From cugambetta at yahoo.com Tue May 5 01:56:49 2009 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 13:26:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: Fwd: Urgent appeal Message-ID: <218658.31414.qm@web57413.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Passing this on. If anyone in Delhi could reply (not to me, I cannot help! I think to anglingcircles at gmail.com and culture.communications at gmail.com), that would be great. I know some people are interested in moving forward with some kind of action on the matter, regarding the eviction described below. Curt ----- Forwarded Message ---- From: Manola To: jacinthak at gmail.com; arka at logostheatreindia.org; jeet.thayil at gmail.com; cugambetta at yahoo.com; bimla_ekta at yahoo.com; jafkizha at gmail.com; deepak at maraa.in; ranjani.mazumdar at gmail.com; soumyacshekar at gmail.com; delvoelle at yahoo.de; kuttylakshmi at gmail.com; vandu_samy at yahoo.com; sanadas26 at gmail.com; siddharth.narrain at gmail.com; mrityunjay.prabhakar at gmail.com; rishika mehrishi ; sharmistha.jnu at gmail.com; wanderer.amita at gmail.com; vibhuti.np at gmail.com; anirudh nair ; shashiniyer at gmail.com Sent: Monday, May 4, 2009 2:12:38 PM Subject: Fwd: Urgent appeal From: Dhritabrata BHATTACHARJYA Tato I am feeling helpless about the fact that hundreds of people got displaced along the canal from Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium up to Kidwai Nagar in the wake of the Commonwealth Games. As per the displaced people (who are mainly small time vegetable/fruits vendors/grocers, traders), there were not even given a notice in spite of them holding ration card and Election Commission of India's valid voter's identity card. More over they were told that they cannot exercise their voting rights either. When one of the vegetable seller called the EC office, he was told that his name got cancelled. I have very little knowledge about it. But I would like to know the following points from anybody: 1. How come the government decide that some citizens won't be able to vote even if they are legal citizens of this country? 2. Why this canal is going to become a parking for hundreds of cars only for an event that is going to be there only for few days? 3. What is going to happen to the parking after the games? 4. Why are our poor citizens have to move out where they were paying tax (electric bills, etc.) to the government? Could you please do something about it? You can talk to one of them ( Shriram 9810889760, he spaeks in Hindi only).-- Dhritabrata Bhattacharjya Tato New Delhi 9811922952 (prefix 0091 from abroad) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090504/83f083e8/attachment.html From esg at esgindia.org Tue May 5 22:58:59 2009 From: esg at esgindia.org (ESGINDIA) Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 22:58:59 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Press Release: No tree felling in Lalbagh till Bangalore Metro proves its activities are legal Message-ID: <4A00775B.90508@esgindia.org> PRESS RELEASE : 05 May 2009 : Bangalore *No tree felling in Lalbagh till Bangalore Metro proves its activities are legal* Following up on the police complaint lodged with Siddapura Police Station last night against the illegal demolition of the western portion of the Lalbagh and the illegal felling of trees by Bangalore Metro authorities, /Hasiru Usiru/ made a strong representation to Mr. Krishna Bhat, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Bangalore South and Mr. Ramesh Chandra, Asst. Commissioner of Police, Jayanagar, to protect public property and trees from such illegal activities. This submission was made in a meeting that the police held with representatives of /Hasiru Usiru /and Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. this evening. In an effort to ensure law and order is maintained, especially given the contentious nature of the issue, and public commons and property is protected, police have assured that the Metro authorities will not implement any part of the Southern reach of the project that involves destruction of Lalbagh and Lakshman Rao parks till such time the Metro authorities provide documents to demonstrate the legality of their activities. /Hasiru Usiru /has made the following case in support of its contentions: 1. That the order of the Government of Karnataka dated 25 February 2009 has 8 conditions. One of the conditions clearly states that 1135.18 sq. metres of Lalbagh may be sold by the Horticulture Department to the Metro based on a valuation that is arrived at by the Deputy Commissioner of Bangalore Urban. Such an order is yet to be passed by the DC and thus the portion of Lalbagh where trees have been felled and work has started is not yet in possession of Bangalore Metro. 2. Since soon after this order was passed, the Election Code has come into force, it is not possible for the Deputy Commissioner to engage in any such transaction till 16 May 2009, after which Election Code will not apply. 3. Metro broke the wall of Lalbagh on 13/14 April 2009, clearly in violation of the Election Code, and without in any manner securing the rightful permissions required per the above mentioned order. 4. In addition Metro authorities have violated a host of judgements and directions of the Hon'ble High Court of Karnataka, which clearly mandate strict compliance with provisions of the Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act and Karnataka Preservation of Trees Act, which the Metro authorities have clearly violated in the present case. 5. The claim made that the trees felled were merely Eucalyptus and not covered under the Tree Act is a vain one, as Lalbagh is a Botanical Garden and a repository of valuable germplasm and varieties of trees. Even though felling Eucalyptus does not require the prior permission of the Tree Officer in general, an Eucalyptus inside Lalbagh is a special specimen as it is part of a botanical collection. The Metro authorities were unable to provide any documentation to support their contentions that their actions were legal. A shocking aspect of the above order of 25 February 2009 is that the Government actually has allowed for the sale of a portion of Lalbagh! This is in blatant violation of the Karnataka Parks Act, 1975 and Karnataka Parks, Open Spaces and Playfields Protection Act, 1985 and various judgments of the High Court and Supreme Court. The unthinkable act of selling Lalbagh has been achieved by relying on an highly questionable Ordinance issued by the Government of Karnataka on 22 November 2008, thus subverting the due right of the Legislature to debate this issue. As a result, the public has also been denied their rightful opportunity to consider the implications of this clearly illegal and disastrous step to start selling Lalbagh. It is important now to enquire if Lakshman Rao Park is also similarly sold to set up Malls! In light of these issues, we are surprised that the Chief Minister of Karnataka is intent on pushing ahead with the southern reach of the Metro despite such major illegalities. We believe Mr. Yeddyurappa has been wrongly advised on this issue and has thus taken this stand. Considering the protests that are gaining strength and the fact that over 3,000 people have signed the online petition to the Chief Minister to protect Lalbagh and Lakshman Rao boulevard, we hope he will take a legal step forward that is also popular. Leo F. Saldanha Coordinator Environment Support Group 9448377403 leo at esgindia.org Sunil Dutt Yadav Advocate 9845557591 sunil_dy at yahoo.com Vinay Sreenivasa Hasiru Usiru vinay.sreenivasa at yahoo.com 9880595032 Environment Support Group, 1572, 100 Feet Ring Road, 36^th Cross, Banashankari II Stage, Bangalore 560070. www.esgindia.org / www.hasiruusiru.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090505/c2f119d1/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: esg.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 341 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090505/c2f119d1/attachment.vcf From carol.upadhya at gmail.com Wed May 6 21:44:22 2009 From: carol.upadhya at gmail.com (Carol Upadhya) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 21:44:22 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fwd: RC21, IJURR, FURS: 2009 Summer/winter school notice In-Reply-To: <926435313.127971241518576515.JavaMail.wladmin@tss1be0002> References: <926435313.127971241518576515.JavaMail.wladmin@tss1be0002> Message-ID: <4b84e4260905060914g3930fc5ah9b08055db5b1f9eb@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Date: Tue, May 5, 2009 at 3:46 PM Subject: RC21, IJURR, FURS: 2009 Summer/winter school notice To: carol.upadhya at gmail.com RC21, IJURR, FURS: 2009 Summer/winter school notice Dear Colleagues, It’s a pleasure to inform you that IJURR and RC21 of the International Sociology Association are holding an inaugural "School" on “Comparative Urban Studies” in Sao Paulo this August. The School is being organized together with the Centre for Metropolitan Studies in Sao Paulo, with funding from the Foundation of Urban and Regional Studies (FURS), RC21, IJURR and the CEM. It will take place in Sao Paulo (Brazil) from the 17th to the 22nd of August 2009, immediately prior to the RC21 Conference on “Inequality, Inclusion and the Sense of Belonging” (23rd-25th August 2009). Topics to be studied in the School include the similarities and differences between cities in the global North and South; Sao Paulo itself (to include guided tours of the city); segregation, inequality and poverty; belonging and exclusion in the city. The School is aimed at postgraduate students and junior researchers in urban studies from across the world. We expect between twenty and twenty-five students only, and we are offering about fifteen generous scholarships for participants from countries classified in category “B” and “C” by the ISA. We hope that you may have students or know of students or junior researchers who would be interested in participating in the School. We are now asking for applications for places and scholarships. The link is: www.shakti.uniurb.it/winter2009. Here you will find all relevant information. Yuri Kazepov, Jeremy Seekings, Eduardo Marques -- Dr. Carol Upadhya Fellow, School of Social Sciences National Institute of Advanced Studies Indian Institute of Science Campus Bangalore 560012 India office: +91 80 2218 5000/ 5141 (ext) cell: +91(0) 97408 50141 carol at nias.iisc.ernet.in carol.upadhya at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090506/207ed302/attachment-0001.html From esg at esgindia.org Thu May 7 21:35:42 2009 From: esg at esgindia.org (ESGINDIA) Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 21:35:42 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Press Release: Karnataka High Court stays tree felling in Lalbagh and Lakshman Rao boulevard for Bangalore Metro