From anant_umn at yahoo.co.uk Mon Aug 1 18:13:13 2011 From: anant_umn at yahoo.co.uk (anant maringanti) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2011 18:13:13 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] EPW launches Review of Urban Affairs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The Economic and Political Weekly has launched a review of urban affairs. EPW readers would know that the journal publishes Review of Political Economy, Review of Labour and Review of women's studies. Each of these is a special collection of articles - published twice a year. The Review of Urban Affairs likewise will be published twice a year - in recognition of the fact that rapid 'urbanization' is transforming the economic and political landscape in India/South Asia. The first set of articles can be viewed/downloaded from the journal's website - here is the link to the introductory essay: http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/16363.pdf There are a total of five essays in this collection (excluding the introduction) exploring different aspects of cities. anant -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yanivbin at gmail.com Tue Aug 2 10:43:00 2011 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2011 10:43:00 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Bengal eyes more tax from bottling plants Message-ID: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110802/jsp/nation/story_14321992.jsp *Bengal eyes more tax from bottling plants * BISWAJIT ROY *Calcutta, Aug. 1:* The Bengal government has sounded out the Centre on a proposal to increase tax on soft drinks bottling plants and mineral water producers so that the state’s civic bodies can raise revenue without levying water tax. The plan to impose more tax on the bottling plants, both domestic and multinational, was mooted following pressure from the Centre on the Mamata Banerjee government to impose water tax in Calcutta and other municipal areas. The Centre has been sitting on funds for the Calcutta Municipal Corporation under the urban renewal mission to nudge the civic body to step up resource mobilisation. Bengal urban development and municipal affairs minister Firhad Hakim had made the new proposal to his central counterpart Kamal Nath and his deputy from Trinamul, Saugata Roy, during his visit to Delhi last week, government sources said today. Hakim confirmed the move but said a formal decision would be taken only after approval from chief minister Mamata Banerjee. “I have told Kamal Nathji we can’t levy water tax as the JNNURM (the urban renewal mission) had proposed. But civic bodies can increase their income by levying tax on the bottling plants. He said we may try it,’’ Hakim said. According to Hakim, the proposed tax increase on the bottling plants would fetch around Rs 200 crore, which would be much more than what water tax can fetch. According to Hakim, only around Rs 15 crore can be collected a year from water-users in slums in the city in addition to tax levied on commercial water-users, including bottling plants. Under the new plan, the bottling plants will be asked to take water from government-run plants located in and around greater Calcutta as well as upcoming projects in towns. The government will help the bottling plants relocate or purchase plots for new ones close to the water treatment facilities. Apart from the revenue-generating potential, the minister felt that the proposal would help stop indiscriminate ground-water extraction by the bottling plants at the cost of agriculture and environment. “We have reports that ponds have dried up and pumps no more lift enough water for cultivation following indiscriminate ground water extraction by the Pepsi bottling plant in Narendrapur in the south suburbs. Arsenic contamination has increased in many other places because of this kind of reckless practice,” Hakim said. A Pepsi official said the bottling plant was not owned by the company but by a franchisee. “It is not possible for us to comment,” the official said. Hakim said the Centre was not insistent on compliance of its conditions, including water tax, to clear the bottlenecks in funds flow. But the state government seems to have preferred to keep the Centre in good humour by desisting from a blanket rejection. “We have written a letter to the Union ministry saying that the state government is in the process of abiding the clauses of JNNURM,’’ the minister said. This assurance was apparently needed to prod the Centre to release Rs 900 crore in phases for already sanctioned projects and extending the deadline of some schemes by two years. Hakim has submitted fresh proposals entailing investments of Rs 784 crore for water works and urban development in the state. “Saugatada has taken the initiative to get the funds released for the CMC projects. Municipal commissioner Arnab Roy was part of my delegation to Delhi,’’ Hakim said. [image: Top] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cugambetta at yahoo.com Wed Aug 3 15:27:59 2011 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2011 02:57:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: [Sarai Newsletter] Call for Proposals: City as Studio, Edition 2 In-Reply-To: <4E3685F0.7010708@sarai.net> References: <4E3685F0.7010708@sarai.net> Message-ID: <1312365479.62348.YahooMailNeo@web125914.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> CALL FOR PROPOSALS   City as Studio, Edition 2 The Sarai-CSDS Associate Fellowship for Contemporary Art and Cultural Practice   The Sarai Programme at CSDS, Delhi is an interdisciplinary platform for the investigation and interpretation of contemporary urban life. Sarai produces events and processes, publishes offline and online content and generates contexts for research and creative practice.   The Sarai Programme, in keeping with its history of support to independent thinking and creativity, invites applications from artists and practitioners in diverse media for  the second edition of the "City as Studio" project. The "City as Studio" seeks to bring contemporary artistic and cultural practice into the contentious, active space of today’s urbanity.   By studio we mean both a space, and a cluster of activities and interactions. The Sarai-CSDS "City as Studio" initiative will create contexts for high intensity inter-disciplinary processes in locations in Delhi and at the Sarai exhibition space at CSDS. The studio process proposes to bring together artists, urbanists, educationists, cultural workers, neighborhood initiatives and diverse audiences to create art works, participatory performances, media works, salons, transmissions of different kinds of signals and imaginative festive events. The process may be rendered as an exhibition, as also a gathering, as a library, as a temporary archive, a salon. It will also take the form of a workshop, a temporary atelier, a media studio and a reading group.   We invite the applicants to imagine that the city itself is their studio, and that urban realities are their materials.   The City as Studio (Edition 1) book is available for free download as a PDF at the Sarai website. (www.sarai.net)   The applicants are invited to write a short note (no more than two pages) sketching an idea that they would like to see realized, participate in, or circulated if they were selected to participate in the "City as Studio".   The artists and practitioners who are selected will work in dialogue with Sarai to develop artistic projects and interventions in a range of forms that could be anything from free standing art works to proposals for mini-exhibitions, installations, performances and happenings, publications, sound works, video, internet and mobile phone based works, graphic novels, public art works, graffiti and signage and speculative architectural proposals.   The applicants who are selected will receive a fellowship amount of Rs. 85,000, and a modest material and logistical support for the realization of project ideas that are developed during the duration of the City as Studio process.   The fellowship period will be for the duration of nine months, during which time the fellows will be expected to pursue their practice in consonance with their stated intentions while applying for the "City as Studio" Fellowship. The fellows will have access to a group of mentors who will act as sounding boards for their ideas. The Raqs Media Collective will be available as interlocutors, and the fellows will interact with each other and with their mentors through this period, and will be expected to send regular updates of their work, visual materials, notes, etc. on to a designated discussion group. They will also be expected to submit a final report of their work at the end of the nine month period, in fulfillment of the terms of the fellowship.   The "City as Studio" Fellows will be required to spend six weeks (January-February 2012) 'in residence' as guests of Sarai in Delhi. Costs for travel to Delhi and accommodation will be borne by Sarai CSDS for candidates from outside Delhi. During this period, they will be expected to work intensively in dialogue with mentors from the Sarai network of artists and scholars.   Who Can Apply:   Anyone above the age of 21 with a bank account and a PAN number in India can apply for this fellowship. The residency period will be located in Delhi and is a compulsory part of the City as Studio process.   What Should Applicant's Send:   1. A two page sketch of an idea that the applicant would like to pursue within the framework of the city studio initiative. 2. A one page note about their practice. 2. CV listing recent works and projects. 3. Samples of recent work - preferably in digital versions. 4. Contact details   Last Date for Sending Applications: 30th August, 2011   Where to Send Applications:   Send the application by post to City as Studio, Sarai-CSDS, 29, Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India.   When can you expect to hear from us:   The selected candidates will be informed by email and the list will be posted on the Sarai website by 15th September, 2011.     _____________________________________ The Newsletter of the Sarai Programme, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054, www.sarai.net Info: dak at sarai.net.To subscribe: send a blank email to newsletter-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. Directions to Sarai: We are 5 mins. from the Civil Lines Metro Station. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _____________________________________ The Newsletter of the Sarai Programme, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054, www.sarai.net Info: dak at sarai.net.To subscribe: send a blank email to newsletter-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. Directions to Sarai: We are 5 mins. from the Civil Lines Metro Station. From cugambetta at yahoo.com Wed Aug 3 15:35:14 2011 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2011 03:05:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: Invitation to MAD Salon 04.2011 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1312365914.69936.YahooMailNeo@web125910.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> From: Rajeev Thakker Subject: Invitation to MAD Salon 04.2011 Invitation to MAD Salon 04.2011 Hello Everyone, Please join us for the Mumbai Architecture & Design (MAD) Salon 04.2011for a talk by Architectural Historian Sebastien Radouan entitled... “ Social Housing for Urban Low Income Families” focusing on the architecture of Andre Lurcat in Seine-Saint Denis, France. Saturday August 6th 2011 @ 7:00pm Studio-X Mumbai Kitab Mahal Fourth Floor 192, D N Road Fort Mumbai  400 001 (Opposite New Excelsior Cinema) Free and open to the public..... Hope to see you there..... Regards, Rajeev Thakker Director STUDIO X MUMBAI Kitab Mahal 4th Floor 192 D.N.Road Fort, Mumbai 400001 Email: studioxmumbai at columbia.edu Mobile: +91 9820401836 Website: www.arch.columbia.edu/studiox -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 983017 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: MAD_o4.2o11_flyerfinal.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 255903 bytes Desc: not available URL: From yanivbin at gmail.com Sun Aug 7 10:33:07 2011 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2011 10:33:07 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] =?windows-1252?q?Top_ten_reasons_you_should_get_your?= =?windows-1252?q?_UID_=91Aadhaar=92_immediately?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: http://openspace.org.in/UIDAadhaartoptenreasons Top ten reasons you should get your UID ‘Aadhaar’ immediately *Top ten reasons you should get your UID ‘Aadhaar’ immediately* 1. You want to give all your personal information to the Americans (L1, the subcontractors, have many ex-CIA spies on their staff and board.). 