So now that you're here, I will actually begin by just introducing the session. My name is Liza Weinstein.
I am from Northeastern University in Boston and it really is my pleasure to chair this session. I sort of feel like I get to be the beneficiary of this panel entitled Knowledge and Power Contestations and Transforming Urban Spaces in India.
So each presenter will have 15Â min and I will notify you at the 5Â min mark and then start making faces.
Oh, you are Rashima. You are the second presenter. So Rashomero will be presenting co-producing.
So Rashomero will be presenting co-producing Knowledge in Action, reflecting from the main B-dilly campaign for equitable planning in Hi.
There you are.
Good morning. Thank you so much for being here on a Friday at 8 30 a. M. Even though I couldn't make it at TED, 30 a.
M. So I'm here to speak to you about the maybe the Lee campaign from New Delhi, India.
And I'm here on behalf of my fellow co-authors, Ruti Kalalal and Malvika Naran.
And I'm also here on behalf of over 100 comrades who are part of this campaign.
So there are 40 civil society organizations. There are unions, labor unions, as civil society organizations that work on diverse themes like gender, on livelihoods, on housing and architects, urban planners and just researchers, academics, and citizens of Delhi generally.
And we've been going for the last half a decade. So the campaign started in 2,018 so maybe the Lee up Shahrazad Bannangi translating translates to I 2 and Deli.
We will now make the city together. And in our name of the campaign is the Advocation of what we truly believe has been one of the big exclusions in urban planning in a city like Delhi where we are saying with we are trying to assert and say that we are also part of Delhi.
The different genders, different costs, people who live in informal housing, people who work in informal neighborhood in labor, informal workforces are also part of the city and that urban planning must become more inclusive must.
Become more participatory. So that we can make the city together. So just a quick timeline. Like I said, we've been going on since 2,018.
Our current works that I'm presenting here stops at 2,022. The campaign is still on going in 2,018 is when the National Institute the Delhi Development Authority which makes the master plans of Delhi had invited the National Institute of Urban Affairs and Open Affairs Think tank in India to make the
next master plan the next 20 year master plan of the city. And and a collective emerged at the same time in Delhi.
Largely the first group that sort of got together were housing rights activists because their work was directly impacted by the master plan because a lot of the evictions that would happen in this city would happen because of the master plan.
And slowly this group grew and invited other organizations and individuals that were interested to understand what the master plan was and what it meant for this diverse set of people that were sort of coming together.
And for the next one year, we had many, many focus group discussions. And these were discussions that were intersectional.
So if we would have a team and say, you know, we are having a session on resettlement colonies in Delhi.
We'd invite the feminist groups, we'd invite the labour unions, we'd invite everyone, and to kind of have a deep and intersectional conversation on what the settlement colonies in India should look like.
If they were planned with people's inputs, people who live there. So this is just one of the examples of the kind of focus group discussions we would have.
And then we had a meeting in 2,019 with about 18 fact sheets and I'll speak about these fact sheets as an artifact of co-production a little bit later in my presentation.
And we had a meeting with the National Institute of Open Affairs as they were doing their baseline studies as they were formulating the plan to present these fact sheets to them to present what the campaign had been doing for about a year, which was really co-producing a lot of research on diverse themes of like I said, livelihood on housing.
on gender, on public spaces, on transportation, on sustainability, on disability on caste. And these present are, these fact sheets were presented to the National Institute of Open Affairs who then invited us to do even more research for them on some of the topics that they were drawing a blank on because in India it is challenging to find household
level data. There are massive date urban data gaps. So they themselves who were formulating the plan said we have no idea where home-based work happens across the city.
Can you tell us where it happens and sort of invited us into that space as as for public participation. Once the plan came out, which came out, the draft plan came out in 2,021 immediately after a very devastating second wave of kovat in Delhi and Delhi had had a particularly high death toll.
And we thought that the state would allow for a little bit of breather and give us time to kind of deal with the plan.
But at that moment they didn't. And so we went out to communities and did many consultations with them on the master plan to get their feedback and to get them to challenge some of their inputs of the plan that it existed in the draft.
So I just want to tell you that this is the highest number of suggestions and objections from the public that the Delhi development authorities ever received on a master plan.
They were 33,000. The campaign submitted 25,000 of those. We also push them to come offline and take because they were, if they were online processes and we asked them to sort of take in-person suggestions as well.
So there would be about 10,000 people standing outside the DD office on any given day trying to put in their suggestions and objections to the plan.
And currently we are waiting for the master plan to come out. It will come out any day and we are hoping to see what the last.
Half a decade of collective work has kind of been able to how it has been able to impact the plan and if not then what are our next steps and that's something that we collectively do.
I also want to say to you that I am one of the coordinators of the campaign. They are 4 coordinators. I'm one of them.
And we've anchored this campaign in sort of getting people together, doing the research that and holding these multiple knowledge that exist within people and this sort of insurgent urban planning that we know and see in the global south cities we are seeing in co-production literature but We are just, it is still considered, they are still
not considered the main forms of planning in our cities. They are still considered peripheral. But maybe they leave with its high sort of engagement with with communities with the state itself.
With the 25,000 suggestions and objections that we were able to submit. We are able to sort of want to see if that has been been able to have an impact on that.
I'm here to kind of particularly speak to you about a certain artifact. Of co production of knowledge.
Within the campaign. So the campaign has produced many, many forms of knowledge. This was one of the first one that was outward facing, both outward and inward facing.
So we have a big archive that we draw for, particularly for this paper, which are the minutes of the meeting that were meticulously kept by the coordinators over the last 5 years.
The WhatsApp group that's active. We have a YouTube channel. We have Twitter. We've got the Facebook happening.
We've got 18 fact sheets and we've got 6 technical reports and then detailed objections and suggestions.
These are all available on our publicly available on our website called Mabeli. Com. Anybody can go and download a PDF and anybody can read it.
They're also in multiple languages. So invariably of course the challenge in India is that the language of planning sometimes is English.
It is often English. But that's not the language of the people. And so the fact sheets have been translated into Udu into Hindi so that these fact sheets can sort of go out and can be sort of addressed and understood by the citizens of the city because then to sort of break that technocratic hold that
we have on planning in Delhi that it is something that's exclusive, it's something that only few understand who've spent many years studying what urban planning is and that it's not something that regular citizens of the city can sort of engage with.
So this is what a fact sheet looks like. It's 4 pages. It's always 4 pages.
And we use a lot of maps, we put in a lot of data. And we put in a lot of, Are we essentially the idea of war came to us?
When in one of our early sort of meetings. So these are minutes. From a second November meeting that we had in 2,018 where the campaign members discuss the principles of Act Challenge and reframe.
So we said that we must add to the plan because there are big gaps in information about informal sector livelihoods as well as many other indicators and connections between different sectors.
That there is a need to add categories that are completely missing, like I mentioned home-based work.
You know, it's a category that's completely missing. Even though the draft master plan because it was formulated during COVID talks about home as working spaces, but not really what how home-based workers have been doing it for years and years in the city.
To challenge some instances where official data is contrary to what is seen on the ground and which is for example Just what are the numbers of home-based workers?
Or what are the numbers of street windows in the city? On what are sort of the number of women that are in the labor force participation, the number of communities for example that exist because in India because of many, many aspects of neoliberal city making in Delhi now we have this idea that informal settlements there are too many they're taking up too much
land is that really true? You know sort of challenge some of these perceptions about you know these self-built auto-constructed housing and why that exists in the city in the first place.
And to reframe the way official data sources like the master plan look at categories such as home and work separating these completely, you know, and we were saying that we have to look at home as an asset as a productive asset.
It's a site of production of labor off economy in Delhi. And sort of really say, 2.
You know city planners or authorities that govern you know the daily master plan and the planning in Delhi to sort of say that there are knowledge that are held.
Multiple knowledge is held with activists with communities themselves. Many times these are, you know, these are not, these are not afforded the same kind of respect that say a researcher who's maybe studied the urban for many years or an urban planner sort of would do.
And the fact that the fact sheets and everything that we have is publicly available is also sort of to take away from the kind of gatekeeping that sometimes happens around research.
So we are saying anybody can, anybody in the city, anybody around the world if they want to blueprint this, you know, in their own different contexts can take it, they can learn from our experiences.
We want the knowledge to be out there. We don't want to be gatekeepers of what we have been able to produce.
And some of the challenges in sort of doing this kind of work, like I said, over 100 focus group discussions across intersectional themes.
Over the course of 1 one and a half years to produce a four-letter four-page fact sheet.
They are 18 so you are looking at 72 pages because a year and a half to produce 72 pages of research.
