Articles selected from the Institute's quarterly journal.

This book presents the findings of an empirical study of the implementation of women s reservations in four Indian mega-cities: Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. It offers a detailed and lively account of what it means to be a woman Councillor in an Indian mega-city today, and a critical view of the functioning of Municipal Corporations, with specific emphasis on women s roles and opportunities to participate and perform in their new environment. By choosing to consider the decentralization policy in general and women s reservations in particular as an experiment in democratization, the authors provide useful and useable insights into a range of issues at stake.To what extent, in what ways and under which conditions can increased political representation of women at the local level empower women?Is the functioning of urban local bodies truly participatory and inclusive?What are the (other) reforms needed to make women elected to urban local bodies more effective agents of urban development?Archana Ghosh, an economist, is Senior Faculty and Head of the Urban Studies Department in the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, and is based in its Eastern Regional Centre at Kolkata.Stéphanie Tawa Lama Rewal, a political scientist, is a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of India and South Asia (CNRS EHESS), Paris, and a visiting scholar at the Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi.

This book explores the informal (political) patronage relations between the urban poor and service delivery organisations in Mumbai, India. It examines the conditions of people in the slums and traces the extent to which they are subject to social and political exclusion. Delving into the roles of the slum-based mediators and municipal councillors, it brings out the problems in the functioning of democracy at the ground level, as election candidates target vote banks with freebies and private-sector funding to manage their campaigns. Starting from social justice concerns, this book combines theory and insights from disciplines as diverse as political science, anthropology and policy studies. It provides a comprehensive, multi-level overview of the various actors within local municipal governance and democracy as also consequences for citizenship, urban poverty, gender relations, public services, and neoliberal politics. Lucid and rich in ethnographic data, this book will be useful to scholars, researchers and students of social anthropology, urban studies, urban sociology, political science, public policy and governance, as well as practitioners and policymakers.

Stories of Innovation, Inclusion, Sustainability and Smartness

Urban areas are integral to India's growth and development, accounting for around two-thirds of the country's GDP. Analysing India's rapidly expanding process of urbanisation, the book identifies the key challenges and opportunities and proposes suitable managerial and policy reforms. It addresses critical issues and puts forth suggestions for better planning financing alternatives and, most importantly, better governance for improved service delivery and affordable housing. Divided thematically into three sections, the volume takes into account the important facets of urbanisation, including the state of urban infrastructure and planning in India with due attention to sustainability, the role of finance in urban development and its dependence on governance, and methods to generate good governance in public institutions, and the impact on housing and climate change.The 11 essays included in this book have been written by leading analysts and practitioners, who propose critical reforms and policy interventions. The volume will be indispensable to students and scholars of urban economics, development studies, urban planning, business practitioners, policymakers as well as the informed general reader.

This book lays out the different and complex dimensions of urbanisation in India. It brings together contributors with expertise in fields as varied as demography, geography, economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, architecture, planning and land use, environmental sciences, creative writing, filmmaking and grassroots activism to reflect on and examine India’s urban experience. It discusses various dimensions of city life—how to define the urban; the conditions generating work, living and (in)security; the nature of contemporary cities; the dilemmas of creating and executing urban policy, planning and governance; and the issues concerning ecology and environment. The volume also articulates and evaluates the way Indian urbanism promotes and organises aspirations and utopias of the people, whilst simultaneously endorsing disparities, depravities and conflicts. The volume includes interventions that shape contemporary debates. Comprehensive, accessible and topical, it will be useful to scholars and researchers of urban studies, urban sociology, development studies, public policy, economics, political studies, gender studies, city studies, planning and governance. It will also interest practitioners, think tanks and NGOs working on urban issues.