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Many cities worldwide are at the frontline of environmental challenges during their future planning. Navi Mumbai presents many opportunities to move a city toward sustainability. The land is scarce for development purposes in Mumbai, which has resulted in the creation of the suburban area of Navi Mumbai. As the latter has numerous water bodies and drainage channels, which lie in the ecosensitive zone, to stop organic development, the environmental suitability index along with the accessibility index needs to be assessed to promote future organized growth. The present study investigated the planning of the new areas and assessed environmental suitability and accessibility for various zones seeking future development. The analytical derivation of the environmental suitability index was based on the parameters, subindex, and attributes of environmental issues in that area. The parameters included (1) soil permeability, (2) water-holding capacity, (3) porosity, (4) properties of groundwater and marine water, (5) properties of air, and (6) noise. The entire area was divided into five zones for the current work. The analytical framework was a developed methodology of indices calculated from five monitoring stations obtained from the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Limited, India (CIDCO). The accessibility parameters of the transportation network were measured using alpha indices (α). Finally, a nondominated sorting algorithm was used to obtain final suitability based on the Pareto optimality condition. The development suitability of an area was obtained by computing the environmental suitability index and accessibility index. This computation decides which of the five stations is best for which type of planning. The study developed a dimension-wise suitability index for Navi Mumbai, aiming to streamline the planning process and integrate policies essential for planning to attain sustainable development for Navi Mumbai. During future planning, policymakers and planners have often ignored environmental aspects in ecofragile areas. Hence, planning for new development in ecofragile areas has often been haphazard, piecemeal, and organic. The framework adopted in this paper, combining the environmental suitability index and the accessibility index, intended to assess the area's health and prescribe future actions to reduce the negative environmental impacts of development and regulate the same. The paper showed how data on soil, water, groundwater, air, and noise can be used in a simple mathematical model to compute the environmental suitability index of an area. Similarly, graph-theoretic measures of the whole transportation network can measure the accessibility index of the area. Finally, the development suitability of the area can be calculated by combining the environmental suitability index and the accessibility index. The level of domination result signifies the most suitable station/node for different types of development. Based on the results, policymakers and planners can determine an ecofragile area's future land use development as required. This model can further be adopted by local governing authorities to plan for zoning, zoning regulations, and approval of a proposed development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Early Clinical Exposure (ECE) was incorporated into the Competency-based Medical Education (CBME) curriculum in 2019. ECE in a classroom setting is conducted through Clinical Case Discussion (CCD) using paper-based clinical case scenarios. The assessment pattern of CBME and Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) includes clinical case-based questions. Therefore, assessing and developing clinical reasoning skills and critical thinking has become the need of the hour. Aim: To measure the effectiveness of the modified One-minute Preceptor (OMP) model as a teaching-learning tool for CCD to enhance the knowledge and reasoning skills of Phase I Bachelor of Medicine Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) students and to assess the perception of students and faculty towards the modified OMP model. Materials and Methods: This prospective interventional study was conducted in the Department of Biochemistry at Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India from February 2020 to May 2020. Out of 250 Phase I MBBS students, 180 who had given consent and participated in all the sessions were included. Eight faculty members voluntarily participated in the study. The faculty involved in CCD for the control and study groups were different and selected through randomisation. After a didactic lecture, a pretest was administered, and then students were divided into Control group A (n=90) and Study group B (n=90). For CCD, the modified OMP model was used for the study group and the traditional unstructured method for the control group. A post-test was given after CCD, and feedback was collected from faculty and students. Quantitative analysis of the feedback was done using a 5-point Likert scale, and open-ended questions were qualitatively assessed. Pretest and post-test scores were analysed using an unpaired t-test. Learning gain was measured, and program evaluation was conducted using Kirkpatrick's model. Results: There was a statistically significant difference in the post-test scores obtained by the control group and study group (p-value <0.001). A higher normalised learning gain (0.83) was observed in the study group. The modified OMP model was perceived as an effective, interactive teaching-learning tool for CCD by both students and faculty. Conclusion: CCD using the modified OMP model significantly improved knowledge, critical thinking, and reasoning skills of students. Even after modifications to the original OMP model, the effectiveness of this model for preclinical subjects remains unaffected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, the rapid loss of mangrove forests often creates long-lasting environmental damage alongside coastlines, mudflats, and river banks. All-weather, physical monitoring of such areas is almost impossible because of inaccessibility to swampy areas and a hostile substrate. Subsequently, conventional field surveys are relatively unavailable to monitor human encroachment in coastal areas like the Mumbai mangrove region of India. In this context, the polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) remote sensing tool becomes a potential candidate for mangrove conservation and management. Since the Mumbai mangrove region of India exists over the extensive land cover, the large-scale classification can articulate the continuous encroachment because of the location of human settlements or activities across this metropolitan coastal city. For this, the traditional algorithms need the essential improvisation to apply for large-scale data analysis, aiming simultaneously at getting the highest decisive and time efficiency. Here, we introduce a shallow learning model of MapReduce-based Multi-Layer Perception (MLP) algorithm to classify the hybrid compact polarimetric (CP) and fully polarimetric (FP) feature space. Even though a shallow learning model of the automated method is easily scalable, it requires a distinctive shallow learnable feature set for better land cover classification. In this effort, this paper investigates the efficacy of derived feature space compared to direct polarimetric measurements of sensors and shows that the shallow learnable feature set is more effective with both CP & FP observations. Simultaneously, the relevancy of the proposed distributed model of MLP is also justified compared to distributed extreme learning machine (DELM) algorithm and provides a practically implementable scaled-MLP algorithm of