In early March, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) issued two notices seeking feedback on a Draft Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Policy (notice dated 9.3.2019) and a Draft Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Regulation (notice dated 10.3.2019). ‘TOD’ is an internationally accepted concept in urban planning to achieve various ends. It has also been part of Delhi’s Master Plan for at least 10 years.
CPR faculty and researchers in collaboration with Moulshri Joshi, Architect and Partner at Space Matters have sent a formal submission to the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). They highlighted specific areas of concern and requested for a widespread consultation on the policy before finalisation. In their submission they point to two specific contexts that the drafts ignore. One is Delhi’s multiple environmental crises related to air, water and waste which could be made worse by a proposal to unconditionally ‘densify’ the city. The other is that large parts of Delhi are already dense beyond the levels proposed by the TOD norms and these areas have received no attention from the policy.
LIMITING DEFINITION OF THIRD PARTY TAKES AWAY FROM THE POTENTIAL OF THIS UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
On September 10, 2018, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change issued a draft amendment to the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006. Through this the ministry has acknowledged that the compliance status of implementation of environmental conditions needs to be improved, and to do so it has proposed to include a randomised third party monitoring system. The ministry has proposed to carry out this third party monitoring through government institutions of national repute.
In response to this draft amendment, CPR-Namati Environmental Justice Program made a submission with the ministry. The submission highlights that such a process is still limited to the original two parties involved in environmental compliance i.e. government agencies and project developers. It emphasises on the need for a monitoring framework that addresses impacts and is not limited to routine inspections. To fill this lacuna the submission suggests that affected people be made part of third-party monitoring mechanism. This mechanism should enable them to collaborate with regulators towards better monitoring and compliance with environmental safeguards. It also raises questions regarding the credibility of the government institutions of national repute and urges the Ministry to disclose the funding details proposed for such an amendment. Read the full submission here.
PODCAST FEATURING SHIBANI GHOSH, SANTOSH HARISH AND YAMINI AIYAR
PODCAST AIR POLLUTION HEALTH
Listen to the 50th episode of ThoughtSpace (above) featuring Shibani Ghosh, Santosh Harish and Yamini Aiyar.
While air pollution levels are unsafe across the country, all-year round, they spike to dangerously high levels during the winter months in North India. This year, as the country confronts the COVID-19 pandemic, the challenge of air pollution is even more pressing, given increasing evidence of levels and transmission of the infection being exasperated by pollution. How can India solve this public health emergency?
In the 50th episode of ThoughtSpace, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, speaks with Shibani Ghosh and Santosh Harish, Fellows at CPR’s Iniitative on Climate, Energy and the Environment. Ghosh and Harish have closely studied and engaged with this crisis in various capacities. They shed light on crop burning and other sources of pollution, the challenges of governance and state capacity, the new Commission set up to manage air quality, and the need to build a larger public discourse around the environment that views this problem as a social justice issue. The recommend a shift from reactive, political quick fixes to more systematic, long-term, institutional solutions.
You can follow the Centre’s work on air pollution on Twitter or visit www.cprindia.org. You can listen to all the episodes our podcast here.
A CONVERSATION BETWEEN RESEARCHERS MUKTA NAIK, ASHWIN PARULKAR, EESHA KUNDURI, MANISH AND RICHA BANSAL
PODCAST ECONOMY POLITICS
The urban team at the Centre for Policy Research carried out intensive field work over two weeks, where the researchers interviewed workers across categories of informal work in Delhi, such as construction workers, sabjiwalas, dhaba workers, small shopkeepers, industrial contract workers etc., to understand how they have coped with the impact of demonetisation or ‘notebandi’, as it is commonly called.
In the seventh episode (above) of CPR’s podcast, ThoughtSpace, Richa Bansal talks to Senior Researchers Mukta Naik and Ashwin Parulkar and Research Associates Eesha Kunduri and Manish to unpack their findings on informal workers’ strategies of coping with ‘notebandi’.
Watch the full video (above) of the Community of Research and Practice (CORP) seminar on ‘Malaysia’s Sewerage and Sanitation Sector Regulatory Framework’ featuring Punita Nook Naidu.
The seminar explored insights that underlie processes of regulatory development specifically in faecal sludge management and desludging services in Malaysia. The seminar largely focussed on the eventual change in the desludging framework as well as the current status, funding dynamics of sewerage infrastructure and services in Malaysia and the benefits and challenges of the funding mechanism employed. This was followed by deliberation on practical learnings from experiences of Malaysia which can be used by stakeholders in India in driving the sanitation agenda forward.
