Author: cprindia

CPR FACULTY REACT TO TREE FELLING IN THE NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION
AIR POLLUTION ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE CPR VIEWS

BUREAUCRACY
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs recently faced the ire of citizens for its decision to cut down at least 14,000 trees for the redevelopment of seven government colonies in the National Capital Region (NCR). While orders from the National Green Tribunal, and subsequently the Delhi High Court put off the felling indefinitely, these did not apply to all areas. Given the high degree of pollution the residents of Delhi grapple with, few agreed with the Centre’s plan to plant a larger number of saplings, citing that they cannot replace full-grown trees. The move raised several environmental concerns and sparked public debate and protest.

In this second edition of ‘CPR Views’, CPR faculty and experts share their comments on this key development.

Manju Menon,
Senior Fellow, CPR Kanchi Kohli,
Researcher, CPR
‘For the last three weeks, Delhi’s citizens have been debating tree felling, compensatory plantations, public participation and urban design in venues like public parks, footpaths, newspapers and television studios. While the trigger was the felling of over 14,000 trees for the ‘redevelopment’ of seven government housing areas in the heart of the capital, the #DelhiTreesSOS and #MyRightToBreathe campaigns have pushed the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) to relook into the project’s design. For now the courts have restrained the felling of trees.

One question that has eluded the discussion so far is whether the construction activity that will be spread over Netaji Nagar, Sarojini Nagar, Nauroji Nagar, Kasturba nagar, Thyagraj Nagar, Sriniwaspuri and Mohammadpur, are part of one, two or seven projects (explained below)? These colonies comprise a contiguous area of 571 acres of government housing north and south of the Ring Road near the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

In July 2016, the union cabinet approved the development of seven colonies together, giving the sense that this is one large redevelopment plan. The urban development ministry then signed one Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the NBCC (National Buildings Construction Corporation Ltd.) for ‘the project’, clubbing three housing colonies Sarojini, Netaji and Nauroji into one, so that the fully commercial World Trade Centre at Nauroji and large commercial hub at Sarojini could finance government housing and offices. The other four were contracted to the Central Public Works Department (CPWD).

However environment clearances under the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006 have been pursued for the seven separately. Depending on their size, they have or are in the process of taking an approval from the central environment ministry or the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA). This leads to two questions – should the seven be treated as one real estate project? Secondly, if they are separate projects, should they have also been put through a cumulative impact assessment for all the integrated components?

On 24th December 2010, the environment ministry issued an office memorandum (No. J-11013/41/2006-IA.II (I)) for ‘consideration of integrated and inter related projects for grant of environmental clearance.’ If this were to be applied to ‘the project’ in question, then each of these redevelopment projects would need to carry out both individual EIA as well ‘prepare a common EIA report.’ This would allow the expert committees appraising these projects to examine ‘the overall impact of the project as a whole.’

In the present case this has not happened. It is important for the environment ministry to urgently respond to this as citizens have raised fears of increased air pollution, water stress, traffic and loss of green spaces due to these projects. It is still possible for government departments to invoke the precautionary principle and to deliberate on these issues in a transparent manner. This will allow for better and inclusive decisions to be taken.’

Longer articles by Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli can be accessed in The Hindu’, ‘Scroll’. The Wire carried four articles: ‘Under Garb of Govt Housing, Delhi Redevelopment Project Legalises Grabbing Public Property’, ‘Compensatory Afforestation Is Not the Ultimate Solution to Delhi’s Tree Fellings’, ‘The Circular Timeline of Environmental Approvals for Delhi’s Redevelopment’ and ‘In the Shadow of Delhi’s Redevelopment’. ‘ThePrint’ and ‘The Hindu’ carried their opinions, and Kohli’s comments can be found in articles in ‘Firstpost’, ‘Outlook’ and the ‘Times of India’.

Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli also wrote a letter to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, highlighting the violations and lacunae in the Ministry’s grant of the environmental clearances for the redevelopment of four GPRA (General Pool Residential Accommodation) colonies.

Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli also wrote a letter to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal urging him to revive Delhi Tree Authority (DTA) and not selectively implement Delhi Tree Preservation Act, 1994.

Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli’s comments on Delhi Government’s Draft Tree Transplantation Policy, 2019 can be read here.

Mukta Naik,
Senior Researcher, CPR
‘Development vs. environment will always be a topic of debate, and given the lived experience of Delhi and its problems with air quality, there is no doubt that we must re-think development projects to minimise environmental damage.

