“How Security of settlement Affects Access to Housing Finance – A Case Study of Nagpur”.

by Nitin Meshram
Faculty: Dr. Amita Bhide

The main goal of the research is to understand the how security of settlement affects access to housing finance with the help of two case studies the one settlement is the notified one and other one is not notified, and to understand the arrangements and access to finance in notified and nonnotified slum settlements

Understanding the Subruban Local Train Hawkers (A Case Study in the Mumbai, Maharashtra)”.

by Priti Pandit Jaware
Faculty: Dr. Ratoola Kundu

I try to identify what are the problems relating to selling goods in suburban trains? Who are this vendors? What are they vending in trains? Why they vending in the train and not on pavements? Do they pay money to the police? Are they aware of the plans for any facility? A major problem is that master plans prepared for cities do not allocate space to train vendors. In most case these laws do not directly prohibit hawking as a profession. My research aims to reflect on these policy gaps.

Spatial – Social Dynamics of Andhra Pradesh Land Pooling Model: The Case of Amaravati

by Gunja Tirumala Kumar
Faculty: Dr. Lalitha Kamath

Land pooling is a technique where public agencies will pool the land from the land owners and gives a reconstituted land, providing all the other infrastructural facilities, and collects betterment charges for its financing. . This research attempts to find the answer to the question of implications from such policy and tries to understand the gap of the ideal plan and the implementation of the actual policy

Process, Rationale and Outcomes of Trifurcation of Municipal Corporation of Delhi

by Apula Singh
Faculty: Dr. Lalitha Kamath

This research examines the process, rationale and impact of trifurcation while tracing the evolution of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, given its unique local governance structure at the in tersection of three levels of government. A qualitative case study approach is followed in conducting a study of the changes in the institution of MCD, with an empirical study of the function of solid waste management – only function of MCD that no other government agency performs – at the East Delhi Municipal Corporation.

Impacts of In-situ Slum Redevelopment in Cuttack

by Anup Ranjan Barla
Faculty: Dr. Amita Bhide

The research speaks about the three slums out of ten selected slums of Cuttack, which are been selected to be redeveloped. The three slums are distinctive in nature and located in three different areas of Cuttack city. The study is about how they react to the redevelopment scheme and how contractors and implementing agencies involve themselves to achieve the objective of the scheme. The study also reflects on the importance and strengths and weaknesses of the in situ slum redevelopment project

Evaluation of ‘Waste Free Jodhpur Campaign’

by Akshayjyot Ratnoo
Faculty: Dr. Amita Bhide

Waste Management as a practice within local urban governance has gone through many trajectories and reinventions, influenced by society and policymaking. This research is an attempt to trace how far waste management in Jodhpur city, Rajasthan, through an Extended Case Method (ECM) study. It highlights the ‘Waste Free Jodhpur’ campaign and it’s implementation, role of authorities and perception of stakeholders. How the campaign has brought conversions in the town within its duration of 18 months has been evaluated.

Process of making Development Plan and its impacts on various stakeholders (A case study of Palghar town)

by Mohini Udaykumar Bhaisare
Faculty: Dr. Lalitha Kamath

Planning process has evolved with various planning tools in a period of time which are evolved in an expectation to provide reforms to citizens and society. One such planning tools which is discussed in detail in this research is the process of making development plan of Palghar town in state of Maharashtra. Along with the development plan making process, the impact of the planning process on various stakeholders was also analyzed.

The development plan process in Palghar not only had one dimension of planning, but other aspects like elites and politics were also involved in it which affects the life of the deprived stakeholders of the society. Analysis of development plan of Palghar explained that there exist the practice of inclusion and exclusion within different types of stakeholders.

As the elites and politicians had larger stake in planning, they became one such stakeholder to influence the development plan that it dominantly contains highly residential clusters, recreational centers, transportation, etc. Deprived stakeholders of slum area are proposed to get relocated to fringe area of town. Local market sellers are ordered to discontinue their livelihood activity alongside roads as they are creating traffic congestion. This vast difference of planning provisions to different types of stakeholders indicate that it still favors the powerful over the deprived, as there are returns when favoring elites and politicians.