shallow learning model. Ultimately, this paper comes up with a better polarimetric signature of land types for both the CP and FP datasets, which can be used in an alternative manner as per data availability for a multi-sensor data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the chemical composition of Particulate Matter, Organic Carbon (OC), and Elemental Carbon (EC) in residential and traffic sites in Mumbai. The average PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations at the traffic site (Sakinaka) were 240 µg/m3 and 424 µg/m3, respectively. The observed levels of OC were 35 µg/m3, 22 µg/m3, and 15.5 µg/m3 at Sakinaka junction (high-density traffic), YP-Gate (low-density traffic), and Hostel Premise (Residential), respectively. The average OC/EC ratio value was high (4.5) at the residential site, indicating contributions from stationary combustion sources and secondary production of carbonaceous species to OC. The residential site has a higher percentage of low volatile OC fraction (57%) in total OC than the traffic sites. On the other hand, Sakinaka has a higher percentage of highly volatile OC fractions (36%) in total OC. The crustal-originated metals were dominating in all areas, but the concentration of metals from anthropogenic sources was highest at Sakinaka, i.e., As (381 ng/m3), Pb (352 ng/m3), Zn (679 ng/m3). The K/Al, Ca/Al, Mg/Al, and Fe/Al ratios were high in all the samples compared to the crustal ratio indicating biomass burning and traffic emission sources of these metals. PM originating from traffic was more enriched with heavy metals that are toxic to human health, increasing cancer risks (CR) through inhalation. The hazard quotient was above 1 at all the locations, and CR was above 1 × 10− 4, causing health risks. According to the dosimetry model, more PM was deposited in the lungs of traffic location occupants through inhalation, increasing the cancerous risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's coastal cities have been playing a pivotal role in international relations through culture, commerce, and connectivity since the hoary past. In modern times, coastal cities such as Mumbai (formerly Bombay) on the Arabian Coast and Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) on the Bay of Bengal have been active actors in international affairs. While Mumbai has been the hub of international trade and commerce, Kolkata has been the junction of cultural bonhomie with Bangladesh and Southeast Asian countries, which gained more traction due to cross-border movements of technology, information, education, trade and finance, and artistic tools bolstered by the New Economic Policy beginning in the early 1990s. Indian states and metropolitan cities are enhancing their positions in international affairs with tangible gains. Mumbai is referred to as India's financial capital and the home to the headquarters of great global business houses and financial organisations. Similarly, Kolkata is known as the cultural capital of India (Sri Aurobindo, Tagore, Shanti Niketan, Bengali folk art and culture etc.) and a destination for foreign tourists, artists and curious researchers. This paper examines the growth and impact of city diplomacy in India through the prism of federalism in advancing local interests in international politics. It attempts to assess the role of Indian cities from a comparative perspective in the conduct of city diplomacy from economic and cultural aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the case of plastic waste regulations, existing policy frameworks ignore that recycling in developing countries is largely undertaken within the unorganised sector. To add to this policies such as Single Use Plastic (SUP) bans disproportionately penalise unorganised sector recycling units and workers employed within them. This paper seeks to identify the global framework of waste minimisation and the lacunae in its implementation in the case of plastic waste in India. This will be based on analysis of national level regulations on plastic waste, court cases in the High Courts of India, and results of a primary field survey of unorganised sector plastic recycling units in Mumbai. By doing so, this paper seeks to explain the importance of recycling as a productive activity, and the need to incorporate concerns of workers and small-scale enterprise owners from the unorganised sector, in order to achieve a just transition to sustainable plastic waste management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is our pleasure to present this special issue of Heat Transfer Engineering with a selection of papers presented at the 20th National and 9th ISHMT-ASME Heat and Mass Transfer Conference, held January 4–6, 2010 in Mumbai, India. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Indian Society of Heat and Mass Transfer (ISHMT) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and was held at the auditorium of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd., at Anushakthi Nagar, Mumbai, India. The conference local organizer was Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the case study of a mental health collective run by queer people in Mumbai that aims to promote mental health literacy and help-seeking behavior that are anchored in the psy disciplines although the founders are not psy professionals themselves. The study analyses the delicate balance between valorizing personal experience and trusting psy authority that is evident in the functioning of the collective and in the founders' own negotiations of their psychiatric diagnoses with their queer identities and other experiences. The analysis is anchored in a broader pattern in India of privileging the psy disciplines over other medical systems although psy authority remains contested and diffused owing to several factors. The limitations of the informal nature of the collective and their acceptance of psy authority are also explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the history of a widening distance and constructed difference between Hindi and Urdu, and their communal identification in colonial and post-colonial India. It examines how majoritarian politics has shaped the language related issues in independent India. Finally, based on limited fieldwork in the Indian city of Mumbai, this paper tries to find out what language does common people speak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of tenure 'contracts' that exist within the low-income settlements involves more than title deeds. Accordingly, 'tenure security' manifests itself beyond legal or de jure construction as it also involves de facto forms of tenure and dweller's perception of security. The perceived tenure security is in turn a function of people's lived experiences which shape the trust they may grant to the future effectiveness of land tenure arrangements. Contextual and historical factors, ranging from political patronage to market pressure to policy provisions, govern the perception of tenure security which usually gets overlooked in policy formulations. With a focus on Mumbai and Jaipur in India, this paper aims to generate and examine the viability of a list of indicators that influence perceptions of land and housing tenure security. The intention is to engender a method towards housing solutions beyond the unidirectional aim of titling and in favour of incremental approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to study the possibility of deployment of free-space optical communication (FSOC) links in India. We have focused on different locations of India for investigating the feasibility of the FSOC link, and it includes the coastal and inland locations, representing the major commercial areas of India. The atmospheric data related to daily visibilities