Project Message-ID: <4A0306D6.3030005@esgindia.org> PRESS RELEASE : 07 May 2009 : Bangalore *Karnataka High Court stays tree felling in Lalbagh and Lakshman Rao boulevard for Bangalore Metro * In a significant decision, Justice Shri. N. Kumar and Justice Shri. Keshav Narayan constituting the Division Bench (in Vacation Sitting) of the Karnataka High Court directed Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. to stop felling of trees in Lalbagh and R. V. Road (till Rajalakshmi Kalyan Mantap Juction including Lakshman Rao boulevard) until further orders. This direction was issued in a PIL filed by Mr. Mahavir Ranka and others challenging the ordinance issued by the Government of Karnataka allocating 1135 sq. Metres of land in Lalbagh for a Metro station. Arguing for the Petitioners, Mr. Gunjal, Advocate submitted to the Hon'ble Court that Metro had engaged in felling trees without seeking permission of the Tree Officer. With the permission of the Hon'ble Bench and at the request of the Petitioners counsel the undersigned Leo Saldanha submitted that the Detailed Project Report of BMRCL concedes that such park lands are being acquired not only for locating stations, but to also develop such areas commercially to offset the high costs of the Metro. It was submitted that even though the trees felled presently in Lalbagh are Eucalyptus which do not require prior permission of the Tree Officer per the Tree Protection Act, the fact that such trees are in Lalbagh Botanical Gardens constitute an important collection of the biodiversity of the park. The distressing fact was presented that the government order of 25 February 2009 allocating 1135 sq. metres of Lalbagh to Metro, involved a sale from the Horticulture Department at a price fixed by the Deputy Commissioner of Bangalore. The grievance of the public at large was raised whether Lalbagh can be sold by one department to another, allowing the latter to commercially exploit the real estate potential. The Hon'ble Bench expressed its concern that trees cannot be felled if the land allocated for a public project was to be commercially exploited. It questioned the Bangalore Metro counsels if it is right for a Public Project to acquire park land for commercial exploitation, more so when the commercial exploitation is by a private entity? The Court was referring to the fact that Metro has outsourced various components of the project to private developers. Consequently, he Hon'ble Bench issued directions to the Respondent BMRCL to file its rejoinder and stayed until further orders any felling of trees in Lalbagh and R. V. Road. The stay comes as sigh of relief to thousands of concerned residents of Bangalore, and all those who have cherished the sylvan spaces of Lalbagh and Lakshman Rao boulevard. Over the past two weeks since Bangalore Metro illegally encroached Lalbagh and felled over twenty trees, hundreds of protestors have gathered over a dozen times to urge the Government to review the alignment of the southern reach of Metro. In an effort to convince the Hon'ble Chief Minister of Karnataka that the Metro project can be built in a progressive and long lasting manner without destroying Lalbagh and Lakshman Rao Parks (an alternative possibility that BMRCL has conceded in its DPR), /Hasiru Usiru /will mobilise a large gathering on Saturday, 9^th May 2009 between 8 am and 9 am. *Clarification:* There are reports floating around that we have protested against Mr. Vijaykumar, MLA (Jayanagar). This is an utterly false accusation against /Hasiru Usiru/. We want to place on record that Mr. Vijaykumar has actively responded to our appeals for help as a local MLA, has intervened immediately and with concern, and has always stated that he will stand by the wider public interest. /Hasiru Usiru /has requested him to bring to the attention of the Hon'ble Chief Minister the considered and widely subscribed position that the Metro can be built without destroying Lalbagh and Lakshman Rao Parks. Leo F. Saldanha Coordinator Environment Support Group 9448377403 _leo at esgindia.org _ Sunil Dutt Yadav Advocate 9845557591 _sunil_dy at yahoo.com _ Vinay Sreenivasa Hasiru Usiru 9880595032 _vinay.sreenivasa at yahoo.com _ Contact: Environment Support Group, 1572, 100 Feet Ring Road, 36^th Cross, Banashankari II Stage, Bangalore 560070. _www.esgindia.org _ / _www.hasiruusiru.org _ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090507/5a0ab5fa/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: esg.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 341 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090507/5a0ab5fa/attachment.vcf From yanivbin at gmail.com Thu May 7 23:42:45 2009 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 23:42:45 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] JNNURM --- TV DEBATE on water supply SPARKS TENSION in Mysore Message-ID: <86b8a7050905071112y4e2c6070wcd22ebce08b754b@mail.gmail.com> http://www.starofmysore.com/main.asp?type=news&item=20502 *DEBATE OVER TATA DEAL SPARKS TENSION* Mysore, May 7 (RK&BRS)- Tension prevailed at the end of a debate over handing over of water supply to Tata-owned JUSCO as members belonging to rival groups were about to exchange blows today. The debate was organised by TV9 channel at the Mysore Palace Eastern Gate between 7.30 am and 10 am today. After the participants expressed their views on the deal, resulting in arguments and counter-arguments, it emerged that the majority of the participants was opposed to the deal. *Only remodelling* Two participants, namely Sandesh Swamy and T.V. Cheluvegowda, both Coporators, clarified that the deal with JUSCO was cleared at government-level and was agreed to by the Council only for remodelling the drinking water pipeline network and the deal did not include responsibility to the private agency for maintenance. If maintenance of water supply is handed over to JUSCO, they would launch a public agitation against it, they warned. *Supporters* Defending the JUSCO deal, former Mayor Ayub Khan, Dr. Bhamy V. Shenoy of MGP, former Mayor H.N. Srikantaiah, Corporators K.V. Mallesh and R. Lingappa, retired engineer Chandranna, Mayor Purushotham, argued that the project was necessary as without remodelling the pipeline and preventing large quantity of wastage, it was not possible to supply water satisfactorily. They agreed that handing over maintenance of the water supply system was not a correct move. They also supported the view that the deal with JUSCO did not amount to privatisation. *Water tank * Citing the case of the water storage tank in Vijayanagar, Chandranna said the Corporation engineers did not evince any interest in protecting the water following the tank's roof collapse. The deal on supplying water of good quality with appropriate pressure with a private agency was a right one, said Dr. Bhamy Shenoy. There was no confusion in the deal. Some people were creating confusion unnecessarily, said Corporator R. Lingappa, adding that the project was the best way of utilising the JNNURM funds satisfactorily, to avoid forfeiting the same. Prof. P.V. Nanjaraja Urs and M. Lakshmana, Convenor, Association of Concerned and Informed Citizens of Mysore (ACICM) led opponents to JUSCO deal. Prof. Urs argued that the deal was meant to mislead the public of Mysore. People's views had not been obtained before agreeing for the project, he said, adding that the Maharajas of Mysore ensured drinking water free of cost to the people. He sought to know why Vani Vilas Water Works was not able to maintain the water supply system after Rs. 196 crore was spent on remodelling the water pipeline network of the city. The JUSCO deal would result in making the citizens pay a heavy price for drinking water in future, he criticised. *Officers as gate-keepers?* Lakshmana argued that the officials of Vani Vilas Water Works would be forced to function only as gate-keepers if JUSCO is authorised to remodel, operate and maintain the water supply system. He questioned the logic of the claim on supplying drinking water 24x7 to the citizens of Mysore. While the pipeline conveying water to the city from Hongalli Pumping Station was leaking at several points on the way, what was the use of remodelling only the pipeline network within the city, he questioned. As those opposed to the JUSCO deal staged a protest, amidst the wordy duels, raising slogans, the participants were about to indulge in fisticuffs. Many left the scene in the resultant confusion. Sandesh Swamy was irked when those opposed to the deal alleged that the Corporators had given their approval to the project under the mercy of JUSCO. He demanded the allegation be withdrawn. Raising his voice, he averred that the JUSCO deal had been decided upon keeping the best interests of the citizens of Mysore. The debate will be telecast by the channel. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090507/337e1fc5/attachment.html From rkamath.research at gmail.com Sat May 9 20:10:05 2009 From: rkamath.research at gmail.com (Ranjan Kamath) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 20:10:05 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] C+ive presents PROSEED_ A Lantern Service To Light Up India Message-ID: <24b9c2a0905090740x212b35eey1687f5ce96ab9807@mail.gmail.com> The PROSEED Lantern Service was introduced in SE Asia by Dr. Brahmanand Mohanty to reduce the usage of Kerosene and bring light to the rural areas of Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. This Lantern Service is most suitable for rural India and for the small entrepreneurs 'on the move' in urban India. To understand the PROSEED lantern service business model please visit the link below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=069ZutR2gkg&feature=channel_page Your investment of Rs. 800/- to purchase a lantern could light up many lives in rural India. For further inquiries, please contact citizen.positive at gmail.com -- Posted By Ranjan Kamath to C+ive _ Civic Society On The Web -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090509/9fcf427d/attachment-0001.html From cugambetta at yahoo.com Sun May 10 23:12:17 2009 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 10:42:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] tata nano housing Message-ID: <358231.57646.qm@web57411.mail.re1.yahoo.com> http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/2009/05/first_it_came_o.html Tata's Nano Home: The company behind world's cheapest car will sell $7,800 apartments. Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 07 Tata, the Indian company that made worldwide headlines with its $2,000 Nano car, now plans to build 1,000 tiny apartments outside Mumbai that will sell for $7,800 to $13,400 each. The company plans to roll out low-cost projects outside other major cities. Tata’s housing division is targeting a segment of the market that was largely overlooked during the housing boom. India’s builders were concentrating on building shiny new high rises and mansions on golf courses. Builders were after profits, but they were also trying to justify their fast-accelerating land costs, especially in and around Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) and other major cities. But some business consultants (most prominently, C.K. Prahalad) were arguing that companies would profit handsomely if they target the “bottom of the pyramid” where the bulk of consumers are. It looks like Tata is taking that advice. Luxury flats in Mumbai can cost more than ones in Manhattan. But these apartments won’t be luxurious. The Tata apartments will be built on 67 acres in Boisar, an industrial area where many lower-wage commuters already rent. These apartments will be absolutely tiny. The carpeted area of the smallest units will be 218 square feet, too small even for most Manhattanites. The largest units would be about 373 square feet (Click here to see the floor plans). Can you imagine squeezing a family into one of these units? The community would have its own garden, post office, meeting hall, schools, and hospital. Tata is not targeting India’s poorest people or even the lower middle class. I worked as a journalist in New Delhi in 2007 and paid my driver $1,500 a year — well above the going rate (I’m almost embarrassed to mention this, but expats in India often have drivers). My former driver, Deepak, considers himself lower middle class. Deepak, 31, lives with his wife, mother and 3-year-old daughter in a small rented room (They share a kitchen and bathroom with others on the same floor). His dream is to own a home. But it’s unlikely that he could ever earn enough to buy one of these units. They are targeted at folks earning an annual salary of $6,000 to $10,000. The average call center employee with 10 to 20 years experience earns 320,000 rupees or about $6,400 a year. From cugambetta at yahoo.com Mon May 11 04:53:14 2009 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 16:23:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] soak mumbai Message-ID: <786356.11029.qm@web57413.mail.re1.yahoo.com> http://www.soak.in/ thought this would be of interest. an ongoing project on mumbai by dilip da cunha and anuradha mathur. curt From cugambetta at yahoo.com Tue May 12 00:58:47 2009 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 12:28:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fwd: Post doc position in urban studies at NIAS Message-ID: <872937.17808.qm@web57406.mail.re1.yahoo.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Carol Upadhya Date: Mon, May 11, 2009 at 8:43 PM Subject: Post doc position in urban studies at NIAS To: anant maringanti , "Rutten, M.A.F." , Michael Goldman , Akhil Gupta , Vinay Gidwani , "Dr. K.C. Sivaramakrishnan" , "sanjukta.mukherjee at utoronto.ca" , S.Chari at lse.ac.uk, "J.Sundaresan at lse.ac.uk" Dear friends, NIAS has recently launched an Urban Research and Policy Programme. Attached is the pdf flyer advertising a post-doc position under this programme, as well as several positions for other new programmes. I would appreciate it if you could circulate this information to those who may be interested. They may contact me for more details. Thanks and best regards, Carol Upadhya -- Dr. Carol Upadhya Fellow, School of Social Sciences National Institute of Advanced Studies Indian Institute of Science Campus Bangalore 560012 India office: +91 80 2218 5000/ 5141 (ext) cell: +91(0) 97408 50141 carol at nias.iisc.ernet.in carol.upadhya at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090511/57694ef4/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: NIAS postdoc positions.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 82581 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090511/57694ef4/attachment-0001.pdf From =?UTF-8?B?RnJlZGVyaWNrIE5vcm9uaGEgW+ClnuCksOClh+CkpuCksOCkv+CklSDgpKjgpYvgpLDgpYs=?= Tue May 12 16:11:47 2009 From: =?UTF-8?B?RnJlZGVyaWNrIE5vcm9uaGEgW+ClnuCksOClh+CkpuCksOCkv+CklSDgpKjgpYvgpLDgpYs=?= (=?UTF-8?B?RnJlZGVyaWNrIE5vcm9uaGEgW+ClnuCksOClh+CkpuCksOCkv+CklSDgpKjgpYvgpLDgpYs=?=) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 16:11:47 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Why our small towns are a mess (Kalpana Sharma) Message-ID: <8ea78e010905120341t2d102330m63a725cf0f99bdc2@mail.gmail.com> Why our small towns are a mess By *Kalpana Sharma* Small towns can be developed as examples of sustainable urban development. Ensuring that a population of 100,000 gets adequate water, electricity and solid waste management systems is simpler than dealing with these problems in million-plus cities. Community participation is critical – but missing -- for better governance of our small towns *Read Part 1 of this report here * [image: On the banks of the Ganga in Mirzapur]On the banks of the Ganga in Mirzapur, temples nestle next to garbage heaps A challenge that all Indian cities and towns, big or small, face is garbage clearance. Indians know how to defeat even the most efficient of systems. And to see this vividly illustrated, you have to visit some of the smaller towns which are attempting some kind of solid waste management. The garbage heap remains the quintessential monument to urbanisation, with its generous sprinkling of indestructible thin plastic bags enmeshed in it. Cows and pigs are additional adornments on this urban monument as they forage unperturbed, looking for edible morsels but often, as in the case of the cows, swallowing the inedible plastic bag. In every one of the seven towns I visited for this study on small towns, I spotted the inevitable * suar* (pig) in a pile of garbage, except in Mirzapur where a generously endowed cow, in its anxiety to reach a nearby garbage pile, almost knocked me over! Solid waste management is one of the principal tasks placed on the shoulders of urban local bodies (ULBs). Their ability to deal with it reflects on the quality of governance not just in small towns but also in the larger cities. And on most counts, our municipal corporations, municipal councils and nagar panchayats -- the three types of urban local bodies -- fail miserably in their task. *Community participation* Some of the tasks allocated to municipal bodies would be made easier if they had support from local communities. Indeed, the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act envisages area sabhas and ward committees similar to the gram sabhas in villages. But in most small towns, these forms of public engagement have not yet taken root. Part of the reason is the very nature of the towns. Villages have old settled populations and even if they are divided along caste or class lines, they have a tradition of public consultation. In small towns, the population is a mix of older residents and new entrants. Bringing them together requires special effort as in addition to class and caste divides, political affiliations become an additional dimension that divides communities. In several towns, including those studied for this report, PRIA (Participatory Research in Asia) and its partners have engaged with local communities and formed mohalla samitis. The process has spanned several years and has involved engaging with women’s groups, youth groups, trade unions and other associations to create these neighbourhood committees. The primary concern of these mohalla samitis has been the cleanliness of their locality. They have devised systems to ensure that the garbage is regularly cleared from their areas, they have run campaigns to inculcate the habit of cleanliness in the community, they have raised funds to organise or supplement municipal efforts at garbage collection, and some of them have even built community centres and gardens with their own funds. Yet, keeping such groups active is a challenge. As long as there is someone mobilising them, they are active. When the organisation doing the mobilising withdraws, the mohalla samitis tend to become inactive. The exception to this rule is where there is an individual who is personally motivated enough to continue working with the community as in Madhubani, or where councilors are also convinced about the value of such local organisations. In Madhubani and Jhunjhunu, local councilors, particularly those who have received training from PRIA, continue to carry forward the ideas that emerged from the mohalla samitis. The most effective outcome is when the local urban body adopts the ideas thrown up by the mohalla samitis as their own. This was particularly evident in Jhunjhunu where mohalla samitis had raised funds to institute house-to-house garbage collection. They also initiated steps to clean up empty plots that had become garbage dumps and turn them into gardens. The local municipality has now incorporated this into its solid waste programme and a municipal sweeper collects garbage from individual houses. However, there is a shortage of sweepers and hence the system does not work as efficiently as it did when the neighbourhoods managed it. The municipality has also initiated a scheme whereby it contributes 70% of the funds needed to convert an empty plot into a garden if the local community raises the remaining 30%. As a result, Jhunjhunu has become a town with many gardens, to the delight of its local residents and it has set an example that others can emulate. In Jhunjhunu, mohalla samitis worked well in middle-income colonies where the residents saw the value of upgrading the cleanliness levels of their locality. Thus, even when the municipality failed to send sweepers, in many areas the community continued to devise ways to maintain cleanliness. In poorer neighbourhoods the experience has been different. Here too women have enthusiastically adopted the idea and have worked to keep their area clean. In Rajnandgaon, for instance, in the Shankarpura slum, the local women’s self-help group keeps after the ward councilor to ensure that the municipal sweeper comes every day. Such vigilance has ensured that even an area termed a slum is very clean. Similarly, in Narnaul, the women of Nai Basti put up a spirited fight with the authorities for water and try and keep their area clean. But they are handicapped by the absence of basic infrastructure like drains and sewer lines. Even if they wanted to flush their drains, they simply don’t have enough water. And even if they did, the wastewater has nowhere to go, as the drains are not linked to a sewerage system. Thus, in poor communities external factors such as the absence of infrastructure severely restrict their ability to keep alive their own initiatives in solid waste management. These experiences, and scores of similar ones, emphasise the importance of community involvement in certain aspects of urban services like solid waste management where municipal services