2. You want to give all your personal information to the Chinese. You like to live dangerously and/or want your personal details (and your children’s) to be flashed over the internet. (In 8 months, the Chinese hacked into the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan, and the Prime Minister’s Office—twice. The government did not even know, it is a study by a foreign university that brought it to light.). 3. You want to change your finger-prints regularly. When (not if) the database is hacked the biometrics you provided will no longer be usable. You will need another set of ‘unique’ finger prints. Guess who will have to pay for the surgery involved. It is either that or upgrade the whole system to a DNA bank… and when that gets hacked… 4. You like spam and pesky SMS from companies. You think that in a country where MPs ask questions in parliament for Rs 10,000 and arrest warrants for the President are issued for even less, your data will not be sold to the marketing companies and anyone who can pay for it. 5. You think the government—with about 25% of the MPs involved in crimes such as rape and murder—will not misuse the data. The government will not lie to you. 5. You like having more ID proofs… after a passport, driving licence, ration card. You can also get multiple UID cards…. (see http://ibnlive.in.com/news/chaos-mars-unique-identification-number-scheme/155176-60-118.html) which is also the reason there are two items at number five on this list. 6. You want to make it easier for hackers to empty out your bank accounts. UIDAI is now working with banks to make it compulsory to have Aadhaar for opening accounts. But stored identification (like passwords for instance) are so insecure that banks now use one time passwords, valid for as little as 20 minutes, to be used from the same computer it was requested. 7. You believe that there will be 100% availability of electricity and a working broadband connexion within walking distance anywhere in this country at all times. There will be no ‘equipment failure’ called ‘human error’ and ‘genuine mistakes’ (as in the case of the terror list given to Pakistan). 8. You think that privacy is a western concept. Like Union Carbide (of Bhopal disaster fame) you know that Indians are lesser human beings and do not deserve fundamental freedoms essential to human dignity. 9. You believe that Nandan Nilenkani will personally enter the data and verify it each time. It will not be sub-contracted out to the lowest bidder and entered/verified by a barely literate person. 10. You believe that Anna Hazare’s campaign against corruption is ill conceived and that the problem with the PDS is technology not human nature of excessive power of the government machinery. You do not believe that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely but rather that all the officials, including those controlling the data (including your fingerprints) are angels. For more go to: http://openspace.org.in/UIDaadhaar -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yanivbin at gmail.com Sun Aug 7 14:10:07 2011 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2011 14:10:07 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] VADODARA : JNNURM BSUP Housing :::----Jambuva deaths spark row Message-ID: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vadodara/Jambuva-deaths-spark-row/articleshow/9509784.cms<%20http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vadodara/Jambuva-deaths-spark-row/articleshow/9509784.cms> Jambuva deaths spark rowTNN | Aug 6, 2011, 10.52PM IST VADODARA: The deaths of two residents of Jambuva housing scheme for the urban poor has sparked a major controversy with the Congressalleging that the deaths were owing to unhealthy living conditions in the civic scheme that lacks basic amenities. The deaths since Friday come in the backdrop of allegations by opposition Congress in the VMC about poor living conditions and substandard work at the housing schemes for the economic weaker sections being developed under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM). Parbat Vanzara (40) died at the JNNURMhousing scheme in Jambuva at his residence, while Ashok Solanki (23) died at SSG Hospital here. In both the cases, opposition leader Chinnam Gandhisaid the persons were ill. "Despite his illness, Vanzara had to fill a bucket of water and take it to the third floor as there is no electricity at the scheme and motors are not working. He died soon after reaching home with the water," Gandhi said. Solanki, Gandhi said, was suffering from malaria and was admitted at SSG, where he died on Friday night. On Saturday, residents of the scheme staged a protest at VMC headquarters in Khanderao Market. The city unit of the Congress led by newly-appointed president Narendra Ravatsubmitted a memorandum to the VMC regarding the problems being faced at such schemes. Ravat said the construction of the houses was sub-standards. "Even in the past it has been exposed by us that inferior quality material was being used. After the first showers itself the houses started leaking. No roads have been made inside these schemes despite clear guidelines. There is a need for a thorough investigation to expose the inferior quality of work," he said. He added that many in these schemes now felt that they were better off in the slums where they stayed. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yanivbin at gmail.com Wed Aug 10 14:02:53 2011 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:02:53 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Shimla civic body mulls green tax on vehicles entering town Message-ID: http://himachal.us/2011/08/10/shimla-civic-body-mulls-green-tax-on-vehicles-entering-town/29836/news/baldev *Shimla civic body mulls green tax ** **on vehicles entering town* Posted by Baldev S. Chauhan , August 10th, 2011 Shimla : In an effort to reduce vehicle congestion in the popular resort town of Shimla, the municipal corporation here is proposing imposing a green tax on all vehicles entering the hill station. This tax is proposed on the basis of a green tax already being imposed in Manali, another crowded resort town of Himachal Pradesh. Only vehicles from outside the state will be taxed while local ones will be exempt, a spokesman of the Shimla MC said Wednesday. Under the Himachal Pradesh Municipal Corporation amendment act 2011, the corporation has been authorised under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) act.Shimla has already been selected under the mission.The matter will come up in the next session of the civic body, the spokesman said. The income generated from the green tax will be spent on the improvement of the environment and civic amenities in Shimla. This summer saw the largest number of vehicles entering the town often causing long traffic snarls.Due to the steep mountain terrain the resort town has very limited parking space.The cost of parking is very high. If one does find a parking lot, one has to walk long distances as many roads in the heart of Shimla are out of bounds for vehicles as well.The vehicle green tax rate list will be finalised in the next civic body session,an official said. Currently a two wheeler entering Manali has to pay Rs 100 a car Rs 200, a sumo sized vehicle Rs 300, while a bus or truck has to cough up Rs 500 per vehicle. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yanivbin at gmail.com Wed Aug 10 14:05:38 2011 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:05:38 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] TCS, S'pore Management University to set up iCity Lab Message-ID: http://www.governancenow.com/gov-next/egov/tcs-spore-management-university-set-icity-lab TCS, S'pore Management University to set up iCity Lab TCS to initially invest six million Singaporean dollars over the next three years; the two organisations plan to create a new research facility to develop industry standards and infotech frameworks for the emerging intelligent city or 'iCity' model of urban development PTI | August 09 2011 Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Monday said it will set up iCity Lab, a hightech research lab, in association with the Singapore Management University (SMU). The TCS-SMU iCity Lab will be located at the SMU campus, a TCS release said in Mumbai on Monday. As part of the initiative, TCS will initially invest six million Singaporean dollars directly in the lab over the next three years. The two organisations plan to create a new research facility to develop industry standards and infotech frameworks for the emerging intelligent city or 'iCity' model of urban development. Apart from the direct investment in the lab, TCS will also support the initiative under the TCS Co-Innovation Network initiative, with collaboration from its global network of innovation labs. The lab will be located within SMU's School of Information Systems (SIS), and will draw on faculty from SIS, as well as from the other parts of SMU. "The investment strengthens our commitment to Singapore and we see this as a hub of innovation in Asia. Tomorrow's cities will be designed and built with infotech backbone to enable integrated urban management, improved quality of life and inclusive economic, social and sustainable growth. Globally, over USD 100 billion is expected to be invested in the intelligent city segment over the next 10 years," TCS Asia Pacific chairman Girija Pande said. The iCity Lab will leverage TCS' existing suite of urban infotech applications, as well as its large global organisation and partner ecosystem. "Through TCS-SMU iCity Lab, we will be partnering with surrounding urban centres across the region to change and re- imagine the way the infotech hardware and software infrastructure of cities is going to be designed, built, integrated and managed in the future," SMU's Steven Miller said. ------------------------------ *Source URL:* http://www.governancenow.com/gov-next/egov/tcs-spore-management-university-set-icity-lab -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yanivbin at gmail.com Wed Aug 10 14:32:08 2011 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:32:08 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] As London Explodes in Riots, There Is a Context That Can't Be Ignored: Brutal Cuts and Enforced Austerity Measures Message-ID: As London Explodes in Riots, There Is a Context That Can't Be Ignored: Brutal Cuts and Enforced Austerity Measures By Nina Power, Comment Is Free Posted on August 9, 2011, Printed on August 10, 2011 http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/647514/as_london_explodes_in_riots%2C_there_is_a_context_that_can%5C%27t_be_ignored%3A_brutal_cuts_and_enforced_austerity_measures Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures. The government knows very well that it is taking a gamble, and that its policies run the risk of sparking mass unrest on a scale we haven't seen since the early 1980s. With people taking to the streets of Tottenham, Edmonton, Brixton and elsewhere over the past few nights, we could be about to see the government enter a sustained and serious losing streak. The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social unrest cuts much deeper. The fatal shooting of Mark Duggan last Thursday, where it appears, contrary to initial accounts, that only police bullets were fired, is another tragic event in a longer history of the Metropolitan police's treatment of ordinary Londoners, especially those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and the singling out of specific areas and individuals for monitoring, stop and search and daily harassment. One journalist wrote that he was surprised how many people in Tottenham knew of and were critical of the IPCC, but there should be nothing surprising about this. When you look at the figures for deaths in police custody (at least 333 since 1998 and not a single conviction of any police officer for any of them), then the IPCC and the courts are seen by many, quite reasonably, to be protecting the police rather than the people. Combine understandable suspicion of and resentment towards the police based on experience and memory with high poverty and large unemployment and the reasons why people are taking to the streets become clear. (Haringey, the borough that includes Tottenham, has thefourth highest level of child poverty in London and an unemployment rate of 8.8%, double the national average, with one vacancy for every 54 seeking work in the borough.) Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country. As Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, phenomena usually described as "social problems" (crime, ill-health, imprisonment rates, mental illness) are far more common in unequal societies than ones with better economic distribution and less gap between the richest and the poorest. Decades of individualism, competition and state-encouraged selfishness – combined with a systematic crushing of unions and the ever-increasing criminalisation of dissent – have made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world. Images of burning buildings, cars aflame and stripped-out shops may provide spectacular fodder for a restless media, ever hungry for new stories and fresh groups to demonise, but we will understand nothing of these events if we ignore the history and the context in which they occur. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From deepamandrekar at gmail.com Wed Aug 10 15:09:09 2011 From: deepamandrekar at gmail.com (Deepa Mandrekar Rao) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 15:09:09 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] [HasiruUsiru] As London Explodes in Riots, There Is a Context That Can't Be Ignored: Brutal Cuts and Enforced Austerity Measures In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: http://www.arcadejournal.com/public/IssueArticle.aspx?Volume=27&Issue=4&Article=324 *ON THE ETHICS OF CATASTROPHE**Nicolas Veroli * ------------------------------ Crisis is in the air. As the global economy crumbles and as the planetary ecology evaporates, the question of what kind of historical moment we are living through becomes contemporary again. Are we living through a catastrophic age? And if so, what should we do? What is our responsibility? Or, on the contrary, is the appearance of universal catastrophe a design, an optical illusion painted on the wall of the future? Everything seems to suggest that a universal catastrophe is upon us. At this moment in time, the Dow Jones industrial average, the index of US industrial activity, has lost half of its value in less than a year. The economic mechanism that has held up American consumerism through loans over the past 30 years, the finance and banking industry, is at a standstill, and at least according to some experts, in large part out of business. Unemployment is reaching doubledigit levels in many parts of the country, and along with it, of course, there come increases in home evictions, poverty and hunger. And all this, as it turns out, is a rather mild version of what’s happening throughout the rest of the world: Entire countries are going bankrupt or are on the brink of bankruptcy, their economies merrily restructured by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – which does not seem to have heard the death knell of neoliberalism – tens of millions more people thereby sinking into all-too-predictable destitution. Meanwhile, symptoms of Global Warming are suggesting that even if the economic logic of consumer capitalism and its foundational institutions could somehow be salvaged, a persistent use of the fossil fuel-based technologies that constitute its actual substance (from anything made of plastic to cars to most power plants) will result in massive ecological imbalances, and, quite possibly, the extinction of human life. One might even argue here that Obama’s “Green New Deal,” while it will go some way toward reducing Carbon emissions – how much and how fast, however, is not quite clear – will do little to the economic structure of capitalism since it is largely premised on re-establishing the status quo ante. But it is precisely this system – premised as it was on ever-increasing consumption of commodities produced in the Third World by an ever-more impoverished middle class in the First (which is precisely where lending came in) – that is no longer an option. Catastrophe thus does seem the order of the day. Environmental prophets are screaming it to whoever will listen; religious prophets (all denominations included) are depicting it in the terms of their favorite image, that of The Apocalypse. Even the Marxist prophets are here for the reunion, resurrected it seems, especially for the occasion, to rub their hands in terminal glee. But if we take a step back for a moment, if we ask ourselves precisely what is a “catastrophe,” this interpretation – let us call it the catastrophist interpretation – seems substantially less compelling. When you think about it, the concept of “catastrophe” is rather paradoxical. On the one hand, catastrophe is a category of history. It denotes a historically identifiable event—the extinction of the dinosaurs, for instance, or the collapse of the Roman Empire. On the other hand, it is a category of history which designates the end of what it belongs to: Namely, the end of the historical process. After that famous meteor shower that had catastrophe written all over it, for instance, the history of the dinosaurs came to an end. The catastrophe is thus both inside and outside history. It exists in history, however, only as the after-image of the end, a phantasmagorical image of something that happened – or more precisely, that stopped happening – in the past, projected ever-forward in the future. The perceived or divined catastrophe is both a symptom of humans’ remarkable consciousness of their mortality and the projection of their greatest fears into a future that is ultimately indecipherable. But the real catastrophe, the Real of the catastrophe to speak the language of the philosophers, is only retrospective, it is only what can be recorded retrospectively about someone or something else. No one lives through a catastrophe: That is the definition of catastrophe. So this is one problem with the catastrophist thesis: The catastrophe cannot be lived in the present. It can only be remembered as an abstract historical memory. Or, it can be experienced as a fantasy of the future, in the mode of science fiction, so to speak. The other problem with the view that we are living through a catastrophe today is that it is a lie, what in more “sophisticated” language one might call a mystification. Think about it this way: Bankers, Wall Street wizards, various industry lobbyists and their flunkies (who compose most of the political establishment), as well as a full supply of academic geniuses inhabiting social science and philosophy departments have been crowing in the same choir for 30 years or so. Let’s call all these people the elite. Their song? A paean to the free market, consumerism, ceaseless economic growth (and the endless construction of ugly malls, ugly houses, ugly buildings that accompanies it), deregulation, privatization—a song whose chorus was “There Is No Alternative,” or TINA. Now, in common parlance, a catastrophe is no one’s fault; it is unforeseen and thus unavoidable. But that is precisely what the current situation never was. Global Warming and environmental collapse have been known quantities since the early 1970s. By 1981 there were federal government scientists who were filing official reports predicting that if significant reductions in greenhouse gases were not made in the medium term, really bad things would start to happen. The global economic meltdown critics like Susan George were starting to get the picture of what would happen by the mid-80s, as they studied the result of neoliberal policies imposed by the IMF/World Bank complex on Southern countries like Nigeria and Mexico that were defaulting on their international debt. It was then that many people started realizing that the financialization of the world economy, the emphasis on American consumption (fueled by personal credit) as the solution to ever-increasing productivity (premised on a stagnant or shrinking global wage) was a recipe for disaster. By the late 90s and the crisis of the so-called “Asian Tigers” (South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, etc.) the writing was on the wall. No one needed to be a genius, then, to see that sooner or later this situation would no longer be tenable. The housing market was a stop-gap that lasted just long enough to get George W. Bush re-elected, but here again it wasn’t difficult for whoever wanted to see what was happening to get the picture. Thus, neither global warming nor the world-economic depression we are now entering can seriously be called catastrophes. They were avoidable and they could have been avoided… had it not been, that is, for the nature of elite rule. So the first thing we must do is refuse the catastrophist premise in all of its practical and existential implications. Yes, climate change is going to happen, and yes, we are going to have to change the way we consume, move and live. We must have limits on how we spend and on what and how we buy. Cars must become our dinosaurs. And cities must become more efficient with water and power. But these changes are not bad; they are by no means catastrophes. ------------------------------ *Nicolas Veroli is a political philosopher. He lives in upstate New York and teaches at several state penitentiaries. He is currently writing a book on the dreamlife of sovereignty. He has published criticism in magazines such as *The Stranger* and *The Portland Mercury* and theoretical and historical articles in academic journals such as *International Studies In Philosophy, The CLR James Journal* and *Ijele: A Journal of African Aesthetics. On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 2:32 PM, Vinay Baindur wrote: > ** > > > > As London Explodes in Riots, There Is a Context That Can't Be Ignored: > Brutal Cuts and Enforced Austerity Measures > > By Nina Power, Comment Is Free > Posted on August 9, 2011, Printed on August 10, 2011 > > http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/647514/as_london_explodes_in_riots%2C_there_is_a_context_that_can%5C%27t_be_ignored%3A_brutal_cuts_and_enforced_austerity_measures > > Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has > seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, > several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on > the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in > Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a > different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and > enforced austerity measures. The government knows very well that it is > taking a gamble, and that its policies run the risk of sparking mass unrest > on a scale we haven't seen since the early 1980s. With people taking to the > streets of Tottenham, Edmonton, Brixton and elsewhere over the past few > nights, we could be about to see the government enter a sustained and > serious losing streak. > > The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the > entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social > unrest cuts much deeper. The fatal shooting of Mark Duggan last Thursday, > where it appears, contrary to initial accounts, that only police bullets > were fired, is another tragic event in a longer history of the Metropolitan > police's treatment of ordinary Londoners, especially those from black and > minority ethnic backgrounds, and the singling out of specific areas and > individuals for monitoring, stop and search and daily harassment. > > One journalist wrote that he was surprised how many people in > Tottenham knew of and were critical of the IPCC, but there should be nothing > surprising about this. When you look at the figures for deaths in police > custody (at least 333 since 1998 and not a single conviction of any police > officer for any of them), then the IPCC and the courts are seen by many, > quite reasonably, to be protecting the police rather than the people. > > Combine understandable suspicion of and resentment towards the police based > on experience and memory with high poverty and large unemployment and the > reasons why people are taking to the streets become clear. (Haringey, the > borough that includes Tottenham, has thefourth highest level of child > poverty in London and an unemployment rate of 8.8%, double the national > average, with one vacancy for every 54 seeking work in the borough.) > > Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London > and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger > picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off > than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been > pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, > according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed > country. > > As Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in The Spirit Level: Why > Equality is Better for Everyone, phenomena usually described as "social > problems" (crime, ill-health, imprisonment rates, mental illness) are far > more common in unequal societies than ones with better economic distribution > and less gap between the richest and the poorest. Decades of individualism, > competition and state-encouraged selfishness – combined with a systematic > crushing of unions and the ever-increasing criminalisation of dissent – have > made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world. > > Images of burning buildings, cars aflame and stripped-out shops may provide > spectacular fodder for a restless media, ever hungry for new stories and > fresh groups to demonise, but we will understand nothing of these events if > we ignore the history and the context in which they occur. > __._,_.