Archives: Project

The TREADS Initiative at CPR initiated a new series of dialogues to bring the theme of water security into the ongoing policy conversations around the vision of Viksit Bharat 2047.

Water security is engaged with vaguely and inadequately, often focused on provision and access. Recent scholarship insists on including the ability to cope with risks – floods, droughts, water quality, etc. Climate change compounds the challenge further, manifesting most profoundly in water-related risks, which are complicated further by their extra-territorial and trans-jurisdictional nature. We have argued earlier that India’s water resources development goals lie in the realm of transboundary river water governance: both international (India shares its key river basins of Indus, Ganga, and Brahmaputra with its neighbours) and interstate (36 federal constituents share 25 river basins; all interstate rivers except one). This geography challenges the conventional notion that water is a State subject. It brings the constitutional scheme for water governance to the centre forcefully: that it is subject to the powers of the Union over regulation and development of interstate rivers (as outlined in Entry 56 of the Union List). India’s policymaking and governance must be reimagined from this crucial perspective for its water security and Viksit Bharat goals. What kind of federal water policymaking and institutional reimagining is required to pursue these goals?

The abandoned effort to redraft the National Water Policy, initiated in 2019, was a lost opportunity to address these critical issues. The theme Water Security for Viksit Bharat of TREADS Dialogues aims to address this agenda to inform and support national water policymaking to work with states for water security. The approach is to brainstorm some related questions with scholars, thought leaders, practitioners and other stakeholders towards setting the water security agenda for the Viksit Bharat vision, in a closed-door, invited-only setting with Chatham House rules.

Find insights from the dialogues below.

India finds itself at a pivotal juncture in its growth story as it strives towards the vision of Viksit Bharat. To fulfil this vision, the nation must aspire to more than a resilient, inclusive and sustainable $30 trillion-plus economy. This initiative situates the quality of India’s institutional architecture governing its macroeconomy at the bedrock of this transformation. This architecture will ultimately determine the country’s capacity to manage complexities, respond to shocks, and ensure that the resulting development is not just rapid but equitable.

This initiative will produce a series of working papers. The objective is to deliver a comprehensive yet actionable blueprint focused on institutional reform and state capacity building. The goal is to help forge institutions characterised not only by strength but also by Resilience, Agility, Accountability, and Inclusivity (RAAI), and harness the country’s immense potential towards its development goalpost of 2047.  It will address a number of aspects of Viksit Bharat, including the roles of the state, market forces, and community; gender equality; climate resilience; urbanisation and spatial development; public health, education and social security; and the role of technology and AI.

Four Decades of Development in Dhampur

Images of urbanisation are often associated with large metropolitan cities, though a significant proportion of India’s urban population live in smaller cities and towns, which are also growing faster than the megacities. 

At the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), this process of urbanisation has been as much an area of focus as the study of specific cities. While CPR has worked on governance of megacities, it has concomitantly looked at the future of urbanisation. More recently, in its work on Subaltern Urbanization, it has focused on the in-situ transformation of rural areas into urban settlements, and emphasised the autonomy and importance of small towns. Similarly, it has explored how approaches to infrastructure development and service provision differ by scale of settlements, notably in the use of decentralised systems. 

However, empirical evidence on the role of small towns in urban and regional development remains inadequate, and this is especially true for longitudinal empirical studies of small towns that analyze their changing growth dynamics over time. This study aims to address that gap.

The objective of this longitudinal study titled Forty Years’ Development Saga of Dhampur: Growth Dynamics and Regional Transformation of an Indian Small Town is to understand the changing growth dynamics and regional inter-dependence of Dhampur over time. It builds on the doctoral thesis of Dr. Pushpa Pathak titled Industrial Linkages and Regional Development: A Case Study of a Small Town, Dhampur, India, 1984, which would provide the earlier data base for this longitudinal study. It is expected that the study findings would offer some insights for formulation of policies and programs for the development of small towns in India, particularly relating to infrastructure development, economic growth and employment generation that are also likely to have a positive impact on the development of the surrounding rural areas. As India works towards meeting the sustainable development goals and the New Urban Agenda, this study expects to fill a critical knowledge gap about small towns in India, where a substantial share of urban India lives and thrives.

About Dhampur

Dhampur is located in the rich agricultural region of western Uttar Pradesh in District Bijnor. Dhampur was recognized as an urban settlement as early as in 1866. As per the Census of India 2011, the population of Dhampur Town or Nagar Palika Parishad was 50,997 and the population of Dhampur Urban Agglomeration was 66,813. Dhampur Sugar Mill, which started operations in 1933, is the largest industrial unit that continues to play an important role in the town’s economy, but there are also many smaller industrial units that provide employment and income generation in the town and surrounding villages.

The research study is led by Dr. Pushpa Pathak, Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR, and supported by Shubham Kashyap, Research Assistant, and Aena Rawal, Research Intern.

The covid-19 pandemic brought to the fore many contradictions and crises of the Indian nation-state. On the one hand, this was a global challenge, which required an internationally coordinated response transcending geographical boundaries, on the other, it also highlighted the centrality of the nation-state and the Indian ‘nation’ within the state. Nationalistic imaginations were called to the fore to mobilise civil society, public service professionals, and ordinary citizens to assist strangers and ‘imagined others’ in multiple ways. The nature of politics and state-craft changed to cater to the challenges of the pandemic. Rapid technology-based response, surveillance and centralisation of decision-making were the calls of the hour which may have given unprecedented powers to the state over the nation and taken deep roots within the state system. The pandemic has also solidified longer transformations already underway in the relationship between the Indian state, society and the nation long before the pandemic began. The protests against the citizen amendment act and the farm bills highlighted that the clash between a monochromatic and pluralistic imagining of Indian nationhood is the defining political contestation of our times. Are Indians defined by a set of common, uniformly shared identity points, or does the nation exist as a set of interrelated, overarching conceptual frames in which many different ideas of community, territory and political leadership co-exist?

