[Reader-list] 14.7.2001: Pheriwala as Encroacher-Entrepreneur

[Mumbai Study Group]

Dear Friends:

In our next meeting, we welcome Dr ARVIND RAJAGOPAL, Associate 
Professor of  Culture and Communications at New York University, New 
York, U.S.A., who will be presenting a paper on "The Pheriwala as 
Encroacher-Entrepreneur: The Aesthetics and Politics of Recent 
Debates on Hawkers in Mumbai".

Dr Rajagopal has previously co-authored Mapping Hegemony: CBS 
Coverage of the United Mineworkers' Strike, 1977-78 (1992). His 
latest work, Politics After Television: Hindu Nationalism and the 
Reshaping of the Indian Public (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 
examines the impact of the screening of the Ramayana serial on 
Doordarshan on Indian society, and the interface between economic 
liberalisation, the rise of Hindu fundamentalism, and the role of the 
mass media. He is a graduate of Madras University and the School of 
Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley.

This session will be on this coming SATURDAY 14 JULY 2001, at 10.00 
A.M., on the SECOND FLOOR, Rachna Sansad, 278, Shankar Ghanekar Marg, 
Prabhadevi, next to Ravindra Natya Mandir. Phone: 4301024, 4310807, 
4229969; Station: Elphinstone Road (Western Railway); BEST Bus: 35, 
88, 91 Ltd, 151, 161, 162, 171, 305 Ltd, 355, 357, 363, to Ravindra 
Natya Mandir.


ABOUT THE MUMBAI STUDY GROUP

The MUMBAI STUDY GROUP meets on the second and fourth Saturdays of 
every month, at the Rachana Sansad, Prabhadevi, Mumbai. Our 
conversations continue through the support extended by Shri Pradip 
Amberkar, Principal of the Academy of Architecture, and Prof S.H. 
Wandrekar, Trustee of the Rachana Sansad.

Conceived as an inclusive and non-partisan forum to foster dialogue, 
discussion and criticism on urban issues, we have since September 
2000 held conversations about various historical, political, 
cultural, social and spatial aspects of Mumbai in the context of 
globalisation. Our discussions are open and public, no previous 
membership or affiliation is required. We encourage the participation 
of urban researchers and practitioners, experts and non-experts, 
researchers and students, and all individuals and groups in Mumbai to 
join our conversations about the city.

The format we have evolved is to host individual or panel-based 
presentations in various arenas of urban theory and practice, and 
have a moderated and focussed discussion from our many practical and 
professional perspectives. Among others, our previous sessions have 
hosted the following presentations:

