Process Documentation of Right to water case in Mumbai High court

Draft Discussion Paper Proposed Amendments in Maharashtra for Community Participation in Urban Governance

The Centre is actively engaged in the ongoing peoples’ consultations around the Mumbai Development Plan (2013-34) in collaboration with a network of citizen and activist groups. The Development Plan is a comprehensive plan for the city which sets out all key infrastructure for the next 20 years. Several groups, including members of the Centre, have come together to form a People’s Campaign to ensure that urban poor groups are included in the Plan and to democratise the planning process. The Centre has taken particular leadership on the issues of both informal and formal housing. Faculty from the Centre provided guidelines for standards for amenity improvement in slums at the request of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and were then invited to be part of the core drafting committee for the Maharashtra State Housing Policy.

The second phase of the project, ‘Building on the Foundations’ was initiated focussing on particular themes that emerged through the first phase — housing, water, planning and governance. The broad consultative and participative approach of the project was maintained through UIRF II as well. It comprised of four modules.

The Project was initiated by UIRF to enhance the influence of citizens on urban reforms by providing relevant knowledge support and services to local academic institutions and civil society organisations in small and medium towns. Studies were done at three scales: national, regional (state level) and local (town level). The project adopted an unconventional methodology that sought to integrate participation at every level. These studies resulted in a series of interlinked knowledge products that cumulatively prepared city-level activists and institutions to gain insight into and engage with ongoing processes of reforms.

In this phase of the project, selected case studies from Durban set out to chart the plight of the city’s poor and marginalized amidst the state’s purported goals of democratization, deracialization, desegregation and integration.

Mumbai in Redevelopment Mode: Implications for Violence and Justice

The Transforming M-Ward Project at TISS enumerated 1,20,000 households from slums and gaothans in M Ward. A socioeconomic survey of 20,000 households was then conducted with the help of students, faculty and volunteers from slum communities. The learnings from these studies have been immense and have fed into several efforts of transformation.

The report is an effort to use participatory methodology in a progressively scalar manner to understand the complex phenomenon of urban poverty through a comparative analysis of Pune, Nagpur and Bangalore.

The National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) in the month of January, 2013 declared the appointment of a People’s Commission on Irregularities in Slum Rehabilitation Authority Projects. The People’s Commission was appointed as a parallel process which could pay closer attention to local concerns through a participatory process of public hearings and generate thinking on alternatives. This report is a product of the review of six such slum rehabilitation sites and the patterns of irregularities found. The report also makes recommendations for a set of principles that informs an alternative policy of rehabilitation.