and wind speeds, over 5 years, along with altitude of locations have been studied to calculate the scattering and turbulent losses. The losses due to scattering and turbulence are further added to find the total atmospheric losses for all locations. The atmospheric losses are maximum for the coastal location of Mumbai, and the inland location of Chandigarh has recorded minimum atmospheric losses. We have calculated maximum achievable link ranges for different locations mathematically by using the power link margin equation and atmospheric losses. Further, the results have revealed that the longest FSOC link of an optimal range of 3.24 km can be deployed in Chandigarh, while Mumbai has the shortest FSOC link of range 1.76 km under the average atmospheric conditions. Additionally, we have designed an FSOC system using Optisystem 13.0 software and analyzed the system performance for different locations of India by incorporating the atmospheric losses of different locations. Furthermore, we have verified the results of the mathematical and simulation model. The maximum achievable link ranges calculated by using the mathematical and simulation model have demonstrated close similarity with an average percentage error of 2.42% only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper inquires into the meaning of food – specifically of food smells – for issues of urban citizenship in the context of urban renewal in Mumbai. The city’s southern neighbourhoods are currently being transformed by a process of chawl-redevelopment. Chawl-redevelopment is the primary governmental tool to open these areas up for new residential developments by demolishing old structures and constructing new high-rise enclaves for the rich, while simultaneously promising to providein siturehousing to the old, lower middle-class residents. A common feature of these new building complexes is that the most prestigious and luxurious new apartments are sold exclusively to vegetarians. While segregation between vegetarians and non-vegetarians in the real estate market is anything but a new phenomenon in Indian cities, I argue that both popular understandings of this practice and scholarly debates about citizenship fall short of grasping its complexity by essentializing affects or effects of food-based exclusion. Using the concept of sensorial citizenship, the paper analyses the mutual relation between rights and aesthetics in order to understand issues of exclusion and belonging in the contemporary Indian metropolis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

• Effect of ageing on different physicochemical characteristics of the excavated waste. • Fine fraction (<4 mm) accounted highest ∼45%, while metal content was <1%. • Assessment for the valorisation of the recovered waste streams. This paper assesses the effect of ageing on physicochemical characteristics of excavated municipal solid waste from Mulund dumpsite in Mumbai, India. Based on disposal year, waste was excavated from different zones in the dumpsite. The excavated waste was screened into five different size categories and further sorted into different streams. Physicochemical characteristics, i.e., pH, bulk density, ultimate and proximate analysis, calorific value and heavy metal concentration of excavated waste were also determined. The results indicate a change in the characteristics and composition of waste with age. The particle size distribution of waste revealed that waste above 80 mm was mostly plastic and textile, whereas <4 mm (fine fraction) composed of soil-like material. Above 80 mm fraction shows a decreasing trend with age and depth, suggesting particle size reduction with time. Parameters like volatile matter, total and organic carbon and calorific value of excavated waste also reduced with the age. A significant portion of waste was fine fraction (∼45%) emphasising on its valorisation for success of landfill mining. Furthermore, metal content in the dumpsite was <1%. The findings from this study can be used to reclaim dumpsites and suggest possible valorisation routes for excavated waste in developing countries like India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper raises questions about how ethics in principle are played out in practice when conducting field research. Drawing on my feminist doctoral research I discuss the challenges experienced conducting field research to explore everyday experiences of gender and poverty in Mumbai, India. The paper aims to provide a reflective account of methodological practice from the perspective of an early career social researcher in the context of negotiating power inequalities within the academy. In particular, showcasing the turmoil experienced in seemingly colluding with the neoliberal academy by capitalising on rapport to gain data efficiently and produce research at the expense of the research participants. The paper suggests that by engaging with difficult questions about rapport and collusion, it presents an opportunity for an early career feminist researcher to test the limits of productive collusion and/or engineered rapport. While raising more questions than answers, this paper revisits questions about ethics in the field concerning rapport and collusion and discusses the tensions between authentic rapport building with strategic or manufactured rapport building in social research while differentiating between the professional and the personal especially as friendships develop with research participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impacts of global warming and local scale urbanization on precipitation are evident from observations; hence both must be considered in future projections of urban precipitation. Dynamic regional models at a fine spatial resolution can capture the signature of urbanization on precipitation, however simulations for multiple decades are computationally expensive. In contrast, statistical regional models are computationally inexpensive but incapable of assessing the impacts of urbanization due to the stationary relationship between predictors and predictand. This paper aims to develop a unique modelling framework with a demonstration for Mumbai, India, where future urbanization is projected using a Markov Chain Cellular Automata approach, long term projections with climate change impacts are performed using statistical downscaling and urban impacts are simulated with a dynamic regional model for limited number of years covering different precipitation characteristics. The evaluation of the statistical downscaling methodology over historical time period reveals large underestimation of the extreme rainfall, which is improved effectively by applying another regression model, for extreme days. The limited runs of dynamic downscaling models with different stages of urbanization for Mumbai, India, reveal spatially non uniform changes in precipitation, occurring primarily at the higher quantiles. The statistical and dynamical outputs are further integrated using quantile transformation for precipitation projection in Mumbai during 2050s. The projections show dominant impacts of urbanization compared to those from large scale changing patterns. The uniqueness of this computationally efficient framework lies in an integration of global and local factors for precipitation projections through a conjugal statistical–dynamical approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period between "liberalization," or the 1991 opening of India's economy to foreign direct investment, and the 2008 onset of the Great Recession was one of unprecedented change in the forms of Indian art and the infrastructures that supported its understanding, presentation, and circulation. This period of efflorescence—of multiplying growth in and transformation