Corporatisation of Delhi Bus Transport System under DIMTS Cluster Project

by Animesh Mishra
Faculty: Dr. Ratoola Kundu

Bus transport system in Delhi has a history of involvement of private players, under the supervision of State Transport Authority. Now, it is majorly provided by DTC and private operators under DIMTS. The decision making, regulating, monitoring is done by DIMTS; which started off as a Special Purpose Vehicle and now a registered company in PPP mode. The 657 different routes in Delhi have been clustered together for better monitoring and regulating purpose.el along with issues and challenges faced and strategy/suggestion to mitigate the same.

The first session of data collection was through interviews with bus crew, women, children, men, senior citizens. Semi-structured interviews with DIMTS planner, Chief-Road transport, AVP-Transport, GM-Transport and Senior Manager-Transport, concessioners was conducted. Empirical data collection included photographs taken during the direct and participant observation. Official documents were referred to understand the legal aspect of the model. Second session was field visit, to fill in data gaps.

Few key features of the cluster model are ITS for performance monitoring, single operator in each cluster, unified time table, pre-defined routes viability gap funding by transport department, regulatory flexibility, no penny war, gross cost model. It is evident that the current model keeps safety, reliability, and comfort as an important criteria; thus the cluster model is public centric. Some issues on matters of sustainability, safety, reliability, space constraints of parking space need fine tuning. The suggestions have been made for the aforesaid challenges. By using carrot and stick policy i.e. incentivizing on good performance and penalizing on under delivery of services, has worked well with cluster project. Even though the bus service is provided by private players, the state is having a better control from regulatory perspective.

Trifurcation or Means of Appropriation? (A study of Process, Rationale and Impact of Trifurcation of Municipal Corporation of Delhi)

by Apula Singh

Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) was trifurcated in early 2012 by Sheila Dikshit-led Delhi government. It was argued by the state that this division of MCD would improve administrative efficiency and accessibility. This research examines the process, rationale and impact of trifurcation while tracing the evolution of the MCD, given its unique local governance structure at the intersection of three levels of government. A review of the evolution of local government in Delhi explains how ever since the constitution of the Delhi government in 1992, it has tried to appropriate the functions of MCD.

The study argues that trifurcation of MCD is one such attempt to garner control over the territory of the local government and successfully create a physical distinction in their jurisdictions. The study finds that the process did not address prior inefficiencies in the system as no attempt was made to address multiplicity of agencies, nor was an attempt made towards decentralising the local government, as recommended by the 74th CAA.

The focus was to create a layer of top-level executives who can assign and monitor tasks across the bureaucracy. Although it seems that management of tasks may have improved, the benefits are nullified by a severe financial crisis which is impacting the routine operations of the Corporation. Thus in this political and administrative slugfest, it is service delivery to the residents of Delhi that has been hit.

Delhi’s Mohalla Sabhas: Participation and Party Building

by Kirthi Rao
Faculty: Dr. Lalitha Kamath

This study examines the participatory budgeting process initiated by the Aam Aadmi Party in the National Capital Territory of Delhi with its multiple turf-conscious governments, agencies and departments and seeks to use qualitative methods to trace its possible trajectories. The study finds that though the first round has already managed to put in place a coordination mechanism, it has had only an insubstantial imprint on the residents’ engagement practices with local state.

The limited capacity of Delhi’s state government to ‘move the state closer to people’ is a reason but so is the output-oriented conversation that the government itself set in motion. The study argues that the process internalised a bureaucratic understanding of people as not interested in governance processes. Also, the fledgling new party itself believed it could mobilise the power of the state to establish itself as a ‘solver’ of governance problems and build a groundswell of support for itself and its process.

While the former led to people viewing the process as a forgettable exercise linked to the budget, the latter did not work with delays due to the city’s tangled governance structures leaving little to talk about. The study shows that realising the Party’s vision requires much more capacity within the state to be built through negotiations with other tiers of government over time and much more support from and for the residents. Since ‘being talked about’ has arguably been an imperative for the two years old Party, the process could be reviewed or even suspended.