alone, no matter how efficient, remain inadequate. But they also underscore the need for greater equity in the distribution of urban resources, such as sewerage, and cooperation between the municipal authorities and community organisations. A major challenge in the area of solid waste management is changing people’s habits. For instance, many towns have experimented with large garbage bins located in different parts of the town where household waste can be deposited. This has failed miserably as everywhere you see garbage all around the bins, rather than in them. Even door-to-door collection has not always worked as people continue to throw out the garbage they accumulate after the sweeper has gone. The concept of storing garbage until it is collected has not yet been accepted. The most common place for depositing garbage is the drain outside the house. Furthermore, open plots, water bodies, riverbanks are all considered suitable for throwing out garbage. Thus, even towns that have a semblance of a system of garbage collection end up looking like places where there is no solid waste management. [image: Community-led garbage collection in Jhunjhunu]Community-led garbage collection in Jhunjhunu *Municipal finance* While there are several success stories in the area of solid waste management, municipal finance remains a grey area. Urban local bodies are permitted to raise revenue through various forms of taxation such as property tax, water tax, commercial tax, vehicle tax etc. In the past, octroi -- the tax charged on goods entering a city or town -- used to be one of the main sources of revenue for most cities and towns. With its abolition – although state governments pay a compensation to urban local bodies – there is no equivalent source of revenue for smaller towns, particularly those with a larger percentage of poor people and no industry or business that can generate additional revenue. As a result, many small towns fail to provide adequately basic urban services to their residents, particularly the poorer communities. *Governance is critical* The critical issue linking all these aspects of urban life – water supply, solid waste management, planning and finance – is governance. The quality of governance can transform these small towns into sustainable urban centres. The 74th amendment has devolved powers to Urban Local Bodies or municipalities. Under the 12th Schedule of the Constitution, 18 specific functions or duties have been handed over to these bodies. Amongst the tasks that even the smallest urban local body must undertake are: Managing the water supply -- domestic, industrial and commercial; drainage and sewerage; solid waste management, urban environment management; land use control; slum services; maintenance of roads and footpaths, traffic engineering; community health, markets and slaughter houses; promotion of education, sports and cultural activities and the aesthetic environment. Solid waste management is an obvious and immediate issue that comes up in any discussion on governance in small towns. But equally important is the quality of the elected representatives who are required to manage the many tasks before urban local bodies. The 74th amendment has reserved one-third of the seats on these bodies for women and also scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Has the presence of more women in elected office, for instance, made a difference to the quality of governance or are they mere proxies? Elected women representatives in urban local bodies have not received the same kind of training and attention as women elected to panchayats. As a result, most of the women who are elected to office, especially in the smaller towns, are quite obviously proxies for their husbands. In all the seven towns studied, the majority of women representatives did not participate in the meetings of the urban local body and even if they were present they rarely spoke up. For all non-official functions, their husbands represented them. There were women whose husbands openly stood in for them on every occasion except at official meetings. In Madhubani, the father-in-law of a woman who had been elected came in her place for a meeting saying he had forgotten to inform her. Many women are never told that they are expected to attend meetings. In Janjgir, a woman councilor stepped out of her home for the first time to visit her constituency during our visit. Her husband had given up his business to devote himself full-time to “her work” and was even planning to make her stand for the position of chairman of the municipal council, a post that would be reserved for women in the next election. He felt no sense of embarrassment when he was asked how a woman, who had never even visited her constituency, could fulfil the role of chairman of a municipal council. At the same time, a surprisingly large number of elected women representatives are educated. Amongst those interviewed for this report was a medical doctor in Rajnandgaon who was able to follow the budget and ask questions about financial allocations. Another in Mirzapur, a young woman post-graduate was enthusiastic about heading the standing committee on education. In Madhubani, a woman councilor was chosen for the District Planning Committee and was brimming with ideas on what needed to be done. Many of these women members acknowledge that they have benefited from the training programmes organised by PRIA and continue to want more such programmes. The bureaucrats involved in urban local bodies were generally disparaging about the abilities of the elected representatives, suggesting that all they were interested in was making money and giving out contracts. Such observations are difficult to substantiate but the state of the towns suggests that this would not be completely off the mark. For instance, it is evident in most towns that no one checks the quality of the work done. So-called cement concrete roads revert to rubble within a few years. Drains built without using proper material disintegrate. In the meantime, funds are utilised for things that have not worked in the past. In Sehore, for example, even as the secretary of the nagar palika admitted that garbage bins don’t work as people throw things all around them, in the compound of the nagar palika stood dozens on newly painted bins that would eventually be placed in different parts of the city. Whose idea was this? Who got the contract? Was it ever discussed in the council? Where do the funds come from? Similarly in Janjgir, one of the smaller towns visited in this study, a cleaning truck that sweeps the roads with rotating brushes has been purchased for Rs 45 lakh. Even though this amount did not come out of the funds raised by the municipality and was a grant from the state government, the truck will only be able to sweep one road – the only one smooth and wide enough to accommodate it. The sides of this road are unpaved. So, even as the brushes suck up the dust, another layer will be deposited. You wonder at the process of decision-making. *Elected vs selected* The presence of political parties at that level, particularly in the smaller towns, could be viewed as a real obstacle in the way of good governance. In villages, candidates standing for panchayat elections do not stand on political party symbols even if these parties are present indirectly. In contrast, in cities and towns, candidates contest under the symbols of political parties. As a result, elected bodies are divided along political lines and decisions on governance issues are dictated by party affiliations. An additional complication is whether the head of the elected council – the mayor, the chairman or the president of a municipal corporation, municipal council or a nagar panchayat – is directly elected or indirectly elected by fellow councilors. If it is the former, there is a greater chance of smoother functioning, as the person so elected cannot be removed for the term of five years of the elected local body. If it is the latter, then a vote of no confidence can be tabled within the first two years if the majority of elected members feel the person is not suitable. If they succeed, then another person is elected. The entire process throws all normal functioning of the elected body into a state of paralysis. No decisions are taken as members jostle to achieve this one goal. Sometimes they do not succeed at first try. But they keep on trying. As a result more than half of their time in elected office is spent scheming about how to get rid of the head of the council. In almost every one of the towns in this study where the chairman was indirectly elected, the council’s energies were totally subsumed in plotting his removal from office. In Madhubani, all the councilors openly speak against the chairman, even to his face. In Narnaul a woman councilor who is educated and active in her ward frankly stated, “Our only work is to plot how to remove this chairman”. *Role of bureaucracy* Another common factor that came up in almost every place visited was the virtually non-existent executive officer (EO). This position is assigned to a state services bureaucrat who is supposed to assist the chairman and the municipal council. Budget-making, for instance, is an important task before the EO. Yet, most of the time, such EOs are known to spend their first year trying to get a transfer out of the job. If they succeed, then the urban local body is left without an EO until another can be found. In the meantime, the secretary, a lower level bureaucrat, has to fulfil this function. The chemistry between the head of the council and the EO determines how long the latter will stay. Sometimes the chemistry is good between these two individuals but there is little coordination or communication between them and the rest of the elected representatives. At other times, they are at loggerheads, and no plan gets passed as both have to sign on. Thus, the day-to-day functioning of these urban local bodies is paralysed. It is evident that efforts to smoothen the working of the bureaucracy with the elected representatives are an essential prerequisite for better governance. *Conclusion* The needs of most small towns are fairly basic – systems of finance that allow the local urban body to undertake basic tasks of managing solid waste, maintaining roads and street lights, ensuring water supply and allowing citizens to have a say in governance. Sorting out systemic problems so that local councils can move ahead with developmental plans. And building the capacity of the urban local bodies and the elected representatives so that they use their powers efficiently and effectively. Improving the quality of life in smaller towns could halt the flow of people from rural areas to the bigger cities. At present, these smaller towns are often the first stop for people displaced by