of a set of interlocking artistic and social forms—poses methodological challenges similar to those identified by George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers in their 1995 volume, The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology. Marcus and Myers' call to focus on appropriation, boundary-making, and circulation, though meant to submit the Western art world to critique, coincides quite clearly with three particularly salient changes seen in Indian contemporary art in the period: the turn to unconventional material as artistic media (appropriation); the deliberate integration of artistic work with the materialities of everyday life (boundary); and the development of entirely new curatorial infrastructures and frameworks (circulation). The present essay examines these changes through Mumbai-based artist Navjot Altaf's post-1996, ongoing collaborative work with adivasi (indigenous) artists in the Central Indian region of Bastar. Eventually registered as the NGO Dialogue Interactive Artists Association (DIAA), the collective's activities have ranged from parallel exhibitions of "art" and "craft" to site-specific, cross-disciplinary engagements with play structures (Pilla Gudi) and water taps (Nalpar) built upon collective practices meant to bridge the considerable social distance between urban upper-class and adivasi artists. DIAA's work with water, like other artistic engagements with infrastructure, highlights the social, aesthetic, material, and political aspects of the built networks that sustain everyday life. Their critique leveraged Marcus and Myers' ABCs, incorporating critical acts of appropriation, the active violation of social and geographical boundaries, and, above all, demonstration of a concern with circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the politics of open defecation by focusing on everyday intersections of the body and infrastructure in the metabolic city, which produces profoundly unequal opportunities for fulfilling bodily needs. Specifically, it examines how open defecation emerges in Mumbai's informal settlements through everyday embodied experiences, practices and perceptions forged in relation to the materialities of informality and infrastructure. It does so by tracing the micropolitics of provision, access, territoriality and control of sanitation infrastructures; everyday routines and rhythms, both of people and infrastructures; and experiences of disgust and perceptions of dignity. It also examines open defecation as embodied spatial and temporal improvisations in order to investigate the socially differentiated efforts and risks that it entails. More broadly, the paper seeks to deepen understandings of the relationship between the body, infrastructure and the sanitary/unsanitary city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mumbai is a collection of seven islands strung together by a historically layered process of reclamation, migration and resettlement. The built landscape reflects the unique geographical characteristics of Mumbai's archipelagic nature. This paper first explores the material, non-material and epistemological contours of space in Mumbai. It establishes that the physical contouring of space through institutional, administrative and non-institutional mechanisms are architected by complex notions of distance from the city's coasts. Second, the paper unravels the unique discursive strands of space, spatiality and territoriality of Mumbai. It builds the case that the city's collective imaginary of value is foundationally linked to the archipelagic nature of the city. Third, the paper deconstructs the complex power dynamics how a sea view turns into a gaze: one that is at once a point of view as it is a factor that provides physical and mental form to space. In conclusion, the paper makes the case that the mindscapes of space, value and power in Mumbai have archipelagic material foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the paper is to present two case studies of teaching and learning practices adopted, to inculcate good independent reading habits in young adults, in an affiliated college of SNDT Women's University, Mumbai in the Indian context. The paper examines there practices in the context of curriculum demands in a globalized world. It examines how the demands of internationalization affect the overall approach to teaching reading and its daily practice especially in a multilingual classroom. The first case study is related to the use of comics (the term is used to include traditional comic books as well as graphic novels) as a tool to teach reading. The second focuses on different strategies to unleash the power of words and use them as a tool of self-expression. In this context, the paper will highlight an Advanced Learners' publication of a monthly newsletter 'Campus Express'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greater Mumbai is a mosaic of diverse languages, cultures and religions. Churches in Mumbai reflect the long association of Mumbai City and Salsette Island which comprise the present day Greater Mumbai. The churches of Greater Mumbai are relics of art, architecture and culture, as well as multi-lingual and religious tolerance. They enjoy a great history which dates back to the 16th century. With the coming of the Portuguese and British, the churches and their surrounding environment have undergone a spatial and temporal change to withstand the needs of the society with increasing population and prevalent intra-urban migration. The contributions of East Indians, Goans, Mangaloreans, Tamilians and Keralites to the progress and development of the Church in the area is immense. The present paper is an attempt to highlight the environmental history of the churches chronologically with sketches and maps. The study also analyses the geographical background and population composition in and around the churches. It brings out the emerging spatial pattern of churches in Greater Mumbai as well as the changes that have taken place over a period of time. Moreover, the paper describes the contribution of sociofugal and sociopetal forces for generating the socio-environmental scenario in the contemporary spatial framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The different aspects of Hindu and Muslim ethnic conflict in India have received much academic attention since Partition. However, compared with the number of studies centered on the causes of ethnic conflicts, few studies indeed have focused on preventing them. We need to examine the specific efforts of the actors and thoroughly address the respective viewpoints of members of communities who have been involved in such conflicts. This paper analyzes how some actors have attempted to prevent conflict through the case studies of the activities of the Mohalla Committees, organized by local police officers and citizens in Mumbai. The Mohalla Committees' aim is to promote communication between local police officers and community members, and to prevent ethnic conflicts. Their activities include patrolling local areas, organizing religious festivals and recreation, and holding meetings between local police officers and people. This paper argues that community policing will lead to peace through dialogue between local police, citizens and the committee members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the regulation of prostitution in colonial India between the abolition of the Indian Contagious Diseases Act in 1888 and the passing of the first Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act in 1923. It challenges the commonly held assumption that prostitutes naturally segregated themselves in Indian cities, and shows that this was a policy advocated by the Government of India. The object was