Articles, Papers & Book Chapters
Pandemic and the City
Anant Maringanti, Karen Coelho, Partha Mukhopadhyay, Vinay Gidwani
The seven papers in this collection were developed from abstracts selected from the submissions in response to a call issued in July 2021. At the time of the call, the second wave of the pandemic was receding. The call sought submissions that promised to illuminate underlying inequities that led to differential and extreme impacts of the pandemic on the population and explicate lessons therefrom.
The Neighbourhood Effect: Coexistence of Residential and Occupational Opportunities in ‘Muslim Neighbourhoods’ of Hyderabad
Mohammad Sajjad Hussain, Sriharsha Devulapalli, Indivar Jonnalagadda, Anant Maringanti
This chapter attempts to understand the distinctiveness of Muslim neighbourhoods in Hyderabad and conclude that Muslim neighbourhoods in the city function as social and politico-economic platforms that enable individual and collective enterprises of various kinds for self-provisioning of services and extended reproduction.
Seizing the Day for Southern Urbanism: Reflections from the Lockdown
Anant Maringanti
COVID-19 and the lockdown have challenged urbanists to rethink many of their core practices. As we return to a ‘new normal’, it is important to articulate responses to present challenges through the manner in which we have taught Southern urbanism over the last decade. One of the early lessons of Southern urban practice was that the field had to be our primary site of pedagogy.
Provocations for Boundary Spanning from Mohammad Nagar’s Community Toilet
Vanshika Singh
Collaborative research endeavours, such as the ‘Boundary Spanning and Intermediation for Urban Regeneration’ project, can help unpack boundary spanning from the viewpoint of communities in informal settlements who engage with the state through certain actors operating as their citizen–state interface. This article builds on the story of a community toilet in Mohammad Nagar settlement in Bholakpur…
‘Sorting’ in the Repertoire of Plastic Work in Bholakpur
Vanshika Singh
Scrap work is the linchpin of livelihoods for many who think Hyderabad is ‘’the sone ki chidiya’’ (The Golden Bird) that will not let anyone sleep on an empty stomach. Many find in Bholakpur, their place in the city, as they segregate, process and recycle plastic waste in the city…
Of Many Storytellers, ‘Asal log’ and Tenants Waiting to Dispose Bodily Waste
Vanshika Singh
As we desire our cities to be clean, they must salvage, sort, sequester and refabricate the unending waste. Bholakpur in Hyderabad, does precisely that. All manner of solid waste – plastic, metal, raw hides and electronic refuse are processed, recycled and circulated back into the economy by a complex repertoire of techniques and tasks.
Kolkata Urban Archive: A Semiotics for the Archive
S Bharat
This article is the third part of a three part series reflecting on the archiving process undertaken to create the Kolkata Urban Archive.
One of the most common questions I ask of people, as an archivist, is “what is this document”, usually while holding up a piece of paper.
Kolkata Urban Archive: Archives and Forms of Knowledge
S Bharat
This article is the second of a three part series reflecting on the archiving process undertaken to create the Kolkata Urban Archive.
“That every document comes layered with the received account of earlier events and the cultural semantics of a political moment makes one point clear.
Kolkata Urban Archive: Archives All The Way Down
S Bharat
This article is the first part of a three part series reflecting on the archiving process undertaken to create the Kolkata Urban Archive.
Even where archives strive to fill gaps in our collective memories, retrace the expulsions and silencings that produced the conditions of possibility for the present, the form
Clan-Based Autoconstruction in Chintal Basti, Hyderabad
Dipon Bose
These series of images represent the clan-based in-situ timeline of autoconstruction of my respondent, Bhikaram V’s house and neighborhood. They track 80 years of changes in the built environment in terms of materials and processes
A Civic Mapping Project in an Indian Megacity: The Uses and Challenges of Spatial Data for Critical Research
Harsha Devulapalli, Indivar Jonnalagadda
As Peter Turchi (2004) puts it, maps are no different from literature in the sense that they attempt to explain human realities. It is the cartographer’s privilege to select what is included and what isn’t. Thus maps in general are assertions of the state of the world which cartographers desire.
Mapping bus transit services in Hyderabad – an illustrative example of the use of open geospatial data
Harsha Devulapalli, Girish Agarwal
Most public transit agencies in India do a poor job of making even basic route information available to the public. The transit mapping exercise reported here demonstrates that crowd-sourcing can be used to generate useful data at very low cost.
The waste-value dialectic: Lumpen urbanization in contemporary India
Anant Maringanti, Vinay Gidwani
Capitalist value making is underwritten by the production and disposal of waste through a complex, often invisible economy of informal waste recycling. This infra-economy is anchored by nodes that process and circulate variegated forms of waste generated in cities and their adjoining hinterlands. Bholakpur, in the city of Hyderabad, India, is one such place.
Rent gap, fluid infrastructure and population excess in a gentrifying neighbourhood
Anant Maringanti, Indivar Jonnalagadda
Through a careful documentation of an ongoing struggle for sanitation infrastructure in a neighbourhood facing intense gentrifying pressure—namely, Mohammed Nagar slum in Hyderabad—this paper shows how incomplete and fluid infrastructures can become sites through which an excess population can be purged outright in order to rebuild neighbourhood character.
Profiting from the Poor: The Emergence of Multinational Edu-businesses in Hyderabad, India
Sangeeta Kamat, Carol Anne Spreen, Indivar Jonnalagadda
Over the last decade, education for the poor in the developing world has become an increasingly attractive market for global investors and multinational corporations. This movement, known as the Global Education Industry (GEI), is vested in setting up schools for profit. fundamental human right.
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