However, the decision to cut over 17,000 mature trees in Delhi is symptomatic of a larger malaise that afflicts the urban development paradigm in India today. This malaise has to do with minimum transparency and lack of public consultation on one hand, and on the other, a dangerous crafting of erroneous design in the language of popular global urban development models like the compact city, transit-oriented development and land value capture to make them palatable.

In the case of the redevelopment projects in question in Delhi, propounding the merits of increased density in the city core and the resulting carbon savings to ‘sell’ them is simply wrong. The reality is that these new developments are car-centric in design, else they would have not been gated communities for government babus but integrated with the city fabric. A compact city model would have included affordable housing, walking and cycling infrastructure and public spaces that are accessible to all. Delhi’s violent past of evicting slum-dwellers from the core and resettling them at the periphery, is proof that the city planners do not have the compact city in mind at all. Designing around trees is essential, but not adequate. The Ministry of Urban Affairs must go back to the drawing board and redesign these projects such that they kickstart a changed urban narrative towards improved liveability.’

Mukta Naik participated in a television debate on ‘NDTV’, which can be accessed here.

Arkaja Singh,
Fellow, CPR
‘It is ironic – in context of all the recent discussion about the land redevelopment projects in Sarojini Nagar, Nauroji Nagar and Netaji Nagar, and before that in East Kidwai Nagar – that the Guidelines for the Smart Cities Mission of the national government name East Kidwai Nagar as one of two examples (the other is the Bhendi Bazar redevelopment project in Mumbai) of what a land redevelopment project supported by the Mission could look like.

The East Kidwai Nagar, Sarojini Nagar, Netaji Nagar and Nauroji Nagar projects follow a particular model, in which government-owned land occupied for housing for government employees is given over for redevelopment, to be converted into new government housing (replacement of existing stock and creating new stock) and commercial real estate – which is to be sold to recover the overall cost of the project. Considering all the questions that have been raised about the projects recently, we wonder why it is touted as a ‘model’ project for Smart Cities all over the country?

With respect to a model redevelopment project, government projects are in any case something of a cop-out to all the complexities of land ownership, and of convincing multiple users and owners of the value of the project. In these projects, the government owns all the land, and it is also the custodian of the city master plan and is responsible for giving all the planning permissions and environmental clearances involved. The contract for project development was awarded to a government agency, without any form of public competition, and on conditions that are described on the contract document in the broadest possible terms. And even then, is it worthwhile to redevelop several hundred acres of prime urban land (and that too with a rich green cover of old trees that will be lost) with the sole purpose of creating some 7,000 additional units of housing for government employees?

In strictly legal terms, the government is free to do this, without even a public consultation, if it could comply with its own environmental and planning conditions (which we now know have been blatantly flouted). But is this a legitimate way to dispose off public resources? What would be the appropriate norms for establishing public purpose, transparency, accountability and best value for the dealing of government land? The government’s power to deal with land in high-handed ways has been called into question by protest movements time and again – but all too often these are battles of rural and poor people, far removed from city imaginations. The emergence of a distinctly urban dimension to similar questions underscores the need for much greater public engagement with the government’s handling of its power in relation to land.’

A longer article co-authored by Mukta Naik and Arkaja Singh in ‘ThePrint’ can be accessed here.

The first edition of CPR Views can be accessed here.

FULL VIDEO OF SESSION AS PART OF CPR DIALOGUES
CPR

Watch the full video of the session on ‘CPR Youth Awards: A Youth-Driven Agenda for Change’, organised as part of CPR Dialogues, featuring Eric Gonsalves, Pradeep Nair, Mukta Naik and Swati Janu.

Over half of India’s population is below the age of 25. Their perceptions and ideas – not just their labour – will shape the country’s future. Today, ahead of the 2019 polls, youth employment and political participation are receiving unprecedented attention. Identifying the youth as a key demographic for policy interventions, CPR researchers have been studying formal and everyday politics among young people as well as their labour market opportunities and migration pathways, especially as rural youth move increasingly ‘off the farm’. Could the curiosity and talent of these aspirational, informed and passionate young people we met in our field sites be harnessed towards improved research hypotheses as well as innovative solutions to their everyday problems?

