Browsing by Author "Mahadevia, Darshini"

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    Bombay Hotel : crime, violence and unsafe spaces in informal commercial subdivisions
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2016) Mahadevia, Darshini; Desai, Renu; Sanghvi, Shachi; Vyas, Suchita; Bakde, Aisha; Sharif Pathan, M.; Malek, Rafi
    The state is largely absent in the Bombay Hotel locality in terms of planning the built environment and providing infrastructure and services. Many builders and other non-state actors then become involved in informal provision of basic services such as water; they reap huge profits from the area, sometimes using threats and coercion to collect monthly charges from residents. The rise of groups who exert control through coercion, threats and direct violence, and the fear that residents experience on a regular basis for their life, family and property, are a consequence of informal development combined with little or no responsive policing.
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    Bombay Hotel : crime, violence and unsafe spaces in informal commercial subdivisions [Gujarati version]
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2016) Mahadevia, Darshini; Desai, Renu; Sanghvi, Shachi; Vyas, Suchita; Bakde, Aisha; Sharif Pathan, M.; Malek, Rafi
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    Bombay Hotel : everyday conflicts in basic services in informal commercial subdivisions
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2016) Mahadevia, Darshini; Desai, Renu; Sanghvi, Shachi; Vyas, Suchita; Sharif Pathan, M.; Malek, Rafi
    Informal service delivery in localities like Bombay Hotel are not possible without the covert compliance of the state. Bombay Hotel is a settlement located next to the Pirana garbage dump on Sarkhej-Narol highway. The residential area of the settlement is spread over about 1 sq.km comprising approximately 25,000 Muslim families. This policy brief examines the absence of the welfare state in the locality, the emergence of informal non-state actors in services provision, and the dynamics of recent state interventions, in order to trace the pathways through which deprivations, conflicts and violence unfold in relation to basic services and infrastructure.
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    Bombay Hotel : everyday conflicts in basic services in informal commercial subdivisions [Gujarati version]
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2016) Mahadevia, Darshini; Desai, Renu; Sanghvi, Shachi; Vyas, Suchita; Sharif Pathan, M.; Malek, Rafi
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    Bombay Hotel : gender insecurity and violence against women
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2016) Mahadevia, Darshini; Desai, Renu; Sanghvi, Shachi; Vyas, Suchita; Bakde, Aisha; Sharif Pathan, Mohamad; Malek, Rafi
    This study looks at gender insecurity and violence against women focusing on two poor localities in Ahmedabad: Bombay Hotel, an informal commercial subdivision; and public housing sites at Vatwa on the city's periphery used for resettling slum dwellers displaced by urban projects. Unsafe mobility, poor infrastructure, lack of public services, illicit businesses, corruption, and young male migrants, are some of the threatening factors contributing to unsafe environments for poor urban women. The absence of welfare state provision of basic services has led to the emergence of informal providers who are often corrupt and predatory. The article suggests policy responses.
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    Bombay Hotel : gender insecurity and violence against women [Gujarati version]
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2016) Mahadevia, Darshini; Desai, Renu; Sanghvi, Shachi; Vyas, Suchita; Bakde, Aisha; Sharif Pathan, Mohamad; Malek, Rafi
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    Bombay Hotel : tenure insecurity and land conflicts in informal commercial subdivisions
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2016) Mahadevia, Darshini; Desai, Renu; Sanghvi, Shachi; Vyas, Suchita; Sharif Pathan, M.; Malek, Rafi
    Informal commercial subdivisions tend to dominate urban peripheries in many Indian cities. The urban development and urban planning paradigm is often hostile or only selectively and intermittently tolerant of land and housing informalities that urban poor and low-Income groups are forced to resort to in order to provide their own shelter. Informality in land transactions often results in illegal bookings where builders sell a plot of land to multiple people who then use various sources of power to stake claim over the land. Residents lack political agency and live in a constant state of tenure uncertainty. Religious differences add to tensions.
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    Bombay Hotel : tenure insecurity and land conflicts in informal commercial subdivisions [Gujarati version]
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2016) Mahadevia, Darshini; Desai, Renu; Sanghvi, Shachi; Vyas, Suchita; Sharif Pathan, M.; Malek, Rafi
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    City profile : Ahmedabad
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2014-09) Mahadevia, Darshini; Desai, Renu; Vyas, Suchita
    This research investigates potential pathways through which urban planning and governance mechanisms become drivers of deprivations, conflicts and violence. While also developing a background understanding of Ahmedabad, it discusses contexts of demography and economic transformations since liberalization; their impacts for urban poverty and inequality; the historical growth of the city and resulting spatial segmentation; the current status of housing amongst urban poor and low-income groups; and the urban development paradigm in terms of planning, housing, basic services, street vending and public transport. How can urban planning and governance interventions help reduce urban tensions, inequalities, conflicts and violence in Indian cities?
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    City profile : Guwahati
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2015-11) Mahadevia, Darshini; Desai, Renu; Mishra, Aseem
    This paper lays out relevant urban context in terms of demography, economic history and employment, the history of migration and conflicts in Assam and Guwahati, the processes of urban growth and development in the city, as well as urban governance. Part II identifies and discusses key arenas of conflicts and violence that are linked to land, planning and governance regimes in the city, namely, informal settlement of the city’s hills, street vending, and women’s safety and safe access to public transport. These arenas of conflict and violence are the focus areas for the research project.
