Author: cprindia

A BOOK BY AGNES DEBOULET, VÉRONIQUE DUPONT AND SOLOMON BENJAMIN
URBAN SERVICES URBAN GOVERNANCE PODCAST

Agnes Deboulet, a Sociology professor at Université Paris-VIII Vincennes Saint-Denis co-authored a book titled ‘Rethinking Precarious Neighbourhoods’ along with Véronique Dupont, a Senior Visiting Fellow at CPR, and Solomon Benjamin, Associate Professor at IIT, Madras.

The Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and CPR hosted a discussion on the book in April this year featuring panellists from government and academia.

Watch the full video of the discussion (above) on how precarious neighbourhoods can be approached within the broader urban context. Especially, since precariousness has increasingly become a typical characteristic of urban spaces, where social and economic transformations lead to rises in material and environmental insecurity. A dedicated event page with the details of the book discussion can be accessed here.

Deboulet also recorded the 17th episode of CPR’s podcast ThoughtSpace on the book, in which she unpacked the concept of precarious neighbuorhoods and discussed its various dimensions. The podcast can be accessed here.

FULL VIDEO OF WORKSHOP BY SUMEET MHASKAR
URBAN ECONOMY

Watch the full video (above) of the CPR – CSH (Centre de Sciences Humaines) workshop on ‘Claiming Entitlements in Neo-Liberal India: Mumbai’s Ex-Millworkers’ Political Mobilisation on the Housing Question’ featuring Sumeet Mhaskar.

Housing the urban poor and the working classes is a globally contentious issue. Since the 1980s, as the state began withdrawing from the social sectors under the neo-liberal dispensations, it had negative implications for the housing initiatives led by the state. The closure of large-scale manufacturing industries, which resulted in the massive retrenchment of the workforce further deepened the housing crisis. The industrial closures since late 1980s in major Indian cities saw the already marginalised space for labour politics shrinking further as traditional workers’ unions became non-functional. While Mumbai too witnessed similar developments, the city’s ex-millworkers re-organised on the rehabilitation question, i.e., housing and alternative employment. Of the total 80,000 workers, about 12,000 ex-millworkers have so far benefited from the subsidised housing allocated by the state.

What factors explain the re-organisation of ex-millworkers on the housing question in post-industrial Mumbai? What conditions enabled Mumbai’s ex-millworkers in the realisation of their entitlements? Why did the neo-liberal Indian state make minimal welfare provisions for the ex-millworkers? These questions are engaged with, using the minutes of the ‘Monitoring Committee’ meetings that took place every month between January 2002 and June 2018. The Monitoring Committee was established to oversee the sale and redevelopment of the textile mill lands and investigate workers’ grievances regarding dues, alternative employment and housing. In addition, in-depth and semi-structured interviews with ex-millworkers, trade union leaders, social and political activists are also used. It is demonstrated that the neo-liberal state can intervene in favour of capital in a non-coercive manner as well as devise minimal welfare policies for the working classes. The state addresses the demands of the working classes as their mobilisation has implications for electoral politics. Capital too reluctantly concedes, in order to avoid the delay in accruing profits from real estate developments.

Sumeet Mhaskar is Associate Professor and Associate Dean (Student Affairs) at the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O P Jindal Global University. He is also a Research Partner at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

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

Find all available videos of previous workshops here.

FULL VIDEO OF WORKSHOP
URBAN ECONOMY

Watch the full video (above) of the CPR – CSH (Centre de Sciences Humaines) workshop on ‘Confining the margins, marginalising the confined: The Distress of Neglected Lockdown Victims in Indian Cities’ featuring Rémi de Bercegol and Anthony Goreau-Ponceaud.

The sudden implementation of the national lockdown caused considerable panic among underprivileged populations. Dramatic images of migrant workers desperately fleeing the big cities to return home have circulated around the world. But not all of them left, far from it, and many had no choice other than to remain confined to the margins. How has the lockdown worked as a health protection for populations that are already experiencing a first-of-its-kind of containment, living as they are on the margins of urban worlds?

This presentation compared two situations in which margin containment processes are expressed to varying degrees — that of a slum in the middle of R.K. Puram district in the centre of South Delhi, and that of a Sri Lankan refugee camp located approximately 20km from Pondicherry; two spaces that are distant from each other but whose characteristics and, above all, situations in the face of the pandemic, tend to bring closer together.

