Latest books

Author: Bharati Dave
Book: Mapping the Quality of Living Spaces in India
MRP: 640 rupees

About the Book

In the fast developing economy of India, the spatial and regional disparity in the quality of living space is indeed wide. This book explores the magnitude of the problem and assesses the linkages and causes of these disparities using the most recent census data for all 29 states and seven union territories. 

Some of the key highlights of the book are:

  • Wellbeing divide in India
  • Macro, meso and micro regions of wellbeing in India
  • Districts with the poorest living space
  • The disparities in wellbeing between the General Category and SC/ST population
  • The disparities in wellbeing between the rural and urban areas
  • Intra-state disparities in the quality of living space
  • Distinctive case studies, such as the Red Corridor Zone, Border areas, and coastal regions.

The book concludes that the quality of living space is both an instrument and an outcome of the ongoing development process. 

About the Author

Bharati Wadehra Dave is an Associate Professor of Geography at Kamala Nehru College, University of Delhi, where she has been teaching for the last twenty-nine years. She is a member of the Institute of Town Planners, India (ITPI), the National Association of Geographers of India (NAGI) and the Association for Geographical Studies (AGS). She has keen research interests in Regional Planning, Development Studies, and Population Geography.


Latest books

Author: Vidyut Varkhedkar
Book: Diary on the Wheel
MRP: 300 rupees

About the Book

Jagriti Yatra is an annual train journey covering over 8000 kilometers in eighteen days across 15 states of India. The tour provides an opportunity to selected 500 youngsters to visit several role models in the fields of social and business entrepreneurship all through the country. The book is a firsthand narration of the journey experience through the eyes of the author who was on board in its 7th edition in 2014 as a facilitator.

The author, Vidyut Varkhedkar, is a Deputy Collector with Government of Maharashtra and is presently on deputation to Pune Metropolitan Regional Development Authority as Deputy Chief Executive Officer. She narrates the triumph of the role models and the panelists and the zest of the Yatris all along the journey. The book brings to its readers a fascinating perspective on the entrepreneurship and the idea of emergent India.

About the Author

Vidyut Varkhedkar Deputy Collector with Government of Maharashtra and is presently on deputation to Pune Metropolitan Regional Development Authority as Deputy Chief Executive Officer. She considers herself a lifelong student and is always in the pursuit of learning new things. She has Bachelor’s degrees in English Literature and Law. She has done her Masters in Social Sciences and Project Management.

She has an experience of over fifteen years at the cutting edge level of the state bureaucracy in various capacities. She is a passionate traveler and a voracious reader with varied interests from poetry to politics. She is also actively involved in mentoring and guiding Civil Services aspirants. She currently stays in Pune with her parents.

Book Launch Event:

From L to R Vidyut Varkhedkar (Deputy Collector, Pune), Chetna Sinha (Mann Deshi Bank) Shashank Mani Tripathi (Jagriti Yatra), Vijay Naik (Sakal Papers) Dr Shabana Khan (Publisher).


Research Papers:

Khan, S. Mishra, J., Doyle, E. & Kuna-hui, E. L (2017). Rethinking Communication in Risk Interpretation and Action. Natural Hazards. 88(3):1709-1726.

Abstract

Khan, S. Mishra, J., Doyle, E. & Kuna-hui, E. L (2017). Rethinking Communication in Risk Interpretation and Action. Natural Hazards. 88(3):1709-1726.

Communication is fundamental to the transfer of information between individuals, agencies and organizations, and therefore, it is crucial to planning and decision making particularly in cases of uncertainty and risk. This paper brings forth some critical aspects of communication that need to be acknowledged and considered while managing risks. Most of the previous studies and theories on natural hazards and disaster management have limited perspective on communication, and hence, its implication is limited to awareness, warnings and emergency response to some selected events. This paper exposes the role of communication as a moderator of not just risk interpretation and action but also various factors responsible for shaping overall response, such as individual decision making under uncertainty, heuristics, past experiences, learning, trust, complexity, scale and the social context. It suggests that communication is a process that influences decision making in multiple ways, and therefore, it plays a critical role in shaping local responses to various risks. It opens up the scope for using communication beyond its current use as a tool to manage emergency situations. An in-depth understanding of ongoing communication and its implications can help to plan risk management more effectively over time rather than as a short-term response.  


