GENRE: Report

Co-authored by Doel Jaikishen and Vindhya Jyoti Disillusionment, divide and doubt. That is the distressing picture media paints of almost every Indian city. People are fighting for their basic rights—a secure home, to pursue livelihoods with dignity, to practice their religion, to access basic health, sanitation and education amenities….the list is endless! In the struggle to just get by each day, the power to rebuild and restore the city through a better understanding of each other’s position and challenges—both individually and collectively—is often the last priority. Justice, equity and dignity continues to elude us, most affecting those who are poor…

In 2010, a 10-yr-old school girl Vipasha Srivastava, wrote a moving letter to the Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh High Court complaining about lack of recreational spaces in the state capital, Shimla. The letter triggered instant action. A Bench led by then Chief Justice Kurian Joseph (who later retired as a Supreme Court Judge) sent notices to the state’s Chief Secretary seeking answers to Vipasha’s questions. The bench termed the issues Vipasha mentioned in her letter as very important since it concerned the healthy, all-round growth of children. The Court also ordered Shimla Municipal Corporation to get funds from the…

Jyoti Aware, a municipal school teacher came to Mumbai in 2009 and since then has been staying in a rented house in Mumbai's northern suburb of Kandivali with her husband and two pre-teen children. Two years back, she purchased a house in Mira Road, a suburb outside Mumbai for Rs 30 lakh, since that was the only place where she could afford a house. However, she could not shift to the new house for that would increase her commute time four times, besides making it difficult for her children to continue in the same school. "The new house is far,…

Heritage and history mean little to city authorities responsible for the maintenance of Bhopal’s parks. Like the historic Yadgar-e-Shahjahani Park, which is being used more for holding sit-ins and demonstrations, pushing out those just wanting a pleasant walk in the park. Shahjahani Park, situated close to the Lower Lake, is a heritage site (established in 1890) where once people gathered to take part in the 1942 Quit India Movement. Unchecked illegal dumping of municipal solid waste in Shahjahani Park and its periodic use by groups for organizing protests and sit-ins has led to its present deplorable condition. Last year, the…

Debashish Mondal looked vacantly at the broken walls of his home. All that remained of the house he was born in 35 years ago was broken bricks, chunks of cement and a shattered roof. On November 11, the colony he lived in, under Tallah bridge in north Kolkata, home to around 60 families, was reduced to rubble. The local municipal authorities and personnel from the Public Works Department (PWD), along with a posse of cops, came around 10:30 that morning. They had brought along labourers for the demolition, and two days later also called in bulldozers for some of the…

Mumbai, known for long as the city that never sleeps, is now that in the literal sense too. One of the first decisions that Aaditya Thackeray, the new state cabinet minister of tourism and environment, took to promote tourism, generate employment and revenue was a pilot project that allows select malls and eateries to stay open all day and night. With the experiment on for over a week now, the reaction of citizens and shop owners has been mixed. The criteria to stay open includes commercial establishments in non-residential areas, gated communities with CCTV surveillance, those with parking facilities, security…

For a planned city like Chandigarh, street vendors are a floating population difficult to include in the city’s planning mechanism. Street vendors tend to create an independent eco-system dominated by power centres within the government framework and outside from touts and racketeers, having to cope with the constant threat of confiscation of their goods. In the absence of a policy, usage of public space by street vendors remains a bone of contention between the different stakeholders in an urban setting. Objections are raised by motorists, resident welfare associations, market welfare committees and others who perceive them as a threat in…

Kolkata proposes to introduce biomining for the first time in the city to tackle its Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management challenge and Mollar Bheri in the eastern part of the city will pave the way.  A portion of land in this shallow flat-bottom waste water-fed fishery, located within the East Kolkata Wetlands, was being used by Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) as a dumping ground. It was alleged that the Bidhan Nagar Municipal Corporation, the Nabadiganta Industrial Township Authority (NDITA) and New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) -- all in the greater Kolkata region -- had been disposing of waste in…

Huge unsold housing inventory across 35 cities in the country is one of the key reasons for the Great Indian Economic slowdown, according to former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramaniam. In a working paper titled "India's great slowdown- What happened? What's the way out?", Arvind Subramaniam estimates that this vacant real estate inventory has locked up funds worth Rs 13 lakh crores, resulting in huge unpaid loans to banks. "While developers could in principle tempt buyers by reducing prices, they couldn't do that in practice because lower prices would have destroyed the (notional) value of the collateral that they pledged…

The continued internet blockade in Kashmir region since August 3rd following the revocation of Article 370, has not only deprived the people of Srinagar and the rest of the valley of an essential means to connect with each other, it has also taken an unprecedented toll on business, education, tourism, health and entertainment. In essence, the internet blackout in Kashmir has not only led to job losses but also loss of confidence in doing business in the valley. Interestingly, a day after a communication blockade was imposed on Kashmir, Jio-fibre, a fibre cable internet service launched by the Reliance group, began operations…