Through various testimonies, the speakers presented the very harsh conditions of confinement of poor populations, whose marginality was further reinforced by the crisis. In addition to the fact that the protective measures against the virus are impossible to respect there, due to congestion and insufficient access to water, the brutal disappearance of their everyday livelihoods strongly aggravates the low standard of living of the inhabitants.

By revealing the paradoxical effects of a confinement that is not adapted to poor neighbourhoods, this presentation argued for a better consideration of the latter during and after the pandemic crisis.

Rémi de Bercegol is an urban geographer at Centre National de la Recherche Française (CNRS) and Centre de Sciences Humaines. Anthony Goreau-Ponceaud is Associate Professor in Geography at the University of Bordeaux and a research fellow at the French Institute of Pondicherry.

Find all available videos of previous workshops here.

FULL VIDEO OF WORKSHOP BY ASHWIN PARULKAR
URBAN ECONOMY

Watch the full video (above) of the CPR – CSH (Centre de Sciences Humaines) workshop on ‘Becoming Homeless in Delhi: ‘Entry’ Typologies’ featuring Ashwin Parulkar.

Based on 60 life history interviews of migrant labourers on the streets and in shelters of North Delhi’s Yamuna Pushta, Parulkar presented a set of typologies on how people from poor agricultural families in rural Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and Jharkhand became homeless in the nation’s capital. Select calamities, or adverse experiences, that were common in these men’s childhoods catalysed various ‘entry’ pathways into homelessness that he discussed. They include deaths of parents, pressures induced by poverty to support family members and physical abuse in early life. These catastrophes, however, spurred various coping mechanisms and degrees of further poverty which resulted in different types of homelessness – that is, living in the city without housing indefinitely (chronically homeless) or living itinerantly between the city and home (transiently homeless). These typologies emphasise dimensions of poverty not captured by urban poverty and homelessness measures, such as abandonment, strained to ruptured family bonds and the erosion of household and community support structures over time. Parulkar discussed how these catastrophes are produced by destitution and should therefore be identified as risks, or vulnerabilities, that certain poor rural people in India plausibly face to future homelessness.

Ashwin Parulkar is a Senior Researcher at CPR where he focuses on causes, survival conditions, and exit pathways associated with homelessness in Delhi.

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

Find all available videos of previous workshops here.

FULL VIDEO OF WORKSHOP BY PARTHA MUKHOPADHYAY
URBAN ECONOMY

Watch the full video (above) of the CPR – CSH (Centre de Sciences Humaines) workshop on ‘Unthinking Urbanisation: How Urban and Messy is India’s Urbanisation?’ featuring Partha Mukhodpadhyay.

Recently, India’s urbanisation has been characterised as ‘messy’. At various times, it has been described as unplanned and chaotic. In this context, this talk primarily engaged with two questions. First, it asked if Indian cities are urban — are they urban in all dimensions, economic, social, political, and spatial? Second — and without prejudice to the answer to the first question and stipulating that an urbanisation process is underway — it asked what does it mean to say that Indian urbanisation is messy, that it is a thoughtless, unplanned sprawl? Is there another way of looking at the urbanisation process? Drawing upon multiple qualitative, quantitative, and spatial data sources, this talk argued first, that in many respects, Indian cities may not yet be urban. Further, the apparent messiness is the result of shortcomings in the public response to relatively normal and predictable individual actions. Consequently, we need to discuss how the public response can be improved rather than adopt punitive measures that penalise rational individual behaviour.

Partha Mukhopadhyay is a Senior Fellow at CPR.

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 (above) of the CPR- Centre for Science and Humanities (CSH) Workshop on ‘Ethnic wage-welfare complex: Migrants, trade unions and the labour market in the city of Kochi’, featuring Mythri Prasad-Aleyamma.

By examining the wages of migrant workers and local unionised labour in the city of Kochi and adjacent towns in Kerala, the paper demonstrates that ‘wage’ embodies practices and processes. It details the labour practices in a port-building site and in urban spot labour markets for construction work. Wages of local workers and that of migrant workers differ not only in terms of quantity, but also in terms of the processes and practices that surround them. These differences are viewed through the lens of cultural politics and spatial differentiation. We do not know much about the historical formation of wages and of the meanings attributed to them by workers in South Asia. The paper is an attempt to begin a conversation around wage practices in the region and the ideological formation of skill and work.