droughts, floods, other natural disasters or acute poverty in the rural areas. But finding no source of livelihood in these towns, they are forced to go further afield in search of work. This need not happen. More importantly, small towns can be developed as examples of sustainable urban development. Ensuring that a population of 100,000 gets adequate water and electricity and has systems of dealing with solid waste is a much simpler proposition than dealing with the behemoths that our larger million-plus cities have become. Small towns need not follow the patterns adopted by many of the bigger cities where non-existent or bad planning and lack of concern for the environment and for equity have turned most of them into crowded, polluted, stressful places. Here only the very rich can survive by creating their own little islands of prosperity while the majority have no option but to accept an inferior quality of life because big cities offer better livelihood options than small towns. (Concluded) *(This is the second part of the report on small towns based on visits to seven towns in six states – Madhubani, Bihar; Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan; Narnaul, Haryana; Mirzapur, UP; Sehore, MP; Rajnandgaon and Janjgir, Chhattisgarh. Part 1 can be accessed at:** ** http://infochangeindia.org/Urban-India/Cityscapes/Slumdogs-and-small-towns.html )* *InfoChange News & Features, May 2009* http://infochangeindia.org/Environment/Eco-logic/How-now-Brown-Cloud.html -- FN * http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com http://twitter.com/fn M +91-9822122436 P +91-832-2409490 http://fredericknoronha.multiply.com/ http://goa1556.goa-india.org "It is not important to be confident, only to look confident..." - D. Niles -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090512/03127398/attachment-0001.html From geetanjoy at rediffmail.com Tue May 12 16:13:41 2009 From: geetanjoy at rediffmail.com (geetanjoy sahu) Date: 12 May 2009 10:43:41 -0000 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: [WaterWatch] Gujarat: An Ecological Nightmare Message-ID: <1242122899.S.39035.33550.f4mail-235-214.rediffmail.com.old.1242125021.18511@webmail.rediffmail.com> Note: Forwarded message attached -- Original Message -- From: farida m faridaindia at gmail.com To: WaterWatch at yahoogroups.com Subject: [WaterWatch] Gujarat: An Ecological Nightmare -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090512/9dad341d/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: unknown sender Subject: no subject Date: no date Size: 36847 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090512/9dad341d/attachment-0001.mht From cugambetta at yahoo.com Fri May 15 02:19:42 2009 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 13:49:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: World-Information City Message-ID: <22325.1554.qm@web57403.mail.re1.yahoo.com> ----- Forwarded Message ---- From: Konrad Becker To: nettime-l at kein.org Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 9:45:37 AM Subject: World-Information City Cities are ground zero for social change. 3 years after Bangalore we again have a World-Information City event with a bunch of distinguished participants: Bruno Latour, Saskia Sassen, Stephen Graham, Eyal Weizman, Carlo Ratti, John Urry, Brian Holmes, Christophe Aguiton, Solomon Benjamin, and many more. Exploring insights on future urban transformations in a digitally networked world - Join us for springtime in Paris or check out the live-stream at http://world-information.org Cheers, K *** World-Information City – Paris 2009 Urban In/Visibility, Access and Zoning Space is a social practice. Over the last decades, mobility – of people, goods, and information – across distances large and small has become an ever more salient aspect of a wide range of social practices. New technological regimes have been created to enable and control this movement and new practices are remaking urban spaces. As an effect, one and the same space might have vastly different characteristics depending on how people interface with the technical grid. This ranges from new ways of coordinating one's movements through space with the help of new mobile technology, to electronic tagging technologies to monitor and restrict the movement of people as a form of criminal punishment, to the construction of special access zones (where certain people can either not enter, or not leave) which create new areas of invisibility. Yet, there is also the promise of using the civic and participatory potential of the new technologies to re-connect people with the local places they live-in. The sociologist Manuel Castells speaks in this context of the re-ordering of the space of places through the space of flows. The analog logic of geography encounters the digital logic of communication networks as lived space turns into a mosaic of practices, sometimes intersecting, sometimes conflicting and often bypassing each other. For the first time in world history a majority lives in cities but the cities' form itself is challenged and stratified into a grid of distinct sectors. Virtual and physical space increasingly fragments into fully global zones along intensely local spaces in a single geographic domain. Urban development is defined by the vectors of knowledge and power. Information in its social expressions manifests in physical environments, and in the shaping of urban spaces. Metropolitan architecture has to accommodate locations of the virtual and the new laboratories of the mind where humans and machines shape each other in the production of meaning. World-Information City Paris 2009 is a two day conference that will focus on four major themes within the wide field of new urban geographies: First, it will focus on new theories to reframe the essential role played by mobilities of all kinds. They pose a major challenge to social and urban theories, which often remain implicitly static. Secondly, it will look at how global flows and local dynamics intersect and shape cities in particularly dynamic cases, such as Bangalore, India. Thirdly, it will investigate remaking of urban spaces through new forms of conflict and strategies of security. And in the final panel World-Information City will look at emerging patterns of distributed action in space and new approaches to map them. Each of these themes will be addressed by two or more of the most outstanding thinkers followed by an open audience debate. A range of additional of workshops provides the opportunity to discuss some of these issues more in depth. High-level presentations and discussions will offer thoughts on urban transformations in a digitally networked world as a valuable resource to be consulted for a long time in the future. Konrad Becker, Felix Stalder WIC Editors World-Information City is a project of World-Information Institute for Futur en Seine in cooperation with Cap Digital, médialab Sciences Po, Orange Labs, supported by Maison des Métallos, Awdio, Bandits-Mages, Ellipse, Labomedia, the City of Paris and the Ile-de-France Region. || May 30 / 31 || Maison des métallos, 94 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud - 75011 Paris # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime at kein.org From cugambetta at yahoo.com Fri May 15 02:40:15 2009 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 14:10:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: [Fwd: Schedule for Metropolis and Micropolitics] Message-ID: <638128.31072.qm@web57414.mail.re1.yahoo.com> If anyone on the list is at University of Washington, do come by! Looks like a great symposium. Curt Friday May 15, 2009 Petersen Room, Allen Library 9:00 Welcome 9:15-12:30 Panel 1: Discourses of urban belonging, citizenship and the politics of exclusion 9:15-9:45 K. Sivaramakrishnan Law, Civitas, and Urban Ecology: Notes from Delhi 9:45-10:15: Amita Baviskar Spectacular Events, City Spaces and Citizenship: The Commonwealth Games in Delhi 10:15-10:30: Discussion 10:30-10:45: Tea Break 10:45- 11:05: Craig Jeffrey Middle class youth politics: a worm's eye view 11:05-11:25: D. Asher Ghertner Inscribed on the landscape, hung on the wall: Picturing Private Property in the Poster Art of Delhi's Slums 11:25-11:45: Mona Bhan Water has the right of way: The Cultural Politics of Conservation in Kashmir, India. 11:45-12:30 Discussion Moderator: Anand Yang 12:30-130: Lunch Break 1:30-5:00 Panel 2: Architecture and the Built Environment 1:30-2:00: Arif Hasan From Architecture To The Built Environment: A personal journey 2:00-2:30: Manit Rustogi TBA 2:30-2:45: Discussion 2:45-3:00 Tea Break 3:00-3:20: Curt Gambetta Concrete and the ‘Technical Imagination’: The politics of architectural making in Post-Independence Bangalore 3:20-3:40: Sanjeev Vidyarthi Planned Neighborhoods and adjacent “Slums”: Disparate urban forms or conjoined twins? 3:40-4:00 Gavin Shatkin The Politics of Privatopolis: For-profit New Towns in Indian Cities 4:00-4:45: Discussion Moderator: Vikram Prakash Saturday May 16, 2009 Communications120 9:15-12:30: Panel 3: Space, States, Social Movements, Collective Action 9:15-9:45 Leela Fernandes Class, Space and State-led Development in India 9:45-10:15: Karen Coelho Civilizing Political Society? Observations on Collective Action of the Urban Poor in Chennai 10:15-10:30: Discussion 10:30-10:45: Tea Break 10:45-11:05: Sapana Doshi The Nation and its Displaced: Redeveopment, Politics and Citzenship in 'Global' Mumbai 11:05-11:25: Neha Sami Who develops? The changing urban politics of real estate development in post-liberalization India 11:25-11:45: Zarin Ahmad Resistance in contemporary urban India: The Delhi abattoir and the politics of relocation 11:45-1:00 Discussion Moderator: Sunila Kale 1:00-2:00: Lunch Break 2:00-3:00: Panel 4: Urban Transitions: Global Trends, Possible Futures. Jan Breman The Great Transformation 3:00-3:15 Tea Break 3:15-4:30: Discussion Moderator: Priti Ramamurthy 4:30-6:00: Reception, Communication Building 204 -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Metro09" Subject: Schedule for Metropolis and Micropolitics Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 16:27:07 -0700 Size: 19347 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090514/0591a9b2/attachment-0001.eml From sguttikunda at gmail.com Fri May 15 09:00:02 2009 From: sguttikunda at gmail.com (Sarath Guttikunda) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 09:00:02 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] City Vehicular Statistics !! In-Reply-To: <683ba1ca0905140458o5ef3a76cvd5e7ab84e14a1540@mail.gmail.com> References: <683ba1ca0905130830h1fb0e104o78c6aaca1943f1e4@mail.gmail.com> <683ba1ca0905130832x6879889al1f47df063172e08c@mail.gmail.com> <683ba1ca0905140458o5ef3a76cvd5e7ab84e14a1540@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <683ba1ca0905142030i3d3ba48fn5d70cfce6b077fe2@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, I