And so one of the key issues was how do you keep the focus of the fact sheets on the issues of the master plan because when people speak and you have people who are speaking say, feminists like myself would go in and who have a difficult relationship with my city that I was born in.
And I'd say, but there is street sexual harassment, you know. And the idea was for the research group and for the groups within to kind of pare it down and say, how are we going to make this into a spatial issue?
Are we going to say there should be more public transport and loss mile connectivity. You know? So how do we create strong advocacy points so that we are talking about the master plan because what happens is many times that you were to go to these authorities and these are not elected bodies in India.
So they'll just say, but that's not my domain go to the police and also I'm only talking about spatial planning do you do what can you tell me about this so the campaign also called these things factsheets instead of a manifesto. What can you tell me about this?
So the campaign also called these things fact sheets instead of a manifesto because a manifesto called these things fact sheets instead of a manifesto because the manifesto automatically in a situation where we are not dealing with elected representatives who are manifesto.
Because the manifesto automatically in a situation where we are not dealing with elected representatives who are going to make the manifesto automatically in a situation where we are not dealing with elected, you know, sort of representatives who are going to make the plan are, you know, sort of representatives who are going to make the plan are.
to kind of say to them that these are the facts that we present to you, that these are the facts that we present to you, that these are the facts that we present to you, that these are multiple know that these are the facts that we present to you, that these are multiple knowledge that we hold and channel and contest and we are bringing this
to how am I going to talk about these different colors that are on the map or the different zones that they are talking about.
And so sort of to keep it simple but not lose the complexity of it. I mean I've showed you a fact sheet.
It's it's maps. It's it's just basic points. So the first one really just introduces what the issue is.
It says what What do these people bring to the city? So if it's a livelihood fact sheet, then what do street windows do for a city like Delhi?
And then what are the challenges? And the challenges hold that complexity not just spatial but just discrimination and other forms of challenges that they have and then the last page is always what can the master plan, 2,041 do for street vendors and that is a list that looks at the spatial sort of understanding you know off of that
challenge and the last was to add missing data so we called research that exists wonderful research that exists in the city into a condensing them into these fact sheets into these technical or condensing them into these fact sheets into these technical reports where we said that for these fact sheets into these technical reports where we said that the technical reports where we said
that for example an Indian Institute for Human Settlement study says that, for example, an Indian Institute for Human Settlement study says that about 11% to 15% for human settlement study says that about 11 to 15% of Delhi's population lives in informal settlements and they had mapped how much land area was under informal
settlements and that was about 0 point 5% of the city. So about 15% of the population on point 5% of land.
So sort of to bring this kind of research forward to bring these kinds of maps and data points forward to kind of, you know, bring it to the National Institute of Open Affairs and ultimately to the Delhi Development Authority.
So what we say is that we were holding and contesting and channeling, you know, the process of bringing together, say, these particular factories, but of course longer technical reports.
And, you know, so essentially when we say holding, there was holding these multiple languages, multiple intersections.
Contesting there were lots and lots of bitter sort of exchanges within, say, with urban planners who'd say, but this land is untenable and 2 housing rights activists would say no 0 evictions have to be the way that we go forward.
We will not have a conversation with somebody who says this land is not tenable. So these kinds of contestations that came in, and it's been a real privilege in the last 5 years to be able to anchor this project to be a part of this to be able to see how knowledge can be co-produced can
be held by communities and can also drive home the point of its complexity to authorities like the Delhi Development Authority.
Finally I was here and the paper actually came out. So the paper has been published by Planning Theory and there's so so we are happy that some of this academic work is now also coming out of the campaign as we wait to see what the master plan will bring.
So thank you so much.
Excellent. Thank you.
And now, video you may share your slides.
I'm sorry, this is not the one.
Just within a second.
All right, the floor is yours.
Yes, it is visible.
Is it visible? Right. So, I'm gonna give you a presentation on, Mainly, thinking of lab as a method.
And, part of the work is actually done by my colleagues, Professor Graham Jeffrey and Ben Perry, which aren't here today for some reasons.
And some bit of this, the works around around the lab I also was part of that.
So, I'm taking the privilege of speaking on their behalf. And, there would be certain questions that I may not be able to answer.
I'm just being honest about it. So I'll leave it for for them and they might be able to get back to you if there are any such questions.
So, so the idea of lab, came into being after witnessing the epistemic injustices that Dharavi and the Global South in general experience and this goes with the extractive knowledge economies.
The, these people, Professor Graham Jeffrey and Ben Perry tied up with Akon Foundation Mumbai with this focus on the recycling communities in Dharavi.
And in which turned out to be crucial for the formation of lab. The work that the recycling communities do is that it has been deliberately invisibleized.
And there is an ongoing peripheralization of wastework for over the last 2 decades. And so therefore, lab was set up in this product context to function as an experimental learning space for Dharabi's young people, including a platform for the artists and designers, to co-create and and co-learn with waste
workers.
Just to say that, you know, there's a Mumbai, geography is bounded from the from the directions where it encounters see so you know the possibility of expansion is only towards north and northeast and then over the years that are has a is only towards north and northeast and then over the years the Ravi
has only towards north and northeast and then over the years the Ravi has has a zoom centrality it to the city and and there's an unusual realistic pressure that it faces despite being an in so-called informal sort settlement and and this is in in way brings it to weakness and in certain ways non-competitively to
any other city in India or in global south.
The focal point of our work has been in the Rave, which is a million plus self will settlement and a significant centre for employment to a large number of infrastructure, labor in the city, you know, using the term in for a labor as when I get one, coins, you know, being in, and, you know, doing the, you know, critical
infrastructure. We're also invisible to the, normalized. Thatabi's, 13 compound, which is, which you can see is, shaded yellow.
Recycles about 162 200 tons per day of plastic waste. Which at least a decade ago or so used to be a thousand tons per day.
So with the peripheralized ongoing peripheralization there's been a constant degrees in the in the amount of plastic that can be recycled from the center from this core.
Site and there are 14 other clusters in in
In the case of Compound 13, the project confronts the question of waste and disposability through the introduction.
Through the introduction, often innovation lab and an experiment an experimental learning space into various spaces and cycles of waste production and furthermore in the way of in the way the project addresses knowledge politics it can be framed as it as a challenge to the smart city paradigm.
The lab is designed to respond to these conditions, learning for everybody, platform for generating new forms of knowledge.
Econ Foundation has been key to the functioning of the lab. Current in a con foundation has been you know the work of foundation has been centered around welfare for the replication and providing informal education for women and children living and working in waste management economy.
City. As a classroom. So, So just a bit about the, just a bit about the lab.
It's an alternative design and learning space inspired by the maker space movement making making or making use for the materials and resources that they stack from the recycling industry for learning and experiments involving ecological designs and living solutions.
Also a site of co-produced research and investigation for, of the smart city from below, but also in SSH, it's a long-term engagement.
So one of the exercises that kids, did was to, to, imagine the city through soundscape with the tools that people may not usually have access to.
You know the the access to current technologies digital media media tools threed design and digital fabrication technologies to marginalize citizens has been key, to, to, set, you know, setting this setting and running this lab.
Just gonna run through a few more slides, which is basically, giving a glimpse of how, people from the community can actually access and made use of.
The tools and technologies that were brought by the lab. This is one of the, pretty printers and, and here you got different varieties of plastic that are being used and these are the these are the varieties of plastic that are being recycled very much in so no kids having access to.
so this is the, this is the space that we ended up providing managed to provide to the case.
You know running toilets and you know a nice space for kids to come after school and have make use of this space as an informed informed learning space.
The lab has been up and running for the last 5 years, you know, except for the time brief period of COVID.
This is. One of the community person a mole is the a in you know sitting on the side not on the camera but sitting on the chair.
He taking the attribute he is on an auto richer driver. He's his from the communities.
So this is you know they are the person behind the camera is a is a resident artist. So it's sort of a co-creation of knowledge, involving people from the community.
So, the principles behind the lab are mainly, the idea of maintenance economy, embedded in the everyday practices of the neighborhood.
Here you can see some pictures of in a repair economy that is functioning very much in very many cities in India but definitely in Thara you'll find such images.
And so kids have chance to imagine what they, want to do with, certain, you know, so for instance, this is the case of LAMB shed that kids they designed themselves and got got them threed printed through our own 3 printers at the lab.
And so, the lab also in allowed, so sort of a one year residency for me to be a part of the lab but also in a slightly different you know investigates slightly different aspect which was about the waste recycling economy itself which is partly not been fully documented but also deliberately invisibleized.
Into the official accounts. So in lab was, you know, able to provide me access to the community with its own setup for for all these years.