___ > Reply to sender| Reply > to group| Reply > via web post| Start > a New Topic > Messages in this topic( > 1) > Recent Activity: > > > Visit Your Group > [image: Yahoo! Groups] > Switch to: Text-Only, > Daily Digest• > Unsubscribe • Terms > of Use > . > > __,_._,___ > -- Deepa Mandrekar monsoon design 12/2, banaswadi main road, cooke town, bangalore 560033 tel: +91 80 41621740/ +91 80 25806139 pers.: +91 9880400477 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carol.upadhya at gmail.com Wed Aug 10 09:24:38 2011 From: carol.upadhya at gmail.com (Carol Upadhya) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 09:24:38 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Reminder: NIAS Public Lecture - Thursday 11 August 6.00 pm - G. Balachandran, 'Nailing a Crisis Lacking a Name: Politics of Knowledge and Policy in the Global Economic Crisis' Message-ID: Dear friends and colleagues, Prof G Balachandran, currently a Visiting Professor at NIAS, will deliver a public lecture on the politics of knowledge in the global financial crisis, on Thursday, August 11 at 6.00 p.m. Do hope you can make it. Please to circulate this mail further. Best wishes, Carol ----- *National Institute of Advanced Studies * *Indian Institute of Science Campus, **Bangalore 560 012*** * * *invites you to a * * * *Public Lecture*** *(as a part of the Ninth Annual NIAS-DST Training Programme **on Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Science and Technology Course)* on *Nailing a Crisis Lacking a Name: Politics of Knowledge and * *Policy in the Global Economic Crisis, c. 2007-2011* * * *by* * * *Prof. G. Balachandran* *Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies* *Geneva, Switzerland* on *Thursday, 11 August, 2011 at 6.00 pm* *at JRD Tata Auditorium, NIAS, IISc Campus, Bangalore 560 012* *Prof. Carol Upadhya* *Chairperson* * * *Coffee/Tea at 5.30 pm* *Abstract*: This lecture is framed by three sets of connected reflections on the politics of economic and policy knowledge in the current crisis. It first addresses the elusiveness of this crisis, as a totality, to conventional scientific imagination. Then it explores disagreements over the crisis’s nature, timeline, causes, and possible solutions to understand why some elements of the crisis seem better understood than others, while efforts to tackle the crisis as a whole have been beset by long periods of paralysis. Finally it discusses the implications of this for our understanding of the politics of social knowledge, generally, as well as of representation and public policy. *About the Speaker:* G. Balachandran is Professor of International History and Politics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva. His research and publication interests broadly encompass financial, labour, and intellectual history. His most recent work is *Globalizing Labour? Asian Seafarers and World Shipping, c. 1870-1945* (forthcoming, 2012). * * * * * * * *All are welcome* *For further details, please contact Dr. M.G. Narasimhan < narasimhanmarehalli at gmail.com> * K S Rama Krishna -- N.I.A.S., I.I.Sc Campus Bangalore 560012 Ph: 2218 5000 Fax: 2218 5028 Email: niasoff at gmail.com -- Carol Upadhya Professor 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 Programme Co-Director, *Provincial Globalisation: The Impact of Reverse Transnational Flows in India's Regional Towns * *http://www.nias.res.in/research-schools-socialsciences-provincial.php* *http://www.provglo.org/* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sharish at iihs.ac.in Thu Aug 11 13:25:05 2011 From: sharish at iihs.ac.in (Swastik Harish) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:25:05 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] GIS course at IIHS Message-ID: <4E438AD9.5070602@iihs.ac.in> Dear All, The IIHS is pleased to announce a short course on _GIS - Principles and Applications in Human Settlements_ from the 23rd to the 27th of August 2011 at the IIHS office in RMV Extension, Bangalore. This 5-day short-course, led by Dr. H. S. Sudhira is a unique programme designed for working professionals, research scholars and post-graduate students from diverse backgrounds working on different aspects of human settlements. It covers the essentials of theory on Geographic Information Science and Systems and followed by hands-on exposure to practice with exclusive case studies. The Short Course will equip learners to appreciate the nuances of key concepts, enabling them to quickly learn, analyze and apply the techniques of GIS into their respective domains and thus be able to produce desirable outputs. This will also expose learners to use / develop mash-ups based on popular web-based GIS applications like Google Maps. The full details for the course are available at the following link: http://www.iihs.co.in/programmes/professional-short-courses/gis-principles-applications-in-human-settlements/. We will be grateful if you could circulate this to appropriate candidates. The last date for applying for the Bangalore iteration of the course is 18th August 2011. We expect to conduct another iteration of the course towards the end of November in Delhi, the details for which will be available shortly at our website. Warm regards, -- Swastik Harish Consultant Indian Institute for Human Settlements Tharangavana 803& 808 Surya Kiran D/5, 12th Cross RMV Extension 19 Kasturba Gandhi Marg Bangalore Karnataka New Delhi India 560080 India 110001 p: +91-80-41137705 p: +91-11-43602798 www.iihs.co.in IIHS - GIS course -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: IIHS-GIS.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 640026 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cugambetta at yahoo.com Mon Aug 15 20:44:38 2011 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2011 08:14:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: Tomorrow- RE-LOOK 16 -Tapati Guha Thakurta on "The Dead Object of Public Statuary" Tuesday 16 August 2011, 6.30 pm @1.Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1313421278.22728.YahooMailNeo@web125920.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> This should be of interest, if in Bangalore. Apologies for any cross posting. Curt ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: 1Shanthiroad Studio <1.shanthiroad at gmail.com> To: Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 5:43 AM Subject: Tomorrow- RE-LOOK 16 -Tapati Guha Thakurta on "The Dead Object of Public Statuary" Tuesday 16 August 2011,6.30 pm @1.Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery For Re-Look 16, historian Tapati Guha Thakurta who has written several seminal books on art, will present her most recent research looking at the public statues of Kolkata. Somberikatte @ 1Shanthiroad   presents   RE-LOOK : Lectures on Indian Art     “The Dead Object of Public Statuary”     a lecture by   Tapati Guha Thakurta Historian, CSSS, Kolkata     Tuesday 16 August 2011 at 6:30 pm @ 1Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery, 1, Shanthi Road, Shanthi Nagar, Bangalore 560027     The Dead Object of Public Statuary Despite their largeness and privileged locations, public statuary are usually rendered the most ignored objects of public spectatorship, consigned to a status of being neither ‘art’ nor ‘icon, neither ‘high’ nor ‘popular’ visual culture. With a focus on Kolkata’s’s colonial and post-colonial statues, the paper interrogates the public lives and functions of these objects from three angles: firstly, looking at the logic of the form and materiality in this genre, and the purposes they serve in transforming human likeness into official symbol; secondly it explores why statues continually fall short of being sculpture, and thirdly it tracks the transition of the colonial to the post-colonial in the changing sculptural iconography of the city.   Tapati Guha Thakurta has written widely on the art and cultural history of modern India, and is currently a Professor in History at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC). Her two main books are The Making of a New 'Indian' Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal(Cambridge University Press, 1992) and Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Columbia University Press, and Permanent Black, 2004) besides several monographs. She has recently curated an archival exhibition of the CSSSC, titled The City in the Archive: Calcutta’s Visual Histories, which was on view at the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre, Calcutta, from July 8 - 26, 2011. She is presently completing on a book on the visual cultures of Durga Puja in contemporary Calcutta.     *RE-LOOK - Lectures on Indian Art This series of lectures will present exciting new research being done in the areas of art history, art practice and visual anthropology in India, each for the first time in Bengaluru. Distinguished art historians and academics will be invited to give illustrated papers on their recent work and interests. There will be a lecture every month, which will take place at the popular artist space 1Shanthiroad, situated in the heart of the city. The lectures are programmed by Pushpamala N, supported by Somberikatte and hosted and administered by 1.Shanthiroad.   *Somberikatte:Somberikatteis a Kannada word meaning idler’s platform- usually the platform around a large tree where people gather to gossip and exchange news. It is a fictional institution, sometimes a forum, sometimes a film production company or the name of a photo studio, used by the artist Pushpamala N.   *1.Shanthiroad: The Studio/Gallery at 1.Shanthiroad, Bangalore, is an independent artist run space for art residencies, slide lectures, small conferences, exhibitions, performances, screenings and informal gatherings. Centrally located with an award winning design, it was founded by Suresh Jayaram and is administered by a not-for-profit trust VAC – Visual Art Collective. www.1shanthiroad.com         -- 1.Shanthi Road Studio/Gallery -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "1Shanthiroad studio/Gallery" group. To post to this group, send email to 1shanthiroadstudio at googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 1shanthiroadstudio+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/1shanthiroadstudio?hl=en. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: tapati Type: image/jpeg Size: 272300 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: logo3.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 93940 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Directions to 1SHANTHI.png Type: image/png Size: 33337 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: LECTURE SERIES.doc Type: application/msword Size: 39936 bytes Desc: not available URL: From yanivbin at gmail.com Wed Aug 17 00:46:50 2011 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:46:50 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] How Bangalore saw the big picture Samar Halarnkar Message-ID: http://www.livemint.com/2011/08/12200219/Urban-Change--How-Bangalore-s.html Urban Change | How Bangalore saw the big picture * *If you live in an Indian city, you live with rebuilding and renaming. But Bangalore, one of the world’s fastest growing cities between 1981 and 2004, urged you to think beyond physical change Samar Halarnkar Let me tell you what this article will not talk about. It will not talk about the little things that defined Bangalore: the sun-shaded tunnels of green created by the arching canopies of grand, old rain trees; the peaked, wooden overhangs called “monkey tops”, which once graced every window on every sprawling bungalow; a climate so agreeable that no house was built with fans; a gentility that allowed migrant and local to live a life of calm reflection and commune with the great outdoors every day; an effortless multiculturalism that accommodated a variety of cultures and beliefs; and the light wind that blows almost incessantly through the city, the Bangalore breeze. Too many people in modern-day Bengaluru (do not expect me to use this name, for the synapses that control nomenclature in my brain resist rewiring) talk of these things and times gone by. Too many appear steeped in a past that will never return. One city tabloid has a daily column in which old timers reminisce of their Bangalore. Other newspapers reveal a similar, strange affinity for faded days and forgotten ways. For a city more globalized than any other in India, for a city that destroys its heritage so ruthlessly and efficiently, for a city that embodies the future like no other, Bangalore has a strange way of not letting go of the past. This could be because “the past” in Bangalore is, often, no more than 20 years away. If you live in an Indian city, you live with change—constant rebuilding, tearing down, renaming, and the acceptance of a metaphor that says, if you want to enter a new life, you must die to another. In Bangalore, whatever passes, lives on as part of city’s great brains trust. In Bangalore, the future does not come—as the American cold-war statesman Dean Acheson put it—one day at a time. It comes many weeks or many months at once. Between 1981 and 2004, Bangalore gained the dubious honour of being one of the world’s fastest-growing cities. Its population doubled, from 3.1 million to more than 6 million, compressing what should have been a slow metamorphosis into an explosion of disruptive change. Between 1995 and 2005, more than five multinational companies streamed into the city every month. *The Bangalore breeze is about the only thing from the old town that physically survives the transition to the 21st century (so, too, do a few tunnels of rain trees, but every day they suffer new assaults). Since its great acceleration into globalization during the 1990s, Bangalore has lost about 70% of its once endless sea of trees, the local forest department estimates.