Research Magazines:

Khan, S. 2018. Potential Areas of Using Social Science to Reduce Disaster Risks in India. India Accelerates in Building Resilience. southasiadisasters.net. Issue 166: 6.

Khan, S. 2017. Water in Megacities: Risks and Research Gaps. GYA Connections: Magazine of the Global Young Academy. Issue 5: 5-7.


Research Paper

Profane Relations: The Irony of Offensive Jokes in IndiaFree

Andrew Sanchez*
Published online: 10 Mar 2016
DOI:10.1080/02757206.2016.1147439
On the shopfloor of an Indian automobile plant, a multi-ethnic workforce exchanges potentially offensive ethnic jokes with one another while remaining largely silent on actual incidences of communal violence. This paper shows how silence and profane humour are important aspects of an inter-ethnic sociality in the workplace, which distances itself from the retaliatory logics of communal violence.

 


 

Books

With a current population inflow into cities of 200,000 people per day, UN Habitat expects that up to 75% of the global population will live in cities by 2050. Influenced by forces of globalization and global change, cities and urban life are transforming rapidly, impacting human welfare, economic development and urban-regional landscapes. This poses new challenges to urban governance, while emerging city networks, advancing geo-technologies and increasing production of continuous data streams require governance actors to re-think and re-work conventional work processes and practices.

 


 

Policy Brief

Towards Sustainability: Managing Integrated Issues of the Brown and the Green Agenda in Water Governance and Hazard Mitigation

By Shabana Khan
Policy Brief - April 2014
Chance2Sustain Policy Brief Series - ISSN 2305-5960
The paper assesses these inter-relationships primarily for the water related hazards and governance issues in Dwarka, a sub-city of Delhi, India. It also suggests that an understanding of these spatial inter-relationships could add to the effectiveness of the participatory approach to address critical issues of sustainability, such as water.

 

Urban Mass Transit Rail Systems in India

By Bérénice Bon
Policy Brief - May 2014
Chance2Sustain Policy Brief Series - ISSN 2305-5960
This policy paper raises the crucial question of the institutional set up of these large scale transport projects, and the implications in terms of new funding sources such as incentive-based land value capture instruments.

Information Management in the Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BUSP) Scheme in Kalyan Dombivili (Maharashtra, India) and Implications for Geographic Information System (GIS) Development

By Christine Richter
Policy Brief - March 2014
Chance2Sustain Policy Brief Series - ISSN 2305-5960
Information management embedded in scheme implementation is highly complex involving various administrative departments as well as non-administrative governance actors, including political representatives and private sector. This complexity makes the development of digital information and communication technology (ICT) administration to manage information about slums, for instance through Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a difficult and politically non-neutral undertaking.

 


 

Reports

Engaging with Sustainability Issues in Metropolitan Chennai

By Loraine Kennedy et al.
Chance2Sustain City Report – Chennai, May 2014
Chance2Sustain City Report Series - ISSN 2309-8198
Chennai is the largest metropolitan city in South India (8.7 million in 2011) and the provincial capital of the large state of Tamil Nadu (population 72 million in 2011). Before that, under British rule, the city was the capital of the Madras Presidency, and was known as Madras until 1996, when the name was officially changed to Chennai. Located on the east coast of India, on the Bay of Bengal, sea trade has been an important aspect of the regional economy since at least the colonial period. Still today, the city combines political functions with economic command functions for both manufacturing and services, reflecting the region's diversified economy.

 


 

 

This Experiment Using a Glass Cover and the Sun Can Generate Water Even in Drought Affected Areas!

In a semi-arid region of Satara district in Maharashtra, there is a plot of lush green land with about 20 fully-grown, beautiful trees – all of which were the part of a very efficient experiment. The seedlings for these trees were fed with water obtained from dry soil, with the help of solar energy.