The event brought together senior policymakers, technocrats, city and state level implementers, members of the civil society and legal experts to learn from their experience in states and in implementation to initiate a broader discussion on the potential for scheduled desludging framework from the viewpoint of technical configuration.
The session was moderated by Anju Dwivedi, Senior Researcher, CPR.
Punita Nook Naidu is an independent consultant at the national and international level.
The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here.
The presentation made at the seminar can be accessed here.
CORP Seminar Series
This is the 19th in a series of the Community of Research and Practice (CORP) seminar hosted by the Scaling City Institution for India: Sanitation (SCI-FI: Sanitation) initiative with the support of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). This seminar series seeks to provide a platform for discussing the experiences of the researchers and practitioners on urban sanitation.
READ HIGHLIGHTS HERE
SANITATION MANAGEMENT WATER RESOURCES
On the occasion of World Toilet Day on 19th November 2018, Centre for Policy Research (CPR) in collaboration with Vidya Bhawan Society organised a seminar on ‘Sustainable Water Resource and Sanitation Management’ in Udaipur. This was the 16th seminar in the Community of Research and Practices seminar series organised by the SCI-FI project.
This seminar was attended by researchers, practitioners, CSOs, and private partners including representatives from Udaipur Municipal Corporation, Urban Improvement Trust and Town Planning Department.
The seminar had two thematic sessions. The first session focused on safe sanitation and waste water reuse. Neelima Khetan, Group CSR Head for Vedanta Resources, Vice President, CSR, Hindustan Zinc Limited (HZL) highlighted that the strength of corporates lies in managing waste water and partnering with competent bodies. This can be leveraged to build capacities of Urban Local Bodies through strategic interface of private partners, government, civil society actors, and community stakeholders. She emphasised on the fact that corporates can strengthen ties with the grassroot community. Considering that Udaipur has a high dependence on on-site sanitation system, Ambarish Karunanithi, Senior Research Associate, CPR emphasised on the need for sustainable solution for non-sewered networks in Udaipur. He also discussed about the partnership with HZL to support Udaipur Municipal Corporation (UMC) to improve sanitation systems in Udaipur. Abhinav Kumar, Research Associate from Vidya Bhawan Society sighted that norms and beliefs play a critical role in determining sanitation choices of the household. He stated access to toilet is not the same as access to sanitation, taking in account the sanitation market scenario in particular. Anju Dwivedi, Senior Researcher, CPR highlighted the need to involve community to improve urban sanitation.
In the second session titled ‘Sustainable Urban Water Management’, Dr Anil Mehta, Principal, Vidya Bhawan Polytechnic presented on Integrated Water Resource Management in Udaipur. He defined Integrated Water Resource Management as a mechanism that promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources in order to maximise the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner. Dr PK Singh, Professor, Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology shared lessons of empowering communities through participatory Ground water management at village level through Managing Aquifer Recharge and Sustainable Groundwater Use through Village-level Intervention (MARVI) project. Drawing lessons from the rural landscape, he focused on participatory water shed management and hoped this model can be upscaled in the urban context as well.
Malaysia has developed an integrated approach to management and treatment of waste from sewered and non-sewered areas that is considered very successful. It is estimated that around 65% of the urban population of Malaysia is covered by network sewerage, while the rest rely on Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) services provided by the same agency that provides network sewerage services.
Through these presentations, Dorai Narayanan discusses the causes and remedies associated with river pollution and their link to the sanitation sector, and contextualises Malaysia’s success story, analysing the associated problems and challenges.
The two presentations can be accessed here:
Rivers and Pollution: Causes and Remedies, and its Link to the Sanitation Sector (above)
Sanitation and Sewerage Management in Malaysia: A Case Study of Reform and Sector Transformation
This is the 11th in the series of the Community of Research and Practice (CORP) seminars planned by the Scaling City Institutions for India: Sanitation (SCI-FI: Sanitation) initiative. More information can be found at the event page.
Watch the full video (above) of the session ‘Socio-legal, technical and financial knowledge base: Evidence and practice’ featuring Ravikant Joshi, Raj Bhushan Roy, Nirat Bhatnagar, Tripti Singh, Manish, Devashish Deshpande, Nilanjana Bhattacharjee and Marie-Hélène Zérah.
The seminar had two thematic sessions. The first session discussed insights from the field to build an understanding of social, legal, technical and financial issues and challenges sanitation workers face, and also deliberated on the ground challenges of bringing sanitary workers into alternative livelihood options. This was followed by a session that focussed on developing an Action Research Agenda for Future for the Indian context and explore possible solutions to improve sanitation workers’ safety. Through this CORP seminar, we aimed to build a shared understanding of the issues and challenges faced by sanitation workers’ and developed future research agenda for furthering action research in order to identify gaps and strengthen evidence to improve sanitation workers’ safety.