And making use of not just the resources but also the and making use of not just the resources but also the, including the people, and the connections that, the, the resources, but also the, including the people, and the connections that, the could estimate over these 5Â min.
Dharavi recycles plastics, white goose, which is A/C fridge microwave washing machines, wood, paper, cardboard, cardboard and metals.
So, so one thing that is key around waste is that, they, you can witness social cultural social culture and material entanglements wherein not just the, you know, social, social culturally evolved knowledge transforms waste and when I say social-culturally evolved knowledge I mean to say it is being knowledge that
has been transferred intergenerally that is completely homegrown and. Yeah, when an in-depth citizen sciences and and so that sort of socio-cultural entanglement with material can be seen in this way but also, entanglement with material can be seen in this way, but
also met the material transforms society in in a way that material works in this case plastic for example for instance works as a boundary object wherein It creates a boundaries not only in between the society and the wasteless cyclists, but also amongst the recyclers wherein one can see that there are certain, certain, certain, you
know, especially you can see in the value chain here, certain sections, you call it, you can see in the value chain here, certain sections, you call it, you can call it bottom of the pyramid, which are seen as as sort of dirty jobs, but they are the relatively cleaner jobs also in
that. So, those that are the portal at at the bottom of the pyramid also have bigger margins but volumes are less and risks are quite high, which eventually keep them in subsistence economy.
I would just, you know, speak briefly about the interdependence between formal informal system, which you know, the official accounts may not even give any value to what is existing on the ground but but here it is just an important thing and with an anecdote that people were saying to us
that especially when we into your direct picker is that, you know, we have to have the rhythms of picking up or pick up picking up our waist because, you know, we have to have the rhythms of picking up our pick up picking up our waist because we cannot be at the time when municipal trucks would come and pick the waste because
they also want their catch and they also want to pick up waste to eventually reset and to sell it and make some money.
So, so there are interconnections between an out would go into say interdependence among this amongst the system and which is currently under threat.
Due to, peripheralization of the waste and biopolitics of disposability associated with that.
And so, we actually, my part of research was very, very much involved around, understanding the collisions between the so-called, the formal infrastructure, which is the technical top down plan, with, with the existing homegrown, you know, unplanned and organic infrastructure.
Such as waste recycling and so what amongst many other things what are we were able to found was one we were able to find was one which is biopolitics and biopolitics of dispossibility, and biopolitics of dispossibility associated with the reorganization associated with the reorganization and peripheralization of
the industry wherein so what we actually witnessed was the workers, and peripheralization of the industry wherein, so what we actually witnessed was the workers, live in a very strange parad now they have better working conditions in the periphery, but there's an absence, clear absence of social
amenities and community facilities. The other aspect which is also very important one is the technological shift from 2 G to 3 G and now to 4G, smartphones.
Has, has brought a radical shift in the business. The interconnections and the deals have become easier and more transparent.
And, such as brought by, using, one of the interview participants were showing us the, the user WhatsApp as a medium for logging in the number of trips that they made during the day, but also to some to others.
The readily available information has caused some concerns because people now can actually go and look up for the, will, you know, going rich for the day, which eventually means they have less margins.
Yeah, for the most challenges, then you know, new paradigms of circular economy post threat, to the existing, waste economies.
And, you know, the sector is deliberately, deliberately invisibleized. And you know, the sector is deliberately, deliberately invisibleized, its contribution to environment, carbon dioxide, its contribution to environment, carbon reduction, job creation, and closing waste cycles is contribution to environment, carbon reduction, job creation, and closing waste cycles is hugely
undermined and closing waste cycles is hugely undermined and there is an oning and has been ongoing.
And there is, an oning and there is an oning and has been ongoing criminalization and moral subjection with the waste workers.
So Yeah, so, this is just a penultimate slide. A lab as a platform both for community as well as for the resident artist.
You know, getting to one aspect of the lab that I witnessed was getting getting data that is reliable, but also feedback into the knowledge production, story through stories, exhibitions.
Yeah, and but also there are still some ongoing challenges that we the lab can not really as a model doesn't really work.
One is that the trust among the community members is still remains a challenge despite being there for a long time.
So, there are, there were incidences when people thought I'm a text inspector I'm going in going to ask them you know when when you go and ask them volumes, how many volumes are you doing, through your, through your enterprise and they were very suspicious of our presence.
So, there is, I think they only, suggest the question of, the you know the longitudinal as in how long have you been there in the community how visibility could you be So there's a limit to it.
And then the second question is the survival of lab, which is currently dependent upon the external funding. I'll probably, stop there and wait for questions.
But there's just one last slide. There's a book, based on waste work written by Professor Graham.
Jeffrey is going to come out very soon. The title is Waste Work, The Art of Survival in So, yeah, open up to you guys.
Thank you. Thank you.
Excellent. Thank you. Alright, and so is our third presenter here? Oh, excellent.
Dare and twin? Yes. So come on up.
Anyone?
So thank you everyone for joining. I'm Dylan from Iem address so here I'm going to present part of my work on my of my PhD and this come out of my recent field work which is which is based in, So, in my.
In my kind of this exploration. I look at the kind of area these questions. Are about how these primary issues are about.
What is the primary source of regarding the communities and the kind of associational activities? That takes place. And how do they negotiate among each other in the context of a development politics?
So, these groups that I'm going, I'm going to talk about. Are part of communities.
There are many, so I draw a distinction between the formal and the informal communities. The formal communities which By mean, I mean that.
Which, is very simple definition I have put, which is the kind of a government approved or government has shared their kind of power and participation in the decision-making process.
So, So to give a brief account of my field which is Bubnesa.
I'm starting a settlement. Called Salasi and in the in the settlement The Ujaga mission which is about which is about kind of a program which has an inset to development of slum.
And creating the livable spaces which are called Bju others. Colonies and which aims to create the civic infrastructures giving security of Lanterner to the inhabitants.
And creating drone based survey and mapping. So in this kind of process participatory development.
Has emerged as kind of approach that government wants to take. And there are many NGOs and you know technology that is used in in sort of making this process.
Effective. In the context there are the slum development associations are created. And a community led development project is taking place.
So I am dealing with. Some key concepts like the expert knowledge. Local state associational politics. And kind of a quote unquote a programmatic politics.
So. So this research builds on the work of ABAC. John Harris Bija Vasquez who on the in the team of associational politics which suggests that there are vertical and horizontal kind of networks where were kind of a patronage kind of system develops and the associational activities takes
place. There are in some cases they say that the ethnic voting there are some other scholars who argue that who pluralises the kind of a middle class association and argue that there is a we need to look beyond the kind of a binary of poor associations poor.
Class associations and middle class associations. And there are some cases where Oh kind of a NGO helping the poor group associations has
You know, taking the center stage. Work here informs that we need to look. To the plurality of these So kind of formal and informal groupings of this.
Quote unquote poor residents.
So my theoretical frameworks I'm drawing from the anti-politics machine which says that they disregard the local dynamics machine which says that they disregard the local dynamics and the specific ideas in the development processes.
And my attempt is to look at this. Both the horizontal and and the vertical networks of or don't go back to age.
So I also assume in my research that the local state has multiple centers of power and knowledge. Where it is co-produced with the informal and the formal committees.
And these committees needs to be looked. Looked into. So So to give you a kind of a executive structure of how the Jagger mission performs is through a slum development association which is asked by the executive body to give them a list of these quote unquote slums.
And the committee at the upper level of SDA which is called UA SRR CC.
Kind of who is called urban area slum rehabilitation and redevelopment committee takes the case of these slums that needed to be upgraded or they assess the infrastructure.
So the demand comes from below. And it is put to the USRRC and the USRRC.
Constitutes a delisting scrutiny subcommittee which is again has you know the constituting of this committee.
That is empowered. To US RRC. The main point what I'm making here is that And the locus of power and the kind of knowledge is stays with the US RRC which is Oh kind of executive body led by bureaucrats and the STA in this process in the DSC which is
D listing subcommittee, scrutiny and subcommittee there the presence though is nominal. Has, you know, in many ways they have tried to.
Make the voices. Less clearer. So So my, now my, I'm making up, you know, kind of argument about how, why we should look at this.
In formal committees where kind of though the SDS in the SDS the arguments the kind of their kind of ideas around land tenure around infrastructure around development is not taken up but in the informal spaces of self-help groups.
The you know kind of religious committees the something called a bustis or Manchu, which is platform for slum development.
So in these kind of committees how And the sort of negotiation and both financial and also in structural negotiation takes place.
So this is one of the examples where how the SDS demands has been sort of bypassed and the formal slum development committees, the whole processes are just completed in very short period of time.
