Mumbai

Street vendors in Mumbai, Part I: Introducing the city's street vendors

Mumbai's hawkers fill the bustling city streets with their colorful products, foods, and services. Selling everything from fruits and vegetables to hot snacks and fashionable footwear, hawkers provide affordable products in convenient locations, often near train stations, businesses, and market areas. Nearly one-third of the city eats from a street vendor each day, and hawking provides jobs to more than 250,000 of the city's poorest. Despite this, the municipality has taken a hostile stance on street vending, with widespread demolition of vending stalls and seizing of hawkers' goods. In a three-part series by Professor Sharit Bhowmik, an expert on street vending and labor issues at the Tata Institute for Social Sciences (TISS), we will be introduced to the city's street vendors, understand the laws governing street hawking, and explore possible solutions for integrating street hawkers more justly into urban life. Learn more.

Submitted by Sharit K. Bhowmik — Sun, 07/15/2012 - 01:00

Taking an interdisciplinary perspective: shelter for Mumbai's working homeless

Roughly one percent of the urban population in India is believed to be homeless, amounting to an estimated 3 million people sleeping under flyovers, in parks, and on pathways. Although the Supreme Court of India issued a directive in February 2010 for a fundamental right to shelter, the response of the state governments has been nothing short of embarrassing. To address this issue, micro Home Solutions (mHS) brought its interdisciplinary expertise in architecture, community engagement, and program design to homeless shelters in India — designing and building two prototypes of temporary shelters, each with a capacity of up to 80 people, at the embankment of the Yamuna River, opposite the Inter-State Bus Terminal (ISBT) in Delhi. Their aim: to influence local government models on the design and operations of homeless shelters. Learn more.

Submitted by Rakhi Mehra — Sun, 06/24/2012 - 01:00

SELCO: An energy loan's ripple effects

Despite India's recent economic growth, improvement in the quality of life has not kept pace for a majority of the country's inhabitants, and the mushrooming of slums without basic infrastructure is a fact of life. One of the main consequences of India's split-screen urban economy is its radically inequitable distribution of public services — from energy, drainage and sanitation, and waste management to potable water and paved roads. Despite the willingness of the poor to pay, inefficient delivery of basic civic services is still the norm in most slums. The poor are forced to fend for themselves — even though their makeshift, homegrown solutions are often inefficient, socially unsustainable, and financially burdensome. Learn more.

Submitted by Sarah Alexander — Tue, 06/12/2012 - 01:00

Low-income housing: Creating social impact through a $240 billion business opportunity

The housing market in urban India has traditionally focused on the top end, with the lower-income segment virtually unserved. Families struggle, living in rented rooms in slums or low-income neighborhoods that are characterized by poor construction, cramped spaces, deplorable sanitary conditions, and a lack of basic neighborhood amenities. Monitor Inclusive Markets (MIM, a division of the Monitor Group) has spent the last six years working with developers, housing finance companies, governments, and other stakeholders to "make the market" in low-income urban housing. In doing so, MIM has found on-the-ground data that demonstrates that there is a profitable, scalable business with internal rates of return (IRRs) comparable to premium housing. Progressive developers and entrepreneurs have built a quality product profitably while creating social impact. Learn more.

Submitted by Alexandria Wise — Mon, 06/11/2012 - 01:00

Stepping in for Mumbai's migrant workers

On Mumbai's shoreline, one of the world's most toxic jobs goes almost completely unseen in the city. Shipbreakers, tattered laborers who come from the poorest areas of India, dismantle expired vessels by hand — wading through toxins and pulling apart asbestos-laden pieces as they inhale oil, gas, and other hazardous fumes. They work with almost no protective gear on these tons of floating toxicity — nearly all of which are the West's waste. Though the big business of shipbreaking is banned in most parts of the world, the work continues in South Asian port cities, where cheap labor and lax safety standards leave workers unprotected. Learn more.