The session brought together senior researchers, practitioners and experts to share their insights on various aspects of action-based research pertaining to the issues and challenges that the sanitation worker faces.
Speakers for the session:
Ravikant Joshi, Urban Management Centre
Raj Bhushan Roy, WaterAid India
Nirat Bhatnagar, Dalberg Advisors
Tripti Singh, Centre for Policy Research
Manish, Centre for Policy Research
Nilanjana Bhattacharjee, PRIA
Devashish Deshpande, Centre for Policy Research
The session was moderated by Marie-Hélène Zérah, IRD, and Centre for Policy Research.
The second session on ‘Solutions and Action Research Agenda for Future to Improve Sanitation Workers’ Safety’ featuring Ravikant Joshi, Raj Bhushan Roy, Ambarish Karunanithi, Anahitaa Bakshi, Devashish Deshpande, Shashi Shikha, VR Raman and Anju Dwivedi can be accessed here.
About the Series
This is the 18th in a series of the Community of Research and Practice (CORP) seminar hosted by the Scaling City Institution for India: Sanitation (SCI-FI: Sanitation) initiative with the support of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). This seminar series seeks to provide a platform for discussing the experiences of the researchers and practitioners on urban sanitation.
WATCH THE FULL VIDEO OF THE WEBINAR
HEALTH SANITATION
Watch the full video recording of the CORP webinar on ‘Informal Settlements and COVID-19: Water and Sanitation as a Frontline Response’, organised by the Scaling City Institutions for India (SCI-FI) at CPR. In this webinar, speakers and presenters contributed towards understanding the aspects of WASH related inequities in informal settlements in South Asian countries and how they are deepened in emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Urban informal settlements are ubiquitous across the Global South – housing from 24% of the urban population in India to more than 50% in Nepal, Bangladesh, and several African countries. Residents of urban informal settlements perennially contend with insecurities in water and sanitation, housing, and livelihoods. Relying on underprovided and shared infrastructure for water and sanitation and cramped to the hilt within living accommodations, social distancing is an untenable proposition for those in these settlements during the ongoing pandemic. Moreover, the disproportionately lower density of water and sanitation infrastructure, compared to the population density, also constrains the ability of the residents to exercise proper and frequent handwashing. Yet, the epidemiological vulnerabilities of urban informal settlements are not endemic only to the ongoing crisis but have manifested time and time again during epidemics, like the Ebola outbreak.
With the continuing upward trajectory of urbanisation and globalisation facilitating the spread of infectious diseases, governments, planners, practitioners, and researchers must respond with not only emergency measures for immediate relief in informal settlements but also strategies for creating more resilient cities that can effectively prevent and arrest emerging and remerging diseases in the future.
Watch out for upcoming CORP webinars in this new series, Informal Settlements and COVID-19: New Urban WASH Priorities for South Asian Governments, that will bring together researchers and practitioners from across South Asia to deliberate upon the urban Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) sector needs to achieve these dual goals.
SECOND DISCUSSION OF THE CPR-TCPD (TRIVEDI CENTRE FOR POLITICAL DATA, ASHOKA UNIVERSITY) DIALOGUES ON INDIAN POLITICS
ELECTION STUDIES POLITICS
Watch the full video (above) of the talk by eminent political scientist, Dr Milan Vaishnav on the current state of Indian politics in the run up to the 2019 national elections.
The talk focused on the seedy underbelly of electoral politics — how candidates are chosen, how parties and campaigns are financed, and how it all affects electoral outcomes.
Milan Vaishnav is Director & Senior Fellow, South Asia Program, at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here.
About the CPR-TCPD Dialogues
This was the second event in the CPR-TCPD Dialogues on Indian Politics series, launched in a partnership between Centre for Policy Research and Trivedi Centre for Political Data (TPCD) at Ashoka University. This is a monthly event that brings together academicians, policy and political practitioners, and civil society actors to grapple with important social and political issues in India. It provides a forum for intellectually rigorous, non-partisan commentary to strengthen public discourse on politics in India. In these polarised times, debates on politics in India have tended to be increasingly noisy, blurring the lines between critical engagement and partisan endorsement. This dialogue series is an effort to carve out a space for critical, nuanced engagement to understand the changing dynamics of Indian political parties, the impact of new and emerging social movements and the use of new instruments of mobilisation in our polity.