Mythri Prasad-Aleyamma is an associate fellow at the Institute for Human Development, Delhi. Her research interests primarily revolve around migration and urban transformation in contemporary India.

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

AS PART OF HABITAT3 PREPCOM3
URBAN GOVERNANCE

Centre for Policy Research is organising a side event at PrepCom3 on 26 July from 8.30 to 9.30 a.m. at Surabaya, Indonesia, on Small Towns and Informal Settlements: Can they Learn from Each Other? in partnership with Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD), France.

One of India’s leading public policy think tanks (since 1976), CPR has a robust body of work on urban issues, and is committed to contributing to the deliberations of Habitat III, a mega urban event to be organised in Quito, Ecuador in October by the United National General Assembly, with a view to reinvigorating the international commitment to sustainable urbanisation.

The PrepCom3 Conference in Surabaya from 25-27 July, organised in preparation for Habitat III, will see members of CPR’s urbanisation team participate in discussions on the draft New Urban Agenda, to be deliberated and negotiated by permanent representatives and permanent observers of the UN.

The CPR-IRD event intends to urge the New Urban Agenda to embrace urbanisation across scale in a manner that pays attention to the particular challenges of informal settlements and small towns that house the majority of the world’s population. The side event brings together researchers, practitioners, think tanks, NGOs and academia. It will focus on alternative sanitation solutions, suitability of existing solutions to small towns and informal settlements, and present experiences of ecological transition, particularly in the context of climate and environmental resilience.

Venue: Crystal 3, Convention and Exhibition Hall Grand City Convex, Surabaya, Indonesia

If you are in Surabaya for Prepcom3, do not miss this exciting event!

The list of speakers at the event include:

Dr Valérie Clerc, Research fellow, IRD-Institut de recherche pour le développement, Paris, France.
Rethinking informal settlements to the light of small towns, perspectives and limits.

Mrs Mukta Naik Senior Researcher, Center for Policy Research, New Delhi, India.
Finding innovative solutions to servicing small towns and informal settlements in India

Dr Gopa Samanta, Professor, University of Burdwan, West Bengal, India.
The sustainability of water and sanitation in small cities in India: A critical approach to current practices.

Mr Marco Kusumawijaya, director, Rujak Centre for Urban Studies, Djakarta, Indonesia.
Building knowledge and capacity for ecological transition and sustainable cities/settlements in Indonesia.

Dr Khairul Islam, Country Representative, WaterAid Bangladesh.
Institutional response to fecal sludge management: Learning from small towns.

Dr Shanawez Hossain, Research Fellow, Head of Urban, Environment and Climate Change Cluster, BRAC Institute of Governance and Development, BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Learning from South Asia.

RESEARCH SHOWS HUGE GAPS AND ERRORS BETWEEN MAPS AND COASTAL AREAS, SEVERAL VIOLATIONS IN CONSULTATION PROCEDURES
COASTAL GOVERNANCE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

The CPR-Namati Environmental Justice Program submitted comments on the Coastal Zone Management Plans (CZMPs) of Karnataka and Gujarat. The research identified huge gaps and errors between maps and coastal areas and several violations in consultation procedures.

CZMP, the reference document that guides development on the coast, is currently under preparation across the nine coastal states and four union territories (UTs) of India. The deadline for the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) to approve the CZMPs was September 30, 2018. While the CZMPs of Karnataka, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Daman and Diu have been approved by the National Coastal Zone Management Authority, the plans for other states and UTs are currently in the making. The states of Maharashtra and West Bengal are incorporating the suggestions made by the National Coastal Zone Management Authority (NCZMA) and have received in-principal approval on their respective plans. Public consultations are currently ongoing in Gujarat, Goa and Andhra Pradesh.

Paralegals of the CPR-Namati Environmental Justice Program took part in the public consultations in the districts of Kachchh, Devbhumi Dwarka, Vapi and Gir Somnath in Gujarat and the Uttar Kannada district in Karnataka. They also submitted their comments to the respective State Coastal Zone Management Authorities highlighting the procedural violations, missed on-ground realities and other anomalies.

The submissions made to the Karnataka State Coastal Zone Management Authority regarding the draft CZMPs can be accessed here.

The submissions made to the Gujarat State Coastal Zone Management Authority can be accessed here.