So So to give you a sense of how the informal committees are spread over the settlement, there are in this settlement there are 44 streets and each street has a local committee.
Led by the Bust Destruction Munch. There are 10 to 15 self-help groups which is led by women in each street.
And these, and there are also local youth clubs situated within the settlement. There are Puja committees, there are other religious and Adivasi committees.
So, so it is very diverse and and one strategy this informal formal kind of committees in together what they do is that to whenever a quote unquote work order comes up a document authorizing a local committee to take up developmental activities.
The local committee will authorize that work order to the local counciler which is very informal to take up the work but will demand their participation in decision making and financial benefit.
From them by porton code not signing the financial documents. So, so these are kind of, that's one of the examples.
And another kind of you know, strategy these informal grouping does is that these self-help groups which are led by mostly by women they, because they are, they can be kind of.
Listed from both the opposition which is let's say Congress or from the BJD they can also negotiate among each other and the O cross party line, their demands are also negotiated in this infrastructure developmental space.
So these are some photographs of the local committee organizing in the context of evictions.
And And there are some, and when there is especially a joint threat kind of thing emerges. All these committees informal committees come up.
Give the demand of the local businesses but one thing that sort of stands out in this kind of settlement in my field work is that the question of land tenure is very much Out of the question.
And which I think in which I need to you know, dig deep into little and how the committees also do not talk about it.
So these are some examples of how this local committee is mobilized and they write a petition to the bureaucratic machinery or and these are the electricity bills, the Russian card.
And and with lot of documents. And there is also this organizational mapping. That I have done which I can share later.
So this So they are kind of networks of informal committees obtain these documents through Jaga Mission Filing, court cases through party networks.
In one case the one of the you know platform for slum protecting the slum residents. Filed a petition you know.
They wanted to bring in code and go to stay order from the courts so that. It doesn't take place.
Reiterating my argument about though in the formal committees of SDA. The knowledge and the power has been subsided through this informal committees.
You know the arguments the contestations the demands is taken up. So these are some of the findings how the leaders of the SDA.
Mostly favours the EU based position on infrastructure and land issues. Member of the other committee's he can also be present with the SG also tries to.
Kind of side with the SDS but the informal committees is the space where we need to look at.
So thank you.
Thank you for that.
Excellent. And our fourth presenter is Mira and Randawa that the organizers of this session.
Good morning everyone and we are really grateful for Lisa to Chair this session and we are happy that Rashi the rain with the and I'm sure Sneha will also connect to our panel which has been so far wonderfully done about talking about co-producing knowledge and power contestation in transforming urban spaces.
As you can see, we have titled our presentation as about insurgents cities, urban social movements and mobilization in India.
So we'll look at a more historical trajectory of how social movements have come about and how they become part of the Indian.
Contest within the Indian cities. So to begin with, I will be looking at the conceptual framework of the social movement.
Yeah, so I'll start with the conceptual framework of the social movement and then talk about the differences between social movement and then talk about the differences between social movement and urban social movement.
We talk about the differences between social movement and urban social movement. So social movement and urban social movement. The social movement and urban social movement will come down to the urban social movement in the Indian context and finally the issues emerging from the urban social movement in the Indian context and finally the issues emerging from the urban social movement which we will take up through the case study of
Sanjamansch, which my colleague Dr. Prithal Dhawa will talk more about.
It's also important because when Rashi talked about Mabi Dili campaign, there's something about here the Leekisky which came about from the earlier part of the movement here through San Jamanch and that was a in late 19 nineties.
So something that's what we are going to cover. So to begin with we talk about what is this conceptual framework and there are lots of ideas which come through that how social movements are mobilized what are the mood points of propelling forces for the social movements and we find 2 very important one is the relative deprivation theory
which talks about that different sections of society when they feel that they have got less than what they deserve. That becomes a moot point for social movements to begin.
And a girl has talked about how these can be, you know, decremental, aspirational or progressive social movement.
More importantly, the resource mobilization theory says that despite deprivation one needs resources to mobilize and we believe cities are crucible for different kinds of mobilization.
For such kind of movements. Apart from that, we have political process theory, new social movement theory, but to go rather to going into details of social movement we want to talk about the urban context in which they have become significant.
So the idea of urban bringing the urban question to the social movement begins with Manuel Castle's work in where his book says in urban question in 1,977 and there's a revised theory about city and the grassroots in 1,983 so in the west urban social sociology was
studied the ways of life the working class their housing pattern kinship neighbouring and friendship and voluntary associations who've been associated with different kinds of problems in the city whether it's crime urban space spatial structures.
But what was interesting was that power and conflict was excluded as being part of urban policies and relegated to the political science, you know, as political groups or political pressure groups.
But Castile says that it has the limitation where one is seeing only from the lens of social order.
The city only from this lens of social order rather than the needs of that group which were not met by the social order.
So that's when he said that it's important that one has to look at how advanced capitalist society the state becomes involved in the process of collective consumption and apart from impacting not just the labor but also that that conflict has extended to the arena of city.
So that's when the urban became important in the idea of social mobilization within the city. And this heap brings out through his, you know, by looking at the social movement in 1,970 in Chile where trade unions, political groups and urban based groups came together to bring the Alan government to power.
But in 1,983 he revises his thesis and he talked about in another book, The City and the Grassroots.
He says that although there are movements which combine trade unions, political groups, and they all come together. Yet there is no much, there's not much structural change in the power relations at the end of the day.
Hence he calls those urban movements as just mere reactive utopias because they are able to bring about some local changes but not actually the power doesn't change.
The power dynamics does not change about that. Now coming to the Indian context where the urban social movement if we look at it how they have been visualized in the Indian context.
Gansham Shah has classified movements by the degree of their transformative intent or consequences, identifying them as either as revolves, rebellions, reformists, or revolutionary.
And very interestingly what we find is that most movements adopt either a transactive approach which are only focusing on improving access to assets and services.
Whereas there is a transformative approach which involves changing in voice agency and along with that above changes. So do our movements in the urban or the Indian context do they become just transactional where we are actually approaching and asking people to make give these changes or do they also transform the voices and the agencies to those who are provided.
So in that context, we look at how, in the what are the issues which then emerge from this social movement so one is that globalization and neoliberal dispossession is not only leading accumulation which is caused by exploitation but it's also by dispossession within urban spaces.
And here there are 2 important things. One is that individual liberty to access urban resources and ability to exercise collective power does reshape the process of urbanization which we see through right to the city and again how Nefever's point has also been taken by David Harvey.
But there could be many ways and when we are talking about collaborations which are happening so what becomes organizational collaboration in the earlier context it was called municipal socialism but later on we see that when cities which provide a kind of a facilitator, what you can say a kind of a scaffolding to have these social movements.
They mobilize people, they help people come together, network with local power relations, which may actually favor those social movements but also might hamper that and we'll see it through the context of Sancha Munch which my colleague will talk about that do these network or local powers do they favor or hamper the relations?
Thank you very much. So yeah, I'll just quickly try to. Talk about How you know, which was created about 25 years ago, 2425 years ago in Delhi in response to the slum demolitions which are happening, rampant slum, demolitions which
were happening during that time. So I'll try to just earn a will try to present but what exactly Saja Manch was how it came into being, what kind of activities.
They were doing and what went wrong with it okay and then try to position it with some of the discussions which some of the issues which Rachina presented basically.
So Sargeamans, it was formed in 1,999. It was like Mabelly campaign.
It was a It was a coalition of basically activists, academic unions, NGOs, community-based organizations, so on and so forth.
Initially they were about 7 or 8 organizations which came together and they came together in response to the onslaught of the state on the slums.
Secondly, also on the unauthorized colony. So, initially they file the PL, public it does litigation in the code.
So there were 7 8 people who came together. Few NGOs were also there. But later on within a span of one to 2 years, of its formation, there was an exponential growth.
In that in the munch. I had the munch grew from about 7 or 8 members to about 80 individuals and organization within 2 years of time.
Monch was at that particular time it was coordinated by a resource center as a center basically which used to primarily work on which used to primarily undertake action research on the issue of urban poverty in formality and urban environment.
So as far as the activities of the MUNSHA were concerned, These are some of the active judicial activities as I mentioned that it began with filing a petition in the court so judicial activism was one of the main activity so they filed a petition against the slum demolitions which were happening in the Yamana Pushhta area
which is on the bank of River Yamana in Delhi. And also against the other demolitions which are happening across the city.
So later on, yeah, so then there was this action research which was basically a co-production of, you know, different kind of literature or knowledge, whatever we call it, which was undertaken at as a center with the support of activists, community and experts.