Unpacking these confusing times required varied disciplinary approaches of historians, political scientists, sociologists and international relations specialists and a discussion format with the depth of academic research and accessibility of popular media.

A Reading Group with participants across academic disciplines was most well-suited. I convened this group in partnership with the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN), LSE, London. Members include early career and advanced academic scholars based in universities around the world. At our monthly meeting, we discuss one theme on Indian nationalism which relates to our ongoing research and a contemporary development such as authoritarianism, populism, and electoral democracy. Our discussions have focused on:

• State of nationalism: What is it and where is it at?
• Nationalism and populism
• Nationalism and national integration
• Nationalism and electoral democracy

We engaged with a wide cross-section of research material, including classic and new academic writings, research reports, news commentaries and social media debates. We published a six-part media series on the theme of “Nationalism and belonging” with Scroll to present our reflections on contemporary trends around Indian nationalism based on our research and discussions. We hope to reach a wider audience with our insights and work through podcasts, journal special issues and media writings.

You can find the suggested reading list here.

If you would like to know more about the group or engage with us, please email at nationalismresearch@gmail.com.

The “Writing Urban India” initiative is a mentoring initiative to nurture early career scholars in writing and publishing on urbanisation in India. WUI is funded by the Urban Studies Foundation (USF), anchored primarily by the Centre for Policy Research, and supported by other institutions and individuals in the WUI collective. The initiative aims to enable candidates with the skills and knowledge required to produce a structured writing output that is academic in nature – through capacity-building workshops, seminars and one-to-one mentorship. The programme follows a hybrid approach, with both online and offline interactions. It also provides financial resources to enable fellows to interact with mentors, attend workshops and access resources as needed. The WUI is currently running a nine-month Fellowship programme for its first batch of 20 mentees.

Models are powerful analytical tools that shape policy priorities, targets, and can impact international negotiations on climate change. National-scale models can, however, feature unclear and widely divergent assumptions, resulting in overly simplistic or conflicting recommendations about an uncertain future. The Climate Futures Project is an initiative co-developed by the Centre for Policy Research and Indian Institute of Technology Delhi to foster an informed and measured use of such modelling studies by policymakers, scientists, journalists and concerned citizens. Focusing on models developing for India, we apply a common framework to assess, compare, and interpret the assumptions and results of modelling studies. Visit climatefuturesproject.in for more information and to read our analyses of climate modelling studies. Watch this short video for an overview of the project.

A study of 2020 assembly elections in Delhi’s Malviya Nagar constituency

For the 2020 Delhi elections, the Aam Admi Party (AAP) made ‘development’, particularly its work in improving governments school and primary health care its central to its re-election campaign. To what extent did AAP’s development agenda shape the perception of voters? Did its development work figure as a prominent for voting preferences, or were other factors, such as caste, lack of an effective opposition option, strength of the candidate, political dynamics of the constituency were equally or more important. Priyadarshini explored this question through a qualitative study of three neighbourhoods in Malviya Nagar assembly constituency, Hauz Rani, Khriki and Begumpur in the run up to the Delhi elections in 2020.

The selected neighbourhoods have a cross section of class, caste and religious groups and was the epicentre of one of the key political developments of the period, the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Hauz rani is a mix of enclaves with poor Dalit communities living alongside affluent Muslim ones which includes Afghan refugees. Khriki also has a mix of Dalit, Muslim, and Sikh communities along with Hindu upper caste shop owners. Begumpur is a predominantly Dalit neighbourhood consisting of shop owners, government employees and private sector employees. Hauz Rani is on an arterial main road of Delhi and in one of the community parks adjoining the main road, a sit-in protest against the CAA was underway from a few months before the elections in February 2020.

As part of the study, ordinary voters, local party members, community leaders and election candidates were interviewed. Campaigns of the election candidates of the main parties, AAP, BJP and Congress were also studied.

The study findings were presented at a panel discussion on 2020 Delhi election results at CPR, New Delhi.

India’s capital is marked by different settlement types, defined by diverse degrees of formality, legality, and tenure. As part of a larger project on urban transformation in India, Cities of Delhi seeks to carefully document the degree to which access to basic services varies across different types of settlement, and to better understand the nature of that variation.The project aims to examine how the residents of the city interact with their elected representatives, state agencies, and other agents in securing public services.

Cities of Delhi has received funding from Brown University and the Indian Council for Social Science Research.

In 2015, in the wake of global enthusiasm for smart cities, the Indian government launched a large urban renewal and retrofitting programme to transform 100 cities into Smart Cities. The Smart Cities Mission embodies a “digital turn” in urban governance with a focus on the implementation of smart technological solutions in order to improve the quality of life for all. This project focuses on understanding the transformations in urban governance in India through a prism of the Smart Cities Mission. The project assesses the newly created Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) in selected cities, the shifting tension between centralization and decentralization, and the increasing role of consultants in decision-making to understand the restructuring of urban governance structures under the Mission. Additionally, in-depth field-based research in selected cities will be conducted to analyze the more or less inclusive nature of the implemented projects, the differentiated manner in which the national programme travels in cities, as well as other sectoral issues.

The project is being implemented by the French National Institute of Sustainable Development (IRD) in collaboration with the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA). It is supported by the French Development Agency (AFD)