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    Deprivations and conflicts in street vending in Guwahati
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2016) Mishra, Aseem; Mahadevia, Darshini; Joseph, Yogi; Das, Arup
    Street vending plays a vital role in providing livelihoods to a large underprivileged section of society, but its contribution is not accepted by city authorities or urban planning agencies. Vending on streets and open spaces is illegal in the city’s Master Plan or Local Area Plan as it does not conform to land use provisions. For city administrators, any land use in violation of the statutory plan demands eviction. “Ordinary” deprivations such as lack of basic services contribute to structural violence. Conditions for exploitation and extortion are created, which provoke harassment and conflict between lessees and vendors. New policy recommendations are suggested.
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    Deprivations and conflicts in street vending in Guwahati [Assamese version]
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2016) Mishra, Aseem; Mahadevia, Darshini; Joseph, Yogi; Das, Arup
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    Ecology vs Housing and the Land Rights Movement in Guwahati
    (Economic & Political Weekly, 2017-02) Mahadevia, Darshini; Mishra, Aseem; Joseph, Yogi
    Selective state interventions to mitigate natural disasters such as floods, the compulsions under which the urban poor inhabit ecologically marginal lands and in the case of Guwahati, the “encroachments” on wetlands and hills, have set the stage for conflict about housing rights, especially for those without legal land tenure. The “encroachments” of the poor are delegitimised and they become victims of eviction drives while encroachments by the state and the middle- and high-income classes on ecologically vulnerable areas are legitimised. In Guwahati, this has led to a cycle of violence and counter-violence. This paper sets this sequence of events against the historically contested land rights issue in a city with limited habitable land due to its natural ecology.
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    Hill settlements : deprivations as conflict and conflicts due to deprivations
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2015) Mishra, Aseem; Mahadevia, Darshini; Joseph, Yogi; Das, Arup
    Hill dwellers were found to be suffering from multiple deprivations, which made them bitter towards the state government, and caused conflicts among themselves. Guwahati is a city of wetlands and hills, bound on the north by the Brahmaputra River and in the south by the Khasi-Garo hills. As a result, geographical constraints apply to availability of land for the city to expand naturally. The hills on the city’s periphery have housed largely low-income households who have moved there to find land to construct ownership housing. Deprivation, by definition, is structural violence. Water shortages result in extreme hardship for women.
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    Hill settlements : deprivations as conflict and conflicts due to deprivations [Assamese version]
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2015) Mishra, Aseem; Mahadevia, Darshini; Joseph, Yogi; Das, Arup
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    Hill settlements : the land rights movement
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2016) Mishra, Aseem; Mahadevia, Darshini; Joseph, Yogi; Das, Arup
    A massive eviction drive was carried out post-election (2011) in Guwahati, where tribal people continue to be divested of their customary right to forest areas for habitation, and other communities are pushed by natural disasters to migrate towards these reserved forests. Exclusionary urban planning and governance leads to different types of violence on the poor, and by the poor. This policy brief tracks how various ecological, geographical and political factors relate to land tenure and lack of basic housing, with recommendations about how to extend land rights to dwellers in ecologically vulnerable settlements.
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    Hill settlements : the land rights movement [Assamese version]
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2016) Mishra, Aseem; Mahadevia, Darshini; Joseph, Yogi; Das, Arup
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    Street vending in Guwahati : experiences of conflict
    (CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India, 2016-02) Mahadevia, Darshini; Mishra, Aseem; Joseph, Yogi; Das, Arup
    In the informal marketplaces of street vendors in Guwahati, urban governance and planning face a particular set of challenges. Researchers in this study find that the state has often withdrawn from the management of these communities, leading to cycles of conflict and deprivation. The study focuses on the markets of Ulubari and Beltola in Guwahati, which are populated with migrants from the rural surroundings who have been unable to integrate into the country’s formal economies. Researchers study both the nature of the conflicts and deprivation in these communities, as well as some of the strategies community organizations utilize to mitigate them in place of the state.
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    Vatwa resettlements sites : basic services and amenities; deprivations and infrastructural conflicts
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2015) Mahadevia, Darshini; Desai, Renu; Sanghvi, Shachi; Vyas, Suchita
    Universal provision of adequate potable water, preferably at the individual house level is essential. Tensions arise when money has to be collected for repairs to communal water pipes and motors, caused by engineering flaws and mineral deposits. Collective payment of corridor light bills also causes conflict when lights continue to fail. Residents have no control over resources or the resettlement process. The already stressed livelihoods of many residents, and deprivations created by resettlement result in further conflicts fuelled by lack of water and sanitation, and social disruptions that make dialogue, cooperation and collective action difficult.
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    Vatwa resettlements sites : basic services and amenities; deprivations and infrastructural conflicts [Gujarati version]
    (Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, IN, 2015) Mahadevia, Darshini; Desai, Renu; Sanghvi, Shachi; Vyas, Suchita