* Kalpana Sharma, Associate Editor of The Hindu and author of the 
recently published Rediscovering Dharavi (Mumbai: Penguin Books, 
2000), spoke about slum-dwellers, citizenship, and representations of 
the poor and unhoused in the mainstream media.
* Kedar Ghorpade, Senior Planner at the Mumbai Metropolitan Region 
Development Authority, presented on the business of managing cities, 
the history of urban planning attempts in Mumbai, and the challenges 
of planning in an expanding mega-city.
* Dr Marina Pinto, Professor of Public Administration, retired from 
Mumbai University, and author of Metropolitan City Governance in 
India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000),  discussed with us urban 
administration in the major cities of the country, and the structure 
and functioning of the Bombay Municipal Corporation.
* Dr K. Sita, Professor of Geography, retired from Mumbai University 
and former Garware Chair Professor at the Tata Institute of Social 
Sciences, spoke about the changing economic functions of the city 
historically, and geographical and social implications for planners.
* Dr Arjun Appadurai, Professor of Anthropology at the University of 
Chicago, Director of Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research 
(PUKAR), Mumbai, and the author of Modernity at Large: Cultural 
Dimensions of Globalization (Univ of Minnesota Press, 1996), 
presented on the questions of cities and globalisation: the changing 
social ecologies of consumption, new market cultures, and the 
multiple loyalties and identities being formed by these global 
processes in local contexts in Mumbai.
* Rahul Srivastava, Lecturer in Sociology at Wilson College, spoke on 
the Neighbourhood Project, an ethnographic initiative he has 
conceived through encouraging his students to look at their own 
localities in the inner-city areas of Central Bombay, through textual 
and visual media. In a discussion of the changing contexts of urban 
identity formation, we noted the value of using the city as a 
pedagogical device for students.
* Sandeep Yeole, General Secretary of the Pheriwala Vikas Mahasangh, 
along with several colleagues from various unions of street vendors 
and hawkers in the city, made an overhead presentation and interacted 
with us on issues of hawkers self-organisation, social consumption 
and street commerce in Mumbai.
* S.S. Tinaikar, former Municipal Commissioner of Bombay, Sheela 
Patel, Director of the Society for Protection of Area Resource 
Centres (SPARC),  and Bhanu Desai of the Citizens' Forum for the 
Protection of Public Spaces (CFPPS) joined us for a round-table 
discussion on the Maharashtra Government's new Slum Policy 2001 and 
the competing interests in the process of policy formation on urban 
issues.
* Shirish Patel, one of India's leading engineers and part of the 
planning team which designed New Bombay, chaired a discussion and 
presentation on Mumbai's built environment in the wake of the 
earthquakes in Gujarat, where we heard from Pramod Sahasrabuddhe and 
Abhay Godbole, both structural engineers with long-standing practices 
in Mumbai.
* Dr Anjali Monteiro, Professor and Head, and  K.P. Jayashankar, 
Reader, from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences Unit for Media and 
Communications, Mumbai introduced their film "Saacha", about poet 
Narayan Surve and painter Sudhir Patwardhan, both of whom were part 
of the landscape of Left cultural activism in Mumbai. The film was 
followed by a discussion with Sudhir Patwardhan about the changing 
face of Mumbai.
* Dr Sujata Patel, Professor and Head, Department of Sociology, 
University of Pune, spoke on politics, identities and populism, on 
the basis of her ongoing project on culture, consumption practices, 
and the Shiv Sena and her forthcoming edited anthology, co-edited 
with Jim Masselos, titled Mumbai: Bombay's Future?. This will be the 
third volume in the series, co-edited with Alice Thorner, of which 
the first two volumes were Bombay: Metaphor for Modern Culture, and 
Bombay: Mosaic of Modern India (both Oxford University Press India, 
1995).
* Dr Mariam Dossal, Head, Department of History, Mumbai University, 
spoke on nationalist architecture and the  Bombay School of 
Architecture in the colonial and postcolonial periods. Dr Dossal is 
the author of Imperial Designs and Indian Realities: The Planning of 
Bombay City 1845-1875 (Oxford University Press India, 1991).
* B. Rajaram, Managing Director of Konkan Railway Corporation, and Dr 
P.G. Patankar,  former Chairman of the Bombay Electric Supply & 
Transport Undertaking (BEST) and currently with Tata Consultancy 
Services joined us for a panel discussion on public transport 
alternatives for Mumbai: the Sky Bus and Underground Metro.
* Ved Segan, Vikas Dilawari, and Pankaj Joshi, three noted 
conservation architects, featured in a panel discussion on the social 
relevance of heritage and conservation architecture in Mumbai.
* Sucheta Dalal, business journalist, author, and Consulting Editor, 
Financial Express talked to us about institutional finance in the 
city.  Dalal co-authored with Debashis Basu The Scam: Who Won, Who 
Lost, Who Got Away, about the Harshad Mehta scam, a story which she 
broke; she is the biographer of A.D. Shroff, financial expert and 
founder of the Forum of Free Enteprise (Viking Press, 2000).
* Debi Goenka, of the Bombay Environmental Action Group, and 
Chandrashekhar Prabhu, architect and environmental and housing 
activist, joined Professor Sudha Srivastava, Dr Geeta Kewalramani, 
and Dr Dipti Mukherji, of the University of Mumbai Department of 
Geography, for a panel discussion on the salt pan lands in Mumbai, 
the politics of land use and the Coastal Regulation Zone Act.

These broad concerns have been the impetus for our conversation. We 
feel that it is through marrying such general discussions to a more 
focussed engagement with the many aspects of urban life, that we can 
promote quality debate and discussion on urban theory and practice in 
Mumbai. As almost any issue deemed "urban" has numerous dimensions -- 
legally, politically, economically, spatially, historically -- the 
Mumbai Study Group is meant as a multi-disciplinary forum for 
discussion and mutual criticism by professionals in their respective 
fields of urban practice: whether as architects or planners, lawyers 
or journalists, academics or activists.Through such a conversation, 
we hope to build an inclusive community of urban citizens, which 
while grounding itself in the practices of professionals also has a 
clear critical perspective, situating Mumbai in the theories and 
practices of urbanism globally.


CONTACT US

We invite all urban researchers, practitioners and other interested 
individuals to join us in our fortnightly conversations, and suggest 
topics for presentation and discussion. For any more information, 
kindly contact one of the Joint Convenors of the Mumbai Study Group: 
ARVIND ADARKAR, Architect, Researcher and Lecturer, Academy of 
Architecture, Phone 2051834, <adarkars at vsnl.com>; DARRYL D'MONTE, 
Journalist and Writer, 6427088 <darryl at vsnl.com>; SHEKHAR KRISHNAN, 
Coordinator-Associate, Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research 
(PUKAR), 4462728, <pukar at bol.net.in>; PANKAJ JOSHI, Conservation 
Architect, Lecturer, Academy of Architecture, and PUKAR Associate, 
8230625, <pjarch at vsnl.com>.