From cugambetta at yahoo.com Thu Jun 2 08:08:04 2011 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2011 19:38:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] article on the 300 dollar house by R. Srivastava and M. Echanove Message-ID: <209564.46852.qm@web125909.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Great piece on the difficult intersection of social entrepreneurship and slum housing. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/opinion/01srivastava.html?_r=1&hp May 31, 2011 Hands Off Our Houses By MATIAS ECHANOVE and RAHUL SRIVASTAVA Mumbai, India LAST summer, a business professor and a marketing consultant wrote on The Harvard Business Review’s Web site abouttheir idea for a $300 house. According to the writers, and the many people who have enthusiastically responded since, such a house could improve the lives of millions of urban poor around the world. And with a $424 billion market for cheap homes that is largely untapped, it could also make significant profits. The writers created a competition, asking students, architects and businesses to compete to design the best prototype for a $300 house (their original sketch was of a one-room prefabricated shed, equipped with solar panels, water filters and a tablet computer). The winner will be announced this month. But one expert has been left out of the competition, even though her input would have saved much time and effort for those involved in conceiving the house: the person who is supposed to live in it. We work in Dharavi, a neighborhood in Mumbai that has become a one-stop shop for anyone interested in “slums” (that catchall term for areas lived in by the urban poor). We recently showed around a group of Dartmouth students involved in the project who are hoping to get a better grasp of their market. They had imagined a ready-made constituency of slum-dwellers eager to buy a cheap house that would necessarily be better than the shacks they’d built themselves. But the students found that the reality here is far more complex than their business plan suggested. To start with, space is scarce. There is almost no room for new construction or ready-made houses. Most residents are renters, paying $20 to $100 a month for small apartments. Those who own houses have far more equity in them than $300 — a typical home is worth at least $3,000. Many families have owned their houses for two or three generations, upgrading them as their incomes increase. With additions, these homes become what we call “tool houses,” acting as workshops, manufacturing units, warehouses and shops. They facilitate trade and production, and allow homeowners to improve their living standards over time. None of this would be possible with a $300 house, which would have to be as standardized as possible to keep costs low. No number of add-ons would be able to match the flexibility of need-based construction. In addition, construction is an important industry in neighborhoods like Dharavi. Much of the economy consists of hardware shops, carpenters, plumbers, concrete makers, masons, even real-estate agents. Importing pre-fabricated homes would put many people out of business, undercutting the very population the $300 house is intended to help. Worst of all, companies involved in producing the house may end up supporting the clearance and demolition of well-established neighborhoods to make room for it. The resulting resettlement colonies, which are multiplying at the edges of cities like Delhi and Bangalore, may at first glance look like ideal markets for the new houses, but the dislocation destroys businesses and communities. The $300 house could potentially be a success story, if it was understood as a straightforward business proposal instead of a social solution. Places like refugee camps, where many people need shelter for short periods, could use such cheap, well-built units. A market for them could perhaps be created in rural-urban fringes that are less built up. The $300 house responds to our misconceptions more than to real needs. Of course problems do exist in urban India. Many people live without toilets or running water. Hot and unhealthy asbestos-cement sheets cover millions of roofs. Makeshift homes often flood during monsoons. But replacing individual, incrementally built houses with a ready-made solution would do more harm than good. A better approach would be to help residents build better, safer homes for themselves. The New Delhi-based Micro Homes Solutions, for example, provides architectural and engineering assistance to homeowners in low-income neighborhoods. The $300 house will fail as a social initiative because the dynamic needs, interests and aspirations of the millions of people who live in places like Dharavi have been overlooked. This kind of mistake is all too common in the trendy field of social entrepreneurship. While businessmen and professors applaud the $300 house, the urban poor are silent, busy building a future for themselves. Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava are the co-founders of the Institute of Urbanology. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yanivbin at gmail.com Sun Jun 12 20:25:48 2011 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2011 20:25:48 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] =?windows-1252?q?The_future_=91class=92_city_Dunu_Ro?= =?windows-1252?q?y?= Message-ID: http://www.india-seminar.com/2011/622/622_comment.htm * The future ‘class’ city * [image: back to issue] URBAN settlements are soon expected to house half the Indian people. What does this mean for the future of the urbis? Most analysts (and educated folk) think that they will collapse under the burden of more and more ‘poor migrants’ unless steps are taken to restrict their numbers. But there may be more deeply rooted causes. The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), launched by the prime minister in December 2005, came with the promise of providing Rs1260 billion to 63 million-plus cities and towns for a massive programme of urban renewal. However, for the mission, the ‘sustainability’ of the city is directly related to its financial ability to recover investments. And the ‘reforms’ are of systems geared towards accessing funds from capital markets and promoting public-private partnerships, putting in place higher user fees and taxes. These are clearly designed to aid in improving the ‘efficiency’ of the money market, not the condition of the citizens. The JNNURM does not stand alone. It is part of a larger package of programmes that pervades the new urban Master Plans, the Integrated Small and Medium Town Development Programme, the Urban Environment and Infrastructure Improvement Projects, the New Economic Policy, the National Urban Transport Policy, the Integrated Low Cost Sanitation Scheme, and the series of agreements under the World Trade Organization negotiations. It also shares the same genealogy of state intervention as the National Slum Development Programme, the Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana, and the Rajiv Awas Yojana. At the core, therefore, is a new model of urban governance that is emerging as part of an ‘investor-friendly’ design. This mode of governance is already exploding into a series of ‘investor-friendly’ scams in huge land-grabs, shady deals, sports events, and mega constructions. In fact, there is now sufficient evidence from these scams to show that the ‘public-private-partnership’ is nothing more than a wholesale transfer of public money into private pockets! Such a design has also given rise to three trends. First, large sections of the urban poor are being displaced by every government in metro cities as well as small towns from spaces that they have occupied for many years. These sections are often the ones who have been employed in the informal sector or are self-employed in the tertiary services sector and contribute to a large chunk of the city’s economy. Second, the geographical and occupational space that they occupy is being transferred to larger private corporate entities or wealthier groups, such as retail stores, malls, and residential layouts so that the space becomes a commodity that can contribute to city revenues. Third, while the driving force behind these changes is manifestly the new globalized economy, it is offered on an environmental platter of ‘cleanliness’ and ‘beautification’ that is strongly supported by ‘civil society organizations’, judicial, legislative, administrative and commercial institutions, and a very compliant media. In the meantime, the Planning Commission is preparing the Approach Paper to the Twelfth Five Year Plan. Earlier, in the first three Five-Year Plans (1951-66), the planners had concentrated on construction of homes for government employees and weaker sections, slum clearance schemes, and preparation of Master Plans. The Fourth and Fifth Plans (1969-79) were made to promote the growth of smaller towns and the Urban Land (Ceiling & Regulation) Act was enacted for this. The Sixth Plan (1980-85) focused on