to prevent the military visiting these segregated areas, in the absence of effective Cantonment Regulations for registering, inspecting, and treating prostitutes. The central government stimulated provincial segregation through expressing its desires via demi-official memoranda and confidential correspondence, to which Rangoon and Bombay responded most willingly. The second half of the paper explores the conditions, in both India and Ceylon, that made these segregated areas into scandalous sites in the early twentieth century. It situates the brothel amongst changing beliefs that they: increased rather than decreased incidents of homosexuality; stimulated trafficking in women and children; and encouraged the spread of scandalous white prostitutes ‘up-country’, beyond their tolerated location in coastal cosmopolitan ports. Taken alongside demands that the state support social reform in the early twentieth century, segregation provided the tipping point for the shift towards suppression from 1917 onwards. It also illustrates the scalar shifts in which central-local relations, and relations between provinces, in government were being negotiated in advance of the dyarchy system formalized in 1919. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sustainable cities normally have numerous urban environments that are not merely dominated by private vehicles but aim to promote pedestrian mobility, cycling routes, and public transport systems. Regulating the use of automobiles and providing efficient public transport options are essential in designing a city to move from car dependency to gradual restructuring of both locally and regionally peripheries, thus freeing up spaces for other potential uses such as ecological landscaping and food production within the city environments and as well as providing better-quality living environments. Transportation problems intensify significantly when infrastructure cannot operate efficiently with the increasing demand of commuters. The transportation system of the city of Mumbai, as the financial capital of India, is selected as a case study for the authors to review and analyze different aspects of sustainability on one basis of transportation. Through critical analysis of Mumbai’s transportation system, a methodology emerges to understand the parameters of a sustainable transportation system. Furthermore, this paper offers a guideline plan with a suggestion of a timeframe (i.e., short-term to long-term), a diagrammatic model including sociospatial, economic, and policy approaches, and a list of parameters for consideration with suggestions for implementation at both policy and practice levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expanding urban populations are inducing development at the edges of Indian cities, given the constraints on land use intensification within municipal boundaries. Existing peripheral towns are becoming anchors for this new growth, creating urban agglomerations. Such areas have become preferred home locations for the working poor and emergent middle class, groups that are often priced out of the urban housing market. However, many such exurban locations lack infrastructure such as durable paved roads and transit, because investments are largely clustered within municipal boundaries. This paper focuses on the Greater Mumbai Region and relies on a cross-sectional household travel survey data set. The objective is to understand how vehicle use is linked to the built environment and socio-economics. Spatial analysis shows that cars are used in urban centres while scooters and motorcycles are used in the exurbs. Estimated censored regression models show that greater household distance from the main employment centre Nariman Point, better job accessibility and improved socio-economic factors increase vehicle use, while land use diversity and density bring down vehicle use. A key econometric result is that after controlling for location, land use, infrastructure supply and socio-economics, the expectation of a motorised two-wheeler or car in a household does not translate to its use. Overall, the findings suggest that policies encouraging higher land use diversity, density and transit supply have the potential to marginally decrease vehicle use in the Indian metropolis. However, future research needs to focus on residential location to better understand how the choices of where to live and how to travel are interconnected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides an historical perspective on everyday experiences of weather and climate, through an analysis of the diaries of two colonial figures in Bombay, western India, in the 1820s: Mountstuart EIphinstone (the then Governor) and Lucretia West (the wife of the Chief Justice). The paper explores the ways in which climate impacted upon their daily routine and health, and discusses evidence for the influence of wider climatic narratives within their writings. Climate played a dominant and complex role within colonial discourse, providing both a barrier to colonisation, and a justification for European governance over populations that had become 'degenerate' through their exposure to tropical climates. Both of the diaries evidence this influence of climate within the colonists' daily lives, but demonstrate the differing responses to climate based on the two diarists' social positions. Mountstuart Elphinstone, in particular, had a strong sense of the impact of climate upon his health, in keeping with contemporary medical beliefs equating climate with physical wellbeing. The paper provides evidence of the evolution of acclimatisation discourse during the early nineteenth century, and suggests that European beliefs concerning tropical climates were changing simultaneously within both the medical establishment and the wider colonial community. The paper also explores the medical excursions that the diarists took to towns in the Western Ghats. It is apparent that their experiences of the climate in such towns were influenced by their prior expectations, a theme which resonates with discourses of climate in our own times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Zeenat Aman helped inaugurate new forms of sexuality and femininity in 1970s Bollywood. Along with redefining the rules of a screen heroine's identity, Aman also created a range of grey characters such as Sheetal in Manoj Kumar's Roti Kapada aur Makaan (1974) and Sheela in Feroz Khan's Qurbani (1980). These roles became associated with hugely popular songs of the period, lip-synched by Aman, including ‘Aap jaisa koi,’ from Qurbani, and ‘Main naa bhoolunga’, from Roti Kapada aur Makaan. This paper explores how these repeated song sequences reflect Aman's positioning within these narratives even as they allow her to reshape her role in innovative ways. In this way, this paper examines how Zeenat Aman deviated from earlier binary models imposed upon Bollywood heroines, pitting heroine against vamp and, in the process, created new modes of femininity and female agency within these films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If informality has been conventionally understood as a territorial formation or as a labour categorisation, this paper offers an alternative conceptualisation that conceives informality and formality as forms of practice. The paper examines how different relations of informal and formal practice enable urban planning, development and politics, and explores the changing relationship between informality and formality over time. To illustrate the political potential of conceiving informality and formality as practices, it highlights the fall-out from a particular urban crisis: the 2005 Mumbai monsoon floods. In the final section, the paper offers three conceptual frames for charting