It is in this context that CPR is delighted to announce start of the CPR Youth Awards, a program designed to interact, collaborate and mentor young men and women across the country to understand what their concerns, their perceptions of the environment and society, and to help them take steps towards addressing problems they are motivated to solve. Tapping into CPR’s own network of NGO partners, we have worked with youth groups aged 18-25 in three locations: Mangolpuri, a resettlement colony in north-west Delhi; Keonjhar, a tribal region in Odisha; and in peri-urban Jaipur. Over the last two months, facilitators from partner NGOs have worked with an experienced mentor to design and execute programs in these three locations involving intensive workshops to help youth groups articulate problem statements and impart to them design-thinking, research and presentation skills.

At this time, these groups are using smartphones to create short videos documenting their projects. For example, in Keonjhar, young men and women are petitioning Block Development Offices to help implement their ideas on improving agricultural productivity. In Mangolpuri, one group is forming support groups online for girls facing sexual violence while in Jaipur, teams are exploring pathways to more effective local governance in areas like waste management. Showcasing the best projects at the CPR Dialogues, our real takeaway has been the importance of placing young people at the centre of conversations, innovations and interventions.

Eric Gonsalves is Chairperson, Governing Board at CPR.

Pradeep Nair is Regional Director at Ford Foundation.

Mukta Naik is a Fellow at CPR.

Swati Janu is the Awards Mentor.

Watch all videos as part of the CPR Youth Awards 2018 here.

Watch all other sessions of the Dialogues below:

The International Climate Change Regime: Looking Back to Look Forward
Research for Policy Action on Air Pollution, in collaboration with CECFEE
India’s Technology Transition: The Present and the Possible
The Emerging World Order and India’s Role
India’s 21st Century Transitions
Understanding India’s Energy Transition in Global Context
Is the Urban Future Metropolitan? Big Cities in Urban Systems
Geopolitics and Geo-Economics in a Changing South Asia

FULL VIDEO OF THE WORKSHOP
URBAN ECONOMY URBAN SERVICES

Watch the full video (above) of the CPR- Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH) Workshop on ‘Delhi without Borders: Contradictions and Conflicts of a Delirious City Region’ featuring Nitin Bathla.

The 1962 masterplan of Delhi introduced a critical intertwining between Delhi and its region. Not only did this initiate the restructuration of Delhi’s metropolitan processes into a continually expanding territory, but more importantly it forged a land-based economic relationship between the city and its region. Thus, concomitant to the radical transformations in Delhi, profound acts of ecological dispossession, enclosure, and infrastructure violence have also been taking shape in its region.

The delirious city-region today represents a tapestry of stark disparities; of sparsely occupied luxury condominiums popping up next to dense settlements housing masses of labour migrants, of industrial-logistic spaces set amidst remnants of agro-pastoral landscapes, of operational landscapes set within sacred ecologies, and of ever new infrastructure networks set in bypass to the perpetually incomplete existing ones. This churning of territory for urban production is revealing a palimpsest of subaltern and planetary dynamics, sedentary and nomadic practices, and urban and agrarian societies, thus revealing unique socio-spatial conflicts and political compromises.

This presentation brought together observations, conclusions, and findings from over two years of ethnographic inquiry by the speaker in an attempt to unpack contradictions and conflicts in the urbanisation of a Delhi without borders.

Nitin Bathla is an urban researcher, artist, and educator based at ETH Zurich where he is currently pursuing his doctoral studies on a Swiss Excellence Fellowship.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here. Find all the available videos of previous workshops, here.

FULL VIDEO OF THE WORKSHOP
POLITICS URBAN GOVERNANCE

Watch the full video (above) of the CPR- Centre for Science and Humanities (CSH) Workshop on ‘How Women Mobilise Women into Politics: Theory and Natural Experimental Evidence from Urban India’, featuring Tanushree Goyal.

How does women’s political entry affect citizen’s political involvement? Building on qualitative interviews and extending elite mobilisation theories to account for who conducts grass-roots mobilisation, Goyal argued that female politicians increase women’s numbers in party activist roles, and prospects of cheaply mobilising women provide a strategic incentive to do so. As a result, more women receive mobilising effort, such as door-to-door party contact, where women contest. Women’s entry in activist roles has downstream effects on the quality of mobilisation. When women enter into activist roles, where they were previously absent, they induce competition for these roles and in doing so raise the quality of activist pool. This affects the political involvement, that is, political knowledge and participation, of all citizens. Goyal provided evidence for this argument using original survey data from a natural experiment in Delhi’s Municipal Council, where randomly chosen electoral seats are reserved for women. By outlining how representation affects the calculus of mobilisation, this paper connects the literature on women’s political entry with mobilisation and political involvement.