am looking for vehicle statistics, from publications/reports for the following cities. Kanpur, Agra, Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Indore, Surat, Pondicherry, Bhubaneswar, Panaji, Patna, Kochi, Nagpur, and Guwahati Categories: Passenger cars (including SUVs), 3Ws, 2Ws, & Buses (Big & Medium) Years: 2005 or later. If you have any references or links, appreciate your help. Any further information on the fuel mix (petrol/diesel/cng/lpg) is a bonus. With regards, Sarath -- Sarath Guttikunda New Delhi, India Email: sguttikunda at gmail.com http://www.urbanemissions.info -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090515/58833052/attachment.html From pmukhopadhyay at gmail.com Fri May 15 10:19:35 2009 From: pmukhopadhyay at gmail.com (Partha Mukhopadhyay) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 10:19:35 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] City Vehicular Statistics !! In-Reply-To: <683ba1ca0905142030i3d3ba48fn5d70cfce6b077fe2@mail.gmail.com> References: <683ba1ca0905130830h1fb0e104o78c6aaca1943f1e4@mail.gmail.com> <683ba1ca0905130832x6879889al1f47df063172e08c@mail.gmail.com> <683ba1ca0905140458o5ef3a76cvd5e7ab84e14a1540@mail.gmail.com> <683ba1ca0905142030i3d3ba48fn5d70cfce6b077fe2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <759b94b30905142149rfd7d4cdmb1cd7442c1aa2da4@mail.gmail.com> Look up Study on Traffic and Transportation Policies and Strategies in Urban Areas in India, May 2008, Ministry of Urban Development (report prepared by Wilbur Smith Associates) http://urbanindia.nic.in/moud/programme/ut/final_Report.pdf On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 9:00 AM, Sarath Guttikunda wrote: > Dear All, > > I am looking for vehicle statistics, from publications/reports for the > following cities. > > Kanpur, Agra, Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Indore, Surat, Pondicherry, Bhubaneswar, > Panaji, Patna, Kochi, Nagpur, and Guwahati > > Categories: Passenger cars (including SUVs), 3Ws, 2Ws, & Buses (Big & > Medium) > Years: 2005 or later. > > If you have any references or links, appreciate your help. > > Any further information on the fuel mix (petrol/diesel/cng/lpg) is a bonus. > > With regards, > Sarath > > -- > Sarath Guttikunda > New Delhi, India > Email: sguttikunda at gmail.com > http://www.urbanemissions.info > > _______________________________________________ > 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 -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090515/80d076b7/attachment.html From sguttikunda at gmail.com Fri May 15 10:48:20 2009 From: sguttikunda at gmail.com (Sarath Guttikunda) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 10:48:20 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] City Vehicular Statistics !! In-Reply-To: <759b94b30905142209v6a224ce6ve150efe6fb7ad282@mail.gmail.com> References: <683ba1ca0905130830h1fb0e104o78c6aaca1943f1e4@mail.gmail.com> <683ba1ca0905130832x6879889al1f47df063172e08c@mail.gmail.com> <683ba1ca0905140458o5ef3a76cvd5e7ab84e14a1540@mail.gmail.com> <683ba1ca0905142030i3d3ba48fn5d70cfce6b077fe2@mail.gmail.com> <759b94b30905142149rfd7d4cdmb1cd7442c1aa2da4@mail.gmail.com> <683ba1ca0905142153i2f2a149lce445cc8a2f7d597@mail.gmail.com> <759b94b30905142209v6a224ce6ve150efe6fb7ad282@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <683ba1ca0905142218o6dd933et6872a2069d4bfa6@mail.gmail.com> Dear Partha, true, the report has some modal share information and that will be useful. But looking for the actual vehicle numbers. As you said, there won't be a single source for all the information I am searching for, and I wasn't expecting that, hence the request to multiples. I have requested some individuals in the city's for respective numbers, and hoping to hear something. Others on the list, if you have information on the individual city's or have a contact person with possible data, appreciate an email. With regards, Sarath -- Sarath Guttikunda New Delhi, India Phone: +91 9891 315 946 Email: sguttikunda at gmail.com http://www.urbanemissions.info On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:39 AM, Partha Mukhopadhyay < pmukhopadhyay at gmail.com> wrote: > Dear Sarath: > > The report does have modal shares for some of the cities, which may be of > help to you. I trust you have seen both the appendices and the main report. > > Otherwise, your best bet is the National Urban Transport Information Centre > (NUTIC), being maintained by the Institute of Urban Transport < > http://www.iutindia.org/index.html> > > I would be surprised if you found a single source for the numbers that you > indicated. As and when you do find them, please do post to the group > > Best > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090515/1a1c6631/attachment.html From dolfteli at yahoo.com Fri May 15 13:14:34 2009 From: dolfteli at yahoo.com (Dolf te Lintelo) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 00:44:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] City Vehicular Statistics !! Message-ID: <539885.16701.qm@web36304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Sarath, might be worth checking with folks at Centre for Science and Environment, the Central Road Research Authority, and possibly the Central Pollution Control Board, if you have not done so yet. good luck, Dolf --- On Fri, 5/15/09, Sarath Guttikunda wrote: > From: Sarath Guttikunda > Subject: Re: [Urbanstudy] City Vehicular Statistics !! > To: "Partha Mukhopadhyay" > Cc: urbanstudygroup at sarai.net > Date: Friday, May 15, 2009, 7:18 AM > Dear Partha, > > true, the report has some modal share information and that > will be useful. But looking for the actual vehicle numbers. > > > As you said, there won't be a single source for all the > information I am searching for, and I wasn't expecting > that, hence the request to multiples. I have requested some > individuals in the city's for respective numbers, and > hoping to hear something. > > > Others on the list, > > if you have information on the individual city's or > have a contact person with possible data, appreciate an > email. > > With regards, > Sarath > > -- > Sarath Guttikunda > New Delhi, India > > Phone: +91 9891 315 946 > Email: sguttikunda at gmail.com > http://www.urbanemissions.info > > On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:39 AM, > Partha Mukhopadhyay > wrote: > > Dear Sarath: > > The report does have modal shares for some of the cities, > which may be of help to you. I trust you have seen both the > appendices and the main report. > > > Otherwise, your best bet is the National Urban Transport > Information Centre (NUTIC), being maintained by the > Institute of Urban Transport > > > > I would be surprised if you found a single source for the > numbers that you indicated. As and when you do find them, > please do post to the group > > Best > > > > > -----Inline Attachment Follows----- > > _______________________________________________ > 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 > From R.N.Naik-Singru at lse.ac.uk Fri May 15 14:44:17 2009 From: R.N.Naik-Singru at lse.ac.uk (R.N.Naik-Singru at lse.ac.uk) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 10:14:17 +0100 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: [Fwd: Schedule for Metropolis and Micropolitics] References: <638128.31072.qm@web57414.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Curt, The symposium looks quite promising given my own research interest which is the socio-spatial transformations and politics of urban development in Mumbai. I see that the papers raise issues of citizenship. It is certainly a pertinent issue given the dormant democracy that is shaping India. One of my recent papers "Democracy, Competitive Governance & Spatial transformation in 'globalising' Mumbai", Conference paper presented at the ISA World Forum of Sociology, Barcelona, Spain (Sept 5-8, 2008) looked at elite politics and corporate influence on public policy in Mumbai. Would you be able to circulate the abstracts or any transcripts of the conference proceedings? Ramola Ramola Naik-Singru PhD candidate: Regional and Urban Planning Dept. of Geography and Environment London School of Economics Adjunct Professor, Center for Development Management Asian Institute of Management, Makati City, Metro Manila, Philippines Ramola Naik-Singru PhD candidate: Regional and Urban Planning Dept. of Geography and Environment London School of Economics Postal address: 4947 Pasay Road, Dasmarinas Village, Makati City, Phillippines Tel: (632) 812 6138 ________________________________ From: urbanstudygroup-bounces at sarai.net on behalf of Curt Gambetta Sent: Fri 15/05/2009 05:10 To: urbanstudygroup at sarai.net Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: [Fwd: Schedule for Metropolis and Micropolitics] If anyone on the list is at University of Washington, do come by! Looks like a great symposium. Curt Friday May 15, 2009 Petersen Room, Allen Library 9:00 Welcome 9:15-12:30 Panel 1: Discourses of urban belonging, citizenship and the politics of exclusion 9:15-9:45 K. Sivaramakrishnan Law, Civitas, and Urban Ecology: Notes from Delhi 9:45-10:15: Amita Baviskar Spectacular Events, City Spaces and Citizenship: The Commonwealth Games in Delhi 10:15-10:30: Discussion 10:30-10:45: Tea Break 10:45- 11:05: Craig Jeffrey Middle class youth politics: a worm's eye view 11:05-11:25: D. Asher Ghertner Inscribed on the landscape, hung on the wall: Picturing Private Property in the Poster Art of Delhi's Slums 11:25-11:45: Mona Bhan Water has the right of way: The Cultural Politics of Conservation in Kashmir, India. 11:45-12:30 Discussion Moderator: Anand Yang 12:30-130: Lunch Break 1:30-5:00 Panel 2: Architecture and the Built Environment 1:30-2:00: Arif Hasan From Architecture To The Built Environment: A personal journey 2:00-2:30: Manit Rustogi TBA 2:30-2:45: Discussion 2:45-3:00 Tea Break 3:00-3:20: Curt Gambetta Concrete and the 'Technical Imagination': The politics of architectural making in Post-Independence Bangalore 3:20-3:40: Sanjeev Vidyarthi Planned Neighborhoods and adjacent "Slums": Disparate urban forms or conjoined twins? 