <8d5106ed0908032104y2157ad7bgdf51985c9e9127c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Dear Anant, Thanks for the response. I still believe there is a crisis of conceptual handles for not just understanding the city, but also for narrating cities. In making the point about class, the issue that I was raising is that one, while we need to be thankful to Marx and Engels and other grandfathers for producing concepts, the manner in which they conceived them cannot be simply lifted and applied to our conditions. We can work with these concepts, and surely, they can be liberating at some points in time and restrictive at others, but there is also a need to probe into the categories which were used to arrive at these concepts. I find that older categories may not apply in the same way today because certain conditions around us have simply changed drastically. For e.g., the nature of the economy now - it is simply not what the economy was like a century ago or even until 1985. In saying all this, I don't mean to say that the wealth of knowledge and information produced in the past is trash and needs to be rubbished. There is a great deal to learn from that - from the poetry of Marx to the beautiful writings of the factory workers - all of this is extremely valuable and inspiring. But I cannot just directly lift from there and put it into the present when the present is laced with ambiguities, desires, anguish, fear, speed, etc. The other issue is that of 'tropes' and Pheeta's point about who has access to what aspects of the city and also the audiences to who you are narrating the city (and what notions and access the audience has to the city). I am somewhat very uncomfortable with this idea that you are writing for a particular class of audiences and therefore you have to tailor your writing accordingly. I am guilty of this myself on various occasions. But then I wonder: when we talk of transformation, change and revolution in our writing, then is there not a trace of responsibility on us about how we write and who we write? Whether the act of writing itself can be transformative and revolutionary, leave alone the Robin Hood revolution outside? And therefore, even in my last posting, I have asked the question - how do we conceive of change, of justice, of transformation - all these conceptions inform our own actions, including the very mundane acts of writing and talking and the way we write and talk. The issue of whether the people who read us want to have access to those aspects of the city that they otherwise would not know or want to know - here the question again is about the issue of how we conceive transformation and change. The last issue which I want to flag concerns something which I have been thinking about and writing about recently, and this relates to the issue of tropes to write about the city. I have pointed this out in my previous post - we are embedded in the city in more ways than one. And sometimes, it is strange and yet wondrous how we get involved in issues and how we act and react to circumstances. Let me illustrate my point here a little. A couple of months ago, I was talking to Radha. Radha works as a domestic maid and was moved from her squatter settlement about 4 years ago. She has been given a house in one of the 14 rehabilitation and resettlement colonies in Mumbai city. I was talking to Radha to figure out how she felt about the move, about displacement and what value did she see in the house she received as compensation. Here is what she said: "We were moved from A about 4 years ago, given a house in Z. Initially, it was scary and uncomfortable. Then, at some point, I took some loans from my employer and from my paternal aunt and rented out a small place in A. I did not want my children's schooling to suffer with the rehabilitation. So, we came back to A. After all, everything we do is for our children. How I feel about having a house? It is good no? Better than living in a squatter settlement where there is uncertainty and fear of getting evicted every now and then. Yes, we did not pay rent or maintenance in the squatter settlement and now we have to do all of that in our rehab house. At least, the children's future is secure now. We have rented out our house in Z. I visit the house once every year, in the summer holdiays." I assumed from everything that Radha told me that in a way, she is not terribly displeased about having a house. I was about to leave when Radha asked me: "Why are you asking these questions to me?" I said: "I am interested to know about your life, how your life gets affected by rehabiliation and resettlement. Maybe, someday, I will try to make recommendations based on all the stories I hear." And then she said: "Why did you not come earlier, when we are being evicted? At least we would not have been moved!" For a moment, all my conclusions went for a toss. Radha is still ambiguous about the loss and the gain. While on the one hand she talks about her house as asset, on the other hand, her memory and emotions of A as her original place defy a very simplistic understanding of value and of real estate and asset. Radha, in some measure, corresponds with the figure Rana described meeting in the hotel who has the money and yet, who works with certain customs and traditions. It would be somewhat short-sighted of me to conclude that Radha is happy with the housing she has got and she is secure now. Radha is invested in the city in various ways. I spoke to her sister-in-law, Charu, some days later and Charu did not have the same things to tell me. Charu was also anxious about her stay in Z, and yet hopeful that some day, they will return back to A. It is these ambiguities and aspirations which prevent any simple trajectories and understandings of mobilizations, change and revolutions. And it is these ambiguities and aspirations that I find essential to pay attention to in order to understand trajectories and cities. As for tropes, you can continue to use them if you feel that transformation will only happen with some Robin Hood coming and saving the city (and then the question is whether the city really has to be saved, from who, and by who?). Even our man, Mr. Sreedharan, who is helping with building metro rail systems in cities talks about collapse of cities and how cities will crumble if there is no metro rail? Maybe Sreedharan is Robin Hood then ... Saviour to our cities ... Who knows ... Still in love with the dreadful and yet inspiring cities, Zainab On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 9:34 AM, anant maringanti wrote: > 2009/8/3 Zainab Bawa > >> I think there are a few crises that we are facing today, one of them that >> I can immediately think of is a crises of conceptual handles - do old >> concepts and categories apply to our present conditions? Even when we think >> of class, does class exist in the same manner today as Marx spoke of? > > > Zainab, If you are asking whether we can take an essay by Engels on the > English factory working class and learn from it how hawkers in Mumbai live - > the answer is of course not. But what are you concluding from that ? That > the way in Engels wrote about class cannot teach us anything about how to > think about or write about hawkers at VT or the way they navigate the urban > terrain ? Concepts and categories are not ever available as > prefabricated objects. They are constellations of ideas, they bear all sorts > of scents, traces and tentacles. You have to work with them to appreciate > them, reshape them and allow them to shape your thinking. > > To me what you describe above as 'crisis' - is a problem of intellectual > currency. Marx is not included in Vogue 2009 winter collection. He hasnt > been for some years. May be he will be on the cover page next year. I cannot > tell. I would be curious to know. But it doesnt feel like anything remotely > like a crisis where class has become an irrelevant concept. > > To some extent what Taha is pointing to is precisely this. Writers have to > work with available tropes to make sense to readers and yet aspire > to transcend those very tropes. What intellectual, aspirational, emotional > resources the writer mobilizes to do that may vary from writer to writer - > but isnt city writing as much about discovering the city as it is to be > discovered by the city? Revealing oneself so that the city reveals itself. > ? > > The generations of writers and film makers that Taha documents worked from > within tropes of the city as the site of corruption and degradation > an imagination of Indian cities as inefficient, corrupt, bloated, resource > consuming. In the post war period, they located indian cities in a sort of > diagram framed by colonialism as one axis and feudalism as another > axis. There is a strange ideological continuum here from the World Bank > to Chinese Communist Party. > In that spectrum urban writers and creative artists responded in a number > of ways ...from the peculiar jeena yahaan marna yahaan kind of resignation > to lets go back to the village...from inciting revolution to modeling ideal > citizens. > > > Taha identifies an important trope. This identification only confirms what > Gyan Prakash from one end and the World Bank from the other end have said - > within Indian nationalist imagination cities have been seen as 'bad'. There > is a decisive shift occurring now. I am not convinced by this line of > thought. Identification of trope is only the beginning of the story. What > did the writers and artists do with it ? That cannot be judged from within > the trope. To do so is like taking one piece of a jigsaw puzzle and trying > to judge the entire shape. On a hunch, though I would say that by and large, > regional language literatures have been a lot more assertive in seeing > cities as avenues for liberation. Those writers had much less guilt about > their own location to deal with. > > In any case, I am glad that these emails landed in my mail box - I am not > subscribed to sarai reader. The point to me is not whether or not the city > is dark and depressing. Rather, if a writer renders a dark impression of the > city, the question to ask is precisely what aspirations is he or she > enlisting - what possible worlds is he or she conjuring up? > anant > > > > -- Zainab Bawa Ph.D. Student and Independent Researcher Gaining Ground ... http://zainab.freecrow.org http://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories-of-the-internet/transparency-and-politics -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090808/dd85dd57/attachment.html From bhargavi_srao at yahoo.com Mon Aug 10 22:39:08 2009 From: bhargavi_srao at yahoo.com (Bhargavi S.) Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:09:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Identifying Traditional and Responsible ways of Celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi- A oneday workshop for children Message-ID: <670984.49331.qm@web32601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Identifying Traditional and Responsible ways of Celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi A One Day Workshop for Children ( Ages 9-14) Ganesh Chaturthi is the birthday of Lord Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu God.  As we all know, He is a very popular god in India and has become a popular symbol around the world too. Ganesha in different art forms has broken many boundaries of caste, race, religion, and nation and has found a space in many living rooms around the world. He is a favorite among the children too. The story of his birth and the variety of delicacies made on this day are enjoyable for children. Over the last few decades, there has been a considerable shift in our societies across the country from celebrating the festival in a traditional way to a more ostentatious occasion, with little regard to the socio-economic, cultural and environmental impacts. The workshop is aimed at helping children identify the traditional and historical significance, ways in which it was celebrated in the past, the importance of the traditional foods made on this day and ways in which the festival can be celebrated without causing harm to the environment around us. The workshop will take children through interesting stories, videos, making clay idols, learning to make traditional decorations, learning through some games and learning to take responsibility.   Workshop Date: 30th August 2009 Timings: 9.30 am -4.30 pm Registration Fees: Rs.300/- Venue: ESG office Contact Details: Environment Support Group 1572, 100 feet Outer Ring Road, Banashankari 2nd Stage, Bangalore-70 Telephone: 91-80-26713559/60/61 Email: divyarrs at esgindia.org/esg at esgindia.org  Website: www.esgindia.org www.esgindia.org www.newsrack.