the changing relations of informal and formal practices: speculation, composition, and bricolage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In scholarly and popular texts, Mumbai is invoked as an iconic example of the problem of urban informal settlements in the twenty-first century. While such representations oscillate between tropes of accommodation and marginalization, they often obfuscate the compromised and historical successes of settler politics in the city. In this paper, the authors use an international urbanization conference as a starting point for exploring Mumbai settlers' housing practices. They examine the processes through which emergent forms of inclusion have been conceptually unhinged from longstanding struggles against inequality. By examining the complex interplay of housing politics, social mobilization, and municipal policy in Mumbai, the paper argues for more careful attention to new regimes of governing that accompany aspirations for 'inclusion' in the cities of the urban age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to answer the question: why do the police use deadly force in a democratic country? Police shootings in India are better known as encounters, a term that refers to a specific type of police contact—a spontaneous, unplanned ‘shoot-out’ between the police and alleged criminals, in which the criminal is usually killed, with few or no police injuries. The police use of deadly force remains largely unquestioned or unaccountable. This paper explores the wider structural and systemic factors that create conditions in which killing ‘hardened’ criminals seems to be the last resort for the police to gain some control in the fight against crime. Wider cultural and specifically police sub-cultural factors that make police killing of alleged criminals both feasible and acceptable in a democratic country are discussed. Based on a qualitative study of Mumbai police officers’ narratives accounting for use of deadly force, the paper draws upon wider policing literature in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, South Africa and certain Latin American countries to explain why this form of police violence occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes the work and collaborations that contributed to the growth of the psychoanalytic community in Mumbai and Kolkata. It describes this with both the development of the Psychoanalytic Observation Studies Training and later, the Child Psychotherapy training. The second part of the paper gives a brief overview of a student's experience of observing a baby in Mumbai. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few years Mumbai -- India's financial and commercial capital - has been affected by adverse climatic events leading to flooding and landslides resulting in high loss of lives and property. While different sections of the population were affected, the poor and the socially marginalized -- living in environmentally risk prone areas -- were more affected than others. In view of the dearth of comprehensive studies linking social vulnerability and environmental risks in Mumbai, this paper attempts to throw some light on this relationship with a specific focus on populations living and working close to the Mithi river which flows through parts of the city. Flooding of the Mithi river has been a major reason for death and destruction in the city during major flooding events in recent years. Contrary to popular views blaming the government, the local municipal corporation and encroachments for enhanced environmental hazards in Mumbai, the paper brings out a more complicated picture of the links between poverty, power distribution in society, discrimination, and environmental changes and shifts that have led to the current crisis. In doing so the article engages with some classical sociological perspectives on risk developed by Mary Douglas and Ulrich Beck, and critiques their applicability, especially in non-western contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A handful of recent film studies publications have taken as their subject composers' reflexive and analytical accounts of their own practice in creating music for film. This paper aims to take that approach a step further by exploring both the collaborative creative processes behind the composition of my score for the 2007 South African/Danish film, My Black Little Heart, and the cross-cultural representational issues raised by it. It is often unacknowledged by composers how much a director, producer or music editor informs the final score, and I examine the often very subtle decision-making processes, the constant adjustments and readjustments, that occurred between the film maker (in this case, the director) and myself, the composer, in the creation of the film's music. An unusual consequence of the high level of creative reciprocity on this project was the powerful influence the music had on the structure of the film. This paper adds to a growing body of recent scholarship that sees a consideration of the production process as fundamental to an understanding of music's active role in the creation of meaning in a film; the antithesis of seeing the score as simply music tacked on to a virtually complete film. This paper also examines the way the film uses a number of diegetic music cues associated with specific characters as a shorthand delineation of their racial, religious and sub-cultural identities. I look at the representational value of these cues and how they relate to stereotypes, myths and metaphors used to describe post-apartheid society, as well as how this relates to the film's representation of South African realities. The article ends with a brief analysis and interpretation of the music, its meaning and effects, but rather unusually, this is done from the perspective of the composer, something that is still relatively rare in film music studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of cosmopolitanism in Bombay often focus on the rubrics of communal tension, tolerance, and violence, and frequently report the decline of a once cosmopolitan city, especially as a result of the communal riots and bombings that occurred in the early 1990s. However, claims that the city has undergone a general social transformation since the 1990s need to be tempered by the multiple forms of cosmopolitan imaginations and practices that exist in the city. There is a wide variety of alternative cosmopolitan formations—not all of them progressive—reflected in civil society organizations and lifestyle changes for different groups, and often vividly reflected in film. This paper will chart two examples of contemporary cosmopolitanism. The first part of the paper explores the cautious optimism of film in the promise of cosmopolitan Bombay during the early years of Independence, before briefly discussing how cinema later attempted to reflect the destabilizing of the postcolonial vision of urban national development. The second part of the paper begins with discussion of the contemporary cinematic portrayal of elite-oriented global cosmopolitan modernity, and then contrasts this with a different form of global cosmopolitan modernity articulated through the work of the Slum/Shack Dwellers International network. This discussion conceives of cosmopolitanism as social, marking a counterpoint to the tendency in discourses of liberal cosmopolitanism that emphasizes the agency of the globally aware individual. Methodologically, the paper seeks to demonstrate that relating often analytically separate realms such as film and civil society can provide a wider politicocultural lens through which to examine urban change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines an ongoing intervention in sanitation in informal