* In a city once known for its cleanliness, only a third of the garbage is collected, as plastic bags spill their decomposing contents on street corners. *A third of the city’s 8 million people live below the poverty line—1.5 million in slums—and less than a fifth are a part of the globalized elite.* But if there is one thing Bangalore forces you to do, it is to look at the big picture, even if some brush strokes are smudged. Globalization brought unprecedented opportunity to the city that I, of no fixed address, consider my hometown. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in a city that taught me the virtues of easy living, sang froid and deep thinking. Bangalore does that to you. It urges you to think beyond your boundaries. It helps you collaborate with new people and new ideas. It provides an atmosphere that lets you join the dots. “I was in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized the world was flat,” says writer Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat, his 2005 best-seller on globalization. By flat, Friedman means the connectedness born from new technologies as trade and political barriers fall, allowing anyone, anywhere to do business with anyone, anywhere in the world. For hundreds of companies and a few million people, the big picture started to emerge in Bangalore during the 1990s. It was during this decade that academic Bangalore—the city that India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru posited as the nation’s intellectual capital—sensed the opportunities offered by the opening of the Indian economy and the demand, primarily from the US, for cheap, intelligent labour for global technology markets. This was the formative decade for Infosys, Wipro and a handful of other Indian companies that were tapping global markets. In 1997, Karnataka became the first Indian state to announce an information technology policy (as we shall see later, that was the last look the government may have taken at the big picture). It was in the 1990s that some of the world’s biggest tech companies, such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Philips, Intel and Nortel, entered Bangalore. Today, Bangalore contributes about 34% to India’s total outsourcing revenue of nearly $50 billion (around Rs.2.25 trillion). This flat world created for the city a wildly diverse economy. The business of technology employs a little more than half a million people, but it provides employment to maybe five times that number in sectors that closely follow the rise of a young, globalized elite. From construction to taxi services to retail to education, the demand for blue-collar, white-collar and collarless professionals is ceaseless. More than half the population is from abroad or from other parts of India, says The Bangalore Story, a 2010 report by Tholons, a global strategic advisory company. A transformation so rapid, from small town to global metropolis, is obviously not easy on those who see change but are not a part of it. So, the 1990s saw the most visible, violent protests against change. This was the decade when farmers and Kannada chauvinists ransacked the first outlet of Kentucky Fried Chicken, picketed multinationals Cargill Seeds and Monsanto, and protested the Ms Universe contest. As the economy swelled to embrace more people, such protests quickly faded, as did Bangalore’s once-regular riots and confrontations—between Hindu and Muslim, Tamilians and Kannadigas, between congregations of various languages in Christian churches. The 1990s also revealed that while Bangalore’s citizens were going global with a speed rarely seen before in the world, its politicians and public services, which should have prepared for transformation, faltered badly. “In the early 1990s, the quality of public service agencies in Bangalore was noticeably declining,” says German geographer Christoph Dittrich in a paper, Bangalore: Globalisation and Fragmentation in India’s High-Tech Capital. “Despite being the centre of India’s information technology boom, electricity, water and garbage disposal services were unreliable, if accessible at all, and providers lacked accountability.” The World Bank says half the middle-income population faces daily demands for bribes from public servants. Bangalore’s rise as one of the world’s hot tech cities often obscures, to those who run it, the primary source of its new wealth: global investors. There is scant regard for the fact that the city is more vulnerable than any other in India to a global recession, and there is little effort in retaining global confidence in Bangalore by transforming its infrastructure and offering more equality to its disregarded poor. There is one other thing that remains from the old city, something that isn’t threatened, yet. If you are in Bangalore and, if, after a profitable and/or pleasing day at work, you are vexed by the traffic, the pollution, the unruliness and the acquisitiveness of people, raise your head and watch the sky. The days tend to end in a blaze of glory. As you watch the spectacular, crimson slashes of a Bangalore sunset, you cannot fail to see the big picture. Samar Halarnkar is editor-at-large, Mint and Hindustan Times. Write to lounge at livemint.com Showing 4 comments Sort by Subscribe by email Subscribe by RSS Vikas_grower 08/14/2011 11:13 PM An old wealthy businessman has 10 years to live and doesnt want to die without heirs . On an advise by a tantrik he marries a 12 year old girl and makes her bear 10 children in the next ten years before he dies. The girl is what bangalore has been reduced to , today by the IT enterpreneurial zeal during the decade 1995-2005. Like Reply Voyeur1 08/14/2011 03:16 PM Of course our brain resists rewiring when it comes to nomenclature doesn't it. It's not like anybody called it Bengaluru before did they? What, you mean to say that the local populace calls it Bengaluru? and Bangalore is only an anglicized version of the same? Go away. Like Reply Vikas_grower 08/13/2011 11:04 PM A city whose ecological wealty lost to economical wealth. Like Reply Jimmy 08/13/2011 03:01 PM *Yeah. All external people are Bangalore's saviors and all kannadigas are chauvinists. I have been living ever since in this great city and I have seen it transform into a megacity, people who come from outside have no love or respect towards the city. They are here just to make a few bucks or are here because their city of origin sucks. They have ruined Bangalore in every possible way. The only way Bangalore can be saved is if everyone goes back to where they came from.* 2 people liked this. Like Reply Reactions Fake IPL PLayer 08/14/2011 01:57 PM From Twitter I see crimson slashes of bglr sunset only cos i wrk frm home n dont hv to deal with traffic http://t.co/CZskbCE N I dont c the big picture Gautam John 08/14/2011 01:43 PM From Twitter Poignant. Me sad. We blew a good thing. | How Bangalore saw the big picture http://t.co/LQd9yGB via @livemint -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From esgindia at gmail.com Thu Aug 18 23:51:01 2011 From: esgindia at gmail.com (ESGINDIA) Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:51:01 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] District Planning Committees Message-ID: <4E4D580D.1020209@gmail.com> The Parliament is satisfied by the mere restatement of the intent of the 74th Amendment. There is absolutely on information about the extent to which this critical provision has been complied with. Leo Saldanha Press Information Bureau Government of India Ministry of Panchayati Raj 18-August-2011 15:49 IST District Planning Committees Under Article 243ZD of the Constitution, the District Planning Committee (DPC) shall be constituted at the District level in every State to consolidate the Plans prepared by Panchayats and Municipalities in the district and to prepare a draft development plan for the district as whole. The composition and functions to be assigned to the DPCs are decided by the State Legislature. While preparing the draft development plan, DPCs have to take into consideration (i) matters of common interest between the Panchayats and the Municipalities including spatial planning, sharing of water and other physical and natural resources, the integrated development of infrastructure and environmental conservation and (ii) the extent and type of available resources whether financial or otherwise. The Planning Commission has issued guidelines for preparation of district plans in August, 2006. A comprehensive Manual for Integrated District Planning has also been prepared in 2008. Moreover, Ministry of Panchayati Raj has issued guidelines dated 29.5.2009 to the States in this regard. Grants to Panchayats are given under Backward Regions Grant Funds(BRGF), Thirteenth Finance Commission, etc. The formula and procedure for distribution among the Panchayats varies from scheme to scheme. The above information was given by the Minister of Panchayati Raj Shri V. Kishore Chandra Deo in reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha today. MC/ls -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: esgindia.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 346 bytes Desc: not available URL: From yanivbin at gmail.com Mon Aug 22 18:51:33 2011 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2011 18:51:33 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Madras miscellany Message-ID: http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/metroplus/article2379304.ece Madras miscellanyS. MUTHIAH [image: The complex Photo: R. Ravindran] The complex Photo: R. Ravindran Recognition for a shell Former Chief Minister Kalaignar Karunanidhi should be a happy man if he gets hold of a copy of *Architecture in India since 1990 *by Prof. Rahul Mehrotra, well-known Mumbai architect and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard University (U.S.). Mehrotra might during his presentation on the book in Madras recently have made passing reference to the Kalaignar's obsessive project as being a building more akin to a modern Reichstag, but he obviously had thought enough about it to include it in his book as one of the landmark creations of the last 20 years. Of the building raised in a rush to be a new Millennium Tamil Nadu Legislative and Secretariat Complex, Mehrotra writes, “One of the first examples of a state assembly building in the post-liberalisation era in India is the State Assembly.” And he added in his presentation that it was probably intended to reflect the modernity and internationalisation prevalent in a State seeking global investment in almost every field from industry to infrastructure. The one feature of the building which struck Mehrotra the most was “the creation of a courtyard element for usage in various forms — a central plaza, an access and distribution area, and an open water tank …” He adds, “The urban plaza circle marks the perimeter for all other subordinate bracketing structures, thus notionally forming the ‘hinge' between the people and the elected government.” A few days before Mehrotra's presentation and the release of his book — the highlight of which is the eye-catching religious architecture that's come up all over India — this paper sought the views of the public on what use should be made of the abandoned, unfinished building and the work-in-progress elsewhere on its campus. But before the three best suggestions could be chosen by this paper for presentation to the present Government, the Government itself has announced its decision. I've always thought the complex, particularly when seen from the Periyar statue junction, resembles that cluster of oil tanks you see when coming down from Royapuram, you know those oil tanks of the type the *Emden *shelled. But that's being flippant. I do have a serious side — and one thing I have repeatedly stated in *Madras Musings* is that to use the building must be put. And that use, the Government has decided should be a multi-speciality hospital for the general public. Now, whether that's the best use given the problems of logistics that may arise in having such a facility in the heart of town, only time will tell. I've always felt it should be housing for all Government offices now in rented buildings. And after hearing Rahul Mehrotra's views I would add that the auditorium and central plaza would have proved a grand performing space. The complex would thus serve two purposes — an official one and a less formal one, but both linking the people with the Government. ******* *Fort St. George remembered* It was only the other day that I wrote that the various events during Madras Week — now spread over a month — were sure to provide grist for this column's mill. And sure enough at one of the early events I found a display that is most appropriate to record today, Madras Day. That early event was an exhibition of Madras and South Indian maps arranged by the Association of British Scholars accompanied by a display of Madras-connected stamps by heritage enthusiast D.H. Rao of the Madras Heritage Lovers' Forum. The blow-up of one of the stamps was what caught my eye, because it featured Fort St. George. And Rao explained that this Isle of Man stamp was the only stamp in the whole world which has featured Fort St. George, Madras. But dominating the Fort, which was in the background, was a red-coated young man who was captioned in these words, ‘Ensign Mark Wilks'. And that name struck a chord which I hastened to refresh on reaching home. The stamp was issued in 1981 on the 150th death anniversary of this Manx soldier and administrator who made his mark in South India. He arrived in Madras in 1778 with a commission in the Madras Army and rose to become the Town Major of Fort St. George. But it was as Resident of Mysore that Col. Wilks, as he had by then become, made his name with his well-known history of Mysore. The three-volume book published between 1810 and 1817 was titled*Historical sketches of South India in an attempt to trace the ‘History of Mysore' from the origin of the Hindoo Government of that state, to the extinction of the Mohammadan dynasty in 1799, founded chiefly on Indian Authorities collected by the author, while officiating for several years as political Resident at the court of Mysore.