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090810/32e0201d/attachment-0001.html From esg at esgindia.org Tue Aug 11 21:18:29 2009 From: esg at esgindia.org (ESGINDIA) Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:18:29 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] High Court of Karnataka takes up cases against privatisation of lakes for final hearing Message-ID: <4A8192CD.3020703@esgindia.org> *PRESS RELEASE : Bangalore : 11 August 2009* *High Court of Karnataka takes up cases against privatisation of lakes for final hearing* Decade old case pending for enforcement of Lakshman Rao Committee recommendations revived Environment Support Group's PIL (WP 817/08, PIL accessible at http://www.esgindia.org/campaigns/lakes/docs/PIL_ESGvsLDA_BloreLakes_Jan08.pdf) challenging the leasing out of Hebbal, Agara, Nagawara and Vengaiahanakere tanks to private developers by the Lake Development Authority came up for hearing before a Division bench of the Hon'ble High Court of Karnataka today. The Division Bench comprising of Justice Shailendra Kumar and Justice Aravind Kumar intently listened to the Petitioner's concerns about the potential threat to the loss of the inherent character of these lakes as functional ecosystems, bird habitats and public commons if the LDA was allowed to go ahead with the commercialisation and privatisation of lakes under the guise of maintenance. The Bench observed the critical importance of preserving the lakes, and said "/waterbodies are like amrutha"./ At this point, Mr. Puttige Ramesh Advocate for the Petitioner in WP 1841/2006 ( Krishna Bhat and ors. Vs. State of Karnataka and ors.) brought to the notice of the bench that his matter had been tagged along for filing a compliance report by the Karnataka Legal Services Authority. It was explained that when this matter was finally disposed off on 17 September 2008, it was with the direction that the Hon'ble Member Secretary of the Authority would help in monitoring various protective measures of lakes in Karnataka as laid out by the Court in the order (accessible at: http://www.esgindia.org/campaigns/lakes/legal/W.P.No.1841_2006.zip). However, even though only one meeting had been called by the Authority, it did not materialise in any progress. Mr. Ramesh said that the Court's directions to Government agencies in the Krishna Bhat case was to survey and live fence lakes with trees, and to take steps to protect lakes from disposal of sewage and garbage into the lakes. But this decision had not been complied with, in the least. The Bench observed that such scant regard for Court directions was a matter of grave concern. The Bench also articulated that a High Court could only issue a writ of mandamus, but could not monitor compliance by the State agencies to a writ direction as this was the duty of the executive wing of the State. The Bench also asked the Asst. Advocate General if the State had any intention of complying with directions issued to it by the Court. Further, the Court was informed by Mr. Sunil Dutt Yadav, Advocate representing Environment Support Group and Leo Saldanha appearing as Party in Person in 817/2008, that there were other related matters on the protection of lakes in Bangalore pending before the High Court. An interim direction in WP 31343/95 (filed by Padmashri Zafar Futehally and ors.) to enforce the recommendations of the Laxman Rao Committee Report had been pending before the High Court for over a decade, in fact since 1995. Even though the Court had directed as an interim measure not to alienate lake lands in the BMRDA region, there was weak compliance with this order. *Issuing directions to call this case for further hearing in two weeks, the Hon'ble Division Bench directed that WP 817/08 and WP 31343/95 would be taken up for final orders jointly. It sought a written submission of compliance from the State with regard to the implementation of the directions in WP 31343/95 and WP 1841/2006*. Nandini Chami Environment Suport Group 1572, 36^th Cross, 100 Feet Ring Road Banashankari II Stage, Bangalore 560070 Tel: 91-80-26713559-61 Email: esg at esgindia.org Web: www.esgindia.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090811/e88d94b6/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: esg.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 348 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090811/e88d94b6/attachment.vcf From yanivbin at gmail.com Thu Aug 13 21:48:44 2009 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:48:44 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Govt to roll out Rs 225k cr plan to house slum dwellers Message-ID: <86b8a7050908130918g2a1c858cofcb0f5a968dcf207@mail.gmail.com> http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/Economy/Policy/Govt-to-roll-out-Rs-225k-cr-plan-to-house-slum-dwellers-/articleshow/4883476.cms Govt to roll out Rs 225k cr plan to house slum dwellers 12 Aug 2009, 0121 hrs IST, Sanjeev Choudhary & Bhanu Pande, ET Bureau NEW DELHI: In its most ambitious bid ever to house 6-crore slum dwellers and realise the vision of a slum-free India, the government is rolling out a massive plan to build 50-lakh dwelling units in five years across 400 towns and cities. The programme could free up thousands of acres of valuable government land across the country and generate crores worth of business for real estate developers. The ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation has sought an allocation of Rs 225,000 crore, over one-fifth of the total budget expenditure for the current fiscal, for the entire scheme, according to a senior ministry official involved with the preparation of the proposal that has been sent to the Planning Commission. The programme, named Rajiv Awas Yojana, draws from the experience of the government in housing the poor in urban areas under the ongoing Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), but is different as it is the first sincere attempt to rid India of slums. The government is holding consultations with all stakeholders, including state governments, municipalities, urban planners, NGOs and slumdweller communities. At least 23 of the 25 states have given in-principle consent for the programme, said the official. *Also Read* * → *Govt may extract Rs 10k cr special dividend * → *Govt fund disbursal to get IT empowered * → *Govt to continue reforms for higher growth: Pranab Mukherjee Proliferation of slums has had an adverse impact on the GDP growth for years. Slumdwellers are characterised by low productivity and susceptible to poor health and criminal activities. The government believes that while better housing facilities will address those social challenges, it will also have a multiplier effect and serve as an economic stimulus. Most importantly, it will perpetuate the UPA government’s inclusive agenda, buttressing its vote bank. The programme involves a model legislation at the Centre, followed by separate legislations in states, which would give slum dwellers property right (as different from land rights). Slumdwellers are mostly squatters on government or private land, but this legislation will make them rightful owner of homes on such land. As per the government data, slums occupy as much as 4% of urban India, of which 78% belongs to the state and central government. Since a large chunk of the government land belongs to the Centre, the government is planning to set up an inter-ministerial panel to thrash out the modalities of making part of the land available for housing slum dwellers. The panel would have representatives from the ministry of railways, defence, commerce & industry, shipping and road transport. These ministries and a number of PSUs have large tracts of their land illegally occupied by slum dwellers, although exact estimates on such land is not available. Such occupants cannot be evicted due to political compulsions, said the official. The programme will not only help the government reclaim a large portion, but also provide better housing conditions for slumdwellers. The proposed scheme recognises a group of 15 or more hutments as a slum, against the 60 hutments norm in the last census. This brings larger number of urban poor within the ambit of the scheme. Under Rajiv Awas Yojana, every state will undertake a city-level slum profiling. Under the scheme, a slum redevelopment project can be undertaken by a private developer, as is the case in Mumbai, with financial assistance extended to slum dwellers. The resident himself can undertake construction of his house, if he so chooses. Each slum household would get a mix of the Centre’s grant (maximum Rs 1.5 lakh), along with a 5% interest subsidy on home loan up to Rs 2.5 lakh for construction. Tenants living in slums for more than two years will also be eligible under the scheme. In Mumbai, slum redevelopment by private developers has emerged as a successful model with players such as HDIL and Ackruti City making major business gains through this. “The dream of a slum-free India is very much acheivable,” says HDIL MD Sarang Wadhanwan, whose company has made fortunes in slum-redevelopment projects in Mumbai for the past 13 years. He says a tax-incentive could encourage developers to take up such projects. The slum redevelopment project offers around 60-70% margin, twice that of any ordinary housing project. However, it is fraught with longer gestation period, and requires to build consensus among slum dwellers and manage local politicians and activists. Of the total population of 102 crore, 28 crore are urban slum dwellers in India. Eight crore are classified as urban poor and two-third of them live in slums. Almost 54% of Mumbai lives in slums, while it is 46% in Faridabad, 44% in Aligarh and 43% in Meerut. The government data shows that slums are no longer confined to major metros, but have spread to smaller towns. And the migration to urban centres is only going to gain momentum in the coming years. As per government estimates, urban population is all set to quadruple in the next 30 years. “Urban population will grow despite National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) scheme as all the real job opportunities lie in urban areas,” says Ranjit Mitra, director of Delhi-based School of Planning and Architecture. Therefore, he argues, land should be freed up and town planners need to have more inclusive masterplans. “There is an urgent need to increase housing supply and relax tenancy laws that might encourage more houseowners to rent their homes,” says Mr Mitra. Planners also underline the need for an efficient and less expensive transport system to make housing for the poor viable. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090813/251fe50b/attachment-0001.html From yanivbin at gmail.com Sat Aug 8 23:38:46 2009 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Sat, 8 Aug 2009 23:38:46 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] 'purloining the people's property' :; ; selling state legislature buildings in the name of PPP Message-ID: <86b8a7050908081108q2577d0b2mec28e13dda82a6f8@mail.gmail.com> seems like this is not an extreme example.... The point is ABOUT HOW far would the privatisation go and two sides of it are on http://www.privatizationwatch.org/ versus http://www.privatization.org/index.cfm So a set of 5 new towns have been incorporated which are "contract" towns and in Georgia state of the US in Dec 2008 dunwoody town is the latest *{ Dunwoody Becomes Georgia’s Fifth New Contract City* Dunwoody, Georgia’s ffth recently incorporated city, offcially opened its doors on December 1, 2008. Five new cities—Sandy Springs, John’s Creek, Milton, Chattahoochee Hills, and Dunwoody—have formed in metropolitan Atlanta since 2005 and, as “contract” cities, *have relied largely upon a privatized city government model in which private contractors provide almost all non-safety-related services*. The frst four new cities are all utilizing the same frm, CH2MHill-OMI, to provide all of their contracted services. Dunwoody leaders ultimately took a different approach, opting to contract out bundles of services. The new city has hired the frm Boyken International to advise it on contracting processes, and it has also recently hired a city manager, one of the few public-sector positions in the city currently. Dunwoody will continue to receive some services from Dekalb County until all of its bundled service contracts are negotiated, and city leaders have also approved intergovernmental agreements for county provision of fire and rescue, water and wastewater, and emergency 911 services. } http://www.speroforum.com/a/20098/Ralph-Nader-on-purloining-the-peoples-property Commentary: Strategy and Politics *Ralph Nader on 'purloining the people's property'* Since the 19th century, privatizing public functions has opened the doors to kickbacks, price fixing, and collusive bidding Friday, August 07, 2009 By Ralph Nader Article Tools Print Discuss Every week, Marcia Carroll collects examples of privatization (that is, corporatization of the peoples assets). Looking at her website, privatizationwatch.org, will either make you laugh helplessly or make your blood boil. The off the wall giveaways at bargain-basement prices of what you and other Americans own eclipses imagination. The latest escapes from responsible government are called public-private partnerships and are designed to enable the likes of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to take over highways, meter-collecting, and public buildings in deals that are loaded with complex tax advantages for the investors. Here are two of her latest entries. Arizona lawmakers and Governor Jan Brewer are moving to fill a $3.4 billion budget shortfall by selling state-owned buildings. These include not only prisons, but also the House and Senate buildings. Thats the state legislature, fellow Americans! Metaphor becomes reality! The proposed sale has bipartisan support and will require a leaseback by the buying corporation to the lawmakers with the right to repurchase the premises within twenty years. The Arizona Republic reports that the deal, which includes 32 state properties, would bring in $735 million in upfront money and entail state lease payments totaling $60-70 million a year. We need the money, State Minority Whip Linda Lopez, a Tuscon Democrat said, adding, Youve got to find it somewhere. Well, why not rent out the backs of the state legislators to their favorite corporate funders? At least the public would get full disclosure of ownership. I look at it as taking out a mortgage, practical Arizona House Majority Leader John McCormish, a Republican, told the Wall Street Journal. The second item comes from the Denver Post, which reports that the foreign consortium, auto-estradas de Portugal (Brisa), operating the toll road Northwest Parkway under a 99-year lease, objected to improvements on a nearby public road. Under the complex leasing contract, the company could cite the improvements as an adverse action reducing toll revenue and the number of vehicles using the parkway. This action would presumably entitle this foreign company to compensation from Colorado taxpayers. Last year, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell tried to push through the legislature a complex, 75-year lease of the storied Pennsylvania Turnpike in exchange for $12.8 billion up front. All kinds of tax breaks and trap-door evasions filled the 686 page lease. The Governor was prepared, for example, to agree to pay the consortium of foreign investors if new safety measures or emergency vehicles entered the toll road and affected the flow of traffic. Fortunately, the