integrated provision of services along with shelter in the more than 4,000 small towns that had been created. The Seventh Plan (1985-90), for the first time, entrusted the responsibility of housing construction and provision of urban basic services for the poor to the private sector. It was only from the Eighth Plan (1992-97) that the importance of the urban sector for the national economy and the role of the urban poor in the informal sector was recognized. But all these plans were made with concepts that were developed in the first half of the twentieth century, essentially by European geographers and economists, on the basis of how the West had ‘developed’ by accumulating the resources of the colonies through trade and converting it into capital and manufacturing. The theorists merely reversed the arrow and argued that if this accumulation was converted into a ‘development’ role, then more capital investments in the centre would send growth impulses outwards into the periphery, and the benefits would eventually ‘trickle down’ to the bottom. But the planners kept coming up against the contradictions that were implicit in the concepts themselves, namely that such growth never actually trickles down because it assumes a uniform landscape of equality amongst all citizens, and idealizes the idea of perfect competition and the ability of all to pay for all services as commodities. Hence, in spite of the official mid-term appraisal of the Eleventh Plan indicating that the aim of achieving an average growth rate of 9% per annum was not met because of the global financial crisis – although India’s financial system was partly protected because it was not fully exposed to ‘toxic’ assets in the international market and depended mainly on domestic savings and consumption – the Planning Commission is intent on pursuing more ‘reforms’, opening up the financial system to the international markets and private firms, while still depending upon private savings and investment. It suggests that the states and cities have to be ‘pushed’ to enhance user charges, commercialize land and services, and raise property taxes. In other words, cities are, by design, becoming more and more expensive to live in and thus ignoring the needs of the large majority of citizens who are currently barely able to make a decent living for their families. Some of these issues became manifest when, towards the end of 2010, the Planning Commission opened up the discussion on the Approach Paper to the Twelfth Plan to ‘civil society organizations’, as distinct from a friendly coterie of industry, trade, and business associations with whom the commission would confabulate earlier. A series of consultations with organizations working with the urban poor (as with other marginalized groups) arrived at a clear consensus rejecting GDP growth as well as the concept of public-private-partnerships as the basic premise of ‘development’ on the grounds that these were not meant for the welfare of the poor. On the contrary, they argued for a plan focusing on growth in employment and the social security of the work force. Yet, the commission not only chose to reject or ignore these recommendations, but publicly proclaimed that there was ‘general agreement’ on maintaining a GDP growth rate of nine per cent. Just as the earlier ‘Garibi Hatao’ slogan of the 1970s was used to remove the poor, similarly the new vision of the ‘Slum Free City’ is today being manipulated to attack the working poor. In such an exclusionary design, urban societies are bound to become increasingly polarized. The idle rich will grow wealthier and more lavish in their lifestyle, consuming vast resources to catch up with their imagery of the ‘world-class’. The working poor will become more impoverished, marginalized, and made invisible through coercive measures. Even their status as citizens will be called into question through various measures like identity cards, cut-off dates, and ability to pay ‘easy instalments’. This is not a doomsday prognosis; it is already happening in every urban settlement, although the media does its best to conceal the truth from prying eyes. And the truth is that such a duality cannot coexist peacefully. It has to either be brutally suppressed or will explode into social violence. Or – and this is a dream that many live with – perhaps better sense will prevail and we, as a people, will once again move towards policies that design for a more humane way of life. Perhaps. * Dunu Roy * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From noopur.raval at gmail.com Tue Jun 14 16:43:44 2011 From: noopur.raval at gmail.com (Noopur) Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:43:44 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Request for help regarding a survey Message-ID: Dear all, Sorry for cross posting. I am Noopur Raval and I am interning with CIS (Center for internet and society), Bangalore. Currently I am on a project with IDS (Institute of development studies), London that requires me to interview 'policy actors'. It is a broad term that encompasses not only bureaucrats and policy makers but also researchers, NGOs, intermediaries and others who indirectly contribute to policy making and changing. The project studies the effects of the usage of new information services (ICT) on these policy actors and the aim is to see if there are changes in the functioning of these policy actors. I am supposed to concentrate exclusively on policy actors in Bangalore. It has to be a face to face interview. Are any of you in Bangalore and could help me complete this survey? Or, if you do know other people who match the description could you please put me in touch with them? Thank you Regards Noopur -- Noopur Raval Student Arts and Aesthetics Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Ph: 9650567690 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From debsinha at gmail.com Tue Jun 14 20:44:04 2011 From: debsinha at gmail.com (Deb Ranjan Sinha) Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 10:14:04 -0500 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Institute for urban studies coming up in Bangalore - Hindu Message-ID: <001801cc2aa5$b6887b70$23997250$@gmail.com> *Touted as the country's first university, dedicated exclusively to Urban Studies, the Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS) is setting up its 58-acre campus in south-west Bangalore. Funded by "multiple private sources," the institute will have an initial capital investment of approximately Rs.250 crore which will be scaled up to Rs.400 crore over the next five years.* http://www.hindu.com/2011/06/14/stories/2011061464392200.htm From debsinha at gmail.com Thu Jun 16 20:57:13 2011 From: debsinha at gmail.com (Deb Ranjan Sinha) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 10:27:13 -0500 Subject: [Urbanstudy] In India, poor health risks rise after move to city | Reuters Message-ID: <002201cc2c39$df718aa0$9e549fe0$@gmail.com> *Body fat, blood pressure and fasting insulin levels (a marker of diabetes risk) all increased within a decade of moving to a city, and for decades blood pressure and insulin continued to rise above the levels of their rural counterparts. The findings raise public health concerns as the global population progressively becomes more urban.* http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/16/us-india-health-idUSTRE75E68C20110 616 From sumandro at gmail.com Tue Jun 7 16:10:44 2011 From: sumandro at gmail.com (sumandro) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 16:10:44 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] bangalore security map Message-ID: To whom it may concern, Security is one of the biggest issues in urban policy debates today. In most discussions, however, the word ‘security’ is understood in terms of ‘hard security issues’, like acts of terrorism, law and order situations, etc. In March 2011, MOD organised a workshopto explore various nuances of the sense of security in an urban context. We intended to expand the notion and incorporate different forms of securities and insecurities – from environmental to emotional – that are part of everyday urban lives. In process, we wanted to broaden the dimensions of a ‘secure city.’ One of the documentation tools we experimented with in that workshop is mapping of participants’ experiences and observations about secure and insecure spaces in the city of Bangalore. Though constrained by the limited and biased experiences of the people present, the exercise was found inspiring and we wanted to expand it into a crowd-sourced mapping project. CSTEP came in as an engaged and creative collaborator. Please visit the *'Bangalore Security Map'* at bsm.mod.org.in and share your observations regarding the spaces of insecurity in the city of Bangalore. We want to know where in the city you feel insecure and why so. Further, if you feel insecure at a certain part of the city (at a certain time perhaps), please share with us what could have make you feel otherwise. Not all senses of security or insecurity are place-specific, not all of them can be pinned to a certain location in the map. In such cases, please feel free to pin them where the name of the city (‘Bangalore’) is shown (or maybe the neighbourhood which you are familiar with) on the map. For the map-hackers and data-wizards out there, we will keep publishing all submitted information in* *.csv format once every two months. Please use the published data to create maps and other visualisations, and share it with us and other participants in this initiative. We are hopeful that a map such as this will create various new discussions about the city, will make possible different ways of *observing the city and making it more livable*. The portal is developed collaboratively by CSTEP and MOD, using the Ushahidi platform ('Luanda'). 