Most of the arguments are framed around the flaws of Delhi Masterplan. So one was in the earlier master plan which was there the flaw of that master plan and then there was another master plan which was coming at that time the third master plan of Delhi.
Which eventually was declared in 2,006. So it was that how the previous plan was flawed and what should be there in the forthcoming master plan of that particular time.
So action research was mostly around that and the material which was produced like Mabitili campaign it was produced in the form of pamphlets, posters, booklets.
One of the major documents which came at that time was I'll just show you the Okay, it's called, the link is key here.
The leak is key here. The leak is here, which means who's deleted it.
Basically, so this document basically became a you know, it basically contested the dominant narrative around the urban policies and the master plan during that time and it became a major you know document for the campaign.
And the campaign, was mainly, you know, I'll go back. So the campaign and mobilization were based on the, yeah, as I said, content which was generated in the form of action research.
And initially it was the members of Hezbollah who were campaigning. Campaigning in the busties.
And later on, you know, they were full time some activists who were recruited. Some funding came in and some activists were included.
So they were involved in campaigns and mobilization. There were also public events which are organized in the form of demonstrations and you know protest marches.
Against the government agencies.
So, just cutting the story short. So this went on for about 7 80 years and eventually what happened that a sergeant started disintegrating.
So we have tried to look at some that the reasons why it started disintegrating. So,
So one of the reasons if we closely examine the discussions which were happening in the Sargeament meetings by looking at the minutes of the Sargearman meeting particularly, we see that there was an when Sarge Mans came into being so there was a single leadership within the munch.
Which emerged from as a center. So there was no organizational structure. So there was self made self proclaimed leader that was 1Â s was you know second reason was usually you know So the everywhere I think I won't go through all these points because we are running short of time but the 2 other point important point where that that over
the years multiple power structures started emerging within the munch. Since there was no proper structure, so, so there was a conflict between those individuals who were there.
So that was another and it started coming out in public actually people started expressing their you know differences in the public forum.
So what eventually started happening that few members started withdrawing from it. Eventually the munch was divided into It was, 2 parts.
And again, you know, and finally it was the the past. The, you know, the, Sorry, just a second.
Yeah, it was divided into 2 segment and the segment which broke away from the munch. It again fell apart in few months.
The membership and activities of the other segment also started decimating and it existed for few more years but it never was able to revive in its original spirit the way it was started.
In terms of, contribution of the munch, you know, yeah, it basically gave Why to the poor in the city because At that particular point of time, the dominant discourse was basically led by the middle class in the city and the poor was in terms of Asher Getner's work also
was. Got was considered as nuisance in the city. So Sarge was able to at least provide this war voice to the poor.
Second thing was that the major contribution of Saja Munch was that in terms of the material which it produced.
In terms of action research and this particular you know report or book whatever we call it. So this became a basis for urban scholars to do further research on urbanism.
By that time, urban research was only limited to like it was mostly the geographers and economists.
Who were doing urban research. But then urban, there was. Which also person like I can't remember his name but there was a turn in urban politics as well as at urban research so where I think Saja Munch or has a center contributed a bit in that urban turn.
Fine. If we, yeah, if we have to examine now Sajamans after 2025 years, so these are the 3 crucial I think points which are emerging.
One was that you know the people in Munch came from diverse background at the individuals, they were NGOs, they were community-based organization and there were a lot of vested interests were also there when people were joining.
So there was no common political or ideological threat which was there to keep them together. That was first I think very important point which is emerging in our research.
Second, I think in terms of organizational structure because these coalitions or months are a very loosely you know formulated so the the problem was with the organizational structure as well as with the leadership.
There was no clarity in that. Okay. That was another major region of its debacle or disintegration.
Thirdly, I think funding was the major reason. Initially when Munch was functioning for the first few years, they were not getting any direct funding for the months activity.
It was the hazard center which was funded, not the Saja Manch, which was coordinating the munch.
So funding when whole time activists were recruited to undertake the activities of the munch, then the actual problem came that where the funds are coming from who is getting how much of money.
So I think these are the 3 large major critique of its debacle. Finally, just to conclude, I'm just making some concluding remarks.
And these are the 3, basically. Questions which we thought that will put together First is in terms of whether it was an alliance for collective action, whether it is a part of an urban social movement or not.
So what we think is that no it was not, we can't, we can't call it an urban social moment. Okay.
The reason was that It was just, you know, in Promptu coalition of collective action where few people came together.
The reason was that at that particular time political parties and trade unions were not addressing the questions of workers. So the existing moments were not addressing the questions.
But so the answer to the first question is no it was a collective action the second answer to the second question is that how do we position it so there are many things to say here but just one thing picking up from what Rachina was saying was that.
Yeah, so it was basically, because in cities there are, there's a lot of resources.
And Just to connect it with Castle's point, Manual Castle's point that as the resource mobilization theory suggests that cities give access and possibilities for facilitating the social movement.
More of a different kind of alliances across social and political groups can be mobilized. So it was easier for this kind of a you know coalition to emerge in the city and the final point in terms of the larger other the theme of the panel is that yeah of course It co produced knowledge which actually helped in and basically
Which was able to basically create an alternative discourse. Yeah, I think I'll just conclude here.
Yeah, so it basically made a significant contribution in the co-production of knowledge which created an alternative discourse.
In response to the dominant discourse which was intended to transform the lean into a world-class city.
All right, I'll just stop here. I think I have taken more time.
Thank you.
And our final presentation is Naya Anavarapu. And.
Hi everyone, I'm really excited to be here. Thank you with Pile and Ratchna for putting together this panel.
I'm really excited to be here. Thank you, Patha and Ratchna for putting together this panel.
I think I provide a slightly different topic of conversation in this otherwise really enriching discussion on civil society, urban poor and co-production of knowledge because I'm looking at an entity that's often considered the enemy of the open door, I guess the police.
So just to. Note that this presentation is part of my book project, which is called Moving Targets, Traffic Rule, State Authority and Urban Citizenship in India, which is an ethnographic exploration of state experiments with traffic authority and the tactile bumpy painful and
pleasurable experience of driving in an Indian metropolis, right? So in this book, I take the practical experience of driving and its regulation as a window to thinking about state citizen relations and urban life in India right now.
The reason I got interested in this topic is of course this over saturated stereotype of the typical Indian street and the typical Indian driver who treats traffic rules as mere suggestions.
So I wanted to dig a little bit under the surface and see what's really going on, how do people really relate to risk safety, pleasure, how is a law enforcement authority in India trying to change these habits, right?
And some of the interesting archival material I came across, especially in the traffic police department, is stuff like this where law breaking is connected intimately to the nation and its position in the developmental trajectory.
Right? So I kept hearing this thing that whenever people come to India, the first thing they see is the traffic and they know that we are a developing country.
Like the traffic actually reveals a secret that we really want to like discard in our quest for world class aspirations.
Of course, as a more sobering side to it, which is the road safety angle and there's been a lot of discussion around the fact that it's not just about our image or at the aesthetics of development, but in fact, road safety has, we need to think about injury, life, loss, and so on and so
forth. And all of this, of course, to me is interesting in the urban context where not just as the volume of traffic increasing but there is a larger anxiety around world-class aesthetics, right?
So the unruly driver kind of appears as a B in the bonnet in the larger aesthetic production of the world-class city.
Alongside and what this presentation will focus on, there is a technological modernization of traffic law enforcement primarily in cities.
So you have a lot of smart policing, you have proliferation of CCTV cameras.
You have all of this kind of really terrifying actually when Optic Ony sort of a policing going on.
So my question in this particular chapter of the book is how does that shape state citizen relations right and you also have a vocal middle class that kind of supports smart policing and is also very supportive of cleaning up the streets and getting rid of this sort of a nuisance of the unruly driver. Right?
So here you have Hyderabad as a global city and right under that you have don't jump red light which to me really captured the kind of irony in this in this sort of discourse.
So the research questions of book are these 2 wise rot traffic and its management so vexing to policymakers, state officials and citizens and however as I've mentioned how our efforts are changing driving behavior are shaping state citizens relations.
The data and methods for this book and this particular paper are 18 months of multi-sided ethnographic field work in the city of Hyderabad.
I'm an ethnographer so essentially I spent time with traffic police kind of followed them around their day-to-day activities, attended road safety programs, attended traffic training programs which were quite a bore to be honest.
There were also interviews with motorists of several social positions. I also learned to drive as part of my field worth because I am an non-drivers.
I think a lot of my curiosity around driving was being this outsider in this situation, right? I also spent time with local NGOs working on road safety participate in a lot of road safety campaigns with them and I analyzed and tracked news media, especially Twitter and social media pages of the traffic police authority as well as
keeping a certain kind of tab on videos and pieces of information that are going right. Right? So coming back to this particular angle or aspect of the book chapter, which is the aesthetics authority.