FIND OUT HOW THEIR GRASSROOTS MODEL OPERATES IN INDIA
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

CPR-Namati Environmental Justice Program’s work on grassroots legal empowerment won the 2016 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. CPR researchers explain their work in India, and why this model makes a difference.

CPR and Namati’s work won the 2016 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. Can you tell us more about the work you do in India?

Since 2012, Namati and CPR have a unique partnership. Together we work to implement an action research project on legal empowerment for environmental justice in India. The project aims to improve the understanding of the institutional mechanisms and regulatory practices for protecting citizens from environmental impacts of industrialization and land use change.

We collect empirical data on how grievances or complaints are handled by specific agencies and what outcomes it leads to. The data from these cases helps us make evidence-based policy recommendations for institutional reform.

The legal empowerment method involves working through these cases with the involvement of those affected through trained community paralegals. Our trained paralegals work with the affected communities and the government, helping in crafting remedies that are meaningful.

Can you tell us more about the legal empowerment work on the ground, and what makes this model unique?

Namati practices the legal empowerment approach to solve some of the gravest justice problems of our time. In each of its programs, trained community grassroots legal advocates or paralegals, (also called grassroots legal advocates) treat their clients as empowered citizens rather than victims requiring an expert service. Instead of ‘I will solve this problem for you,’ Namati’s message is: ‘We will solve this together, and you will grow stronger in the process.’

Together, the paralegals and clients use different strategies and methods to determine the most effective ways to address justice challenges. In India, for example, we have worked on over a 100 cases related to pollution, loss of access to livelihood resources and damage to property. In all cases, the problems have existed for several years or have occurred repeatedly.

Paralegals trained by the program have been instrumental in bringing regulatory attention to these cases and assist in shaping effective remedies. Since we track every case systematically, we are able to use this information for systemic changes, like better policies for environmental regulation.

Plans for CPR-Namati, going forward?

Our plan over the next few years is that we hope to develop scalable models of participatory environmental regulation that focus on the experience of the environment by citizens and their resultant needs. We will work to implement these models in India and share what we have learned with legal empowerment practitioners around the world.

As a program that would like to respond creatively and productively to global environmental challenges, the goals for the Namati-CPR program are ambitious. There could not have been a better place than India to test this approach and learn from because India has a rich tradition of environmental values as well as a robust set of environmental laws. CPR’s long-standing research experience and engagement with national, regional and international policy is a unique asset to this program.

Which are the other countries in which you do similar work? And what areas do you span?

Namati and its partners currently work in eight countries: India, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Mozambique, Liberia and Uganda. We focus on enforcing environmental law, protecting community lands, and securing the rights to citizenship and effective healthcare. We also convene a global network of over 600 legal empowerment groups from 150 countries. The members are learning from one another and working together to make justice a reality for the billions of people who live outside the protection of the law.

To learn more about CPR-Namati Environmental Justice Program’s work, visit the dedicated page here.

Read Namati CEO Vivek Maru’s reflection on receiving the Skoll Award here.

CURATED COMMENTARY BY CPR FACULTY
SOUTH ASIA

The recent state of emergency imposed by President Abdulla Yameen in the Maldives followed by an arbitrary political crackdown has led to calls from the Opposition in the country, led by former President Mohammed Nasheed, for Indian military intervention – harking back to a similar intervention by India in 1988. However, the domestic and geopolitical context today is very different, especially given Yameen’s closeness to China. In these circumstances, CPR faculty analyse the choices India has – in the curated commentary below:

G Parthasarathy writes in The New Indian Express that ‘Yameen’s insensitivities to India’s security and economic concerns should be addressed imaginatively.’
‘With China seeking to capitalise on its support’ for Yameen, the Maldivian crisis has become a ‘defining moment’ for India, writes Brahma Chellaney in Project Syndicate, suggesting that ‘India’s best option is to hold out a credible threat of military action’, while simultaneously imposing economic sanctions with other democratic powers. Chellaney further elaborates on these sanctions in another article in the Hindustan Times.
In an interview with The Wire, Shyam Saran says that India should proceed cautiously unless China entrenches itself in the region, which is of strategic significance location wise.
In a discussion on NDTV, Zorawar Daulet Singh says that the Maldivian crisis should be a moment for India to think through the role it wants to play in South Asia, while G Parthasarathy adds that even though India does not have the economic and military power to balance China, China’s own behaviour is helping India get partners.