In convening the third session of the World Urban Forum in Vancouver, the United Nations Human Settlements Program has asked us to focus our attention on the Sustainable City and consider critical challenges across three sub-themes: • Urban Growth And Environment• Partnership And...

This paper explores three important but interrelated issues: The power of example; the fragment as evidence; and finally, the field experience and the possibility of generalisation. These issues are central in the current discourse of social science practice in which serious doubts are being raised...

Watershed development is a very important rural development programme in India. This paper studies 60 community groups in 12 micro-watersheds in South India to understand how villagers cooperate to manage watershed related tasks. The paper examines the factors that affect collective...

The promotion of ‘inclusive citizenship’, through which the disadvantaged engage in collective struggles for justice and recognition, has been attracting growing attention as a solution to chronic poverty. This paper problematises this formulation by drawing on a case of landless...

Scholars have pointed to ethnic and other social divisions as a leading cause of economic underdevelopment, due in part to their adverse effects on public good provision and collective action. We investigate this issue in post-war Sierra Leone, one of the world’s poorest countries. To...

This paper examines the possibility of using economic instruments, especially pollution taxes and bargaining approaches, as a means to encourage or improve people’s participation in environmental management in India. It provides an intuitive description of methods for designing economic...

Obituary: Sharmila Rege (1964 to 2013)

The paper examines the state of public sector hospitals, how they are being compelled to transform into profit churning units through reforms, and in the process alienating poor and the underprivileged groups from public hospital inpatient care.

What is the character of our cities? What are the attributes of inequalities and social exclusions in towns, metropolises and mega cities? How do urban structures and forms characteristic of pre capitalist cities of India reorganize itself as capitalist relations enter into these cities? What...

Policy makers, therefore, often encounter the following questions while formulating the social security schemes. What are the priority social security needs of unorganized workers? What existing mechanisms and strategies do they use to meet the social security needs? Do social security needs and...