I kind of address the 2 sets of literature I'm kind of speaking to right one is the literature on police and state power in which police are traditionally viewed as agents of state violence or those that hold the monopoly on the use of force in a specific territory, very weberian understanding of police, right?
Then there's very interesting work now on excessive policing and incarceration, particularly in the United States context.
There is amazing empirical work or attributes a bias in policing even in India which looks at how the police overpolices marginalized communities and its effects then on urban marginality and the criminalization of urban poor, especially in buses, right?
Alongside an emphasis on technology and policing shows or kind of tries to explore how the population is becoming more legible to the state with the use of technology.
So how is technology particularly smart policing amplifying the legibility question. Paula James Scott, how is the state seeing its populations, and how is technology enabling that?
And of course, issues like Shrinivas Kodali, a researcher in Hyderabad, has done some amazing work kind of talking about the issues with the collection and storage of sensitive data being collected by the Hyderabad police right now.
So here we see the Hajiba police relying on, you know, they stop passers by on the road take pictures of their faces and add it to the database to enable facial recognition systems, right?
And much of this conversation around CCTVization of the city is Kulmated in these police towers which are inaugurated last year and have a control and access to approximately 9 lack cameras in the cities.
So hydroba is currently the most surveyed city in India and guess what? The top officials take a lot of pride in that, right?
So in a lot of like public meetings they say we are the we have the most number of CCTV cameras in the country.
So it comes in a register of a pride and a certain kind of technological charisma that pervades these conversations, right?
But I am actually not talking about the legibility question here, which a lot of researchers are writing about.
What is interesting to me is that in the day-to-day conversations of traffic police authorities, the question was much more basic.
How do we get people to follow traffic rules? Do we persuade them into doing so or do we punish them?
Is it fear or is it a certain kind of genuine understanding of why rules are important? And in this quest, What became interesting was that technology became like this sort of like catch all solution, right?
So I first encountered the term smart policing and friendly policing in my very first meeting with Akumar, the commissioner of Hyderabad traffic police in March, 2,018.
After I explained my intention to study traffic regulation and driving habits, he asked me if I had selected Hyderabad traffic police as my case study because of the innovative techniques being used by them.
True to my trade as an obnoxious ethnographer, I feigned ignorance to elicit more information and he pointed to a mantlepiece behind him and he said since 2,015 we've adopted smart policing and we are like using a lot of technology.
But then he said something a lot more interesting and important in my mind, which is that he said, we need to change the image the public has right now when we think of an average traffic policeman.
Right now they think of a latte wielding, educated, rude and aggressive, pot-bellied, very body shammy of Mr. Akumar, an uncouth fellow who is after their money.
What we need is a tech savvy, sophisticated and fit police force with Bluetooth speakers in their ears and sleek tabs in their hands.
Hyderabad says it's a high tech city so police also have to become high tech. The image of the police needs to be such that the put public will automatically want to obey, right?
So Kapoor is of course not referring to himself as a Lati wielding educated rude fellow who needs to be disciplined in his mid fifties, Kapoor was a suave IPS elite police bureaucrat, he was instead referring to the stereotype of a street level traffic cop as it so
circulates in public imagination and the stereotype can be summed up by someone who I think exemplifies the IM middle class but not really I'm very elite liberal so to speak person that is the controversial novelist and journalist Manner Joseph who in an article in New York Times said the face of the
government, the cops illicit no respect not because of their reputation but also because of how they look, their cheap uniforms and how they wear those uniforms, how they sit on the roadside on plastic chairs, large punches like babies on their laps and how 6 of them hide under flyers to pounds on motorists in the great
game that is the Indian daily life. And this understanding of their self representation and public discourse was so palpable amongst my low street-level police officials that I spent time with.
They were very cognizant of the fact that this is how they are viewed and they kept talking about how they appear as buffoons in in cinema and they always point to movies like Singham and they're like the inspector is considered this savvy you know like alpha character but the constables are almost always buffoons.
And we act as Jaragui also writes about this in her book Provisional Authority, which is an amazing ethnography of police force in India.
So here some of my interlocutors again, constables and lower-level officials brought some of this stuff up and they said it must be common for you to this kind of government office.
They talked about the command and control office, right? But even having air conditioning and proper infrastructure for police is a new thing.
Have you seen the SERN at the traffic police station? It is operating out of a tin shed.
And the Nala Kuna one, it is in an old building that is on the verge of collapse.
Imagine a police station that looked like looks like a poor man's shack could do. It happens only in India.
Then another one said, public should see a station and feel respect. Or if public feels like we are too broke to have air conditioning, why will they take us seriously?
This is the main reason why people follow rules and malls and spit in government offices. So there was this kind of like overarching obsession almost with the aesthetics of authority and that is precisely my point that in much of the literature on policing and even in ethnographies of policing.
There's there is a very important emphasis on surveillance and legibility but what's also equally important to maybe bear in mind is the anxieties of legitimacy that lower level police officials articulate on an everyday basis.
So this was told to me by the ACP of traffic again who essentially articulated something so important. He said we want to communicate an image to the public that we are not the old kind of police, we are the new police, we are service providers.
Shifting the language from agents of state violence to service provision, right? Thereby depoliticizing their arena of policing, which has such important repercussions in thinking of state citizens relations.
We provide the service of safe roads, ordered traffic, quick and easy movement in the city. With technology, all this is easier.
Have you seen all the gadgets traffic police have now? Body-won cameras, galaxy tabs, personal digital assistance, laser guns.
The thing is that these gadgets are not as helpful for policing but they're also changing the way people look at us.
I don't actually have time to get through the counter narratives, how all of this is challenged, especially by auto richer drivers and certain driver unions especially who really pointed out the kinds of continuities of police violence even in this era of smart policing.
I don't attempt to get into it, but let me maybe bring some of this contestation around smart policing up for the case of body-worn cameras.
So body one cameras introduced in Hyderabad in 2,018 for traffic police and the idea is that when police are patrolling and enforcing you know traffic rules we are the issuance of traffic tickets in a group of policemen the sub-inspector or above would be equipped with a body one camera.
And the idea of course is that the officer ranks want to survive. Instances of bribery amongst traffic police or at the street level, right?
So after receiving a lot of complaints around bribery. The idea is to equip them with body-worn camera so we can police the police in theory, right?
Yet or except, a lot of my interlocutors pointed out how the body won't cameraize actually a mirror in which the society can see how uncivilized it behaves with the constables.
They see this footage and they feel bad for us because they finally see how the police look scared of public.
Does it happen in any other country? You tell me. We are told to be friendly. Police are IPS officers who tell us to be friendly have no idea what we face every day and this court came up in the context of this particular case that went viral that actually my dissertation committee members in the US are sending me links to
this so it actually went like pretty globally viral right where this woman who was driving a moped or a scooter was essentially contesting a traffic ticket that was issued to her by this traffic inspector because she wasn't wearing a helmet.
And what was very interesting about the video and I wish I could show it right now but I won't because of the lack of time is that the police are not doing anything.
They're just kind of recording her having this meltdown about this traffic ticket, right? So they just keep recording and it reinforces their point that we are dealing with an unruly public that does not listen to us and does not follow rules.
Now the counter narrative just to give you a brief glimpse was that amongst a lot of my auto extra driver informants, especially in old city where this is all happening, said that this was a deliberate ploy by the police to reinforce a stereotype of the old city as being unruly and that they could have just
cut her a ticket and let her go. But instead of doing that, they kind of prolong the drama of her being unruly, right?
So they were a bit like, what is the problem? Just give her a ticket, let her go.
But instead you're kind of showing the fact that she's getting angrier and angrier and recording all of that and of course the police has links with news media especially locally so they kind of let slip this video and it just expired right and the comments under this particular Times of India article are very Islamophobic and kind of
reinforce again this idea that the there are certain parts of the city, code, Muslim and low income that are very hard to govern.
So the police is able to take charge of the narrative, right? It's able to use technological sort of gadgets and the virality of videos to script the official discourse around which areas are hard to govern.
So it's able to sort of legitimize itself and thereby also produce the unruly citizen in a particular way.
Another example is this, which is very different from the previous one, but in this one there was a drunken driving sort of patrolling going on and this young man is actually the opposite of what we saw earlier, very elite lives in Jubilee Hills, the poshest part of the city and is driving an
Audi or some such luxury said in when he stopped for you know being drunk and driving and he gets off the car and he actually starts abusing the police saying you can't even spell government.