'Bangalore Security Map' on MOD site: http://www.mod.org.in/mod/2011/06/bangalore-security-map/ 'Bangalore Security Map' on CSTEP blog: http://blog.cstep.in/?p=956 Regards, sumandro *mod* www.mod.org.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leo at esgindia.org Fri Jun 3 21:14:03 2011 From: leo at esgindia.org (Leo Saldanha) Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2011 15:44:03 -0000 Subject: [Urbanstudy] [ESG-LIST] Release of "Tearing through the Water Landscape", A study of environmental and social impacts of POSCO project in India In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: *Environment Support Group* *27 May 2011* *Release of Study on impacts of POSCO's India project* “*Tearing through the Water Landscape: Evaluating the environmental and social consequences of POSCO project in Odisha, India”* On 2nd May 2011, Indian Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh finally approved the diversion of over 3,000 acres of forest land, of the 4,000 acres demanded, for a steel-power-port complex of the POSCO India project. Earlier, on 31 January 2011, Ramesh had approved the environmental and coastal regulation zone clearances that the project had secured in 2007, even though all these clearances were obtained by fraud, and thus illegal, as proved by two independent investigative committees that he appointed last year. *Forest Rights denied is violation of Fundamental Rights* The diversion of forests for non-industrial use by POSCO was based on “categorical assurances” that Jairam Ramesh sought from the Odisha Government, that the Forest Rights Act did not apply to communities affected directly and indirectly by POSCO. The Odisha Government gave him this assurance on the basis of fraudulent claims that there were no non-traditional forest dwellers and tribes in the POSCO project affected villages of Jagatsinghpur, thus making this massive land transfer merely an administrative arrangement. Rather cheaply, the Odisha Government accused Shishir Mahpatra, the Sarpanch of Dhinkia Panchayat, of fraud in providing resolutions of Palli Sabhas that demonstrated that not only were there OTFDs and tribals in the project affected area, but that they had been dependent on the region's natural resources, particularly forests, for centuries. Ramesh did not hesitate for a moment and question this claim by the Odisha Government. On the basis of this uncertainty in fact, he proceeded to support the POSCO clearance claiming it was of “strategic importance” to India. *Authorising the loot of India's natural resources:* As the single largest industrial foreign direct investment ever in India (with a capital cost of Rs. 51,000 crores at 2005 prices), POSCO's ambitions in India aren't merely of location a steel-power-port complex in the ecologically senstive Jagatsinghpur district. In fact, company officials have submitted before the investigative committees that they will not invest in the steel-port complex if permission to mine for iron ore in over 6,100 acres of dense jungle in the Kandadhar Hills in Sundergarh district is not granted. Most of this iron ore mined is for export without any local value addition, and thus will serve the economic interest of South Korea and POSCO stockholders – mainly American banks and Warren Buffet – one of the world's richest's individuals. POSCO has also demanded a dedicated railway line to the port – that means additional land demands. Further the project requires at least 2,000 acres for a township for its employees, and diversion of drinking water from the Jobra barrage for industrial use. All this has been agreed to by the Odisha Government when the project MOU was signed in 2005, but the people have been kept in the dark of the real consequences of such loot of India's non-renewable natural resources. *The Making of a 'Right-less People' by Jairam Ramesh* Over 13,000 acres is merely the demand of land for realising POSCO's dream venture in India. Thousands of families will be dislocated, and suffer irreparable damage to their lives and livelihoods. It is time we appreciated that this steel-power-port-township-mining project is the single largest industrial venture conceived in recent memory, and that such scale of investment will be done only because we are gifting highly expensive and excellent iron ore for POSCO to make stupendous profits. There is absolutely no benefit for India in this deal, and what POSCO will leave behind, if they succeed at all, is a lot of fly ash, destroyed ecologically sensitive coastal and forest environments and thousands of people in misery. To help appreciate the full consequences of the POSCO investment in India, Environment Support Group, a not-for-profit public interest research, training, campaign and advocacy initiative, has produced a study entitled “*Tearing through the Water Landscape: **Evaluating the environmental and social consequences of POSCO project in Odisha, India”, *which is co-authored by Leo Saldanha and Bhargavi Rao. This study was undertaken at the request of POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samithi (POSCO Project Resistance Movement), leading the opposition against the POSCO project. The study reveals on the basis of extensive review of historical, ecological, social and economic evidence that Jairam Ramesh's support for POSCO is nothing but a highly condemnable act that legitimises fraud and corruption in environmental decision making. As a result, the study reveals that Ramesh has today become the architect of one of India's greatest planned disasters that begins its ominous initiative by turning the affected communities into a 'rightless people', as their fundamental rights have been snatched on the basis of “faith and trust” in Odisha Government's lies*. * A copy of this study is accessible at *www.esgindia.org* Environment Support Group, 1572, 36th Cross, Banashankari II Stage, Bangalore 560070. INDIA Tel: 91-80-26713559~61 Email: *esg at esgindia.org* Web: *www.esgindia.org* Email of authors of this study: Leo Saldanha: *leo at esgindia.org* Bhargavi S. Rao: *bhargavi at esgindia.org* -- *{It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. - Jiddu Krishnamurti}* Leo Saldanha [Environmental, Social Justice and Governance Initiatives] Environment Support Group - Trust 1572, 36th Cross, Ring Road Banashankari II Stage Bangalore 560070. INDIA Tel: 91-80-26713559-61 Fax/Voice: 91-80-26713316 Email: leo at esgindia.org Blog: http://leoonpublicmatters.blogspot.com/ Web: www.esgindia.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Water_Landscape_ESG_Posco_Final_27May2011.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 2723291 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Dead Line 1: Last date for submitting DD to KEA to obtain brochure cum application form is 25 Jun 2011 For details see the attachment or the following links: Notification: http://kea.kar.nic.in/pgcet/pgcet_notification.pdf. Eligibility: http://kea.kar.nic.in/pgcet/pgcet_eligibility.pdf *You may kindly circulate this to interested candidates who are keen to pursue Post Graduate Studies in Karnataka, India.* with regards Anitha Suseelan Architect, Urban Designer, PG Coordinator (Urban Design), School of Architecture, RV College of Engineering, Bangalore, India -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: KEA PGCET Notification_2011_0001.