settlements in Mumbai, India. The Slum Sanitation Programme (SSP) is premised upon 'partnership', 'participation', and 'cost recovery' in the delivery of large toilet blocks as a practical solution to the stark lack and inadequacy of sanitation, and offers an opportunity to interrogate a growing consensus on sanitation provision among mainstream development agencies. In the paper, I argue for a more flexible approach to policy infrastructure, technical infrastructure, and cost recovery in urban sanitation interventions. I also consider whether the SSP, as the largest city project of its nature in Indian history, marks a shift in the relationship between the state and the 'slum' in Mumbai. I suggest that, despite constituting a change from ad hoc sanitation provision to a more sustained and universal policy, informal settlements in the SSP remain populations outside the sphere of citizenship and notions of the clean, ordered modern city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the construction of housing for lower-middle-class groups is financed in developing countries. Although it focuses on a single case study from Mumbai (previously Bombay), the case suggests that the conventional policy focus on mortgage finance for individual consumers may be insufficient, and that policy makers should also consider the problem of development finance for housing producers, including consumer cooperatives. Second, it indicates that successful financing strategies are likely to involve an overlap of both formal and informal practices. Third, in the documented case the tenants' group succeeded in leveraging the development potential of their land to cross-subsidise its housing costs. However, the paper highlights the difficulties involved and cautions against any policy reliance on such a strategy as a financing panacea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the complexities involved in 'enabling' the provision of housing in developing countries. In conventional thinking the enabling strategy focuses on the ability of the private sector, specifically the 'markets', to deliver housing. Enabling has been promoted as consisting of, primarily, decentralisation, privatisation, deregulation and demand-driven development. The focus of the policy prescriptions is to reduce the 'damaging' involvement of the state. This paper presents evidence from slum redevelopment programmes in Mumbai, India, to demonstrate that enabling is likely to be much more complicated. Paradoxically, enabling housing provision through market mechanisms may require four levels of seeming policy contradictions - both decentralisation and centralisation; both privatisation and public investment; both deregulation and new regulations, and both demand-driven and supply-driven development. In other words, enabling is likely to require a different type of state involvement, not necessarily less state involvement. A complex and more sophisticated role of the state is necessary to provide the institutional support for well functioning property markets, as well as to capture the opportunities high value property markets provide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing policy formulation should be informed by a careful understanding of the behaviour of the urban housing market, as reflected by housing demand behaviour. Such basic information is important, not only for improved project design but also for the development of better sector-wide policies. The overall analysis in this paper stresses the importance of prices and income on the demand for housing in Mumbai metropolitan region. Estimates of housing demand function are given. In our analysis, we account for rent control in Mumbai which distorts rents. The results indicate that housing demand is elastic with respect to income and price. The income and price elasticities are around 1 and -1 respectively. We also estimate income and price elasticities for different income classes. The paper concludes with policy prescriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structures built in the sea are traditionally designed according to historical climate observations or hindcasts. In geographical locations typical of India, such designs do not take the effect of future climate change into account. For structural safety, considerations of such effects are highly desirable. Many recent studies have demonstrated likely changes in the extreme wave conditions at different offshore locations. This paper reports similar results in the Mumbai High region, where the majority of India's offshore oil platforms are located. Using historical wind data provided by the National Centre for Environmental Prediction/National Centre for Atmospheric Research and a Canadian general circulation model for future data (CMIP5-RCP8.5), a numerical wave model of the past and future wave conditions was simulated over a 40-year period. A statistical analysis of both past and projected datasets obtained significant wave heights with a 100-year return. The comparison of wave heights derived from past and future datasets showed that wave magnitudes would increase at almost all locations within the Mumbai High area. The northern locations may undergo a significant rise from 10% to 28%, while the southern sites may experience a smaller increase, from almost zero to 10%, under the highest projected pathway of global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Activity-based modelling approaches require a typical survey instrument which can collect the finer details of activities of each individual over both time and space. This paper focuses on the design of a new survey instrument called an activity-travel diary; examines its method of administration; and analyses activity-travel behaviour in the context of developing countries. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region in India is selected as the study area. With the aim of understanding the activities of each individual over a period of time, a pilot survey was conducted in a continuous time frame for a period of 15 days, followed by a main survey. The analysis of data collected by the instrument reveals some interesting facts regarding the relationships between socioeconomic attributes, activities and trip making behaviour. Identification of interactions among households and other members were also facilitated by the newly designed diary, which is not a well-versed topic for research in the context of a developing economy like Mumbai's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Slums pose a significant challenge for urban planning and policy as they provide shelter to a third of urban residents. UN-Habitat reports that, in 2001, approximately 924 million people lived in slums or informal settlements across the world (UN-Habitat, 2003). However, varying definitions of what constitutes a slum result in different slum population estimates. Most definitions treat a slum as a community of several households, rarely recognizing that housing conditions differ for each individual household within the area. Moreover, definitions of slums usually take a dichotomous approach whereby a place is either a slum or not. Little attempt is made to go beyond this slum/non-slum dichotomy. This paper moves beyond the traditional ways of defining a slum by proposing a new household level enumeration of slums and developing Slum Severity Index (SSI), which measures the level of deprivation on a continuous scale based on the UN-Habitat's slum definition. We apply this new approach of analyzing slums to a household survey dataset to estimate the total number of slum households in Mumbai and Kolkata, two megacities in India. To contrast our approach, we compare these estimates with the Census of India's. The comparison highlights