3:40-4:00 Gavin Shatkin The Politics of Privatopolis: For-profit New Towns in Indian Cities 4:00-4:45: Discussion Moderator: Vikram Prakash Saturday May 16, 2009 Communications120 9:15-12:30: Panel 3: Space, States, Social Movements, Collective Action 9:15-9:45 Leela Fernandes Class, Space and State-led Development in India 9:45-10:15: Karen Coelho Civilizing Political Society? Observations on Collective Action of the Urban Poor in Chennai 10:15-10:30: Discussion 10:30-10:45: Tea Break 10:45-11:05: Sapana Doshi The Nation and its Displaced: Redeveopment, Politics and Citzenship in 'Global' Mumbai 11:05-11:25: Neha Sami Who develops? The changing urban politics of real estate development in post-liberalization India 11:25-11:45: Zarin Ahmad Resistance in contemporary urban India: The Delhi abattoir and the politics of relocation 11:45-1:00 Discussion Moderator: Sunila Kale 1:00-2:00: Lunch Break 2:00-3:00: Panel 4: Urban Transitions: Global Trends, Possible Futures. Jan Breman The Great Transformation 3:00-3:15 Tea Break 3:15-4:30: Discussion Moderator: Priti Ramamurthy 4:30-6:00: Reception, Communication Building 204 Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm From esg at esgindia.org Wed May 20 23:42:15 2009 From: esg at esgindia.org (ESGINDIA) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 23:42:15 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] ESG has moved Message-ID: <4A1447FF.7040303@esgindia.org> Dear All, Environment Support Group has moved. Our new coordinates are: Environment Support Group 1572, 36th Cross, 100 Feet Ring Road, Banashankari II Stage Bangalore 560070. INDIA Tel: 91-80-26713559/26713560/26713561 Email: esg at esgindia.org Web: www.esgindia.org We are open 10 am to 5.30 pm on all weekdays and on the 1st, 3rd and 5th Saturdays. As always we look forward to your support and cooperation in advancing environmental and social justice. Sincerely, Mallesh K. R., Nandini Chami, Sruthi Subbanna, Divya Ravindranath, Shankari, Zeenath, Venkatesh, Bhargavi Rao and Leo Saldanha ESG Team -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: esg.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 325 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090520/854d20fb/attachment-0001.vcf From cugambetta at yahoo.com Sun May 24 05:03:47 2009 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 16:33:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: H-ASIA: PUKAR: Forthcoming events in June Message-ID: <751184.96632.qm@web57415.mail.re1.yahoo.com> ----- Forwarded Message ---- From: Kate Brittlebank To: H-ASIA at H-NET.MSU.EDU Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 3:07:47 AM Subject: H-ASIA: PUKAR: Forthcoming events in June H-ASIA May 16, 2009 PUKAR: Forthcoming events in June ***************************** PUKAR 5th June 2009 SOAK: Mumbai in an Estuary Soak is an exhibition of an artistic imagination and design, looking at Mumbai through an alternative lens. Curated by Anuradha Mathur & Dilip da Cunha , it is composed of maps,drawings and designs that posits Mumbai as a city deeply embedded in it's aqueous terrain. In March 2009, PUKAR had invited the citizens of Mumbai to contribute to this exhibition by submitting their recorded experiences of 2005 floods. It is our hope that Mumbaikars will join in large numbers to view their own contributions to this collective memory of the city. 27th - 28th June 2009 PUKAR Annual Lecture This year the lecture takes the form of a day-long panel. The participants will include academics, activists, architects, artists and policy makers from the city and from other parts of the world. Please keep these dates free and look out for further announcements. ------------------------- PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action and Research) Address:: 272, Municipal Tenements, Shivaji Nagar, BMC Colony, Kher Wadi, Bandra (East), Mumbai – 400 051 Telephone:: +91 (22) 6574 8152 Fax:: +91 (22) 26474872 Email:: pukar at pukar.org.in Website::www.pukar.org.in ( http://www.pukar.org.in ) PUKAR is an innovative and experimental initiative that aims to contribute to a global debate about urbanization and globalization. ****************************************************** To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: For holidays or short absences send post to: listserv at h-net.msu.edu with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/ _____________________________ From geetanjoy at rediffmail.com Mon May 25 12:57:14 2009 From: geetanjoy at rediffmail.com (geetanjoy sahu) Date: 25 May 2009 07:27:14 -0000 Subject: [Urbanstudy] SC grants bail to Dr Binayak Sen Message-ID: <20090525072714.54333.qmail@f4mail-235-128.rediffmail.com> SC grants bail to Dr Binayak Sen The Supreme Court on Monday granted bail to civil rights activist Dr Binayak Sen, who has been lodged in jail for the last 22 months on charges of aiding and abetting naxalite activities in Chhattisgarh. A bench comprising Justices Markandey Katju and Deepak Verma took up the matter on Monday after senior advocate Shanti Bhushan, on May 22, mentioned Sen's petition in which a notice was issued to the Chhattisgarh government. When the notice was issued, the apex court had asked the state government to provide medical aid to Sen, who has been suffering from heart ailment. Sen, who has been in custody since May 14, 2007, contended that there was no evidence against him to be booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. The Chhattisgarh government accused Sen, who is the vice-president of the People's Union of Civil Liberties, of acting as a courier for an alleged naxalite who is in jail. He also sought bail on medical grounds, saying he had been suffering from a heart ailment and needed treatment at the Christian Medical College, Vellore in Tamil Nadu. Sen, a doctor by profession, claimed that the chargesheet against him had already been filed and that he had remained in jail during the investigation of the case registered against him. Thanks, Geetanjoy Sahu Postdoctoral Fellow CISED, Bangalore -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090525/353d3029/attachment.html From esg at esgindia.org Mon May 25 21:30:12 2009 From: esg at esgindia.org (ESGINDIA) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 21:30:12 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] [Fwd: Conclusions and recommendations from the International Meeting on Water and Cooperation in Africa] Message-ID: <4A1AC08C.2080401@esgindia.org> This has some useful indicators of how international community is focussing on water related issues. Leo Saldanha -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Conclusions and recommendations from the International Meeting on Water and Cooperation in Africa Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 10:17:23 -0400 From: Pilar Gonzalez-Meyaui Reply-To: Pilar Gonzalez-Meyaui To: Water Issues Announcement List Dear colleagues, On 25 May, on the occasion of Africa Day, the United Nations Office to support the International Decade for Action ‘Water for Life’ 2005–2015 and Casa Africa publish the conclusions and recommendations from the International Meeting on Water and Cooperation in Africa, which took place from 20 to 22 April 2009 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. The main objective of the meeting was to reinforce cooperation tools and mechanisms that will strengthen the capacities of African countries to achieve the Millennium Development target to ‘halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation’. This document has being developed by the organizers with the intent of reflecting all contributions and points discussed in the debates that took place during the meeting. We hope you will find it useful and kindly request your cooperation in disseminating it as broadly as possible. The document is currently being translated into French and Spanish. The organizers will also publish a complete dossier with all the meeting materials (final programme, abstracts, presentations, etc.), which will be available in electronic format. If your organization wishes to receive it, please contact water-decade at un.org We would like to take the opportunity to offer our thanks to all those who contributed to the meeting, without whom its success would not have been possible. With kind regards, The organizers http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/ http://www.casafrica.es/ You are currently subscribed to water-l as: esg at esgindia.org Go to your membership options . To unsubscribe click here . climate-l.org - http://www.climate-l.org - A knowledgebase of International Climate Change Activities, provided by IISD in cooperation with the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) Secretariat - Subscribe to IISD Reporting Services' free newsletters and lists for environment and sustainable development policy professionals at http://www.iisd.ca/email/subscribe.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: imwca_conclusions_and_recommendations_final_eng.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 193942 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090525/dd298e59/attachment-0001.pdf -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: esg.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 325 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090525/dd298e59/attachment-0001.vcf From bhargavi_srao at yahoo.com Thu May 21 10:28:56 2009 From: bhargavi_srao at yahoo.com (Bhargavi S.) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 21:58:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Exploring Environmental education beyond the classroom- A workshop for teachers Message-ID: <762205.92841.qm@web32607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Environment Support Group  Presents Exploring Environmental Education beyond the Classroom A workshop for teachers of ICSE, CBSE and SSLC schools The Indian Supreme Court passed a law in 2004 which mandates all Indian schools to compulsorily and immediately include a subject on environmental studies in all grades from primary to high school.  Since the introduction of the subject teachers have been at a loss being confined to the classroom, text book and a syllabus to complete within a given time. A complete lack of teaching techniques, teaching aids, and application to explain environmental concepts to students has made environmental education another burden to teachers and to students in a system that is overloaded. This workshop for teachers will provide the opportunity to find new skills and share what has worked and what needs to change. This is a workshop for enthusiastic teachers, coordinators and facilitators with a passion for educating and motivating kids.  It aims to help young professionals develop their skills and knowledge so they can inspire children and others more effectively. The purpose of the workshop is to demonstrate to the teachers how the outdoors can be utilized to Introduce, strengthen, and emphasize concepts of the environmental education curriculum. Through classroom sessions, games and field studies, we will explore the curriculum, teaching techniques, and classroom activities that can help kids learn about the wonders of nature and their environment. As part of the workshop we will help identify some simple methods and techniques for teaching environmental education in the outdoors and the workshop will also familiarize the participants with some of the environmental issues of the city of Bengaluru. Teachers will learn from Naturalists, Social scientists, Environmental lawyers, Community health specialists and Community leaders. Teachers will also be provided with a resource kit.   