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 1860104 bytes Desc: not available URL: From p.arabindoo at ucl.ac.uk Fri Jun 17 18:41:03 2011 From: p.arabindoo at ucl.ac.uk (Pushpa Arabindoo) Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:11:03 +0100 Subject: [Urbanstudy] MSc in Urban Studies at University College London Message-ID: <000601cc2cf0$02bc74a0$3a6b5290@uclusers.ucl.ac.uk> MSc Urban Studies at University College London This unique course is a collaboration between four UCL faculties (the Bartlett; Arts and Humanities; Engineering; and Social and Historical Sciences). Students take three core modules including "Urban imaginations", "City, space and power", and "Urban practices" and then choose further courses from over twenty optional modules ranging from research training (for the dissertation) to specialist modules such as "Creative cities", "Spatial planning", "Urban design", "Asian cities in a globalizing South", "Comparative urbanism", "Public space and the city", "Italian cinema and the city", and "Post-colonial theory and the multicultural city." This advanced interdisciplinary programme is aimed at two main groups of students: first, students from a professional background who wish to take an opportunity for critical reflection and skills enhancement for their career development; and second, students who wish to consider embarking on a research career in the urban field and see the MSc as a useful first step towards independent writing and research at PhD or postdoctoral level. Entry requirements are the equivalent of a first or upper-second class degree. Full time, part time and flexible study options are available. For further details visit the course website: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanstudies/ The course is run by the UCL Urban Laboratory: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanlab Academic enquiries to: Professor Matthew Gandy at m.gandy at ucl.ac.uk Admissions enquiries to Fiona Mannion at f.mannion at ucl.ac.uk General enquiries to urbanlaboratory at ucl.ac.uk Dr. Pushpa Arabindoo Lecturer in Geography & Urban Design UCL Urban Laboratory Department of Geography University College London 26 Bedford Way London WC1H 0AP Tel.: 020 7679 5512 (internal ext. 25512) Fax.: 020 7679 7565 e-mail: p.arabindoo at ucl.ac.uk http://www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanlab http://www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanstudies -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kchamaraj at gmail.com Fri Jun 17 21:06:23 2011 From: kchamaraj at gmail.com (Kathyayini Chamaraj) Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:06:23 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Reminder: CIVIC - Invitation to 'Monitoring of BBMP's Works by Citizens'- Sat, 18.06.11, 3.00 PM to 6.00 PM Message-ID: *Do you want to monitor BBMP’s projects? * *Come and learn how* *CIVIC Bangalore* has great pleasure in inviting you to a presentation on *BBMP’s Web-based Global Project Management System * *Mr. R. Sri Kumar, **IPS* *Vigilance Commissioner, Central Vigilance Commission * *Will preside* ** * Guest of Honour Ms Sharadamma **Worshipful Mayor, BBMP * ** *Chief Guest* * * *Mr. Siddaiah, **IAS* *Commissioner, BBMP* ** ************ *Mr. Raja Seevan & Mr. J. K. Rao* *Founder Trustees, Indian Centre for Social Transformation (Indian CST)* *will make the presentation* *Date: Saturday, 18th June 2011* ** *Time: 3.30 PM to 6.00 PM* ** *Venue: Senate Hall, Central College Campus* *Entrance from Jnana Jyothi Auditorium side, Palace Road* *Bangalore 560001* * * ** ** ** ** ** * **All are welcome* * * *CIVIC Bangalore * *(Citizens' Voluntary Initiative for the City of Bangalore) Regd.* # 6, Kasturi Apartments, 35/23 Langford Road Cross, Shanthinagar, Bengaluru 560025 Tel: 22110584/Telefax: 41144126, (M) 97318 17177 Web: www.civicspace.in / Email: info at civicspace.in** * * * * * **Programme Schedule* 3.00 PM Tea & Registration 3.30 PM Welcome & objectives – CIVIC 3.40 PM Presentation of Web-Based Global Project Management System (GPMS) of BBMP by Mr. Raja Seevan & Mr. J.K.Rao, Founder Trustees, ICST 4.10 PM Q&A and open discussion on BBMP’s GPMS 5.00 PM Remarks by Chief Guests, Ms Sharadamma, Worshipful Mayor, & Mr. Siddaiah, Commissioner, BBMP 5.40 PM Chairperson’s remarks by Mr. R. Sri Kumar, IPS, Vigilance Commissioner, Central Vigilance Commission 6.00 PM Vote of thanks * * Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike's Global Project Management System (GPMS) has been developed by the Indian Centre for Social Transformation along with Karnataka State Police Housing Corporation. It is a professional tool to manage projects on-line from conception to completion. The progress of the project is tracked by all stakeholders who work collaboratively to ensure successful completion of the project. The system has the following components available: - On-line Global Project Management System (GPMS) - Remote Eye Monitoring System (REMS) - Intelligence Report Generation System (IRGS) This e-governance initiative enables real-time monitoring and management of BBMP's 33,737+ works, which are going on in various parts of the City. If someone wants to monitor any particular project being executed by BBMP, with respect to its timely completion, cost effectiveness or quality, they can follow the progress of the work by selecting the project and putting the same on their watch list. As progress gets uploaded on BBMP's website, they will get alerts and the public can also upload photographs and feedback to ensure that the work proceeds in the desired direction. Advantages of using Web-Based Global Project Management System (BBMP-GPMS) · The goal is to use technology-aided tools to enable efficiency and transparency and bring about accountability in all e-governance services. · To provide total transparency in all the civic functions of BBMP. · Empower citizens by providing them accurate ready-to-view real-time information on-line. · Provide a single-point database for all citizen services and matters. · Enable access to central repository to all citizen data through cloud services. · Bring about constant improvement in e-governance services through continuous public feedback. Now BBMP has provided this portal for public to register complaints, view projects, provide additional information, suggestions of their interest and update delays or inconvenience caused through this BBMP-GPMS on-line portal. -- Kathyayini Chamaraj Executive Trustee 97318 17177 CIVIC Bangalore #6 Kasturi Apts. 35/23 Langford Road Cross Shanthinagar Bangalore 560025 Tel: 080-22110584 Telefax: 080-41144126 info at civicspace.in www.civicspace.in -- Kathyayini Chamaraj Executive Trustee 97318 17177 CIVIC Bangalore #6 Kasturi Apts. 35/23 Langford Road Cross Shanthinagar Bangalore 560025 Tel: 080-22110584 Telefax: 080-41144126 info at civicspace.in www.civicspace.in -- Kathyayini Chamaraj Executive Trustee 97318 17177 CIVIC Bangalore #6 Kasturi Apts. 35/23 Langford Road Cross Shanthinagar Bangalore 560025 Tel: 080-22110584 Telefax: 080-41144126 info at civicspace.in www.civicspace.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From debsinha at gmail.com Mon Jun 20 19:50:26 2011 From: debsinha at gmail.com (Deb Ranjan Sinha) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:20:26 -0500 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Urban India must pay more for better services: minister | Reuters Message-ID: <000901cc2f55$3647e9f0$a2d7bdd0$@gmail.com> *Hundreds of millions of Indians living in the country's overcrowded cities must get used to paying more for better public services as the government pushes a huge infrastructure privatization program, the urban development minister said.* http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/20/us-property-summit-nath-idUSTRE75J 11120110620 From waquarahmed at hotmail.com Mon Jun 20 23:06:00 2011 From: waquarahmed at hotmail.com (waquar ahmed) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 23:06:00 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] New book on India's new economic policy In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: May I draw your attention to “India’s new economic policy: a critical analysis” that Amitabh Kundu, Richard Peet and I have co-edited? It has been published by Routledge, New York: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415801881/ Rawat Publications, New Delhi: http://www.rawatbooks.com/book_more_detail.aspx?id=587&catagory_name=self 6 of the 13 chapters focus on urban India and may be of interest to subscribers of this list-server. Content: Introduction Waquar Ahmed, Amitabh Kundu and Richard Peet 1. Neoliberalism, Inequality and Development Richard Peet 2. From Mixed Economy to Neo-liberalism: Class and Caste in India’s Policy Transition Waquar Ahmed 3. Urban System in India: Trends, Economic Base, Governance and a Perspective of Growth under Globalization Amitabh Kundu 4. New Urbanism, Neoliberalism and Urban Restructuring in Mumbai Swapna Banerjee-Guha 5. Economic Liberalization and Urban Governance: Impact on Inclusive Growth Shipra Maitra 6. The Right to Waste: Informal Sector Recyclers and Struggles for Social Justice in Post-Reform Urban India Bharti Chaturvadi and Vinay Gidwani 7. From Red Tape to Red Carpet? Violent Narratives of Neoliberalizing Ahmedabad Ipsita Chatterjee 8. Neoliberalism, Environmentalism and Urban Politics in Delhi Rohit Negi 9. Coping with Challenges to Food Security: Climate Change, Biofuels and GMOs Suman Sahai 10. Imperialism, Resources and Food Security, with Reference to the Indian Experience Utsa Patnaik 11. Special Economic Zones: Space, Law and Dispossession Rupal Oza 12. Thinking Militant Particularisms Politically: Resistances to Neo-liberalism in India Dave Featherstone 13. Radical Peasant Movements and Rural Distress in India: A Study of the Naxalite Movement Raju Das Thanks, Waquar Ahmed. Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 21:13:39 +0530 From: arkaja at gmail.com To: urbanstudygroup at sarai.net Subject: [Urbanstudy] CSH-CPR Urban Workshop Series Dear All, Please see below announcement for the CSH-CPR Urban Workshop Series. Best wishes, Arkaja theindiancity.net Urban Workshop Series Robust Plans, Contingent Plans and Complementary Plans: A framework for resilient urban development Arnab Chakraborty University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 3:45 pm Tuesday, 31 May, 2011 Conference Hall, Centre for Policy Research, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi The practice of planning for urban development is often too focused on developing a single plan for a single desirable future and fails to adequately consider uncertainties and possible alternative futures. Uncertainties often arise from forces beyond the control of a single planning agency, for example, changes in projected trends in global oil prices, shift in central government priorities, or private sector dynamics. Uncertainties may greatly affect the efficacy of plans. Using the case of Washington DC, Arnab will demonstrate how to systematically incorporate uncertainties in the plan making process and use this framework to identify robust, contingent, and complimentary decisions and plans in an intergovernmental and strategic planning context such as the NCR. He argues that while a single future driven plan may be tempting to make and enforce; the institutional complexity of modern cities and metropolitan regions make a desirable future largely unavailable to planners. Instead planners should think systematically about uncertainty to improve the efficacy of plans and resiliency of cities. Arnab Chakraborty is an Assistant Professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on three complementary areas, viz. impact of land use policies on housing affordability, politics and praxis of regionalism, and strategic planning under complexity. He is an affiliate of the National Center for Smart Growth and, has previously worked for the Chicago Transit Authority and taught at the Johns Hopkins University. Arnab is a graduate of Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and received his PhD from the University of Maryland at College Park. This is the sixteenth 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.fr or Partha Mukhopadhyay at partha at cprindia.org _______________________________________________ Urbanstudygroup mailing list Urban Study Group: Reading the South Asian City To subscribe or browse the Urban Study Group archives, please visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yanivbin at gmail.com Wed Jun 22 12:05:29 2011 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2011 12:05:29 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Maximum city, minimum involvement Message-ID: Maximum city, minimum involvement Time to rope in RWAs for optimal urban governance R Swaminathan | Mumbai | June 20 2011 For a city that understands finance like Tendulkar the cover drive a bit of number crunching will help us put its urban woes in perspective. Let’s take up two symbols of every Mumbaikar’s existential reality – the Bandra-Worli Sea Link and the suburban rail and road transportation network – and do some nifty comparative mathematics to see where it’s all adding up. When it was unveiled the Bandra-Worli Sea Link was supposed to be an emerging Mumbai’s brand new icon. By all accounts it seems to have succeeded – just look at the Sea Link postcards lining up the city’s tourist spots dislodging the old favourite Gateway of India. Postcard pretty it is, but what has an average Mumbaikar shelled out for it? The 4.7 kilometres – 7.7 kilometres if you take the approach entry and exit roads – of the Sea Link cost Mumbaikars Rs 1,684 crore. That’s Rs 358.29 crore a kilometre to be precise. So next time you pay Rs 50 to cross the bridge, remember that each metre whizzing by is the costliest real estate, at Rs 35.8 lakh, in the city that you have ever set your foot on, or rather your car on. Not to make any value judgements, but isn’t it ironical that in a city where over 60 percent of the population lives in slums, the costliest real estate is a metre of a road? Before I get Shanghaied and shipped off to the favourite high priest of many of Mumbai’s urban renewal brigade Zhu Rongji – widely credited for polishing a grubby Shanghai to a nice, global shine – for a lesson in governance, speed of execution and project management, the Sea Link is a prime example of the lack of all three. Ten long years, a budget of Rs 300 crore escalating over five times to Rs 1,600-plus crore and only 4.7 kilometres to show for it is a case study of how not to execute an iconic project. Operational issues of project management, elastic timeframes and opaque tender processes aside, there is a larger social point that has always needed urgent attention, but has been never been treated in a serious manner. If one goes by the quaint world that Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) inhabits, Mumbai has 1.4 crore people living in it. But since a city is always a living, breathing and growing organic being, very rarely in sync with atrophied bureaucratic data and files, in reality the city’s population dramatically goes up to 1.8 crore during any working day as people stream into its business districts for their daily bread. Of this 1.8 crore who do something or the other every single day, a large part of it involving moving themselves and their goods from point A to B, only 9% own a four-wheeler or a two-wheeler. Whittling it down further, one finds that the percentage of people owning a four-wheeler is just 3%. Now, that means that the number of people who own two-wheelers, at 6%, is 10.8 lakh and those who own cars at 3 percent, is 5.4 lakh. As I am using 2007-08 figures, and since the automobile industry is justifiably claiming a boom, at an annualised growth rate of approximately 22%, I am suggesting that the percentage increase in private vehicle ownership in the city would be another 4-6 percentage points. So assuming that we are today dealing with a 15% private vehicle ownership, and keeping the same gap between two-wheeler to four-wheeler ownership, of six percentage points, the population owning four-wheelers is 9%. That is 16.2 lakh people. The peak handling capacity of the Bandra-Worli Sea Link per day is around 85,000 cars. Currently it is handling around 37,500 cars. Now, assuming that all 16.2 lakh people decide to use the Bandra-Worli Sea Link one sunny morning and by some swish of a magical wand the Sea Link is able to handle the horde, from a cost-benefit ratio it works out to Rs 96,000 of your and my money for plying a single car across to Worli or to Bandra. Now, considering that the bridge is being used by only 37,500 car owners today, just 0.023% of the total car owners, the cost-benefit ratio are even more obscenely skewed. So plying one car on the Sea Link today costs Rs 2,22,644, the approximate on-road price of a no-frills Maruti Alto or two of the iconic Tata Nanos. Now, even if we assume that every single car or an SUV, which obviously has a higher capacity, crossing the Sea Link is carrying an average of four people, it still works out to a healthy Rs 55,661 per passenger. So there are two questions: Why spend this kind of money on such a niche ‘public’ utility? And, who sanctions them? Which, then, brings us to the city’s suburban rail and road transportation network. Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) says it’s the lifeline for 88% of the population. Technically correct. But it’s not as if the remaining 12%, 15 if you take my calculation mentioned earlier, take out their cars, scooters and motorbikes every day. The number of people using public transport, say experts-in-the-know, is closer to 95% on any working day. That’s a world record. No city in the world, not New York, not Moscow not Tokyo or Beijing, has practically its entire population depending on the public transportation network. It’s a testament to the resilience and innovation of the people who are running an overburdened and antiquated network. The only significant planned investment in the last decade or so for an integrated multi-modal public transportation system has been the World Bank-assisted Mumbai Urban Transportation Project (MUTP). [image: mumbai] *Photo: Parveen Kumar* *Plying one car on the Sea Link today costs Rs 2,22,644. If each car carries four people, it still works out to Rs 55,661 per passenger * The total cost of the project, to be completed in two phases, as per 2002-03 prices is Rs 4,626 crore. Assuming a standard 30% project-cost escalation, the amount being spent at current prices works out to Rs 6,013.8 crore. Ninety-five percent of 1.8 crore works out to 1.71 crore. Just pause and let it sink in. One crore seventy one lakh men, women and children like you, me and our families, stream out of their homes every single day and take either an auto or a taxi, a bus or a train, usually a combination of all three, to