legislature rebelled and blocked the deal. The Indiana Toll Road was turned over to private companies in 2006. The 75-year lease was for $3.8 billion, which is a little more than the cost to repair the Woodrow Wilson bridge over the Potomac River between Virginia and Washington, DC. Tolls on the Indiana Toll Road have already doubled and are expected to double again within ten years, according to the Dallas Morning News. Last year, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago privatized the citys parking meters. Chicagos inspector general concluded that the meters were worth nearly twice as much to the city as the $1.15 billion that the city received under an agreement rushed through the City Council with no civic input. A fourfold increase in meter rates this year has driven many motorists to residential neighborhoods in search of free parking spaces. Indiana, a leader in outsourcing governmental functions to private corporations, gave the servicing of the states welfare program to IBM. According to the Indianapolis Star, error rates since corporatization have risen 17.5 percent last November and 21.4 percent in December. The myth that corporatization is better, faster, and cheaper is falling apart. This year, the IRS announced that it will end the use of private tax collectors after consumer groups argued that taxpayers were subjected to immediate payment demands by private collectors while IRS employees would offer citizens an array of options to help pay their tax debt. Then there are the corporatized water systems where the companies deliver poorer service at higher cost. Since the 19th century, privatizing public functions has opened the doors to kickbacks, price fixing, and collusive bidding. New depths of corruption were reached in Pennsylvania recently when two state judges pleaded guilty to taking bribes in return for sending youths to privately-owned jails. After reading report after report about the vast, relentless waste, fraud, and abuse arising out of corporate contractors to the Pentagon in Iraq, why should readers be surprised at this domestic scene whereby taxpayers pay through the nose for corporations to govern them? So, youre not surprised. But are you indignant? Are you ready to make sure the politicians hear from you in no uncertain terms, hear from you to stop this recklessness and restore public control of the public infrastructure under accountable government? If the state politicos try to pull a fast one, demand public hearings with thorough reviews of the proposed contracts or leasebacks. Better yet, in states like Arizona or Colorado, require any such proposals go through the open, state-wide referendum voting process. Corporatizations such as the above just pass on to our children the burdens that our generation should have assumed itself to run government within its means funded by fair taxation. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author only, not of Spero News. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090808/e1ab4ce4/attachment-0001.html From geetanjoy at rediffmail.com Thu Aug 13 21:22:14 2009 From: geetanjoy at rediffmail.com (geetanjoy sahu) Date: 13 Aug 2009 15:52:14 -0000 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Required research officer to work on urban issues Message-ID: <20090813155214.14518.qmail@f4mail-235-139.rediffmail.com> Dear All, If you know anybody who is interested to work on urban issues at the School of Habitat Studies of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai then please pass this information. Kindly find the advertisement as an attachment. Thanks, Geetanjoy School of Habitat Studies TISS, Mumbai -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090813/cc997e87/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Advt_Final__1_._for_RA_and_RO_in_SHS.doc Type: application/msword Size: 245248 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090813/cc997e87/attachment-0001.doc From yanivbin at gmail.com Sat Aug 15 00:32:47 2009 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:32:47 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] President gives away National Urban Water Awards 2009 Message-ID: <86b8a7050908141202k184e9d57kd0a8a1767d9d8d7b@mail.gmail.com> http://www.pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=51843 President gives away National Urban Water Awards 2009 WATER AND SANITATION TO BE ACCORDED DUE PRIORITY-REDDY. ________________________________ 20:1 IST The President, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil urged people to apply their efforts to improve service delivery of basic infrastructure in an efficient and equitable manner. She further stated that provision of clean drinking water and sanitation are vital components for creating conducive living conditions for city populations. She stated this while speaking at National Urban Water Awards 2009, function, here today. The President also referred to Gandhiji who emphasised that, “the first condition of any municipal life is decent sanitation and unfailing supply of pure water”. This is an important message and we should fulfill the vision of the Father of the Nation, she added. She mentioned that urban areas throughout the country are making efforts to improve the access, quality, quantity, efficiency and sustainability of urban water and sanitation services. This is being done by redefining policies and institutional arrangements, using better technologies, improving management practices, providing targeted subsidies to the poor and forging new partnerships. Speaking on the occasion Shri S.Jaipal Reddy, Union Minister for Urban Development stated that Water and Sanitation will be accorded due priority under the newly approved scheme for development of satellite towns and counter magnets around seven megacities. The Minister informed that under the recently launched Phase I of the Asian Development Bank assisted North Eastern Region Urban Development Programme which is to be implemented at a cost of Rs 1371 crores in five capital cities i.e Kohima, Agartala, Aizawl, Gangtok and Shillong, 4 water supply projects, 2 solid waste management sectors will be implemented. Water and sanitation projects are also being sanctioned under the 10% lumpsum scheme for infrastructure development in the North East region including Sikkim. Shri Reddy said that the water and sanitation sector which covers water supply, sewerage, solid waste management and storm water drainage accounts for about 73.43 % of the total number of projects sanctioned under JNNURM as on date and 80.81% of the total cost of projects sanctioned. In absolute terms, the number of such projects sanctioned is 340 out of a total of 463 projects sanctioned under the scheme. In addition, 4 projects with an approved cost of Rs 116 crore have been sanctioned for preservation of water bodies. He added that under the Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small and Medium Towns (UIDSSMT), out of a total of 969 projects, the water and sanitation sector accounts for 828 projects i.e which is as high as 85% on terms of the cost, the share of the water and sanitation sector would be 92% i.e Rs 18409.91 crores out of Rs 19833.11 crores. In addition, 9 projects at a cost of Rs 30.03 crores have been sanctioned for the preservation of water bodies. He mentioned that the National Action Plan for Climate Change envisages a number of measures in the water and sanitation sector under the National Mission for Sustainable Habitat which is being piloted by the Ministry of Urban development as well as the National Water Mission which is piloted by the Ministry of Water Resources. The National Urban Water Awards, 2009, have been instituted by the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) with the purpose of recognizing urban local bodies, water boards and organizations which have taken significant steps towards efficient delivery of water and sanitation services in order to promote excellence in this sector. The awards cover six categories: a.) Technical innovation, b.) Financial reforms, c.) Services to the poor, d.) Citizen services and Governance, e.) Public-Private Partnership and f.) Urban sanitation. The Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad (ASCI) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), an international cooperation enterprise for sustainable development with worldwide operations owned by the Federal Republic of Germany are the MoUD’s partners in this endeavour. In the “Technical Innovation” category, the winner is Town Municipal Council, Kundapura for its achievement in the area of “reduction in non- revenue water and improved service delivery” which the city has been able to achieve despite its small size and limited resources. The runner up is Surat Municipal Corporation for its efforts in institutionalizing “energy efficiency in water management” through Energy Efficiency Cell and use of biogas from sewage treatment plants for power generation. In the “Financial Reform” category, the winner is Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board for it’s achievement in “cost recovery through effective billing and collection” facilitated by citizen friendly interface such as spot billing, 24X7 payment facilities through Kaveri Kiosks, 100% metering and GIS applications. The runner up is Karnataka Urban Water Supply & Drainage Board for its effort in “improving water services through financial reforms in Hubli-Dharwad” through effective metering, 100% spot billing, reduction of non-revenue water and barcoded Tap Cards. In the “Services to the Poor” Category, the winner is Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation for its efforts in “providing access to 24X7 water supply to the urban poor” through pro-poor measures such as reduced access cost, network extension in poor areas, simplified procedures and delinking of services to land tenure. The runner up is Vijayawada Municipal Corporation for its efforts in “providing subsidies and incentives for water supply to the urban poor” through reduced water connection charges and monthly tariff as well as delinking of water services to land tenure. The “Citizen Services and Governance” category, the co-winners are Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and Jamshedpur Utility and Services Company (JUSCO). The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai has implemented a State-of-the-Art Information and Communication Technology enabled systems for citizen friendly payment and grievance redressal including payments through Mobile Phones, Internet, Cybercafes and Kiosks. JUSCO introduced a customer centred approach through Sahyog Kendras offering single point interface for customers. It offers service level guarantees to its customers and has undertaken service level improvements based on customer feedback. Periodic compliance reports and third party assessments are also carried out. In the “Public-Private Partnership” category, the winner is Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation for its efforts towards “Providing 24/7 water supply in Hubli-Dharwad, Belgaum and Gulbarga” in partnership with the three Municipal Bodies. The project is implemented in public private partnership mode in pilot areas and has generated demand for 24X7 water supply at city level. Social mobilization and pro-poor approaches are integral part of the initiative. The initiative also establishes willingness of people to pay for improved services. The runner up is Nagpur Municipal Corporation which has been able to demonstrate the benefits of 24X7 water supply in a pilot zone implemented under PPP framework. In the “Urban Sanitation” category, the winner is Kalyani Municipality for its efforts in “Community Led Total Sanitation” which has led to Kalyani being declared as ‘open defacation free’ by the State Government. The merit of the initiative lies in promoting behavioral change and social mobilization initated by committed leadership. The Kulgaon-Badlapur Municipal Council has been identified for special mention by the Advisory Group for its initiative in implementing eco-sanitation technologies for institutional sanitation. TFK./AS/Water Awards09 Following is the text of the speech of Shri S.Jaipal Reddy, Union Minister for Urban Development on the National Urban Water Awards function. Hon’ble President of India, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil, Honble Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Shri Montek Singh Ahluwalia, my colleague, Minister of State for Urban Development Shri Sougata Roy, Dr M. Ramachandran, Secretary, Ministry of Urban Development, mayors and elected representatives, ladies and gentlemen. We have gathered here today to celebrate the achievements of urban local governments and water boards in improving water and sanitation services in urban areas. It is very heartening to see the active involvement of elected representatives, municipal and water board functionaries from all over our country. I would like to welcome and thank her Excellency for gracing the occasion. The presence of the Honble President of India is indicative of the importance that the Government of India attaches to the issues of water and sanitation and will motivate all the stakeholders in the sector such as the cities, water utilities, citizens, private sector utilities to innovate and strive for excellence in the provision of these services. I have been privileged to be associated with the urban water and sanitation sector since the year 2005 and the position which I am holding has given me the opportunity to introduce and catalyse much needed changes in this sector. The number of projects sanctioned for the water and sanitation under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission is testimony of Government’s commitment to the sector. As most of you are aware, the Government launched the reform linked Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission along with Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small and Medium Towns (UIDSSMT), which is the most ambitious and comprehensive scheme in the urban sector in the history of India, in December 2005. The total