*James Kirkpatrick, Resident at Hyderabad, was of great help to Wilks in writing this definitive work on the rise of the Wodeyar Dynasty in the 16th Century and its subsequent problems as a consequence of the rise of Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan. Returning to the Isle of Man to concentrate on his history, Wilks found himself appointed before long Governor of St. Helena (in 1813) where his ‘guest' was the exiled Emperor Napoleon. And they both spent much time together discussing history. Back in the Isle of Man in 1816, Wilks was elected to the House of Keys, the Manx Parliament, and in 1926 became its Speaker. Karnataka may remember him for having written the first history of Mysore and, therefore, of Karnataka, but the Isle of Man remembers him as a soldier of Fort St. George. As I would like to do. ***** *When the postman knocked…* * A number of readers were kind enough to think that the printer's devil — or my over-speeding typewriter, as some had it — had made an ‘N' of an ‘M', but a couple of readers more forceful stated that the person referred to by N. Vittal in Miscellany, August 15, should have had his name spelt as ‘Panikkar'. One admirer of the historian emphatically stated I should have referred to him as ‘Sardar K.M. Panikkar'. But did reader Vittal in fact mean ‘K.N. Panikker', who was an educationist, asks another reader. * Curly Wee continues to enchant readers, all of whom want to say how captivated they were by him. But Dr. D.B. James has a couple of facts to add to the information about the strip that is piling up. Apparently the first annual came out at the end of 1948 and included three stories, ‘Patrick Porker and the Smugglers'. ‘Election for Parliament' in which Curly Wee wins even though he had been drugged and kidnapped by associates of the Fox, and ‘The Proud Buns'. “In all these early stories Curly Wee was depicted as a noble person,” writes Dr. James, “but the later stories had him taking to violence to please a generation growing up in the late 1950s.” -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yanivbin at gmail.com Tue Aug 23 09:31:15 2011 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2011 09:31:15 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] CPR/ CSH Urban workshop series:: Fragmentation, Obfuscation, Contestation: The Emerging Urban Policy Landscape In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: FYI Dear All,**** ** ** As part of our CSH-CPR Urban Workshop Series, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), Delhi invite you to a workshop titled **** *‘Fragmentation, Obfuscation, Contestation: The Emerging Urban Policy Landscape’ *by *Vinay Baindur and Lalitha Kamath. * ** ** Date: Tuesday, 30 August, 2011 Time: 3:45 pm Venue: Conference Hall, Centre for Policy Research, Dharma Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 110021**** ** ** Sincerely,**** ** ** Marie – Hélène Zérah and Partha Mukhopadhyay**** ** ** ** ** [image: cpr logo]**** *theindiancity.net***** * * *[image: logo-2009-05]** *** ** ** *Urban Workshop Series *** * * *Fragmentation, Obfuscation, Contestation: The Emerging Urban Policy Landscape* *Vinay Baindur** and Lalitha Kamath *Independent Researcher and Tata Institute of Social Sciences ** *3:45 pm Tuesday, 30 August, 2011 * Conference Hall, Centre for Policy Research, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi**** ** ** The urban policy landscape in Indian cities is an increasingly fractured and contested one. While the making of such policy has been characterised by a politics of stealth and non-transparency, its implementation has been noted for its diversity, fractious non-compliance and downright subversion. Using two policymaking cases from Karnataka and tracing their genealogy and drivers, this presentation analyses the mechanics of contemporary urban policymaking. It suggests the multiplicity of modes by which policy is being crafted and ideologically and institutionally embedded at the subnational level, greater policy convergence over time, as evidenced by overarching programmes like the JNNURM and the UIDSSMT, and the formation of a relatively cohesive network of (national and international) policy actors with shared policy imaginaries. The presentation also takes a critical look at the implementation of such policies, which is a process fraught by conflict, competing interests, and shifting regional political alignments. By juxtaposing policy visions with the translation of these visions into urban realities the presentation highlights the disconnect and the widening gaps in the processes of urban transformation underway. **** The presentation largely draws from an updated version of a paper titled, *Reengineering Urban Infrastructure: How the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank Shape Urban Infrastructure Finance and Governance in India* commissioned by the Bank Information Centre, South Asia, and presented at the World Bank / IMF Annual Meetings, Istanbul, October 2009.**** *Vinay Baindur* Vinay Baindur is an independent researcher on water sector and urban governance reforms based in Bangalore. He has been part of a Bangalore-based research collective, where he studied the politics of policy making especially with regard to the new non-profits, IFIs and governance models such as JNNURM. Over the last 20 years he has been an observer and analyst of liberalisation policies, structures of enabling environment for the private sector and public engagement with these mandates.** *Lalitha Kamath ***** Lalitha Kamath is an Assistant Professor in the School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Her research interests include critical explorations of both formal and informal practices of planning and governance in cities, especially those to do with infrastructure sectors, the politics of public participation, and urban reforms. She received her doctoral degree from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.**** * * *This is the nineteenth in a series of Urban Workshops planned by the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), New Delhi and Centre for Policy Research (CPR). These workshops seek to provoke public discussion on issues relating to the development of the city and try to address all its facets including its administration, culture, economy, society, and politics. For further information, please contact: Marie-Hélène Zerah at marie-helene.zerah at ird.fror Partha Mukhopadhyay at partha at cprindia.org ***** * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1049 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.png Type: image/png Size: 3180 bytes Desc: not available URL: From arkaja at gmail.com Tue Aug 23 15:12:53 2011 From: arkaja at gmail.com (Arkaja Singh) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:12:53 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] CSH-CPR Urban Workshop Series Message-ID: Dear All,**** ** ** As part of our CSH-CPR Urban Workshop Series, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), Delhi invite you to a workshop titled *‘Fragmentation, Obfuscation, Contestation: The Emerging Urban Policy Landscape’ *by *Vinay Baindur and Lalitha Kamath.* ** ** Date: Tuesday, 30 August, 2011 Time: 3:45 pm Venue: Conference Hall, Centre for Policy Research, Dharma Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 110021**** ** ** Best wishes, Arkaja ** ** ** [image: cpr logo]**** *theindiancity.net***** * * *[image: logo-2009-05]** *** ** ** *Urban Workshop Series *** * * *Fragmentation, Obfuscation, Contestation: The Emerging Urban Policy Landscape* *Vinay Baindur** and Lalitha Kamath *Independent Researcher and Tata Institute of Social Sciences ** *3:45 pm Tuesday, 30 August, 2011 * Conference Hall, Centre for Policy Research, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi**** ** ** The urban policy landscape in Indian cities is an increasingly fractured and contested one. While the making of such policy has been characterised by a politics of stealth and non-transparency, its implementation has been noted for its diversity, fractious non-compliance and downright subversion. Using two policymaking cases from Karnataka and tracing their genealogy and drivers, this presentation analyses the mechanics of contemporary urban policymaking. It suggests the multiplicity of modes by which policy is being crafted and ideologically and institutionally embedded at the subnational level, greater policy convergence over time, as evidenced by overarching programmes like the JNNURM and the UIDSSMT, and the formation of a relatively cohesive network of (national and international) policy actors with shared policy imaginaries. The presentation also takes a critical look at the implementation of such policies, which is a process fraught by conflict, competing interests, and shifting regional political alignments. By juxtaposing policy visions with the translation of these visions into urban realities the presentation highlights the disconnect and the widening gaps in the processes of urban transformation underway. **** The presentation largely draws from an updated version of a paper titled, *Reengineering Urban Infrastructure: How the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank Shape Urban Infrastructure Finance and Governance in India* commissioned by the Bank Information Centre, South Asia, and presented at the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings, Istanbul, October 2009.**** *Vinay Baindur* Vinay Baindur is an independent researcher on water sector and urban governance reforms based in Bangalore. He has been part of a Bangalore-based research collective, where he studied the politics of policy making especially with regard to the new non-profits, IFIs and governance models such as JNNURM. Over the last 20 years he has been an observer and analyst of liberalisation policies, structures of enabling environment for the private sector and public engagement with these mandates.** *Lalitha Kamath ***** Lalitha Kamath is an Assistant Professor in the School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Her research interests include critical explorations of both formal and informal practices of planning and governance in cities, especially those to do with infrastructure sectors, the politics of public participation, and urban reforms. She received her doctoral degree from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.**** *This is the nineteenth in a series of Urban Workshops planned by the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), New Delhi and Centre for Policy Research (CPR). These workshops seek to provoke public discussion on issues relating to the development of the city and try to address all its facets including its administration, culture, economy, society, and politics. For further information, please contact: Marie-Hélène Zerah at marie-helene.zerah at ird.fror Partha Mukhopadhyay at partha at cprindia.org * * * ** ** ** ** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.png Type: image/png Size: 3180 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1049 bytes Desc: not available URL: From debsinha at gmail.com Wed Aug 24 08:10:22 2011 From: debsinha at gmail.com (Deb Ranjan Sinha) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 11:40:22 +0900 Subject: [Urbanstudy] FW: Review: 'Identification, Surveillance, and Governance in Contemporary Society' Message-ID: <007601cc6207$2cf29410$86d7bc30$@gmail.com> Thought list members would find this interesting in light of the UID programme. Deb. -----Original Message----- David Lyon. Identifying Citizens: ID Cards as Surveillance. Cambridge Polity Press, 2009. 192 pp. $22.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7456-4156-0. Reviewed by Larry Frohmann (SUNY Stony Brook) Published on H-German (August, 2011) Commissioned by Benita Blessing Identification, Surveillance, and Governance in Contemporary Society National identification cards are everywhere, and, as David Lyon demonstrates in this timely, well-argued book, a subject in need of careful analysis because of the pervasive ways in which these cards, along with the population databases to which they are tethered, are structuring our everyday existence and, in so doing, raising important questions about personal freedom and the meaning of citizenship in modern societies. Almost every country has some kind of national ID card program; they are mostly mandatory; many of them require fingerprints; and a small but growing number include additional biometric information. ID cards are also high up on the political agenda of those countries that do not have them. In the United States, the implementation of the Bush administration's Real ID program, which would have made state driver's licenses into a de facto national ID card, has encountered widespread resistance from both the public and the states. Australia's proposed Access Card has similarly run aground, as have ID card schemes in Canada and France, and the Japanese Juki-Net system is leading only a stunted existence. The British, on the other hand, approved the Identity Cards Act in 2006--only to see the program scrapped by the new Conservative government.[1] A number of different arguments have been advanced over the years in support of such cards. In addition to their obvious (or at least assumed) role in enhancing domestic and international security, proponents argue that national ID cards can make it easier for citizens to interact with government agencies (and sometimes the private sector as well), increase government efficiency by both reducing welfare and tax fraud and facilitating access to public services by qualified individuals, provide the validation needed for e-government, help combat identity theft, and facilitate trans-border travel in a more mobile, liquid modernity. The issue that Lyon addresses in this book is how these national ID cards--and the processes, databases, information systems, and protocols on which the functioning of these identification systems depends--are altering the meaning of citizenship in the modern world. Over the past decade, Lyon has written widely on various aspects of surveillance and identification. _Identifying Citizens_ pulls together many of his ideas on surveillance, security, and identity, and the book needs to be read in particular in conjunction with _Playing the Identity Card_, a companion volume of theoretical explorations and national case studies, which Lyon edited with Colin Bennett.[2] Lyon's main argument in the current book is that the process of identifying citizens necessarily leads to the intensified surveillance of the population, which, he says, happens "when organizations pay close attention, in routine and systematic ways, to personal data" (p. 5). Before the computer age, most identification documents were issued locally, and, in view of the difficulty in maintaining any centralized register, the identification process focused on verifying the authenticity of the documents themselves. What is novel about modern identification systems, especially those using new electronic ID cards, is that the identity of the carrier is now established by querying the personal information contained in networked, searchable databases--above all, computerized national population registries--which encode and disseminate the data that define the administrative identity of the person. Lyon's arguments here about the ways in which ID cards, ID numbers, computers, and population registries are intimately linked in modern population identification systems are spot-on. However, one point where I would disagree with him is his claim (p. 42) that the focus on stop-and-search authority diverts attention away from these linkages because this argument itself overlooks the fact that in most instances it is only through such encounters that the state actively attempts to determine the identity of any given individual. The more expansive the scope of the social state, the more intense its security concerns, and the greater the desire to leverage this information for commercial purposes, the greater will be the scope of this routinized collection of personal information. Moreover, this active process of "identifying" the individual is by no means a neutral, technical process, Lyon argues, because the finer the granularity of this identifying information collected by the state, the greater will be the potentiality for treating citizens differently according to their respective administrative identities. In fact, the very purpose of querying these databases is to determine whether the individual does or does not possess those particular characteristics that can prove that he or she is a legitimate member of the community, whether he or she is eligible for some specific privilege or service, or whether the person should be selected for further scrutiny as a potential welfare cheat, unregistered worker, criminal, or terrorist. Chapter 1 provides a brief survey of the historical roots of modern concerns with the legibility of the population. Lyon traces these back to the need for more effective government in colonial contexts, efforts to combat crime, and the need to identify and mobilize the nation's resources for war. He is particularly concerned that, despite the not unreasonable claims that modern identification systems can provide greater security and convenience for the holder, these systems will be forever burdened politically by these "negative histories" (pp. 37-38) that are seemingly hardwired into their most elemental structures and that serve to amplify, rather than neutralize, historical patterns of discrimination. In other words, the process of identification always entails what Lyon has elsewhere called social sorting, which is simply another way of describing the ways in which the politics of difference are built into databases and identification systems.[3] Chapter 2 explores the functioning and politics of computerized social sorting. Here Lyon argues that the subtle exclusionary bias that seems to exist in all identification systems as their most primal raison d'être is becoming more pronounced in conjunction with the broad shift in public mood from the focus on concrete risks to a new concern with "precaution," which requires the open-ended collection of personal information in an effort to forestall the occurrence of precisely those risks that can never be rendered determinate or calculable. This precautionary imperative, which often justifies the integrative function creep that Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson have called the "surveillant assemblage,"[4] poses obvious dangers to civil liberties, and for Lyon the question is "can identification processes which inevitably are 'sorting systems' yet be made compatible with the desires of ordinary citizens not merely for national security but also for human security ... which is both more global and more personal" (p. 58)? In chapter 3, Lyon advances two different sets of arguments. First, he takes over Niklas Rose's idea of the "securitization of identity," i.e., the predication of the enjoyment of certain rights or freedoms--such as rights to vote or social services, the right to cross borders, the right to purchase goods at a distance, use the Internet, or even communicate (as I learned on my last trip to Germany, where I was forced to prove my identity in order to buy a new SIM card for my American cell phone)--upon proof of identity or entitlement. However, he then argues with John Torpey against Rose that, although one should not see this securitization of identity simply as evidence of the expanding of the tentacles of the state, certain actors--such as the state--are much more weighty or important in this process than others (p. 69). In the next chapter, Lyon extends this argument by taking up Louise Amoore's suggestion that this expanding use of identification cards as a means of access can be understood as a novel mode of "governance by identification" (p. 90), and here he rightly suggests that the spread of national ID systems is giving rise to "a particular way of seeing the world--indeed, of _being_ in the world" (p. 63). The second set of arguments that Lyon makes in chapter 3 relate to what he calls the "card cartel." As I noted above, a number of different arguments have been advanced on behalf of national ID card systems, and commentators have often noted the opportunism with which these arguments have been employed in different contexts. In this chapter Lyon argues that, in addition to the long-standing interest of the state in identifying and controlling its citizens, the spread of national ID card systems has been influenced by a number of high-tech corporations (with technology protocols and, increasingly, biometrics conditioning the operation of these systems). But rather than explaining the spread of these systems in terms of either economic or technological determinism, Lyon argues that the bases on which identification systems engage in social sorting always reflect the political culture or the political unconscious of the societies in which they operate: "New ID schemes tend to create citizens in the image of the leading motifs of the societies that give them birth. In societies dominated by consumption, it is unsurprising that citizenship is subtly recreated in terms of consuming.... Equally, if the leading motifs informing 'citizenship' are ones designed to root out and outlaw certain specified groups, then identification processes will reflect this" (p. 81). And here, as well as elsewhere in the book, Lyon's arguments reflect his belief that, whatever the specific context and motive advanced, such systems are valued precisely because of their intrinsic function of sorting and discriminating among the individual members of the population. External borders are one of the chief points at which citizen identities are administratively verified. In addition to governance by identification, chapter 4 also discusses the interoperability of identification systems and their relation to mobility, modernity, and the need for identification at a distance in response to the intensification of movement across national borders. Here, Lyon argues that the International Civil Aviation Organization in particular has played a pivotal role in promoting the globalization of interoperable identification systems and standardized, machine-readable ID cards and in "policy laundering" by permitting national politicians to present domestically unpalatable ID card policies as an unavoidable response to requirements imposed by a politically unaccountable international authority. Chapter 5 addresses the role of biometrics in identification systems. According to Lyon, the very availability of biometric technologies tends to increase the frequency with which vulnerable groups are required to identify themselves. In this way, they tend to reinforce the pre-existing negative stereotypes of such persons. But Lyon also makes a set of more intriguing arguments about the relationship between the human body and biometric information about the body. The purpose of biometrics is to establish a perfect connection between an individual body and the set of personal information associated with an individual identity, that is, to definitively attach this information to a specific living person. Lyon argues that the particular intimacy of such biometric data will require a rethinking of the meaning of bodily integrity, although he shies away from using the word "privacy" to describe this intimacy. This attempt to privilege certain kinds of information runs contrary to the privacy concept that informed the major pieces of privacy legislation from the 1970s. These laws, which were passed in response to the advent of precisely the networked databases that Lyon is describing here, were an attempt to respond to the growing realization that the real danger to personal privacy came not from the _misuse_ of privileged data, but rather from the everyday collection, processing, and electronic dissemination of personal information that enjoyed no special protection. Since any piece of personal information could--depending on the context and the way it was combined with other pieces of information--be used to the disadvantage of the individual, privacy advocates argued that the individual had the right to control the initial collection and subsequent use of personal information. Despite the fact that Lyon has always preferred to emphasize the importance of political control over surveillance systems rather than the defense of privacy rights, his argument here appears to pivot incongruously on the belief that bodily, biometric information ought to be privileged in some way or another. Lyon concludes his discussion of biometrics by suggesting that the biometricization of identity can never reach its holy grail and provide a definitive verification of an individual identity, because biometrics are caught in a vicious circle: The same categories of biometric information (fingerprint or facial recognition algorithms, for example) that are gained by abstracting certain characteristics from the body are, in the process of identification, simply projected back upon the body as they define or construct the corporeal self (p. 125). There is no privileged access to the reality of the body outside of the biometric language through which it is constructed. The greatest strengths of the book are, first, Lyon's analysis of the relation between ID cards and the databases on which ID cards systems depend for their functioning; second, his multifaceted account of the intrinsic and apparently inescapable exclusionary or discriminatory effects of such surveillance technologies; and, third, his description of the role of identification systems as a mechanism of governance and the ways in which they are shaping our being-in-the-world. In the concluding chapter on cybercitizenship, Lyon restates many of the arguments that were advanced in previous chapters and asks whether it might be possible to conceive of an ID card system that would not have the negative consequences that he has analyzed in such detail. The answer, Lyon suggests, may be found in an ethics of care, whose basic thrust would be to explicitly compensate for the stigmatizing, disciplinary effects inherent in governance through identification. However, while an ethics of care may make us more conscious of these problems, in his next work Lyon's task will be to more fully explain the status and functioning of this ethic of care. That is, Lyon must reconcile the question of how one can at the same time categorize and classify people, without incurring the discriminatory consequences that, as he argued throughout this volume, may well be intrinsic to the identification process itself. Notes [1]. "ID card compensation ruled out as MPs approve abolition," http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11319766. [2]. David Lyon and Colin Bennett, eds., _Playing the Identity Card: Surveillance, Security, and Identification in Global Perspective_ (New Brunswick: Routledge, 2008). [3]. David Lyon, _Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk, and Automated Discrimination_ (New Brunswick: Routledge, 2002). [4]. Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson, "The Surveillant Assemblage," _British Journal of Sociology_ 51, no. 4 (December 2000): 605-622. [5]. Louise Amoore, "Governing by Identity," in Bennett and Lyon, eds., _Playing the Identity Card,_ 21-36. Citation: Larry Frohmann. Review of Lyon, David, _Identifying Citizens: ID Cards as Surveillance_. H-German, H-Net Reviews. August, 2011. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30999 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. From vpjain28 at rediffmail.com Tue Aug 23 21:10:34 2011 From: vpjain28 at rediffmail.com (Ved Prakash Jain) Date: 23 Aug 2011 15:40:34 -0000 Subject: [Urbanstudy] =?utf-8?q?Anna?= Message-ID: <20110823154034.20198.qmail@f4mail-235-197.rediffmail.com> http://www.scribd.com/doc/62775295/Corruption-the-Great-Divide                                               Corruption: the Great Divide                                                               V P Jain We are corrupt. Corruption is deeply entrenched and it has become institutionalised. Corruption has become endemic to the system and it has to be fought has become a constant refrain. Then what is the current turmoil about and where is the catch? The problem is very simple: It does not affect everybody the same way. It is creating an asymmetrical society.  On the one hand we have the beneficiaries of the corrupt system, the big business houses, the politicians, the bureaucrats and their cronies led by the government. On the other, we have the general mass of people who are victims of the corrupt system (euphemistically called the cattle class), led by Anna Hazare. And one takes sides depending on which side of the fence you are. Corruption is much more than bribe culture and has a much wider connotation in the present context to mean the grotesque system of unholy nexus. The core issue centres round sharing of the resources of the nation: the land, the mines, the forests and now the virtual world, i.e. the 2G- Spectrum. Over the years, the beneficiaries of the system have consolidated their position and continue to corner resources to which they think they are entitled to because of their proximity to the powers that be, and they are getting wealthier  at the expense of the rest of the society. With all the scams which have surfaced recently, which are mind boggling, both in its quantitative and qualitative dimensions, it is now a no holds barred situation and it is wholesale loot. In fact big business has become a metaphor for organised crime. The situation has, obviously, gone beyond the tolerance threshold of the people. The current resolve, therefore, is enough is enough and we have to fight it out.  It is class war, pure and simple. The government is trying every trick to browbeat the civil society into submission. Brute force, smear campaign, propaganda are some of the weapons which they have unleashed. One of the propaganda aired by the government is that that the Jan-Lokpal bill is the brainchild of a few individuals who have arrogated to themselves the right to enact laws of the land. Let us not forget that these so called individuals were members of the committee constituted by the government to draft the bill and they have every right to be heard by the parliament for the consideration of which the draft has been prepared. It was incumbent on the committee to forward both the drafts since there was no consensus. It is tantamount to presenting the Parliament with a fate accompli by filtering out serious reservations the crusaders had on the efficacy of draft forwarded. Let us take the analogy from the judicial bench constituted by the Allahabad High Court to h ear the Ajodhya case. The verdict was given by a majority of two to one. But the dissenting judgement was also put on record. Later on, the Supreme Court reversed the verdict and did not uphold the majority judgement. Likewise, the committee to draft the Lokpal Bill could not block the alternative draft from the consideration of the Parliament on the presumption that a razor thin majority was the sole repository of all the wisdom and alone represented the will of the people. System theory analysts know so well that the final outcome is very sensitive to initial conditions and it was crucial for the government to manipulate the game to prejudice parliament. The government packed the committee with members of choice and in requisite number only to reach preordained conclusions and took everybody for a ride. The objective was, obviously, to stifle democracy and accountable governance in order to protect the powerful interests wedded to the system of preferences.  &nbs p;   Another bogey raised by the government and the opposition alike is the sanctity of Parliament to enact laws. Parliamentary procedures have to be adhered to and legislative process cannot be abandoned. There are no two opinions on the supremacy of the august body and nobody has questioned the constitutional imperatives. But there are a lot of imponderables to be considered. There is the obvious danger, one would concede, of building the so called peoples movements, out of sheer expediency, by whipping up sentiments to achieve parochial and communal objectives like building the Ram temple which catapulted the  BJB to power in  the centre. The government was more than a willing partner to the mob frenzy which led to the demolition of Babri Masjid. Both the BJP and the Congress have a history of engineering mob frenzy, ostensibly on the plea that they were spontaneous outburst, to push divisive issues center stage. One only shudders to remember the mass murder of the Si khs in 1984 and communal riots in Bombay and Gujarat, to name only a few, by way of illustration to focus on the underpinnings of the stage managed peoples movements, so called.  History is replete with instances when those who were not part of the locally dominant culture were reduced to a second class citizenship and they became outsiders in their own country. I, like many others, am myself a victim of such vandalism against the minorities. The dominant community in the locality has constructed a temple on the road in front of my house, a non-Hindu and a rationalist, in defiance of all the laws enacted by the revered parliament to safeguard my freedom to choose my own belief system. Tainted by the shadow of political considerations, the government, in spite of all the protests, remains a mute spectator to such violations of fundamental rights of the citizens, expediency being the hall mark of governance. The government has become totally impervious to the plight of the peaceful and law abiding citizens and refuses to act, as a matter of policy, unless blood runs in the streets.     But we cannot be oblivious to the potential of building peoples movements for just causes. We have a lot to learn from movements directed to frame environmental, feminist and human rights issues for the governments to address and parliament to legislate, with considerable success. One might as well add to the list the Jessica Lal and Matoo murder cases and how peoples movement secured justice. One should bear in mind that the only safeguard is to participate in the movement and give direction and not let the field free for unsavory elements as a license to vandalize. The apprehensions of peoples movements becoming disoriented are well placed, but one has to take guard. The responsibility to steer such movements for social engineering lies with the progressive forces in the country and they must not look for alibis either because they cannot assume leadership roles or because of some other reservations, either on ideological grounds or forebodings. It would, of course, b e presumptuous to think that peoples movement is the sole patent of some individuals, groups and political outfits. The left may still be sulking from the trauma of peoples movement in Singur. But they have learn the lesson and come out of the phobia and join the mainstream of protest movements which challenge the exploitative established order. The minorities also have everything to gain from such a uprising, for they bear the real brunt from corrupt governance.         So far as the sanctity of parliament is concerned there is need to introspect. The scandals like vote for money, business lobbies deciding ministerial posts and their portfolios, question marks raised at the integrity and honesty of the legislators and, of course, all the scams which have triggered the current uprising, are some of the issues which have embarrassed the whole nation. And what is this talk about parliamentary procedures as something holy. The entire decision making in parliament can be simulated and laws enacted without wasting precious time, energy and public money. Legislators are not free and are bound by the whips of their respective parties. Consequently, It has merely become a talking shop and mimics a TV serial or a cricket match where everything is fixed and the outcome scripted and well-rehearsed as per the arithmetic of the demographic profile of various parties. It is an irony, that in the absence of any scope for fair and free discussion, the county is run by lobbies and we have as many of them as the number of promising operators. The current movement led by the civil society is not an emotive issue which can be high jacked by the unscrupulous elements. It is an issue of survival for the masses whose lives have been jeopardized in the name of development. We have no choice after we have been driven to the wall but to challenge the predator, that is the only hope. If democracy is to survive in this country, then the discourse cannot remain merely at the level of general principals of justice, freedom and survival with dignity, but device legislative procedures through which these general principles can be implemented.    V P Jain Associate Prof.(Retd), School of Learning, University of Delhi. Mail ID: vpjain28 at redffmail.com           -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: