Living on the periphery
Six thousand migrants who have been living in Delhi’s Jai Hind Camp for the last 15 years are struggling to retain their dwellings, kiosks and livelihoods as waste-pickers as land sharks try to oust them to cash in on the spiralling value of land. This story of callous displacement is being played out all over urban India today
The law of the land is the law of the realtor
The ongoing battle of the slumdwellers of Golibar, Mumbai, is not just a battle against big builders, but against a system that is loaded against them. It is a battle that is playing out in many different parts of the country
The commercialisation and dehumanisation of the city
The Yamuna River is the site for spanking new stadia, sports villages, malls and multiplexes. Around 22 lakh people reside in the extended floodplains of east Delhi. Can this population withstand the new colonisation that is threatening to invade the floodplains? An interview with Dunu Roy of the Delhi-based Hazards Centre
The role of cities in climate change
The danger of treating climate change only as a man-made phenomenon that impacts nature's systems is that it posits the problem in some distant remoteness and absolves all of us of immediate responsibility. The facts tell us that three-quarters of the carbon dioxide in the world, which is the biggest greenhouse gas, is emitted by cities
Dilli hamari bhi hai
There are over 100,000 homeless people living in Delhi. Only 7,000 of them can be accommodated at the capital's shelters for the homeless. Of the 19 shelters in the city, nine are operated by Aashray Adhikar Abhiyan
Kolkata has the highest number of lung cancer cases worldwide
Seventy per cent of Kolkata's citizens suffer some form of respiratory disease. Delhi is not far behind at 68%, reports a new study on air pollution by the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute, West Bengal's department of environment and the Central Pollution Board, Delhi
Bangalore's contract municipal cleaners battle for minimum wage
Despite a Karnataka High Court order, that contract municipal cleaners in Bangalore be given the minimum wage of Rs 1,800 per month, corrupt contractors and Bangalore Mahanagara Palike officials continue to flout the laws
`Squatters are the largest builders of housing in the world'
Journalist Robert Neuwirth quit his job to study squatter communities around the world and try and change people's perceptions about squatters. At present, he is in Mumbai where five to six million people live in slums
Scrap-collectors fight for and win a new legitimacy
The scrap-collectors union of Pune in Maharashtra has given waste-collectors who scoured garbage bins and collected old newspapers and bottles a new respectability and access. The municipal corporation now issues identity cards to them and offers a limited health insurance plan, recognising their contribution to recycling waste in the city