outlay for the Urban Infrastructure and Governance component of JNNURM which is administered by my Ministry, is Rs 31500 crore for the Mission period i.e 2005-2012. I am delighted to inform you all that the water and sanitation sector which covers water supply, sewerage, solid waste management and storm water drainage accounts for about 73.43 % of the total number of projects sanctioned as on date and 80.81% of the total cost of projects sanctioned. In absolute terms, the number of such projects sanctioned is 340 out of a total of 463 projects sanctioned under the scheme. In addition, 4 projects with an approved cost of Rs 116 crore have been sanctioned for preservation of water bodies. Water supply projects sanctioned under JNNURM incorporate features such as reduction of Non Revenue Water below 15%, volumetric tariff, 100% metering of all connections, creation of water districts with bulk flow metering and district metering areas, 24x7 water supply etc. In respect of sewerage and sanitation, JNNURM has enabled cities to improve coverage of sewer networks and treatment capacities which may not have happened otherwise. This is likely to have positive health and environmental outcomes and reduce water borne diseases which are the main cause of infant mortality especially in slums and localities inhabited by economically weaker sections of society, apart from the quality of water bodies in and around the cities. Similarly in the case of solid waste management, an integrated approach covering segregation at source, primary and secondary collection, transportation of waste to designated site, processing of waste and scientific and hygienic disposal has been adopted. Moreover, all projects incorporate provisions for waste processing facilities including composting, pelletisation and waste to energy and construction of sanitary landfill. Once these projects are implemented, I am optimistic that the cities and towns where they are located will show dramatic improvements in terms of overall cleanliness and hygiene. For cities and towns traditionally crippled by water logging and flooding problems, JNNURM has provided an opportunity to address the issue of inadequate drainage facility in a holistic manner. Under the Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small and Medium Towns (UIDSSMT), out of a total of 969 projects, the water and sanitation sector accounts for 828 projects i.e which is as high as 85% on terms of the cost, the share of the water and sanitation sector would be 92% i.e Rs 18409.91 crores out of Rs 19833.11 crores. In addition, 9 projects at a cost of Rs 30.03 crores have been sanctioned for the preservation of water bodies. Outside the JNNURM umbrella, two mega projects have been sanctioned for two major cities i.e the Brihanmumbai storm water drainage project for Mumbai city at a total cost of Rs 1200 crore and the Seawater Reverse Osmosis Desalination Project for Chennai city to be constructed at Nemelli at a cost of about Rs 1000 crore. Once these projects are implemented fully, it is expected that the citizens of these two cities will get a much needed respite from the problems of flooding and acute water scarcity which they have been suffering for too long. Under the recently launched Phase I of the Asian Development Bank assisted North Eastern Region Urban Development Programme which is to be implemented at a cost of Rs 1371 crores in five capital cities i.e Kohima, Agartala, Aizawl, Gangtok and Shillong, 4 water supply projects, 2 solid waste management sectors will be implemented. Water and sanitation projects are also being sanctioned under the 10% lumpsum scheme for infrastructure development in the North East region including Sikkim. Water and Sanitation will be accorded due priority under the newly approved scheme for development of satellite towns and counter magnets around seven megacities. The Ministry of Urban Development has been in the forefront of attempts to usher in critical reforms in the water and sanitation sector as well as creation of infrastructure through JNNURM and other initiatives like Service Level Benchmarking, National Urban Sanitation Policy, NERUDP etc. We are also conscious of the fact that the phenomenon of climate change will throw up fresh challenges in the water and sanitation sector necessitating the need for mainstreaming practices such as conservation through low water use toilets, water audits, achieving higher energy in water and waste water pumping, recycling of waste water, desalination, reduction of methane gas emission etc. The National Mission for Sustainable Habitat piloted by my Ministry and the National Water Mission piloted by the Ministry of Water Resources which are components of the Prime Minister’s Action Plan for Climate Change will address these issues. Given the scale of challenge we face in the water and sanitation sector, it is imperative that we promote excellence through recognition of innovations in the sector and sharing of best practices. The National Urban Water Awards have been instituted by the Ministry in this context in partnership with the Administrative Staff College of India and the GTZ. Last year, we saw important initiatives like the Kulgaon-Badlapur Municipal council’s hydraulic modeling to transform an intermittent supply to 24x7 water supply, implementation of an underground sewerage project through public participation in Alandur led by the Chairperson, 24x7 water supply in Navi Mumbai and the like. This year, we are happy to see even greater participation and we hope that the search for excellence will gain momentum year after year till we achieve our goal of adequate and safe drinking water to all our people. I am sure that each one of the initiatives show cased under the National Urban Water Awards 2009 programme is a lesson in itself and is worthy of emulation. Every entry is a winner and we acknowledge the leadership and contribution of the persons who have made it possible. I would like to compliment my colleagues in the Ministry, ASCI and GTZ for this endeavour. I hope to see an urban India which is able to provide quality water and sanitation services to all its citizens. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090815/a2574b70/attachment-0001.html From jrajaya at yahoo.com Sat Aug 15 17:27:45 2009 From: jrajaya at yahoo.com (jayaraj s) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 04:57:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] planning sustainable cities- UN report 2009 In-Reply-To: <975376.48920.qm@web110412.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <589980.58556.qm@web110803.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Planning sustainable cities -UN-Report-2009 -link below. Looking at local planning after decades of 'development' agenda.thematic- hence comparative to some extent. http://www.unhabitat.org/content.asp?typeid=19&catid=555&cid=5607 BestJayarajhttp://personal.lse.ac.uk/sundares See the Web's breaking stories, chosen by people like you. Check out Yahoo! Buzz. http://in.buzz.yahoo.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090815/b0370202/attachment.html From yanivbin at gmail.com Sun Aug 16 00:40:31 2009 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:40:31 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] =?windows-1252?q?=91World_Class=92=3A_Arrogance_of_t?= =?windows-1252?q?he_Ignorant?= Message-ID: <86b8a7050908151210i6694c62ay66f9e93e8419f171@mail.gmail.com> http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2009/08/3133 ‘World Class’: Arrogance of the Ignorant Is the multi-crore 'magnificent success' called Delhi Metro turning out to be a holy cow? Hardnews opens a public debate on a touch-me-not issue Dunu Roy Delhi *Urban renewal is* one of the flagship projects of the present government and the Metro has become the iconic face of the "world-class city". Both were projected in all their glory when Jaipal Reddy, Union Minister for Urban Development, was participating in a panel discussion on *'Why Dream Cities turn Living Nightmares'* hosted by *CNN-IBN* late in the evening of July 14, 2009. The minister declared in resonant tones that the Metro in Delhi was a "magnificent success", but deftly avoided the issue of what constituted "success". For instance Phase I of the Metro with three lines was initiated in 1995-1996, to be completed in 10 years. When Phase I was completed in November 2006, DMRC claimed that it was "three years ahead of schedule" (based on a presumed starting date of 1998), although the recent audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India indicates that there was a delay of 6, 15, and 14 months respectively for Lines 1, 2, and 3. Who, then, is to believe for confirmation of this parameter of 'success'? The figures for 'ridership' are even more intriguing. In the original 'Project Report' for the Metro of 1995, the number of passenger trips per day was stipulated as 31.85 lakh. This was scaled down arbitrarily to 22.6 lakh in 2003. Now the CAG reveals that it has never increased beyond 6.62 lakh, that too in 2007 - one year after completion of Phase I. Unfortunately, the general public has no way of checking out the official assertions because the page of the DMRC website relating to ridership figures has been "under construction" for the past two years. This "successful" performance at the level of 29 per cent of target has been reflected in the balance sheets of DMRC. In 2002-2003, DMRC incurred a loss of Rs 8.3 crore. The next year this climbed to Rs 32.4 crore, and in 2004-2005, the loss was Rs 76.3 crore. After that DMRC has been claiming that it makes "operational profits" but, not surprisingly, the balance sheets have disappeared from the public domain. The only oblique reference the minister made to this measure of "success" was to acknowledge that "we have not built enough feeder channels so that more people could travel in the Metro". However, this aspect of 'feeding' a linear system was well known long before the Metro was built, both from the experience of the Kolkata Metro as well as the Ring Rail in Delhi, both built in the 1980s. Then why was this not incorporated into the designed plan of the Delhi Metro? In fact, in an effort to 'persuade' commuters to abandon the cheaper bus system for the swanky Metro, 15 routes of the DTC with 58 buses plying along the Metro corridor, and three routes of the STA with 106 buses, had been curtailed or diverted by 2006. Yet, this did not apparently succeed in enhancing ridership figures to any significant degree - perhaps because the ticket costs were three times higher. *The financial performance* of DMRC actually disguises a couple of interesting features of its functioning - contracting out and commercialisation of property. Thus, during Phase I, the CAG report reveals that 100 contracts for Rs 8,900 crore were given out, while in the first six months of 2009 (with Phase II in full swing over twice the distance) DMRC has already announced tenders for 110 contracts. These cover a range of activities from construction to structural work, maintenance, servicing, electrical and mechanical installation and repair, architectural finishing, fire-fighting, cash collection, road surfacing, and signage. Commercialisation of land has been aided by the declaration of the Union urban development ministry that a 500 metre belt on either side of the Metro line is a "development corridor". Based on this convenient change of land use, DMRC has already awarded nine properties to concessionaires for commercial development, leased out four more for residential development, and is further developing three more on its own. Contracts have been tendered for commercial development and construction of hotels. In addition, DMRC is engaged in revenue generation through 28 consultancies for designing similar Metro lines in other cities all over India, but the minister is unable (or unwilling) to address the issue of how the cumulative deficits are going to be accounted for. However, this kind of commercialisation will definitely lead to another kind of "success". Property prices along the Metro are already beginning to boom as witnessed, for instance, in Dwarka near the international airport in Delhi. Further densification is taking place as more high rises come up on this valuable real estate, such as in Civil Lines, South Delhi, and the flood plain of the Yamuna. This upward growth also increases the demand for services such as energy, water, sanitation and amenities of health and education - all at significantly higher prices as most of these are privatised. In other words, the geographical space next to the Metro lines is taking on a more exclusive character as now only the affluent can afford to live and work there. What is not commonly known in this context is that Metro alignments in Phase I have been changed from the originally proposed ones. Line 1, planned from Delhi University to Central Secretariat through Civil Lines, is the only one to retain its original route. Line 2 was supposed to go from Shahdara to Subzi Mandi and then bifurcate into two lines to Holambi Kalan and Nangloi, all essentially working class areas. But the former now abruptly terminates at Rithala, while the latter has been abandoned completely. Instead, a totally unplanned Line 3 has come up in the upper middle class region from Indraprastha to Dwarka, while almost 700 poor families have been evicted to make way for the gleaming trains. These factors of route changes, commercialisation, and contracting out have also impacted on environment and safety - two of the prominent features of the "world class" Metro. Thus, multi-level parking lots, commercial complexes, and high rises have begun to mar the landscape with consequent adverse impacts on water quality, air pollution, congestion, noise levels, waste generation and disposal, and horrendously pathetic resettlement of the evicted families. Further, the farming out of almost all activities (including key ones such as fire-fighting and signalling) to contractors so as to keep DMRC "lean and effective" has meant that DMRC is unable to supervise the work of the contractors. The CAG report notes that DMRC violates standard procedures of quality control by scaling down of testing requirements, non-witnessing of tests by the company's representatives, non-preservation of test reports, non-submission of testing procedure plans by contractors, and testing in non-credited laboratories. But what the Auditor General does not record is the supervisory structure of DMRC. Thus, it was only in December 2008 that DMRC advertised for three posts of 'DGM, Safety'. Since data is not publicly available of how many workers DMRC employs or how many safety supervisors are there, it is only pertinent to note that this works out to only one DMRC safety manager for about 60 km of track. Hence, while the minister acknowledges that there have been 50 deaths since "the time Metro project was started in Delhi" he does not compute that this works out to 5 deaths per year - and for this to compare favourably with the average national industrial death rate of about 0.1 per 1000 workers, DMRC would have to have at least 50,000 employees. This would challenge its claim to being "lean" with the "lowest people per kilometre ratio". It also conceals the fact that contractors are encouraged to be equally lean and thus work is 'rationalised'. That is, the engineer in charge of construction is made responsible for safety and is always faced with the choice between meeting targets on time or stopping work while adequate safety precautions are put in place. *This pattern of* thinking infests the whole enterprise of urban renewal. Within the claim that the Metro is a "grand" success is hidden the bare fact that *its underground line costs between Rs 250 to Rs 300 crore per kilometre and the elevated line is Rs 150 to Rs 180 cr/km, as compared to Rs 8 cr/km for surface rail and Rs 5 cr/km for bus-based transport for carrying an equal number of passengers. When quizzed on the offer of the Indian Railways to upgrade its trunk routes and Ring Rail in Delhi for a mere Rs 600 crore, as well as the possibility of building a similar bus-based system for an even lower Rs 400 crore* (*as against the Rs 10,571 crore spent on Metro Phase I*), the minister feigned ignorance. This is rather surprising because the upgradation of the Ring Railway and its feeder routes has been discussed since the mid-1990s, with committees set up even in 2002 to examine the matter, comprising members from the railways, the transport department, the government of Delhi, NDMC and MCD, and DMRC. It is even mentioned in the Master Plan of Delhi notified in 2007. *So why did the matter not reach the honourable minister?* Even when he claims that Rs 95,000 crore have been sanctioned for his ministry's Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), why is it that his attention is not drawn to the ministry's website which shows that Rs 45,839 crore have been approved, and only Rs 6,931 crores (15 per cent) actually used? The minister further goes on to say on TV that "90 per cent of this amount was meant for basic services - drinking water, drainage, underground sewage, housing for the poor and not for flyovers or such". But he seems to be unaware that an analysis of the City Development Plans by civil society groups of over half the JNNURM cities shows that only 11 per cent has been earmarked for basic services. He also seems not to know that his ministry puts up data on the website to show that over half the money has been grabbed by the 'developed' states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, while roads, flyovers, water supply, and sewerage account for 3/4th of the project costs. And he is blissfully unaware that ticking over behind him on the CNN-IBN screen is the graphic that shows that 87 per cent of the viewers are convinced that urban life is a nightmare. *What is responsible for this ignorance of our presiding political leaders*? Much of it may have to do with the bureaucratic apparatus that surrounds them and mediates between them and the public. For instance, letters to the minister are never acknowledged, faxes cannot be traced, appointments are never given, phone calls are received by secretaries who are "not aware" of the matter, and even applications under the Right to Information Act are returned with the bland response that "no record exists". It is this same bureaucracy that has created the JNNURM, that has not allowed it to be cleared through Parliament, that signs the legal agreements between governments and multi-lateral funding agencies, and whose will then becomes binding on elected representatives and urban local bodies. In a sense, therefore, what we are seeing is the steady and remorseless dismantling of the democratic structure of governance, and the replacement of the 'corrupt' politician by the 'efficient' administrator; of the 'citizen' by the 'stakeholder', of the accountable 'city planner' by the alien 'international consultant'. The entire give and take of politics, of the balance between the powerful rich and the powerless poor, and of the negotiation over due rights and entitlements, has been rendered subservient to the laws of commerce - if you can buy it you can have it, and the devil take the hindmost. There is an implicit arrogance in this imposed model of 'good governance'. And it essentially means that the 'people' do not know what is good for them, but have to be guided by the resolute hand of the knowledgeable technocrat. And that all that glitters is really gold. AUGUST 2009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090816/d39dbe26/attachment-0001.html From ravikant at sarai.net Sat Aug 22 15:00:44 2009 From: ravikant at sarai.net (Ravikant) Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:00:44 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fwd: metro woes Message-ID: <200908221500.46519.ravikant@sarai.net> ...and the need to look at cost-benefit calculations by shobhit mahajan. ravikant ---------- आगे भेजे गए संदेश ---------- Subject: Date: गुरुवार 20 अगस्त 2009 15:53 From: Shobhit Mahajan Here is something i thought of while stuck in a major traffic snarl yesterday! Hope you enjoy it. The Delhi-Gurgaon expressway ends in two exits in Delhi- one which goes to Dhaula Kuan and beyond and the other which takes the Outer Ring Road. Unfortunately, both these exits offer a harrowing experience for commuters- in one case, the Airport Metro line is being constructed while on the other, a grade-separator (half a flyover for the uninitiated) is under construction. The Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway is a showcase project- world class roads, lighting, signages etc. Never mind that the time taken to make 20 odd kilometer of the road was significantly more than the time taken by the Chinese to take the railway to Lhasa, over some of the most inhospitable terrain in the world. And yet, as soon as one gets off the expressway, one is faced with road conditions which are worse than those in the badlands of Bihar. That the alternative road provided during construction will be narrower than the regular road is expected. But the narrow road itself is in such a pathetic condition with huge potholes and mounds of construction material leads to huge traffic snarls. Add to it the movement of massive cranes and other construction machinery, an occasional stalled Blueline or a truck and we get what can safely be described as mayhem! And this is at almost all times of the day and has been going on for months. Disruptions caused by infrastructure projects are almost always unavoidable- and the logic given is, “inconvenience today leads to a better tomorrow”. However, there are two issues involved here, both of which to my mind are important. Firstly, when the cost-benefit analysis of any infrastructure project is done, is the cost of these disruptions taken into account? I don’t think this has been done for any of the major projects. And, as an elementary calculation can show, this can be significant. Let us take the Gurgaon expressway- I don’t have the exact numbers, but it is safe to say that close to a 100,000 vehicles use it daily. And all these vehicles have to pass through the two exits to enter Delhi. Add to this the traffic for the domestic airport which also uses a small portion of the expressway (and these two exits) and the numbers would increase substantially. Now, having travelled on the expressway for some time, I can safely say that typically, the delay at both these places is on an average about 15 minutes. So, vehicles are inching their way forward (or stopping and inching forward) throughout this stretch. Typically, one can assume that an additional litre of fuel is wasted in this process per vehicle. This translates, even with conservative numbers, into a huge 100,000 liters of fuel worth about Rs. 40 Lakhs a day! You multiply it by 2 years and we are soon talking real money here! This back of the envelope calculation is only for the fuel wasted because of the disruption- you add to it the enormous time wasted by the commuters (and its impact on productivity) and the environmental damage caused by the slow moving or idling vehicles and the cost could become significant. One could argue that these infrastructure projects are important for the future of the city and would pay back by improving the quality of life for the citizens over a period of time. It is no one’s contention that infrastructure improvements should not be done- but it is important to realize that it is never an either-or situation. For every desired goal, there are a set of alternatives available. For instance, do we need a Metro or a BRT or a high speed rail, do we need a grade separator or a slip road, do we need elevated metro or underground metro etc. The choice is ultimately governed by a cost-benefit analysis of the available and viable options. All one is asking for is that when such an analysis is done, the cost of disruption during the construction phase be added so that a realistic estimate to the true cost is considered. The second issue concerns the responsibility of the contracting agency to make available (on a best effort basis) alternatives so that the citizens are put to the least inconvenience. In the present case, as I had mentioned the situation is abysmal. The already narrow alternative roads are full of potholes and obstacles, causing a completely avoidable bottleneck. And these are not terribly major improvements- fixing a pothole or clearing a mound of debris would immensely ease the flow of traffic especially during peak hours. What is more glaring is the fact that during the earlier Metro constructions, much care was taken to provide for a smooth flow of traffic- wide, paved roads, traffic marshals to guide the traffic etc. But in the case of the Airport line, this is not the case. Maybe, as other recent incidents seem to suggest, the famed Metro culture is slipping. Or, maybe, as a friend suggested, there are other reasons. The company responsible for the Airport Line belongs to a business house is above all the normal rules and laws of the land. And what is ironic is that the very same industrial house is running a media campaign about the huge loss to the exchequer because of the shenanigans of a rival business house! -- With best wishes Shobhit http://people.du.ac.in/~sm ------------------------------------------------------- From sguttikunda at gmail.com Sun Aug 23 12:06:44 2009 From: sguttikunda at gmail.com (Sarath Guttikunda) Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2009 12:06:44 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] =?windows-1252?q?=91World_Class=92=3A_Arrogance_of_t?= =?windows-1252?q?he_Ignorant_=28by_Dunu_Roy=29?= Message-ID: <683ba1ca0908222336j1ef0687ew67319cc6b771db7a@mail.gmail.com> *‘World Class’: Arrogance of the Ignorant (by Dunu Roy)* http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2009/08/3133 Is the multi-crore 'magnificent success' called Delhi Metro turning out to be a holy cow? Hardnews opens a public debate on a touch-me-not issue Dunu Roy Delhi *Urban renewal is* one of the flagship projects of the present government and the Metro has become the iconic face of the "world-class city". Both were projected in all their glory when Jaipal Reddy, Union Minister for Urban Development, was participating in a panel discussion on *'Why Dream Cities turn Living Nightmares'* hosted by *CNN-IBN* late in the evening of July 14, 2009. The minister declared in resonant tones that the Metro in Delhi was a "magnificent success", but deftly avoided the issue of what constituted "success". For instance Phase I of the Metro with three lines was initiated in 1995-1996, to be completed in 10 years. When Phase I was completed in November 2006, DMRC claimed that it was "three years ahead of schedule" (based on a presumed starting date of 1998), although the recent audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India indicates that there was a delay of 6, 15, and 14 months respectively for Lines 1, 2, and 3. Who, then, is to believe for confirmation of this parameter of 'success'? The figures for 'ridership' are even more intriguing. In the original 'Project Report' for the Metro of 1995, the number of passenger trips per day was stipulated as 31.85 lakh. This was scaled down arbitrarily to 22.6 lakh in 2003. Now the CAG reveals that it has never increased beyond 6.62 lakh, that too in 2007 - one year after completion of Phase I. Unfortunately, the general public has no way of checking out the official assertions because the page of the DMRC website relating to ridership figures has been "under construction" for the past two years. This "successful" performance at the level of 29 per cent of target has been reflected in the balance sheets of DMRC. In 2002-2003, DMRC incurred a loss of Rs 8.3 crore. The next year this climbed to Rs 32.4 crore, and in 2004-2005, the loss was Rs 76.3 crore. After that DMRC has been claiming that it makes "operational profits" but, not surprisingly, the balance sheets have disappeared from the public domain. The only oblique reference the minister made to this measure of "success" was to acknowledge that "we have not built enough feeder channels so that more people could travel in the Metro". However, this aspect of 'feeding' a