reach their respective destinations. Let’s use the same yardstick as before. A simple back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that Rs 6,013.18 crore spread across 1.71 crore people leaves each Mumbaikar who is dependent on the public transportation network, like me, with a meagre Rs 351.60 as his or her share to improve the quality of life. Just to put it in perspective for readers who do not live in Mumbai, a return ticket from Andheri to Churchgate on the Western Railway costs Rs 14. Assuming a five-day week, a to and fro fare for a week costs Rs 70. For a month Rs 210. By the time the second month is over, an average Mumbaikar has already shelled out more than what his government has given back to him to improve his quality of life. So, yet again, we are back to the same two questions: Why spend public money in such a manner? And, who sanctions them? Even though the questions for both the urban conundrums are the same, ironically their intent and meaning are as different as chalk is from cheese. Only a city of extreme contrasts like Mumbai can have exactly the same questions having different meanings. For those who have reached till here, the next obvious question is what is the way out? How can Mumbaikars take on the tetra-headed, land gobbling creature born of weak political will, testosterone driven muscle-power and an unmanageable lure of the lucre? The solution, though radical, is available. But it will make the political class uncomfortable, the land mafia livid and the average Mumbaikars less insular and more inclusive. Planning for city dwellers, which is you and me, has always been an institutional exercise considered as a domain for ‘experts’ who will decide for us what is best. Mumbai today has a plethora of institutions – BMC, MMRDA, MSRDC, MVRC – supposedly serving us, but in reality passing the buck to each other for not providing us basic civic amenities like quality toilets in railway stations. At last count, there were 23 institutions directly or indirectly ‘planning’ for us Mumbaikars. There is an urgent need to ‘de-institutionalise’ urban planning. The 74th Constitutional Amendment Act was to energise the people of metropolitan areas (population of 10 lakh and more) at the ground level so that they can participate and become stakeholders in planning and urban development. While the intent was to make the urban development more democratic, in reality it has become even more institutionalised with Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) getting politicised and becoming part of the existing power structure. So, what do we do in order to ‘de-institutionalise’ planning? There are two critical, perhaps even radical, steps that need to be taken. The first step is to revamp the legislative framework surrounding the Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs). If empowered properly, the RWAs have the potential to transform a city’s landscape for the better. The legal safety net to empower the RWAs must seriously consider making them a compulsory and statutory body, if needed by an act of parliament, which every housing society or a cluster of housing societies should constitute. RWAs do exist today, and there are specific cases where they are being involved by the powers that be. One of the main examples of such an attempt is the Bhagidari project in Delhi. But for RWAs to be really effective there must be internal democracy within them and transparent elections. It might even be a good idea to bring RWA elections under the purview of the Central Election Commission (CEC). Furthermore, it is critical that RWAs don’t turn out to be like Indian sporting federations with ‘life presidents’, unbridled power and unlimited corruption. It is necessary to evolve a system when the decision-making posts are not occupied by the same person for more than two terms. What an empowering legal system can do is allow the RWAs the autonomy to decide what is best for their localities in terms of infrastructure enhancement and quality of life. A legally empowered and politically neutral RWA, it is hoped, will eventually engage and interact with urban planners, architects, solution and civil society organisations to evolve solutions for local urban problems. But there seems to be no point in legally empowering RWAs if they are not allowed to be at least financially autonomous, if not independent. And that should be our second step. It may sound a bit radical, and even a bit theoretical and conceptual, but RWAs will not be empowered unless they are allowed to raise resources. It is necessary for the government to enable RWAs to access financial resource pools, including alternative sources of revenue. It may sound outlandish but a fundamental question needs to be answered. If we are free-market economy shouldn’t RWAs be allowed to raise money from the market? Of course there are regulatory and other questions that require deep debate and discussion on what sort of institutions should be allowed to enter the market. But why should institutions that do not have a profit motive not approach the market? If a Multi Commodities Exchange’s (MCX) proposal to open an alternative exchange to BSE and NSE can be considered, Securities and Exchange Board’s (SEBI) experiment with regional exchanges for greater financial inclusiveness can be allowed, then every option and way to allow non-profit institutions to participate in the market should be explored. If RWAs enter the market, they will have to maintain financial transparency, their balance sheets will have to be made public, audit firms will have to be involved and their activities be liable for scrutiny. Where does this leave the MMRDAs and BMCs of the world then? Their job and consequently their deliverables become clearer. In a scenario where the RWAs are empowered and are taking neighbourhood-level decisions, right from repairing roads to managing public spaces, then public institutions can concentrate on their core competence, which is executing megaprojects, like the East-West corridor, that will yolk together all the smaller projects that will be implemented by the RWAs. So what are the potential challenges? A political establishment, which will be sweating under the collar, the deeply entrenched bureaucratic mandarins, who will be looking at law, by-laws and rules on why it cannot and should not be done and the powerful land mafia which will find it next to impossible to bulldoze their way into public land. Those are the challenges that a Mumbaikar has to face and surmount. I am willing to do it. Is anyone else with me? *This piece first appeared in the June 1-15 issue of *Governance Now*magazine (Vol.2, Issue 9). * ------------------------------ *Source URL:* http://governancenow.com/news/regular-story/maximum-city-minimum-involvement -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From geetanjoy at rediffmail.com Wed Jun 22 19:13:15 2011 From: geetanjoy at rediffmail.com (Geetanjoy Sahu) Date: 22 Jun 2011 13:43:15 -0000 Subject: [Urbanstudy] =?utf-8?q?Seminar_by_Gautam_Bahn_on_The_Juridicalisa?= =?utf-8?q?tion_of_Politics=3A_Thinking_through_Evictions_in_Millen?= =?utf-8?q?nial_Delhi-_Friday_24th_June=2C_2011_3-5_p=2Em=2E?= Message-ID: <1308733187.S.12339.5105.F.H.TmdlZXRhbmpveSBzYWh1AEZ3ZDogU2VtaW5hciBieSBHYXV0YW0gQmFobiBvbiBUaGUgSnVyaWRpY2FsaXM_.f4-234-89.old.1308750195.25038@webmail.rediffmail.com> Dear All,The School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai invites you to a seminar on The Juridicalisation of Politics: Thinking through Evictions in MillennialDelhi,   byGautam BahnDate: Friday June 24, 2011Time :3 - 5 p.m.Venue: Kumarappa Lecture Hall, 2nd floor, Malti Naoroji Campus, TISSAbstract: Since the millennium, a series of evictions have scarred theface of the city of New Delhi, different not just in degree but inkind from evictions in previous decades. Critically, these evictionswere not ordered by the planning authorities, the city or state governments, or thedevelopmental authorities of the city, but were results of PublicInterest Litigations (PILs) in the Delhi High Court and the SupremeCourt of India.This presentation reads these evictions in order to answer a set ofquestions:How do we understand these evictions? How were they legitimated in thename of "public interest"? What has made them not only possible, butappear just, ethical and as acts of "planning" and "good governance"?What implications does this have for a politics of resistance, or theimagination of more inclusive urban futures?What implication does it have, in ot her words, for a progressive urbanpolitics?About the speakerGautam Bhan is an writer and activist on urban issues, focusing on thepolitics of urban poverty in Indian cities. He is the co-author ofSwept off the Map: SurvivingEviction and Resettlement in Delhi (Yoda Press: 2006). He iscurrently with the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (iihs.co.in)and the University of California, Berkeley.   