Workshop Dates:  9th, 10th and 11th   July 2009 Duration of workshop: 2 and ½ days Venue: ESG office Registration Fees: Rs 750/-(Non Refundable)   For more details contact: Bhargavi S.Rao, Environment Support Group  #1572, 36th Cross, Outer Ring Road, Banashankari 2nd Stage, Bangalore -70 Tel: 91-80-26713559/26713560/26713561 Mob: 9448377401 Email: bhargavi at esgindia.org  Website: www.esgindia.org ………………………………………………………………………………………………………Tear Here……………………………………………………………………………………………………..   Registration form to be sent by email to bhargavi at esgindia.org /post to the address mentioned above   Name:     Residential address:     Telephone Number:     Email:     Name of School:     Address:     Subject/s taught:     Classes taught:     Mode of payment Cash/Cheque      www.esgindia.org www.newsrack.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090520/143acdbc/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Exploring beyond the classroom.doc Type: application/msword Size: 1120256 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20090520/143acdbc/attachment-0001.doc From bawazainab79 at gmail.com Sat May 30 09:40:13 2009 From: bawazainab79 at gmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 09:40:13 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] On Transparency - when the state watches itself ... Message-ID: These days, I often encounter the term “transparency”. What does it mean? Does it mean the same to all? Is transparency the act of making something or someone visible? If yes, what is made visible, why and by whom? And at the cost of making something visible, can something or someone be made invisible? On analyzing discourse, it appears that transparency is the act of making clear – clear as if you are able to see through. Complete visibility. But does it not matter what you see and more importantly, how you see? It also matters what is being shown or made visible. Transparency translates in different ways on the ground. Civil society organizations, private collectives, development aid organizations and public private partnerships have been implementing initiatives to institute transparency. These initiatives in turn shape discourse. In this post, I am more interested in raising questions about how state agencies see their own agents/actors/employees. This post is an outcome of some of the research which I have been doing at the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) for understanding the discourse of transparency and politics and examining when, how and why the Internet became an important space (place?) to materialize transparency. “Our task is to organize all those passengers who are going to travel in the unreserved compartment in the inter-city and inter-state trains. It is horrible the way they travel – huddled up, packed like they were cattle. But they prefer to travel this way. Even when general compartments are empty and we ask them to move to those, they say that they want to travel in the unreserved section because travelling in a huddled manner in the unreserved compartment gives them a sense of safety and security. I would not travel this way nor would I allow my family members to commute in the unreserved compartment. Since a few months, we have been organizing these unreserved compartment passengers to line up in queues before getting into the compartment. We watch while they get inside. The watching is also done to check on the railway police force (RPF) guards who have recently been levying money from these passengers. The railway authorities have simplified the process for passengers travelling unreserved. When they get to the platform, passes are issued to them. These entitle them to enter the compartment. But despite that, the passengers hand over some money to either the RPF guards or the general railway police (GRP) or to the regular police manning the station and the trains. Sometimes the bribes are given voluntarily. Like, the other day, I was standing with my hands crossed behind my lower back when suddenly I felt some paper in my hand. I turned around and saw that one of the unreserved passengers had placed a 500 rupee note in my hand and was requesting me to let his family and him enter the compartment. I laughed and told him, ‘you are knocking on the wrong door’ and I returned his money back to him. Then I eventually let him enter the compartment when everyone else had boarded. But the RPF guards have been forcibly extracting money from these passengers. The passengers also pay because of the intimidation – the RPF guards often beat up people. Now, you see, in the peak season, there are hundreds of such passengers travelling unreserved each day. If the RPF levies even 200 rupees from each one of them, it amounts to a lot of money. The money collected then has to pass into the hands of the seniors and bosses at the higher level. There, the bosses have set standards – so much collection each week. Thereafter, what is remaining gets distributed among and between the various rungs. A few months ago, some of the officials in the railways came to know that even an ordinary RPF guard is accumulating so much money every week and the bosses are making so much. This eats into the cuts of the railway officials who are anyway irked by the RPF guards because the RPF guards also extract bribes from hawkers standing outside railway stations. Our official bosses decided to stop this practice of RPF guards extorting money from passengers. So they put us on duty to man the people and in turn, keep an eye on the guards. If the RPF ends up accumulating a lot of money each day and every week, then that also eats into the powers of our officials. Our officials launched surprise checks at railway stations. On one occasion, we even found that a cop who was not assigned duty that day had unofficially come to keep guard. You can imagine then how much money these people are making. Now, our bosses have ordered that the doors of the compartment can only be opened 50 minutes to one hour before the train is to depart. This is terrible. It is only adding to the agony of these people who have gathered at the station at least four-five hours before the train’s departure. In some cases, they come the night before and wait their turn to queue up.” I watched the railway personnel disciplining people and organizing them into orderly lines. After the queued persons had entered the compartment, they would hurl some verbal abuses to the remaining passengers and ask them to quickly enter the compartment. The RPF would strike their bamboo rods on the ground upon noticing someone breaking the queue and entering the compartment. This would frighten off the erring passenger. Some acts were humanitarian despite the hurling of verbal abuses. Some acts were of intimidation, of exercise of power. I watched the proceedings for three hours at the railway station. I was rather fascinated to understand how did the senior railway officials come to ‘know’ of the excessive bribe collecting by the RPF guards. I was told that one of the junior railway officials had seen a junior RPF guard hand over xxx rupees to his boss each week. The story circulated among the railway officials and finally reached the top. That is when the top bosses started issuing orders. The discourse on transparency developed with the understanding that the citizens should be able to see their state. Transparency translated in terms of streamlining processes and provision of information. The logics underlying such acts were to eliminate middlemen, reduce corruption and create an avenue for ‘citizens’ to ‘directly’ interact with their state. But then, what is this state that will be seen and interacted with? Who are these ‘citizens’ who will interact with the state? How ‘directly’ is direct? While I probe these questions, what strikes me as interesting and important is the fact that particular material practices symbolize acts of establishing and consolidating territory. The act of RPF guards collecting money from unreserved passengers seemed to bother the railway officials because it symbolized and materialized as creating territory. Perhaps then, state agencies and actors watch on the creation of territory. In recent times, the increasing centralization of authority in political parties has perhaps resulted from the need to watch against the creation of territory by members of parties and elected representatives from the party. How would the discourse of transparency address and account for this complexity of the state agencies and actors watching on their (seeming) counterparts? Would this create turbulence/uncertainty/dialectics for discourse itself? -- 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 From yanivbin at gmail.com Sat May 30 20:07:15 2009 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 20:07:15 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Talk On :: Financial crisis and Urban planning Jun 2nd 09 at 5 pm Message-ID: <86b8a7050905300737l40a070f3r2e9271595148b24b@mail.gmail.com> Invitation to a talk cohosted by a group of interested individuals and the Centre for Internet and Society Cunningham road http://www.cis-india.org/advocacy/digital-governance/financial-speculation-as-urban-planning "Financial Speculation as Urban Planning" What *Talk by Prof Michael Goldman* When Tuesday Jun 02, 2009 from 5.00 pm to 07:00 pm Where Centre for Internet and Society, No D2, third floor, Shariff Chambers, 14, Cunningham Road, Bangalore Contact Name Vinay Baindur Contact Email yanivbin at gmail.com An open talk and discussion about the roots of the US financial crisis and related dynamics in "world city" planning, such as those here in Bangalore. Speaker Bio Michael Goldman Associate Professor Dept of Sociology Univ of Minnesotta, Minneapolis, MN McKnight Presidential Fellow *Interest Areas*: Transnational, political, environmental, and development sociology; Sociology of knowledge and power; Transnational institutions (international finance, expert networks). *Current Research:* Neoliberalism and its discontents; the making of a world city: Bangalore, India; “Water for All”/ water privatization policies; development and environment in North-South relations. *Recent Publications* 1. “How ‘Water for All!’ Became Hegemonic: The Power of the World Bank and its Transnational Policy Networks.” 2007. *Geoforum* special issue on global water policy, 38(5): 786-800. 2. “Under New Management: Historical Context and Current Challenges at the World Bank.” 2007. *Brown Journal of World Affairs*, special issue on Wolfowitz’s Bank, Vol. XIII: 2, Summer 2007. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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