linear system was well known long before the Metro was built, both from the experience of the Kolkata Metro as well as the Ring Rail in Delhi, both built in the 1980s. Then why was this not incorporated into the designed plan of the Delhi Metro? In fact, in an effort to 'persuade' commuters to abandon the cheaper bus system for the swanky Metro, 15 routes of the DTC with 58 buses plying along the Metro corridor, and three routes of the STA with 106 buses, had been curtailed or diverted by 2006. Yet, this did not apparently succeed in enhancing ridership figures to any significant degree - perhaps because the ticket costs were three times higher. *The financial performance* of DMRC actually disguises a couple of interesting features of its functioning - contracting out and commercialisation of property. Thus, during Phase I, the CAG report reveals that 100 contracts for Rs 8,900 crore were given out, while in the first six months of 2009 (with Phase II in full swing over twice the distance) DMRC has already announced tenders for 110 contracts. These cover a range of activities from construction to structural work, maintenance, servicing, electrical and mechanical installation and repair, architectural finishing, fire-fighting, cash collection, road surfacing, and signage. Commercialisation of land has been aided by the declaration of the Union urban development ministry that a 500 metre belt on either side of the Metro line is a "development corridor". Based on this convenient change of land use, DMRC has already awarded nine properties to concessionaires for commercial development, leased out four more for residential development, and is further developing three more on its own. Contracts have been tendered for commercial development and construction of hotels. In addition, DMRC is engaged in revenue generation through 28 consultancies for designing similar Metro lines in other cities all over India, but the minister is unable (or unwilling) to address the issue of how the cumulative deficits are going to be accounted for. However, this kind of commercialisation will definitely lead to another kind of "success". Property prices along the Metro are already beginning to boom as witnessed, for instance, in Dwarka near the international airport in Delhi. Further densification is taking place as more high rises come up on this valuable real estate, such as in Civil Lines, South Delhi, and the flood plain of the Yamuna. This upward growth also increases the demand for services such as energy, water, sanitation and amenities of health and education - all at significantly higher prices as most of these are privatised. In other words, the geographical space next to the Metro lines is taking on a more exclusive character as now only the affluent can afford to live and work there. What is not commonly known in this context is that Metro alignments in Phase I have been changed from the originally proposed ones. Line 1, planned from Delhi University to Central Secretariat through Civil Lines, is the only one to retain its original route. Line 2 was supposed to go from Shahdara to Subzi Mandi and then bifurcate into two lines to Holambi Kalan and Nangloi, all essentially working class areas. But the former now abruptly terminates at Rithala, while the latter has been abandoned completely. Instead, a totally unplanned Line 3 has come up in the upper middle class region from Indraprastha to Dwarka, while almost 700 poor families have been evicted to make way for the gleaming trains. These factors of route changes, commercialisation, and contracting out have also impacted on environment and safety - two of the prominent features of the "world class" Metro. Thus, multi-level parking lots, commercial complexes, and high rises have begun to mar the landscape with consequent adverse impacts on water quality, air pollution, congestion, noise levels, waste generation and disposal, and horrendously pathetic resettlement of the evicted families. Further, the farming out of almost all activities (including key ones such as fire-fighting and signalling) to contractors so as to keep DMRC "lean and effective" has meant that DMRC is unable to supervise the work of the contractors. The CAG report notes that DMRC violates standard procedures of quality control by scaling down of testing requirements, non-witnessing of tests by the company's representatives, non-preservation of test reports, non-submission of testing procedure plans by contractors, and testing in non-credited laboratories. But what the Auditor General does not record is the supervisory structure of DMRC. Thus, it was only in December 2008 that DMRC advertised for three posts of 'DGM, Safety'. Since data is not publicly available of how many workers DMRC employs or how many safety supervisors are there, it is only pertinent to note that this works out to only one DMRC safety manager for about 60 km of track. Hence, while the minister acknowledges that there have been 50 deaths since "the time Metro project was started in Delhi" he does not compute that this works out to 5 deaths per year - and for this to compare favourably with the average national industrial death rate of about 0.1 per 1000 workers, DMRC would have to have at least 50,000 employees. This would challenge its claim to being "lean" with the "lowest people per kilometre ratio". It also conceals the fact that contractors are encouraged to be equally lean and thus work is 'rationalised'. That is, the engineer in charge of construction is made responsible for safety and is always faced with the choice between meeting targets on time or stopping work while adequate safety precautions are put in place. *This pattern of* thinking infests the whole enterprise of urban renewal. Within the claim that the Metro is a "grand" success is hidden the bare fact that *its underground line costs between Rs 250 to Rs 300 crore per kilometre and the elevated line is Rs 150 to Rs 180 cr/km, as compared to Rs 8 cr/km for surface rail and Rs 5 cr/km for bus-based transport for carrying an equal number of passengers. When quizzed on the offer of the Indian Railways to upgrade its trunk routes and Ring Rail in Delhi for a mere Rs 600 crore, as well as the possibility of building a similar bus-based system for an even lower Rs 400 crore* (*as against the Rs 10,571 crore spent on Metro Phase I*), the minister feigned ignorance. This is rather surprising because the upgradation of the Ring Railway and its feeder routes has been discussed since the mid-1990s, with committees set up even in 2002 to examine the matter, comprising members from the railways, the transport department, the government of Delhi, NDMC and MCD, and DMRC. It is even mentioned in the Master Plan of Delhi notified in 2007. *So why did the matter not reach the honourable minister?* Even when he claims that Rs 95,000 crore have been sanctioned for his ministry's Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), why is it that his attention is not drawn to the ministry's website which shows that Rs 45,839 crore have been approved, and only Rs 6,931 crores (15 per cent) actually used? The minister further goes on to say on TV that "90 per cent of this amount was meant for basic services - drinking water, drainage, underground sewage, housing for the poor and not for flyovers or such". But he seems to be unaware that an analysis of the City Development Plans by civil society groups of over half the JNNURM cities shows that only 11 per cent has been earmarked for basic services. He also seems not to know that his ministry puts up data on the website to show that over half the money has been grabbed by the 'developed' states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, while roads, flyovers, water supply, and sewerage account for 3/4th of the project costs. And he is blissfully unaware that ticking over behind him on the CNN-IBN screen is the graphic that shows that 87 per cent of the viewers are convinced that urban life is a nightmare. *What is responsible for this ignorance of our presiding political leaders*? Much of it may have to do with the bureaucratic apparatus that surrounds them and mediates between them and the public. For instance, letters to the minister are never acknowledged, faxes cannot be traced, appointments are never given, phone calls are received by secretaries who are "not aware" of the matter, and even applications under the Right to Information Act are returned with the bland response that "no record exists". It is this same bureaucracy that has created the JNNURM, that has not allowed it to be cleared through Parliament, that signs the legal agreements between governments and multi-lateral funding agencies, and whose will then becomes binding on elected representatives and urban local bodies. In a sense, therefore, what we are seeing is the steady and remorseless dismantling of the democratic structure of governance, and the replacement of the 'corrupt' politician by the 'efficient' administrator; of the 'citizen' by the 'stakeholder', of the accountable 'city planner' by the alien 'international consultant'. The entire give and take of politics, of the balance between the powerful rich and the powerless poor, and of the negotiation over due rights and entitlements, has been rendered subservient to the laws of commerce - if you can buy it you can have it, and the devil take the hindmost. There is an implicit arrogance in this imposed model of 'good governance'. And it essentially means that the 'people' do not know what is good for them, but have to be guided by the resolute hand of the knowledgeable technocrat. And that all that glitters is really gold. AUGUST 2009 ********** -- Sarath Guttikunda New Delhi, India Phone: +91 9891 315 946 Browse @ http://www.urbanemissions.info Just Videos @ http://ecoentertainment.blogspot.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090823/6c3f1550/attachment-0001.html From esg at esgindia.org Mon Aug 24 08:45:41 2009 From: esg at esgindia.org (ESGINDIA) Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:45:41 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] =?windows-1252?q?=91World_Class=92=3A_Arrogance_of_t?= =?windows-1252?q?he_Ignorant_=28by_Dunu_Roy=29?= In-Reply-To: <683ba1ca0908222336j1ef0687ew67319cc6b771db7a@mail.gmail.com> References: <683ba1ca0908222336j1ef0687ew67319cc6b771db7a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A9205DD.4010604@esgindia.org> The Metro project is a fantastic case of the the lure of megaprojects being instruments of leaving behind one's political and administrative legacies. In this article Dunu Roy discusses the serious problems caused due to the lack of transparency in the adminstration of the Delhi Metro. This article could be of immense use to anyone involved in taking big decisions relating to how Bangalore resolves its public transport problems. A point not to be missed is that to make the Delhi Metro viable, the city is being geographically re-aligned to generate revenue for the project. A very similar policy is being adopted for Bangalore, where presently 150 metres on all sides of Metro stations (which come every km. or so), the FAR has been increased to 4 - and that without any conformance with the provisions of the Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act, and related legislations. In effect this would make the Metro alignment in Bangalore a high density elite corridor, thus densifying a major portion of the built area without addressing its short term and long term consequences - including the strong possibility of increasing congestion along this very corridor. Leo Saldanha Sarath Guttikunda wrote: > > *‘World Class’: Arrogance of the Ignorant (by Dunu Roy)* > > http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2009/08/3133 > > Is the multi-crore 'magnificent success' called Delhi Metro turning > out to be a holy cow? Hardnews opens a public debate on a touch-me-not > issue > Dunu Roy Delhi > > *Urban renewal is* one of the flagship projects of the present > government and the Metro has become the iconic face of the > "world-class city". Both were projected in all their glory when Jaipal > Reddy, Union Minister for Urban Development, was participating in a > panel discussion on /'Why Dream Cities turn Living Nightmares'/ hosted > by /CNN-IBN/ late in the evening of July 14, 2009. The minister > declared in resonant tones that the Metro in Delhi was a "magnificent > success", but deftly avoided the issue of what constituted "success". > > For instance Phase I of the Metro with three lines was initiated in > 1995-1996, to be completed in 10 years. When Phase I was completed in > November 2006, DMRC claimed that it was "three years ahead of > schedule" (based on a presumed starting date of 1998), although the > recent audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India > indicates that there was a delay of 6, 15, and 14 months respectively > for Lines 1, 2, and 3. Who, then, is to believe for confirmation of > this parameter of 'success'? > > The figures for 'ridership' are even more intriguing. In the original > 'Project Report' for the Metro of 1995, the number of passenger trips > per day was stipulated as 31.85 lakh. This was scaled down arbitrarily > to 22.6 lakh in 2003. Now the CAG reveals that it has never increased > beyond 6.62 lakh, that too in 2007 - one year after completion of > Phase I. Unfortunately, the general public has no way of checking out > the official assertions because the page of the DMRC website relating > to ridership figures has been "under construction" for the past two years. > > This "successful" performance at the level of 29 per cent of target > has been reflected in the balance sheets of DMRC. In 2002-2003, DMRC > incurred a loss of Rs 8.3 crore. The next year this climbed to Rs 32.4 > crore, and in 2004-2005, the loss was Rs 76.3 crore. After that DMRC > has been claiming that it makes "operational profits" but, not > surprisingly, the balance sheets have disappeared from the public > domain. The only oblique reference the minister made to this measure > of "success" was to acknowledge that "we have not built enough feeder > channels so that more people could