You can't even spell psychology. How dare you cut me a ticket when you can't even speak English, right?
So he's bringing up the supposed incivility of the police and pointing out that they are not as educated as he is and therefore do not have a right to cut him a ticket.
These are the contestations and tensions that come up and the interface of traffic policing reveal the sorts of anxieties that authority has about its grip on this citizen public, right?
So the inspector that I often hung out with in Old City, he told me that we have a lot of these scuffles nowadays but with our body bone cameras my mantra is record don't react because if you react then the public has a spin on the counter narrative and are able to kind of prove that the police are in
fact engaging in overpolicing, right? So this guy was like, these body wound cameras are our friends.
We are able to record and not react. And here again you have police being given handheld cameras to sort of practice non-contact enforcement, the idea being take a picture of a vehicle that's in fraction of traffic rules and just send them an electronic ticket right so therefore minimize contact and enforcement but that has also become you that all the evidence of that is
being used by the traffic corps in in what they call showing evidence of snake chalans. So they're calling this the anaconda of traffic violation.
So here they've got someone who's apparently these many unpaid traffic tickets. So here they've got someone who's apparently these many unpaid traffic tickets.
So here they're using non-contact enforcement via digital cameras, but they're also using photographs not just as evidence of violation but also evidence of the unruly citizen right they're using all of these images again to show that this is a very difficult job and therefore we are not actually facing or finding much cooperation with public and
these photographs are always used on the social media sets to kind of prove their point. So very, very briefly, and this is something I'm still thinking through. It's very raw.
I actually had another presentation at ISA for much more sophisticated workout idea which was on potholes.
And I kept thinking today I was like maybe I should just present that like it's just like more work together.
But I just been sort of thinking about how the production of a smartness, right, or the production of friendliness and smartness or the traffic police is actually very contingent on the production of the opposite or the production of an in civilized or UN Civilized or unruly citizen, right?
And who are occupies that image or who occupies that category shifts depending on situations. But they always need a certain kind of scapegoat or through which they can leverage their idea of slickness.
Right? And so theoretically I would like to contribute to the literature on urban policing, I would like to contribute to the literature on urban policing, do the literature on urban policing but to the literature on urban policing but sort of give it a different spin maybe do an asher curtainer in a different way, but sort of give it a different spin, maybe do an asher curtainer in a different way by focusing a little bit on
a shower curtain in a different way by focusing a little bit on aesthetics and the image of authority rather than a little bit on aesthetics and the image of authority rather than a sole focus on legibility and state power.
Excellent. Thank you so much. So don't go anywhere. I'm going to invite the presenters who are here and co-authors as well.
Back up to the front and I'm going to bring Vidya back on. And.
Let's see.
So I'll invite everybody to sit at the table. Oh.
And we have about 15Â min or so for questions and comments. On these really excellent papers on knowledge technologies, counter narratives, counter-technologies that are shaping politics and power in urbanizing India.
So I would like to invite. The audience to ask questions and if you don't have questions that will be fine because that is my opportunity to ask all of the questions that are buzzing in my head right now.
But I'd like to offer and please come to the mic so that those who are in visiting online and can hear your questions.
So come on up. So just form a queue and yeah, so I mean I want to take a couple of questions actually and give the presenters a chance to respond to sort of a cluster of questions.
So if you would come up to the mic, each of you. And ask your questions.
And that one is fine. That might. Yeah. Thank you.
All those are really interesting and gripping presentations. So I have a question, a joint question actually and there actually a set of reflections that maybe we can reflect on together for, Rashna and Pitta and Lashi.
So, comparing the 2 kinds of collectives or campaigns that you both presented.
This is a fundamental difference in how Sanjamans was kind of recruiting activists and they were these issues of authority being sort of not clear.
And I was just wondering when we think of social movements, whether having a structure or power structure of authority.
I mean does that in fact discourage people from joining the campaign because it's not as equal or equitable as a people's campaign should be.
Similarly, the idea of recruiting activists I found very interesting because Typically, activism is seen as something you do for yourself and not as something which is in exchange for payment.
However, we also see activists are all often struggling to meet ends because there's no money coming in.
So it's a double edged sword in a way because you're trying to support them into into sort of investing time in that space of that campaign.
What those experiences were and what your thoughts are on how to sustain a campaign and whether in fact campaigns also just have a life and beyond that life you know it's not reasonable to expect them to sort of go on.
So. Yeah. That's it. Excellent.
Thank you. And Dana and
Hello everyone. Thanks so much for the presentations. I'm so sorry that I joined late and but I do have a couple of questions and so the first one was also on the Sage of Munch paper and I was just wanting to hear your thoughts on, so you talked about some of the difference in ideology and organization and I would just be
really interested to hear your reflections on other kind of sorts of sources of fracturing within the group, particularly around gender, caste, region, and whether looking back in reflection those were resilient sources for some of those were salient sources for some of those divides or perhaps whether some of those divides or perhaps whether
organizing explicitly around class might have been you know organizing explicitly around class might have been you know organizing explicitly around class might have been organizing explicitly around class might have been, as you said, there wasn't a common ideology if there was contentions around.
How that might have been conceptualized by members within the month. And then secondly for Sneha, I really enjoyed your presentation.
And I was really curious to hear, I, the performative and sort symbolic elements of this are so salient and I'm wondering how that relates to the actual attempt to reconfigure the relationship with citizens amongst the police and whether those were joined or accompanied by institutional changes and practices like I couldn't help but think of
the English speaker, whether he's really mad that he's going to actually have to pay his ticket in Alfred for the first time.
So how are those institutional practices changing alongside the performative aspects? Thank you. Excellent. And yeah, I saw a and then.
Hi, this is some share. Teach at Fleet University. Thank you for very interesting presentations.
So my question is to 9 feet one is If you could just. Give an idea about what was a specific issue with which this Saja Manchur came into existence.
I know you've mentioned that the unions, trade unions or the political parties at that point in time were not raising the issues of the working class.
And if I can just like, you know, expand that question to recently concluded farmers protest on the borders of this thing which was also a collective umbrella of various kinds of ideologies and entities etc.
I don't know you don't have to like kind of reflect on that but if you have any you know idea or any perception of that movement Second, my co-micer sense to me has really very fascinating work and presentation.
My question to you is that what I felt throughout the narratives and the descriptions you presented is that there is some kind of like you know, negotiation and how they try to navigate the trouble water.
By you know avoiding as much as the confrontation possible with the public. Do the technological adaptation throughout the period which you have spent in the field have made any kind of actual you know.
Results or has it changed in any way. Over those 3 years and also how do people see the police perception because here what we mostly read or saw was that what the police is saying or thinking but what about the offenders or what about this unruly and civilized people?
Excellent. And we'll take one more question set of questions and then give everyone a chance to respond.
Thank you and thank you all for really interesting presentations. I have a question for Vivia and for a partner.
And I have a question for a video and for a company about, because you both talk about the relation between the formal and the informal.
And I was wondering whether these would talk about the relation between the formal and the informal. And I was wondering whether these huge national government campaigns you both talk about the relation between the formal and the informal and I was wondering whether these huge national government campaigns like you were talking about the relation between the formal and the informal.
And I was wondering whether these huge national government campaigns, like you were talking about the Jagu a urban especially where CSOs and NGOs are involved whether the current regime in India is performing a similar crackdown on these kinds of organizations as on Hey, human rights organizations, etc.
Or whether they are more integrating it with the state like trying to you know co-opt urban issues into the state agenda.
Excellent. So if each presenter could take about 2, 3Â min and will go in the same order of presentations.
So Rashi, if you would like to begin. So question on different, you know, You know the question that was Yeah, I think it's better.
Yeah. I think that, You know, for maybe Dilly campaign, we had kind of studied what had happened, what are the kind of campaigns that existed in the city before and not just in Delhi but across the board in India, especially around master plans.
So we did do a lot of the reading and the work that Automans had done before. We kind of had read it, we read the reports, we read the books.
Derek come out. We'd also spoken to a lot of the activists and in fact a lot of those activists were part of maybe the Lee and had bought those experiences in.
The 3 things that you have sort of highlighted that became a concern within were what we avoided within maybe Dili.
So we are not a funded campaign and we chose very early on that that would be one of the principles that funding wouldn't come in that people would volunteer their time, offices, spaces.
If somebody could volunteer the 4 coordinators salaries and which was taken up by about 3 different organizations that you know we sort of loan these people to the campaign for part of their day and that's the work that they're going to do.
We had a very clear agenda that we and we do have that clear agenda where we are focusing on the master plan.
So there are many, many urban challenges within Delhi and our agenda is very clear that we want to input into the master plan at a stage when it was being developed when the draft came out.
So for us that ideology was very clear because we said we are not going to look at, say, rest in welfare associations which are very middle class and they also participate a lot in sort of with the master plan kind of engage and we set our agenda and how politics is that the people were.
And like we would sort of left out are off the traditional conventional planning paradigms are the ones that we want to focus on.
And we have a horizontal structure of However, the 4 coordinators were all chosen because we were young and personable and we were we would go and listen to mean a lot of brick paths from this more senior members or other members so our role when we came in was very clear that we are not to confront ever we are supposed
to. Smile nomadically and say what you're saying is absolutely right and that has come in handy a lot in the last couple of years to build some of these sort of things.
So there is a lot of learning. That's flowing and considering and that's what it is I think from MBD the next one whatever it takes you know it's going to continue to learn and become better and just very quickly on the regime thing in India for maybe Dili particularly and a couple of other networks that
we are a part of and it is also part of the Moby Billy campaign. There's also something called the Daily House and rights task force.
We're not registered, we don't have bank accounts. We don't or stay clean to it as institutions.
So when I work as a coordinator of Maybe Dilly campaign, I am no longer, I do not bring in my institutional affiliation of the Union Institute for Human Settlements.
I go there as an individual. And so there are, there is of course, goes without saying that there's a crackdown any kind of, you know, I severe crackdown on any kind of sort of, you know, engagement with even engagement that people might want to have with the state authorities at this moment in time in
India. But people are finding ways around it. Excellent. And video?
Yes.
Yeah, I would, I would respond to am I audible? Yes, I'll respond to the question on the relation between formal and informal and and then the emissions such as the United States interventions such as such part mission, cleaning your campaign.
And so how is this changing? But there's one thing that, well, I would basically talk about 2 things.
First is that state has a very reductionist view on on informal waste recycling for for the state reduces down to the waste picking work.
Whereas if you would have seen in my the, the value Chen hierarchy, it only begins from we speaking to a sorting and then sorting and washing and grinding and further politician.
So there are series of works that happen in the name of basically cycling in Mumbai and it's across the Mumbai metropolitan region but also we have seen in the works of, Gary Gillin and others.
All over across India. So that's one bit, having a very reductionist to you.
But the other bit is, there's an involvement of, so it's, it's, you know, involving the NGOs and really offering the opportunity for the best speakers to work at the drivers recycling centers that government in the case of Mumbai has set up in across various neighborhoods.
There are 46 of them that are up and running in across Mumbai and the concept is similar to what informal wasteless atler would do they would you know state would intervene and and sort of occupy some payment side and sides of the payment and make it a shed like a structure wherein waste from the neighborhood would
be collected and and these way speakers would be involved in sorting work. And so one thing that can be perceptibly seen was when I interviewed people over there that they're working number of you know working hours have definitely improved where in while in informal settings there would be like 12Â h ship for men and 8Â h shift for women.
Over here the the wages are slightly decent and the number of hours are reduced from 12 to 8 for men, 8 or 9.
But the other thing is the element of choice that the way speaking work offers, which, wherein when I interviewed many, I also via one of the, one of the things that Akon Foundation does is supporting the lives of the, the base workers.
So we have, as our recipient of some of the, some of the work, some of the, donations that the foundation does is a voice, women's race because collective inarabi and there's a very fascinating story round it by I won't go in detail.
The thing that they mentioned is that the reason behind them being in in speaking is that the sheer choice that they have instead of, you know, choice in terms of number of working hours they have to put a choice in terms of where they can go and what they have to do rather than just sitting in with soldiers, you know, sitting in a
go down and sorting waste for, you know, it's a very, highly, you know, sort of amenable labor, breaking kind of work you just sit and in a position and keeps.
Shifting through a shuffling through the different types of waste. So I think there's an element of choice that, you know, Intervention such as switch while admission doesn't really take into consideration and of course it does offer a you know better social security and access to health is very much acceptable but but I think that the perception of this informal basis
Yeah. That's helpful. Thank you. Darren?
cycling work is quite reductionist. That's what I would end.
Thank you for that question. I think on the The formal and the informal differences. That I'm talking about in the in the paper.
Is mostly based on a kind of a simple definition of of how the structural power is kind of shared and and this organization or the committees that are based in the neighborhood or the settlement.
Are kind of able to participate and share the power.
With the government or the executive parties. So, so there are some groups which can be.
Which can be formally are closer to the executive bodies or the government. But then there are also some informal committees one has to understand that these are also though not institutional closer to the government but can claim or can you know kind of negotiate and a locus of power.
Is also with them. On the on the idea of like go like kind of issues of co-optation that this government can do there are different avenues.
Through it tries and of course we cannot deny the issue of the backdoor negotiations or kind of party networks that are kind of party networks that are more much more wider and negotiations or party networks that are more much more wider and things of negotiation or party networks that are more much more wider and things of negotiation happening.
And one has to also look at like I will share anecdote that, You know, these slum development associations.
Before becoming a slum development associations the executive body will go to this kind of people they know in the neighborhood and they kind of you know, create one body.
Before designating inverse slum development association and they will tell that you know this is the letter you need to send to the executive body and then we will there is a back door.
Kind of process happening. So there is a estimate is much more complex. What I think. Thank you.
Thank you. And Pitt Bob and.
Yeah, there were many questions actually so I'm just trying to and very little time actually negative time.
So only a so I'm putting them under 3 categories and quickly respond to them. It depends on you see there's a difference between whether you see yourself as a campaign or as a in the case of Saja Manch.
It was very different. It was not just a campaign. Sargeamans used to see itself as a longer term you know movement in the city it was not just a simple campaign against Islam addictions and but it was trying to represent the voice of the people of the poor in the city basically.
So I think that clarity is required. In terms of whether you are a campaign or a movement, whether you are looking for a transformation or translocation if you have to connect it with the you know the larger questions of urban social movement.
Second is on ideology I think. Yeah, mainly and I think in terms of ideology it was of course a class-based moment because it was representing the voice of the poor but of course it was unable to capture the unlike Mabeli campaign which Sashi mentioned that it was.
Mavidly campaign is actually able to capture the diversity within the class also. Gender, cast, legend, so on and so forth.
Sergeant Manch, I don't think that there was any discussion about the diversity within the class. So it was just a class-based movement and ideology also just linking it with the question of whether it was class location and transformative.
I think it was very much it was not looking for in terms of it didn't have a longer term you know sustainability because it was just it was not a transformative in nature, it was translocation.
Okay, I'll just with the final point on your question about So I don't know why Palmer's movement was successful and despite diverse ideology I would say That is, that the question or?
Okay, I'll just make my comment whatever I've understood from that. Farmers movement I would say was still you know there was a binding thread between different unions which were involved in farmers moment.
There was some sort of an ideology which which brought all of them together and the leaders were trying to make sure that at least you know that ideology remains despite several you know differences peripheral you know issues in within the moment i think the leadership in the farmers moment was very strong Unlike Sargeamans, which was unstructured and
without any leadership. I think I just stopped here. That's great. And we have a bigger audience for a snay house response.
So finally. Yeah, that might be easier. Yeah, I mean indeed I didn't get a chance to talk about the counter narratives as I was saying in the counter narratives as I was saying in the presentation.
I just didn't have enough time narratives as I was saying in the presentation. I just didn't have enough time.
I just didn't have enough time, but very quickly and Beatrice Jarogy also points this out in her own work, but very quickly and Beatrice Jarogy also points this out in her own work, there is a sort of dual image of the traffic police in public imagination. There is a sort of dual image of the traffic police in public imagination.
On the one hand, they are objects of IR and annoyance, in public imagination. On the one hand, they are objects of IRA and annoyance because they're sort of, they are objects of IRL and annoyance because they're sort of, you know, you're constantly getting traffic tickets or a make some money on the go, more elite interlocutors were very much in favor of not
just like higher fines but also you know honestly corporal punishment. I don't know if they were being serious but I would often hear things like the US.
Policing, US has law and order, which is not even true, because they have guns, right? We, our cops are equipped with nothing.
So how are they going to manage this sort of like unruly public without having access to actually violence in a material way, right?
So there was the sort of tension and I would chart it to class based tensions largely around what is the best mode of disciplining this sort of public.
But I'll stop here because there's a lot more. Hopefully you'll see it in a written form at some point and that will address some of these questions but thank you.
Excellent. And thank you to our next panel for your patience, but I'm sharing that panel so I have chairs prerogative to extend a little bit longer but thank you so much to all the presenters and thank you for the organizing of this panel and I think many many conversations are going to continue in the hallways
and after about these excellent papers. So thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.