Submitted by Carlin Carr — Mon, 06/04/2012 - 01:00

Incubating Dharavi's industriousness

Given the ingenuity of Dharavi's half-million residents and their eagerness to improve their circumstances, the next logical step would be to apply this entrepreneurial spirit to pressing issues in the slums: improving access to healthcare, housing, water and sanitation services. As Howard Husock's article "Slums of Hope" shows, more and more agencies are awakening to the "resourceful and creative" population living in poverty. Husock quotes journalist Robert Neuwirth, who "extols slums as places where 'squatters mix more concrete than any developer. They lay more brick than any government. They have created a huge hidden economy.... [They] are the largest builders of housing in the world — and they are creating the cities of tomorrow.' In keeping with this encouraging trend, the UN even describes the Third World's informal settlements as slums of hope." Learn more.

Submitted by Carlin Carr — Mon, 05/28/2012 - 01:00

Tackling child malnutrition with systemic change (Dasra Part 3)

After four months researching malnutrition among young children in the slums of Mumbai, Dasra concluded that child malnutrition in Mumbai's informal settlements is, at its core, a political and behavioral issue among key stakeholders specifically, caregivers and public health care providers. The resulting research report focused on children from birth to age three and surveyed 50 organizations working with marginalized communities in Mumbai, including SNEHA (Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action), Mumbai Mobile Creches, and Apnalaya. In part three of a series on child malnutrition in Mumbai, Dasra offers insights into how the public healthcare system can be improved. Learn more.

Submitted by Dasra — Wed, 05/23/2012 - 01:00

Solutions start with a voice: Participatory development and urban governance

One of the most effective ways to influence redevelopment plans and the future of urban slums in India is to involve the people. Giving the people a voice and a path to express their concerns in a meaningful, democratic way would effectively bridge the opposing notions of "ground-up" development — by the people, for the people — versus "top-down" development — government-run with little outside input. Yet this is difficult in urban India, where the urban poor are egregiously underrepresented. If the structures do not change, the redevelopment will likely plow forward with little notice of the needs from below. Ramesh Ramanathan, co-founder with his wife, Swati, of the Bangalore-based organization Janaagraha, has written extensively on bringing about greater representation in urban governance: "India today has the smallest number of decision makers to population when it comes to public issues ... And as for the average urban resident, forget it. Imagine if this is true for the 'empowered' urban Indian, what it could be doing to the urban poor. They are twice forsaken: once because of their state, and once by the state." Learn more.

Submitted by Carlin Carr — Mon, 05/21/2012 - 01:00

Small, scalable and eco-friendly: new ideas for transport

In the last several decades, India has seen a twenty-fold rise in the number of motor vehicles, and while private vehicle usage rates are increasingly becoming an indicator of newfound wealth and prosperity, this also translates to a significant deterioration in the quality of life of the urban poor. Huge spending on new auto-centric infrastructure, such as expressways and ring roads, encourages more private vehicle ownership and use. This auto-centric development affects public transport subsidies, and, in turn, quality and accessibility. Lower-income groups, who are solely dependent on public transport and spend up to 25 percent of their income on their mobility, are most affected, as this decreases their prospects for income, education, health, and social care, as well as secure living conditions. Learn more.

Submitted by Divya Kottadiel — Thu, 05/17/2012 - 01:00

Mitigating the impact of Mithi River flooding

Mumbai's oppressive summer heat has residents awaiting the arrival of monsoon season. The rains are celebrated across the country, bringing three months of relief from soaring temperatures as well as much-needed water for farmers and their crops. In urban centers, however, the rains pose a serious threat to lives and livelihoods, especially for the poor. Slums have proliferated wherever space is available, even on disaster-prone hillsides, in floodplains, or alongside bodies of water. These shelters are flimsy in the best of circumstances. When an unexpected deluge comes down, Mumbaikers know the devastating consequences all too well. Learn more.