This paper is part of an ongoing dissertation book project, provisionally titled, ‘The politics of representation: How female politicians make politics inclusive in India’, that examines the consequences of women’s entry through quotas in Delhi’s civic body. Drawing on a natural experiment, extensive fieldwork, interviews, and original survey, combined with insights from a new electoral polling-station level panel dataset, this book proposes to offer new theoretical insights and an empirical account of women’s agency in shaping urban politics and governance in India.

Tanushree Goyal is a third year PhD candidate at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, UK. She specialises in the political economy of development and comparative politics with a geographic focus on South Asia.

The presentation made by the speaker at the workshop can be accessed here. Find all the available videos of previous workshops, here.

FULL VIDEO OF THE WORKSHOP
POLITICS URBAN GOVERNANCE

Watch the full video (above) of the CPR- Centre for Science and Humanities (CSH) Workshop on ‘How Women Mobilise Women into Politics: Theory and Natural Experimental Evidence from Urban India’, featuring Tanushree Goyal.

How does women’s political entry affect citizen’s political involvement? Building on qualitative interviews and extending elite mobilisation theories to account for who conducts grass-roots mobilisation, Goyal argued that female politicians increase women’s numbers in party activist roles, and prospects of cheaply mobilising women provide a strategic incentive to do so. As a result, more women receive mobilising effort, such as door-to-door party contact, where women contest. Women’s entry in activist roles has downstream effects on the quality of mobilisation. When women enter into activist roles, where they were previously absent, they induce competition for these roles and in doing so raise the quality of activist pool. This affects the political involvement, that is, political knowledge and participation, of all citizens. Goyal provided evidence for this argument using original survey data from a natural experiment in Delhi’s Municipal Council, where randomly chosen electoral seats are reserved for women. By outlining how representation affects the calculus of mobilisation, this paper connects the literature on women’s political entry with mobilisation and political involvement.

This paper is part of an ongoing dissertation book project, provisionally titled, ‘The politics of representation: How female politicians make politics inclusive in India’, that examines the consequences of women’s entry through quotas in Delhi’s civic body. Drawing on a natural experiment, extensive fieldwork, interviews, and original survey, combined with insights from a new electoral polling-station level panel dataset, this book proposes to offer new theoretical insights and an empirical account of women’s agency in shaping urban politics and governance in India.

Tanushree Goyal is a third year PhD candidate at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, UK. She specialises in the political economy of development and comparative politics with a geographic focus on South Asia.

The presentation made by the speaker at the workshop can be accessed here. Find all the available videos of previous workshops, here.

FULL VIDEO OF PANEL DISCUSSION
URBAN ECONOMY

Watch the full video of the CPR – CSH (Centre de Sciences Humaines) panel discussion (above), featuring Amita Bhide, Kaveri Gill, Pankaj Kapoor, Anne Odic, Sanjeev Sanyal and Asim Waqif, which seeks to understand and explore the implications for the urban research agenda.

Even as India urbanises, there is relatively limited discussion on what this future urban will be. Will we follow well-trodden paths or will our dispersed settlement pattern, the advent of Industry 4.0 and new tools of governance lead us to a different destination? A panel of thought leaders from industry, civil society, academia and government brought their distinctive perspectives to answer such questions.

Amita Bhide is the Dean of the School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Kaveri Gill is Associate Professor, Department of International Relations and Governance Studies, Shiv Nadar University.

Pankaj Kapoor is founder and Managing Director of Liases Foras.

Anne Odic is the head of Local government and urban development division of the French Development Agency.

Sanjeev Sanyal is the Principal Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance, Government of India.

Asim Waqif is an artist.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here. Find all available videos of previous workshops here.

FULL VIDEO OF WORKSHOP BY ANIRUDH KRISHNA
URBAN ECONOMY

Watch the full video of the CPR – CSH (Centre de Sciences Humaines) workshop (above), which seeks to investigate the condition of slums in the cities of Bengaluru, Jaipur and Patna.

Projections suggest that most of the global growth in population in the next few decades will be in urban centres in Asia and Africa. Most of these additional urban residents will be concentrated in slums. However, government documentation of slums is incomplete and unreliable. Slums and slum dwellers are systematically under-counted in India. It is necessary to employ creative methods to locate and sample these understudied populations. By using satellite image analysis and fieldwork to build a sample of 279 diverse slums in the 3 cities, and neighborhood surveys as well as individual interviews with 8,257 households, the presentation shows that living conditions vary along a wide-ranging continuum of wellbeing. Most variation in conditions is due to differences across rather than within slum neighborhoods.