stark differences in the two estimates and the slum/non-slum household classifications. The estimates by the Census are considerably smaller than those based on the UN-Habitat definition in both cities. By applying the SSI, we also demonstrate intra-urban variability in housing conditions within our study cities. The analysis highlights differences in slum profiles measured in terms of both housing deprivation levels and housing deprivation types in both cities. The main objective of this study is to demonstrate the usefulness of the household level analysis of slums in drawing implications for designing and implementing slum policies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Climate change is a 'wicked' problem. No central authority manages climate change, and those creating the problem are also trying to solve it. Climate change brings uncertainty in ways that cities have not tackled previously. There is a need to explore new governance forms able to deal with change and to enable transformations. In this paper we explore seven local climate innovations to better understand the enabling conditions underpinning success and the governance barriers that are encountered. We connect the more formal and emergent climate governance 'innovations' through adaptation and mitigation experiments in Mumbai, India. Case studies indicate an emerging development model. Effective climate governance has to be an inevitable part of new development in the South. While climate externality exists in all development planning and implementation, smaller community-level efforts indicate how opportunities are offered within existing systems to integrate with larger institutional climate governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the late 1910s onward, co-operative housing societies in cities like Bombay offered affordable housing by using the agency of community to protect against the vicissitudes of the market. At the same time, ideas of urban citizenship premised on the liberal individual received greater attention with a broadened franchise and became increasingly linked to social rights such as affordable housing. While the community and the individual are seen as opposed to one another in the discourse of citizenship, this paper suggests that they mutually informed and constituted one another between 1919 and 1980 in ways that have enduring significance for understandings of urban citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years cities around the world have undergone mass slum clearances for redevelopment. This study of Mumbai offers an alternative interpretation of urban capital accumulation by investigating the differentiated political subjectivities of displaced slum residents. I argue that Mumbai's redevelopment entails not uniform class-based dispossessions but a process of accumulation by differentiated displacement whereby uneven displacement politics are central to the social production of land markets. Two ethnographic cases reveal that groups negotiate redevelopment in contradictory ways, supporting or contesting projects in varying moments. Redevelopmental subjectivities are influenced at key conjunctures by market-oriented resettlement, ideologies of belonging, desires for improved housing, and participation in non-governmental groups. This articulated assemblage of power-laden practices reflects and reworks class, gender, and ethno-religious relations, profoundly shaping evictees' experience and political engagement. The paper concludes that focusing on differentiated subjectivities may usefully guide both analysis and social justice practice aimed at countering dispossession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new type of civil society movement led by the urban middle class has grown with increasing economic liberalization, one that aims to eliminate ‘filth’, including garbage, slums, and street stalls, from the city's public space and to create a ‘world-class’ city. These movements have been critically analyzed as a phenomenon representing a new India aspiring to progress based on consumerism and pleasure at the cost of the poor. ‘Fight the Filth’, organized by a Mumbai English-language tabloid, is one campaign of this type. This paper aims to provide a new perspective to understand these controversial movements by focusing on the forms and aesthetics of this campaign. It illustrates the demands on the middle class in public culture, both to catch up with global India's new consumer aesthetics and to be proper citizens responsible for the society at large, and considers how the middle class is coping with this. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: In the study reported in this paper we have dealt with the intrinsic complexity of the daily total ozone time series over Mumbai, India (19°23′N, 72 15°00′E) by means of detrended fluctuation analysis and phase portrait analysis. From the detrended fluctuation analysis of first order it is revealed that the said time series is characterized by persistent power-law correlation which is stronger in shorter time scale than in the longer time scale. The phase portrait analysis is based on a non-linear autonomous system generated from regression equations; infinitely many stable nodes are found along the straight line x =273.556 and from the behaviors of the contours, it has been revealed that the daily total ozone concentration is unlikely to go beyond 315DU (approximately) and it is almost stable. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In a context of rapid urbanisation in the Global South the potential of ecocities to provide sustainable development is hotly debated within academic and policy circles. This paper will contribute to this debate by referring to Lavasa, India's largest planned 'hill city', a fifth of the size of Mumbai. Mentioned in the influential McKinsey report as an emerging global city, Lavasa, the first 'sustainable' city developed in the Mumbai Pune region, attempts to deal with urbanisation, environment, and migration in very particular ways. Yet, it has been riddled with controversies since its inception, and construction has been interrupted by the courts a number of times for alleged environmental violations. Using Lavasa as an example, I will examine the rise and rise of ecocities in India through their legal and policy context. I will argue that future ecocities in India run the danger of prioritising economic development over environmental sustainability in the absence of strong legal enforcement and monitoring of environmental performance. I conclude that strong environmental policy framing and regulation are crucial in this context if new planned cities in India are to have any potential in addressing the challenges of rapid urbanisation and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, Mumbai has increasingly been understood as representative of new forms, trajectories and processes of 21st-century urbanism. This has been a welcome rejoinder to a continued predominance of North American and European cities within international urban research and debate. Yet it is important to query what theory cultures and geographical imaginations have been mapped onto Mumbai in this recent emphasis on the city. This paper argues that, unless Mumbai’s specificities and grounded realities are used to disrupt and reframe existing urban analysis, there is a risk of replicating the comparative perspectives and visions of élite policy-making. This does not mean conferring paradigmatic status on Mumbai or isolating Mumbai as an exceptional form of contemporary urbanism, but instead generating new theoretical dialogue and opening up new channels of urban research and policy formation within a wider world of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]