travel in the Metro". > > However, this aspect of 'feeding' a linear system was well known long > before the Metro was built, both from the experience of the Kolkata > Metro as well as the Ring Rail in Delhi, both built in the 1980s. Then > why was this not incorporated into the designed plan of the Delhi > Metro? In fact, in an effort to 'persuade' commuters to abandon the > cheaper bus system for the swanky Metro, 15 routes of the DTC with 58 > buses plying along the Metro corridor, and three routes of the STA > with 106 buses, had been curtailed or diverted by 2006. Yet, this did > not apparently succeed in enhancing ridership figures to any > significant degree - perhaps because the ticket costs were three times > higher. > > *The financial performance* of DMRC actually disguises a couple of > interesting features of its functioning - contracting out and > commercialisation of property. Thus, during Phase I, the CAG report > reveals that 100 contracts for Rs 8,900 crore were given out, while in > the first six months of 2009 (with Phase II in full swing over twice > the distance) DMRC has already announced tenders for 110 contracts. > These cover a range of activities from construction to structural > work, maintenance, servicing, electrical and mechanical installation > and repair, architectural finishing, fire-fighting, cash collection, > road surfacing, and signage. > > Commercialisation of land has been aided by the declaration of the > Union urban development ministry that a 500 metre belt on either side > of the Metro line is a "development corridor". Based on this > convenient change of land use, DMRC has already awarded nine > properties to concessionaires for commercial development, leased out > four more for residential development, and is further developing three > more on its own. Contracts have been tendered for commercial > development and construction of hotels. > > In addition, DMRC is engaged in revenue generation through 28 > consultancies for designing similar Metro lines in other cities all > over India, but the minister is unable (or unwilling) to address the > issue of how the cumulative deficits are going to be accounted for. > However, this kind of commercialisation will definitely lead to > another kind of "success". Property prices along the Metro are already > beginning to boom as witnessed, for instance, in Dwarka near the > international airport in Delhi. Further densification is taking place > as more high rises come up on this valuable real estate, such as in > Civil Lines, South Delhi, and the flood plain of the Yamuna. This > upward growth also increases the demand for services such as energy, > water, sanitation and amenities of health and education - all at > significantly higher prices as most of these are privatised. In other > words, the geographical space next to the Metro lines is taking on a > more exclusive character as now only the affluent can afford to live > and work there. > > What is not commonly known in this context is that Metro alignments in > Phase I have been changed from the originally proposed ones. Line 1, > planned from Delhi University to Central Secretariat through Civil > Lines, is the only one to retain its original route. Line 2 was > supposed to go from Shahdara to Subzi Mandi and then bifurcate into > two lines to Holambi Kalan and Nangloi, all essentially working class > areas. But the former now abruptly terminates at Rithala, while the > latter has been abandoned completely. Instead, a totally unplanned > Line 3 has come up in the upper middle class region from Indraprastha > to Dwarka, while almost 700 poor families have been evicted to make > way for the gleaming trains. > > These factors of route changes, commercialisation, and contracting out > have also impacted on environment and safety - two of the prominent > features of the "world class" Metro. Thus, multi-level parking lots, > commercial complexes, and high rises have begun to mar the landscape > with consequent adverse impacts on water quality, air pollution, > congestion, noise levels, waste generation and disposal, and > horrendously pathetic resettlement of the evicted families. Further, > the farming out of almost all activities (including key ones such as > fire-fighting and signalling) to contractors so as to keep DMRC "lean > and effective" has meant that DMRC is unable to supervise the work of > the contractors. > > The CAG report notes that DMRC violates standard procedures of quality > control by scaling down of testing requirements, non-witnessing of > tests by the company's representatives, non-preservation of test > reports, non-submission of testing procedure plans by contractors, and > testing in non-credited laboratories. But what the Auditor General > does not record is the supervisory structure of DMRC. > > Thus, it was only in December 2008 that DMRC advertised for three > posts of 'DGM, Safety'. Since data is not publicly available of how > many workers DMRC employs or how many safety supervisors are there, it > is only pertinent to note that this works out to only one DMRC safety > manager for about 60 km of track. > > Hence, while the minister acknowledges that there have been 50 deaths > since "the time Metro project was started in Delhi" he does not > compute that this works out to 5 deaths per year - and for this to > compare favourably with the average national industrial death rate of > about 0.1 per 1000 workers, DMRC would have to have at least 50,000 > employees. This would challenge its claim to being "lean" with the > "lowest people per kilometre ratio". > > It also conceals the fact that contractors are encouraged to be > equally lean and thus work is 'rationalised'. That is, the engineer in > charge of construction is made responsible for safety and is always > faced with the choice between meeting targets on time or stopping work > while adequate safety precautions are put in place. > > *This pattern of* thinking infests the whole enterprise of urban > renewal. Within the claim that the Metro is a "grand" success is > hidden the bare fact that /its underground line costs between Rs 250 > to Rs 300 crore per kilometre and the elevated line is Rs 150 to Rs > 180 cr/km, as compared to Rs 8 cr/km for surface rail and Rs 5 cr/km > for bus-based transport for carrying an equal number of passengers. > When quizzed on the offer of the Indian Railways to upgrade its trunk > routes and Ring Rail in Delhi for a mere Rs 600 crore, as well as the > possibility of building a similar bus-based system for an even lower > Rs 400 crore/ (/as against the Rs 10,571 crore spent on Metro Phase > I/), the minister feigned ignorance. > > This is rather surprising because the upgradation of the Ring Railway > and its feeder routes has been discussed since the mid-1990s, with > committees set up even in 2002 to examine the matter, comprising > members from the railways, the transport department, the government of > Delhi, NDMC and MCD, and DMRC. It is even mentioned in the Master Plan > of Delhi notified in 2007. > > /So why did the matter not reach the honourable minister?/ > > Even when he claims that Rs 95,000 crore have been sanctioned for his > ministry's Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), > why is it that his attention is not drawn to the ministry's website > which shows that Rs 45,839 crore have been approved, and only Rs 6,931 > crores (15 per cent) actually used? > > The minister further goes on to say on TV that "90 per cent of this > amount was meant for basic services - drinking water, drainage, > underground sewage, housing for the poor and not for flyovers or > such". But he seems to be unaware that an analysis of the City > Development Plans by civil society groups of over half the JNNURM > cities shows that only 11 per cent has been earmarked for basic services. > > He also seems not to know that his ministry puts up data on the > website to show that over half the money has been grabbed by the > 'developed' states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, while > roads, flyovers, water supply, and sewerage account for 3/4th of the > project costs. And he is blissfully unaware that ticking over behind > him on the CNN-IBN screen is the graphic that shows that 87 per cent > of the viewers are convinced that urban life is a nightmare. > > /What is responsible for this ignorance of our presiding political > leaders/? > > Much of it may have to do with the bureaucratic apparatus that > surrounds them and mediates between them and the public. For instance, > letters to the minister are never acknowledged, faxes cannot be > traced, appointments are never given, phone calls are received by > secretaries who are "not aware" of the matter, and even applications > under the Right to Information Act are returned with the bland > response that "no record exists". > > It is this same bureaucracy that has created the JNNURM, that has not > allowed it to be cleared through Parliament, that signs the legal > agreements between governments and multi-lateral funding agencies, and > whose will then becomes binding on elected representatives and urban > local bodies. > > In a sense, therefore, what we are seeing is the steady and > remorseless dismantling of the democratic structure of governance, and > the replacement of the 'corrupt' politician by the 'efficient' > administrator; of the 'citizen' by the 'stakeholder', of the > accountable 'city planner' by the alien 'international consultant'. > The entire give and take of politics, of the balance between the > powerful rich and the powerless poor, and of the negotiation over due > rights and entitlements, has been rendered subservient to the laws of > commerce - if you can buy it you can have it, and the devil take the > hindmost. > > There is an implicit arrogance in this imposed model of 'good > governance'. And it essentially means that the 'people' do not know > what is good for them, but have to be guided by the resolute hand of > the knowledgeable technocrat. > And that all that glitters is really gold. > > AUGUST 2009 > > ********** > > -- > Sarath Guttikunda > New Delhi, India > Phone: +91 9891 315 946 > Browse @ http://www.urbanemissions.info > Just Videos @ http://ecoentertainment.blogspot.com > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Urbanstudygroup mailing list > Urban Study Group: Reading the South Asian City > > To subscribe or browse the Urban Study Group archives, please visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: esg.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 348 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090824/176aeac9/attachment.vcf From yanivbin at gmail.com Wed Aug 26 01:27:07 2009 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:27:07 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] State roots for water tax Message-ID: <86b8a7050908251257w106ef0f0id9176302aeb504e4@mail.gmail.com> http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090825/jsp/calcutta/story_11404348.jsp *State roots for water tax* A STAFF REPORTER Funds from the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission will dry up if the state does not impose water tax on the intended beneficiaries, state urban development minister Asok Bhattacharya said on Monday. “Many of our projects are getting stuck as municipalities, including the CMC, do not charge water tax. If the tax is not introduced we won’t be entitled to funds from the central scheme,” Bhattacharya said. The minister got support on the issue from unlikely quarters — the Trinamul Congress, which had opposed water tax. Trinamul’s Sougata Roy, junior minister for urban development in Delhi, said after meeting Bhattacharya: “While applying for funds under the scheme, the state had agreed to introduce a water charge. The commitment should be kept.” Roy said the Centre could allot up to Rs 3,220 crore to Bengal under the scheme till 2012. “But the state has till date utilised only Rs 1,394 crore.” -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090826/386f9f23/attachment.html From sollybenj at yahoo.co.in Thu Aug 27 12:26:27 2009 From: sollybenj at yahoo.co.in (solomon benjamin) Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:26:27 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Public Lecture-Ms. Rajyashree Reddy will speak on "Producing Abject Citizens:The Politics of Toxic Waste Management in Bangalore"-Monday 31 Aug 09 at 3.30 pm at Lecture Hall, NIAS Message-ID: <833161.7654.qm@web8908.mail.in.yahoo.com> Subject: Public Lecture-Ms. Rajyashree Reddy will speak on "Producing Abject Citizens:The Politics of Toxic Waste Management in Bangalore"-Monday 31 Aug 09 at 3.30 pm at Lecture Hall, NIAS National Institute of Advanced Studies > >   > Public Lecture > >   > organised by > Urban Policy and Research Programme, > NIAS > >   > by >   > Rajyashree Reddy > > MacArthur/ICGC fellow, University of > Minnesota > >   > > On >   > “Producing Abject Citizens: > > > The Politics of Toxic Waste > Management in Bangalore” > >   >   > Date    :           Monday, > August 31, 2009 > >   > Venue :           Lecture > Hall, > > National Institute of > Advanced Studies, Bangalore >   >                                                 > Time    :           3.30 p.m. > (tea at 3.00 p.m.) > >   > Abstract : > >   > Bangalore extolled as India’s ‘Silicon Valley,’ > generates nearly 6,000-8,000 tons of toxic electronic waste > annually.  The bulk of this waste is > generated by the hi-tech information technology (IT) firms > of Bangalore but it is processed with few or no safety > precautions by petty recyclers and scrap dealers drawn from > the city’s marginalized communities.  > In this paper, based on ethnographic data, I > highlight the contribution of these anonymous actors to > Bangalore’s IT economy and demonstrate how their underpaid > labors subsidize the environmental costs of Bangalore’s IT > boom. In the second section, I highlight recent efforts made > by transnational development agencies to streamline > Bangalore’s waste disposal practices.  > I argue that the survival niche of informal recyclers > —living off the commodity detritus of electronic > capitalism—is under assault by the modernizing agenda > & the techno-environmental priorities of transnational > development agencies. In the concluding section, I draw upon > anthropologist, James Ferguson’s elaboration of abjection > to make sense of informal recyclers’ experience of loss > and their fraught negotiations with transnational > development agencies. I show that the modern waste > management system that is envisioned for Bangalore > effectively casts off the city’s informal recyclers from > having a substantial role in the city’s new waste > collection and disposal system even as it promises to > integrate them and thus makes them abject > citizens. > >   > About > the Speaker : > >   > Rajyashree Reddy is a doctoral candidate in the > Department of Geography at the University of Minnesota. She > is a MacArthur/ICGC fellow at the University and is the > recipient of research grants from the interdisciplinary > MacArthur program, Consortium on Law, Value and Ethics in > Environment and the Graduate School.  > She holds a MA in Economics from the Central > University of Hyderabad and a Masters of Environmental > Science from Yale University. > >   >   > > All are > cordially invited > N.I.A.S., I.I.Sc Campus > Bangalore 560012 > Ph:   2218 5000 > Fax: 2218 5028 Beauty is just a click away. Find beauty parlor listings on Yahoo! India Local http://in.local.yahoo.com/ From yanivbin at gmail.com Fri Aug 28 11:44:23 2009 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:44:23 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Cities of chaos Message-ID: <86b8a7050908272314p596b93berd1c16d672378e5c8@mail.gmail.com> *Vol:26 Iss:18* *URL: http://www.flonnet.com/fl2618/stories/20090911261808700.htm* ------------------------------ *COLUMN* * Cities of chaos * BHASKAR GHOSE * The structures of urban governance must be set right and fresh professional human resources inducted for lasting urban development. * SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA * A homeless man sleeping on the pavement in New Delhi. A file photograph. There are over 100,000 homeless people in Delhi for whom the government runs 14 night shelters, with a total capacity of 2,937. * LET us begin by putting down some facts that all of us know. There is no city or town in India that does not get flooded or terribly damaged in one way or the other by the annual monsoon, or often by just a spell of heavy rain. There is no city or town in India that does not have power shortages, often for hours on end. There is no city or town in India that is clean; all of them are dirty, some of them impossibly so. There is no city or town in India that does not have a water supply problem. In no city or town in India can one drink water straight from the tap, when the tap does have water flowing from it. No city or town in India disposes of its sewage in a sanitary, hygienic manner. There may be just one exception to all these propositions – or there was, until not so long ago – Jamshedpur. One hears, though, that things are not quite as ideal as they were, and the city is beginning to slip from the high standards of civic qualities it once had. But I have no means of verifying this. In any event, one swallow does not make a summer. But the facts I have put down in the first paragraph are a pathetic commentary on the way our cities and towns are run. The primary cause is systemic. The municipalities and municipal corporations are, for the most part, impoverished to the point that many of them cannot pay their monthly wage bill. What is more astonishing is that although the Constitution puts all the powers to maintain and develop urban facilities in the State List and makes provision to give most of the powers to municipalities and local bodies, not one State has actually enacted a law passing these powers on to municipal or other bodies. Instead, almost all of them have done one thing: for the larger cities, usually the State capitals and others, they have set up urban “development authorities”, such as the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) in Haryana and the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) in Chennai. These bodies have been given powers and some funds to do some development work. In practically every State, this has resulted in a most unsatisfactory state of affairs, with even more authorities being set up, no one clear as to who does what and none of them getting the funds they ask for; and the situation described in the first paragraph continues, even 62 years after Independence. In this respect, very little has changed in urban India; if anything, it has become worse. To compound this situation, there is what has been reported in *India-Urban Poverty Report 2009*, a report brought out by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which has inputs from researchers, eminent academics and representatives of civil society. This is the first report of its kind, and some of its findings are of considerable interest. For one, it estimates that, by 2030, the population in the urban areas of the country will be around 575 million, roughly 41 per cent of the total population of the country. The United States census estimates the population of that country to be 400 million by 2039, so the *urban population of India alone will exceed the entire population of the U.S.* The report says that urban poverty in India is, even today, pretty high: 25 per cent of the people in urban areas live in poverty, that is, over 80 million people – approximately, as the report points out, the population of Egypt. Moreover, most States have reported poverty figures in urban areas as being much higher than those in rural areas, though at the national level rural poverty is higher. But what the report has also brought out is that “the incidence of decline of urban poverty has not accelerated with GDP [gross domestic product] growth. *As the urban population of the country is growing, so is urban poverty.*” Given this, one needs to step back and take a look at the whole picture: the much touted growth in the GDP has not affected urban poverty at all. In the context of the manner in which State governments have made scrambled eggs out of the system of urban governance, this is not a very encouraging prospect. The report has come up with one other very interesting, if not unsurprising, finding: “A substantial portion of the benefits provided by public agencies are cornered by middle and upper income households. 54.71 per cent of urban slums have no toilet facility. Most free community toilets built by state government [*sic*] or local bodies are rendered unusable because of lack of maintenance.” The report itself cites an example of the “benefits” given to the poor. It says that in Delhi there are over 100,000 homeless people for whom the government runs *14 night shelters, with a total capacity of 2,937*. What happens to the others? The report provides one answer. “Outside the walled city of Delhi, private contractors called *thijawalahs* rent out quilts in winter and plastic sheets during the monsoon for five rupees a night. Iron cots are rented for 15 rupees a night.” The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation deserves to be congratulated for having brought out such a frank and realistic report. At least we now know where we are in the effort to lessen, if not eliminate, urban poverty. The effort is more complicated than one thinks. Many feel that little will be achieved by making physical improvements in cities and towns as they will only attract more migrants from rural areas, making the situation even worse. The answer, they say, is to improve rural development projects in the “catchment areas” of each city and town, so that fewer people come to the urban areas for a better life. A key factor in this may well be the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). If it is intensively and effectively implemented in the “catchment areas”, it may have a marked effect on the number of people leaving their villages to look for work in towns and cities. But this is seen by others as a utopian concept. What happens, they demand, to the intolerable conditions in which the urban poor now stay? They advocate a massive effort to provide decent housing, employment (the much debated urban employment guarantee scheme), sanitation, water supply and a steady power supply first to poor areas and similar measures. It is here that the otherwise commendable Urban Poverty Report falters. Making recommendations to improve the present terrible conditions is one thing; devising a workable financial model that makes this possible is more difficult and is key to any development effort that one may take up. The report makes no mention of how the development effort can be financed. It does not even suggest that the scrambled eggs be unscrambled, and how this can be done. Perhaps, even before the report is considered by the authorities at the Centre and in the States, this is what needs to be looked at first. Systems need to change. Municipalities need to be restructured. The antique colonial laws that govern their working should be repealed and new, more relevant laws enacted, providing for a single urban authority, which needs to have sources of funding that are adequate for the tasks in hand. Government cannot be the source of funds. Other sources need to be identified. Perhaps, the urban bodies could be given powers to raise money through cesses and taxes of some kind. Whatever the method, it must be understood that the structures of urban governance must be set right first, and fresh professional human resources inducted. That and only that will pave the way to lasting urban development and the removal of urban poverty. * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090828/aaf5bdd7/attachment.html From yanivbin at gmail.com Fri Aug 28 15:04:58 2009 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:04:58 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Old Bangalore lives on in the middle of the IT boom Message-ID: <86b8a7050908280234s30a24472yd7205b077cb2b765@mail.gmail.com> http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSBNG38287820090828?sp=true Old Bangalore lives on in the middle of the IT boom Fri Aug 28, 2009 1:02am EDT By Ajay Kamalakaranand Sakthi Prasad BANGALORE, Aug 28 (Reuters Life!) - Anyone wondering what the world's outsourcing hub and India's information technology centre looked like before all the multinationals came rushing in only has to visit Bangalore's Basavanagudi neighbourhood. With its temples, leafy lanes, bungalows and markets, the area, right in the heart of the skyscrapers and choked roads of downtown, is the last bastion of a traditional way of life that seems to be disappearing in a booming city quickly turning into India's answer to Silicon Valley. Basavanagudi derives its name from its Bull Temple, famous for the giant statue of Nandi, the mount of Hindu god Shiva. Many residents of the neighbourhood are determined to maintain their lifestyle and guard their heritage against what some like Anand Iyer call the "American-ization" of Bangalore. Iyer, who has worked at a government-owned bank in Basavanagudi for the last 20 years, claims he's never been to a McDonald's outlet. Munching on a masala dosa dripping with ghee at a popular neighbourhood restaurant, he reminisces about the days when Bangalore was known as a pensioner's paradise. "This locality is free of the character-less malls and the night clubs for now," Iyer says. "You can still get a decent lunch for 40 rupees ($0.80) here." Bangalore's rapid development has brought with it many of the ills of modern city life: snarled traffic, polluted air and apparently endless construction. But Basavanagudi offers an escape from it all in the form of Bugle Rock Park, a serene, leafy oasis with landscaped slopes and footpaths that are regularly pounded by fitness-seekers. "It's an unbelievable contrast," says Michael Forjahn, an American who works for a multinational IT firm, describing the difference between the towers and luxury shops in the vicinity of his office and the "old-world charm" of where he lives. "Until I moved to this part of town, I felt that Bangalore was a bit too Western for my liking." In two years, Forjahn has learnt to fluently speak the local dialect and celebrates local festivals with enthusiasm, practices not often embraced by many of the city's Westernised youth. Bangalore's past and future are clearly on display at the Lal Bagh botanical gardens, where joggers listening to music on iPods race past pensioners reading newspapers and discussing the poor rains that have plagued India this year. The 240-acre garden traces its origins to the middle of the 18th century and bears testimony to the city's former rulers, from Muslim kings to the British, who built a replica of London's Crystal Palace inside the grounds. Sitting near a bandstand with a view of the Glass House, 68-year-old retiree Shivananda Adiga is confident Bangalore's boom will not encroach on Basavanagudi, despite its location. "Most of the economic activity in the area is conducted by smaller family-run businesses and I don't see any reason for people to just pack up... no matter how much money the builders and big companies offer," he said. (Editing by Miral Fahmy) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090828/900aa2b2/attachment-0001.html From geetanjoy at rediffmail.com Mon Aug 31 18:45:35 2009 From: geetanjoy at rediffmail.com (geetanjoy sahu) Date: 31 Aug 2009 13:15:35 -0000 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: Fw: Invitation for the Mumbai Reader launch from 6.00pm to 6.30pm at Coomaraswamy Hall on the 1st September 2009 Message-ID: <1251709477.S.14323.60074.f4mail-235-202.rediffmail.com.forward.old.1251724535.63344@webmail.rediffmail.com> Note: Forwarded message attached -- Original Message -- From: amita bhide bhideamita at yahoo.com To: geetanjoy sahu geetanjoy at rediffmail.com Subject: Fw: Invitation for the Mumbai Reader launch from 6.00pm to 6.30pm at Coomaraswamy Hall on the 1st September 2009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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