Anirudh Krishna is the Edgar T Thompson Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University. His research investigates how poor communities and individuals in developing countries cope with the structural and personal constraints that result in poverty and powerlessness.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here. Find all available videos of previous workshops here.

FULL VIDEO OF THE WORKSHOP
URBAN ECONOMY

Watch the full video of the CPR-Centre for Science and Humanities (CSH) workshop (above) on ‘A Post-Post Apartheid Urban Praxis’ featuring Jhono Bennett.

South African cities are experiencing an unprecedented shift in the nature of growth and control as the country nears its fourth democratic election. The loss of majority political control held by the post-1994 ruling party to its opposition in three out of the five major metros, combined with the growing disillusion of the ‘rainbow nation’ articulated by student leaders in recent student protests, suggest a very different process of growth for a rapidly urbanising country.

Specifically, the manner in which those that practice and frame teaching and research within city-making spaces engage with each other will become increasingly fraught due to the growing contestation of the various urban identities; making it harder in the near future to meaningfully work across polarised sectors of the city to address emerging urban challenges.

The presentation shared a reflection on the speaker’s journey through this context and on their emerging modes of praxis.

Jhono Bennett is an architectural urbanist based in Johannesburg. He is a co-director and co-founder of 1to1 – Agency of Engagement, a design based social enterprise that has been developed to support the positive re-development of South African cities.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here. Find all the available videos of previous workshops, here.

FULL VIDEO OF WORKSHOP
URBANISATION

Watch the full video of the CPR – CSH (Centre de Sciences Humaines) workshop (above) on ‘Iron Cage meets Makeshift Shed – The ‘Jugaad’ State in Mumbai’, featuring Dr Shahana Chattaraj.

How does the state govern cities where much of the economy is informal, on the margins of state regulatory institutions? Chattaraj draws on field research in Mumbai between 2009-2016 to present an empirically-based conceptualisation of how the state works in cities like Mumbai, where ‘informality is a mode of urbanisation.’ She uses the popular Indian notion of ‘jugaad,’ which refers to makeshift adaptations, workarounds and improvisation under constraints, to describe the state in Mumbai. ‘Jugaad’ practices and strategies of governance – adaptive, flexible, negotiated and contingent – are routinely applied by state actors at different levels in Mumbai, in spaces ‘illegible’ to formal state institutions. ‘Jugaad’ governance practices are not arbitrary or merely corrupt, but rational, if ad hoc and extra-legal, adaptations around formal rules. These processes embed state actors in local power structures and crosscutting networks that span state, market and political organisations. While they enable the state to apprehend and partially incorporate the city’s informal spaces, they dissipate centralised state power and cohesiveness. The ‘jugaad’ state concept encapsulates how the formal and informal workings of the state interact and shape urban governance in largely informal cities. It draws attention to tensions and disjunctions within the state and in state-society relations in informal contexts.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here.

Find all available videos of previous workshops here.

FULL VIDEO OF THE WORKSHOP BY SHAMINDRA NATH ROY AND KANHU CHARAN PRADHAN
URBAN ECONOMY

Watch the full video of the CPR – CSH (Centre de Sciences Humaines) workshop (above), which seeks to estimate the number of census towns (CTs) that will be identified in 2019 for the 2021 census.

The presentation asks whether the large increase in the number of CTs from 2001 to 2011 census was a one-off phenomenon or part of a longer process of rural-urban transformation. Since such prognosis requires a detailed review of the census methodology of determining CTs, it also clarifies certain challenges that arise during such identification.

Along with this methodological review, the talk presents the regional distribution of CTs on the basis of the last two censuses and the upcoming predictions; and offers insight on their spatial characteristics in relation to larger cities, attempting to shed light on their economic characteristics in the broader context of rural-urban transformation. A better appreciation of this transformation is necessary to contextualise how well the policy framework is placed to manage and govern these areas, not only in the present but also in the future.

Shamindra Nath Roy and Kanhu Charan Pradhan are Senior Researchers at the Centre for Policy Research. Their current research includes patterns of rural-urban transformation, migration, labour force participation, and issues related to spatial segregation, urban informality and governance.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here. Find all available videos of previous workshops here.