For more details contact Ms.Alpana (Secretary, School of Habitat Studies) @ alpanact at tiss.edu, 022-25525375Thanks & Regards, Geetanjoy Sahu Assistant Professor School of Habitat Studies TISS, Mumbai-400088 Phone Number-022-25525373 (0), 9619584969 (Mobile) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carol.upadhya at gmail.com Wed Jun 22 22:28:05 2011 From: carol.upadhya at gmail.com (Carol Upadhya) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2011 22:28:05 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Public Lecture-Dr. Partho Sarothi Ray, "Five Years of Special Economic Zones in India"-Mon 27 June 2011 at 4.00 pm, NIAS Message-ID: *National Institute of Advanced Studies** * *Indian Institute of Science Campus, **Bangalore** 560 012* *Public Lecture*** on “*Five Years of Special Economic Zones in India*” *by* * * *Dr. Partho Sarothi Ray*** Assistant Professor in Molecular Biology and Evolution, IISER, Kolkata Chairperson *Prof. Carol Upadhya*** on *Monday, 27th June, 2011 at 4.00 PM* Venue: *Lecture Hall, NIAS*, IISc Campus, Bangalore 560 012 *Abstract: *Five years have passed since the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government passed the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) Act in 2005. Altogether there are around 1200 SEZs in different phases of development today. Analyzing the development and distribution of SEZs in different parts of India in the last five years gives us some ideas about the political geography of special economic zones in India. The information about where SEZs have been established, and where they have not, allows us to make some surmises about the politics, economics and commercial motivations behind SEZs and also the multifarious resistance movements against it that has erupted in large parts of the country. This talk will draw on this analysis and the personal experience of the speaker in struggles against various SEZs in India including the proposed POSCO SEZ in Orissa which has received a very strong farmers’ resistance. *About the Speaker*: Dr. Partho Sarothi Ray is currently assistant professor in molecular biology and evolution at IISER Kolkata. He completed his Ph.D from the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2005. He is an active contributor to Sanhati, a web journal. * * * * * * * *All are welcome* For further details, please contact Dr. Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay < ritajyoti 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 cugambetta at yahoo.com Wed Jun 22 22:31:27 2011 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:01:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: Fwd: Public Lecture-Dr. Partho Sarothi Ray will speak on "Five Years of Special Economic Zones in India"-Mon 27 June 2011 at 4.00 pm in Lecture Hall, NIAS In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <136836.71479.qm@web125901.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: NIAS-BANGALORE Date: 22 June 2011 15:08 Subject: Public Lecture-Dr. Partho Sarothi Ray will speak on "Five Years of Special Economic Zones in India"-Mon 27 June 2011 at 4.00 pm in Lecture Hall, NIAS To: niasoff09 at gmail.com National Institute of Advanced Studies Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bangalore560 012      Public Lecture  on “Five Years of Special Economic Zones in India”  by Dr. Partho Sarothi Ray Assistant Professor in Molecular Biology and Evolution, IISER, Kolkata Chairperson Prof. Carol Upadhya   on Monday, 27th June, 2011 at 4.00PM Venue:  Lecture Hall, NIAS, IISc Campus, Bangalore 560 012     Abstract: Five years have passed since the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government passed the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) Act in 2005. Altogether there are around 1200 SEZs in different phases of development today. Analyzing the development and distribution of SEZs in different parts of India in the last five years gives us some ideas about the political geography of special economic zones in India. The information about where SEZs have been established, and where they have not, allows us to make some surmises about the politics, economics and commercial motivations behind SEZs and also the multifarious resistance movements against it that has erupted in large parts of the country. This talk will draw on this analysis and the personal experience of the speaker in struggles against various SEZs in India including the proposed POSCO SEZ in Orissa which has received a very strong farmers’ resistance. About the Speaker: Dr. Partho Sarothi Ray is currently assistant professor in molecular biology and evolution at IISER Kolkata. He completed his Ph.D from the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2005. He is an active contributor to Sanhati, a web journal.   * * * * * * * All are welcome   For further details, please contact Dr. Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From arkaja at gmail.com Thu Jun 23 10:34:42 2011 From: arkaja at gmail.com (Arkaja Singh) Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 10:34:42 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] CSH-CPR Urban Workshop Series Message-ID: Dear All, As part of our Urban Workshop Series, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), Delhi invite you to a workshop titled *'Realising Ambitions of the Rajiv Awas Yojana: Slum Planning Schemes - A Statutory Framework for Improving Slums and Assigning Tenure'* by *Bimal Patel*. Best wishes, Arkaja Date: Tuesday, 28 Jun, 2011 Time: 3:45 pm Venue: Conference Hall, Centre for Policy Research, Dharma Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 110021 *theindiancity.net* * * * * *Urban Workshop Series * * * *Realizing Ambitions of the Rajiv Awas Yojana* *Slum Planning Schemes – A Statutory Framework for Improving Slums and Assigning Tenure* *Bimal Patel** *Environmental Planning Collaborative* * *3:45 pm Tuesday, 28 June, 2011 * Conference Hall, Centre for Policy Research, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi Rapid implementation of slum improvement projects – as the Rajiv Awas Yojana proposes to do – is a truly formidable challenge. This is true even in cities where political resolve, finance and institutional capacity are not significant constraints. This talk will argue that, were we to institute a statutory framework that enables officers to concurrently deal with technical, financial, organizational and tenure related complexities of slum improvement projects, it would be much easier for mandated agencies to meet this challenge. The statutory framework that will be proposed – Slum Planning Schemes – draws on several existing mechanisms, such as the T P Schemes mechanism. It is designed to enhance participation, enable collaboration, promote transparency, support fiscal prudence, and, to uphold formal and informal rights of landowners, slum communities and the government. It takes a pragmatic approach and promotes fairness. Eschewing a one-size-fits-all policy approach, it advocates flexibility in structuring slum-specific physical and tenure improvement projects. * * *Bimal Patel* is a consultant, researcher and teacher. He is founder director of Environmental Planning Collaborative, a not-for-profit research, advisory and advocacy organization that works with government to understand and transform urban design and planning practice in India. He also leads HCP Design and Project Management, a fifty year old firm that provides urban planning, urban design, architecture, interior design and project management services. Bimal Patel holds a Master's Degree in Architecture and a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. *This is the seventeenth 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.fr or Partha Mukhopadhyay at partha at cprindia.org *** * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sumandro at gmail.com Thu Jun 23 13:24:33 2011 From: sumandro at gmail.com (sumandro) Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 13:24:33 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] banaglore security map (please spread the news) Message-ID: To whom it may concern, Earlier this month, MOD and CSTEP launched an online portal for creating a map of insecurties in Bangalore. Security is one of the bigger issues in urban policy debates today. However, in most discussions the word ‘security’ is understood in terms of ‘hard security issues’, like acts of terrorism, law and order situations, etc. We at MOD and CSTEP are rather interested in more nuanced emotions of insecurity. We want a more inclusive and city-specific understanding of 'insecurity' to emerge from discussions among residents of Bangalore. We want to know where in the city you feel insecure and why so. Please visit the 'Bangalore Security Map' at http://bsm.mod.org.in and share your observations regarding the spaces of insecurity in the city of Bangalore. Not all senses of security or insecurity are place-specific, not all of them can be pinned to a certain location in the map. In such cases, please feel free to pin them where the name of the city (‘Bangalore’) is shown (or maybe the neighbourhood which you are familiar with) on the map. Also look at submissions by others, where in the city they feel insecure and why. Write to us at bsm at mod.org in if you agree with them or otherwise. We are hopeful that a map such as this will create various new discussions about the city, will make possible different ways of *observing the city and making it more livable*. Regards, sumandro *mod* www.mod.org.in >> *history of the "bangalore security map"* In March 2011, MOD organised a workshopto explore various nuances of the sense of security in an urban context. We intended to expand the notion and incorporate different forms of securities and insecurities – from environmental to emotional – that are part of everyday urban lives. In process, we wanted to broaden the dimensions of a ‘secure city.’ One of the documentation tools we experimented with in that workshop is mapping of participants’ experiences and observations about secure and insecure spaces in the city of Bangalore. Though constrained by the limited and biased experiences of the people present, the exercise was found inspiring and we wanted to expand it into a crowd-sourced mapping project. CSTEP came in as an engaged and creative collaborator. The portal is developed collaboratively by CSTEP and MOD, using the Ushahidi platform ('Luanda'). 'Bangalore Security Map' on MOD site: http://www.mod.org.in/mod/2011/06/bangalore-security-map/ 'Bangalore Security Map' on CSTEP blog: http://blog.cstep.in/?p=956 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cugambetta at yahoo.com Fri Jun 24 15:17:37 2011 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 02:47:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: Competition: A Future Beyond Concrete In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <801366.73785.qm@web125906.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Philippa Abbott To: urbanstudygroup-owner at sarai.net Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 9:19 AM Subject: Competition: A Future Beyond Concrete Hi All, Please follow this link for the online competition [co]design 2011: A Future Beyond Concrete, based in Bangalore, India. http://openarchitecturenetwork.org/competitions/codesign2011 The registration date has been extended to the 5th July. Join the facebook community: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_222136111130922 Cheers, Philippa Abbott [co]design studio Competition Director A bit more about the competition: [co]design 2011: A Future Beyond Concrete is an open invitation to all creative minds to engage in finding low-cost, innovative alternatives to concrete, concrete reduction or concrete re-use within the real world context of low-income housing in Bangalore.  This is a global competition to design materials, techniques or processes that create sustainable ways of building. A strong winning design will be scoped to be prototyped on the ground in India. A Future Beyond Concrete is an initiative of community oriented design ([co]design studio). In a world stressed by a changing climate and shifting populations, the need to find new ways to adapt to our environment and to each other is paramount. To build a brighter future we must develop alternatives to existing methods. Materials, technology and process are central to this; most critically viable substitutes for concrete and cement. Cement is increasingly being used in low-income communities around the world, replacing traditional building construction materials at an immense scale. This has prompted an urgent need to investigate affordable and appropriate solutions and alternatives for cement, that will meet the needs of the world’s poorest. ________________________________ Design Competition Objectives There are two starting points: design new ways or adapt old ways. You may choose to look at an innovative design for a single material or construction technique. Equally the innovation could be re-adapting, evolving or promoting an existing material or process of making. Use the background material provided to frame, explore and develop your design concepts. You could... Create a new material. Define a different method of construction. Engineer a process of making. Rebrand an old technology. Design a new one. Configure a network to disseminate. Employ recycled and reused materials. Pilot a program to share techniques or train people. Market new livelihood opportunities. Foster social entrepreneurship. Imagine real change. Innovate. Make it happen. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Codesign- A Future Beyond Concrete_Brief.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 2615948 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: A future beyond concrete flyer.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 148706 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cugambetta at yahoo.com Thu Jun 30 00:20:26 2011 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:50:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: Socio-financial Online Networks: A Public Lecture by Radhika Gajalla In-Reply-To: <20110629110758.20860.qmail@mail.cis-india.org> References: <20110629110758.20860.qmail@mail.cis-india.org> Message-ID: <1309373426.69772.YahooMailNeo@web125905.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> If in Bangalore, check this out. Sruti Chaganti gave a fascinating talk on this issue at Alternative Law Forum last week, linking the coming re-emergence of the micro-finance industry to the emerging infrastructure of UID (something which the focus on privatization issue associated with UID has largely ignored). -Curt ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Prasad Krishna To: Curt Gambetta Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 4:37 PM Subject: Socio-financial Online Networks: A Public Lecture by Radhika Gajalla . Dear Curt Gambetta, Socio-financial Online Networks: Globalizing Micro-Credit through Micro-transactional Networked Platforms – A Public Lecture by Radhika Gajalla   The Centre for Internet and Society invites you to a public lecture by Prof. Radhika Gajalla of Bowling Green State University. She will give a lecture on how microfinance online functions through the social networked online space and the micro-transactional abilities of the interface together work to enhance financialization of the globe. In her lecture, she will focus on how this is made possible by the increased digitalization of financial practices and the role micro practices play in producing globalization. She will also lay emphasis on the fact that the increased digitalization of finance also means that "financial literacy" is also removed into the virtual space so that it is further away from subaltern daily praxis while simultaneously staging subaltern presence in cosmopolitan space through mobilizing structures of 'feeling' that Dr. Shameem Black refers to as "sentimental sympathy". Prof. Gajalla’s lecture will also touch upon issues like what online socially networked micro-credit websites do visually and through the use of multiple tools that are embedded in the discourse of interactivity is to make it seem as if the subaltern is indeed participating in these networks. Thus, the appearance of a subaltern presence is produced. In this production of appearance of the subaltern presence in online contexts, just as in other visual and static contexts, the complexity of socio-cultural and economic intersections are not clearly revealed or accounted for. This reproduces exotic notions of the authentic, mummified ‘other’ and offers the subaltern image up for consumption. In turn, as Web 2.0 tools are set up to actually reach the offline subaltern via non-profit or for profit representatives that connect to these online networks, the subaltern in turn is tapped as a consumer for capital.   Radhika Gajjala Radhika Gajjala is a Professor of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University and Director of the American Culture Studies program. Her book, "Cyber Selves: Feminist Ethnographies of South Asian Women" was published in 2004. She has co-edited collections on "South Asian Technospaces", "Global Media Culture and Identity" and "Webbing Cyberfeminist Practice: Communities, Pedagogies, and Social Action". She is presently working on a forthcoming book, "Weavings of the Real and Virtual: Cyberculture and the Subaltern" to be published in 2012 and is also working on two interrelated projects — one on "Microfinance Online and Money in Virtual Worlds and Social Media" in relation to the ITization and NGOization of global socio-economic work and play environments and the other on "Coding and Placement of Affect and Labour in Digital Diasporas". Date: July 8, 2011 Time: 5.00 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. Venue: Centre for Internet and Society Thanks and Regards, Prasad Krishna Publication Manager Centre for Internet and Society prasad at cis-india.org Unsubscribe #194, Second 'C' cross Domlur Second Stage Domlur Bangalore, 560071 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: