[Urbanstudy] Re: Urbanstudygroup Digest, Vol 26, Issue 4

Thu Apr 6 10:04:06 IST 2006

dear friends

Yesterday 27 activists from urban bastis, working on education met at mobile
cretches to discuss a shared strategy on ensuring right to education to
children living in the slums

Some basic concerns shared were

the increasing threat to meaningful education through policy suggessions
from authorities (like the  Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs on making
Maths, Science anfd English Optional subjects after 8th standard)

Increasing non-institutional means of denying admisions and free/ equal
learning opportunities for the urban poor-maily the dalits. Negative
attitude of teachers and increase of physical punishment were highlighted in
this regard

Failing of children in the said subjects in large nos. A survey from Vazir
pur suggests the school related factors are the most important reasons for
this toi happen

A mass campaign folowed by specific interventions in different places in the
city are envisaged in the meeting, strategies and details of which would be
finalised after hearing from organisations and individuals

The gathering was attended by activists, Academics and was chaired by Dr
Anil Satgopal

Please send your responses . also send a copy of your responses to
mosadrel at yahoo.com. You can also call up 9868078123 for further enquiries

thanking you

Bijulal
ISI

On 4/6/06, urbanstudygroup-request at sarai.net <
urbanstudygroup-request at sarai.net> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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>   1. Is that female a contractor? (mythri )
>   2. [Fwd: Citizen intaraction meeting under JNNURM] (ESG VSNL India)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Message: 1
> Date: 5 Apr 2006 10:29:57 -0000
> From: "mythri " <mythriprasad at rediffmail.com>
> Subject: [Urbanstudy] Is that female a contractor?
> To: urbanstudygroup at sarai.net
> Message-ID: <20060405102957.24728.qmail at webmail17.rediffmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>
> I am currently part of the Sarai Student Stipendship Program.Focusing on
> the road construction sites in Trivandrum city,Kerala, my research attempts
> to understand the political economy of urban infrastructure building in the
> context of a regime of privatization. Pieces of legislation concerning
> roads, documents of international lending agencies and the public works
> department, conversations with workers and visits to their living quarters
> and work sites, and interviews with local contractors, engineers and workers
> are the major sources of this study.
> What are the implications of the movement of global capital represented by
> companies like Punj- Lloyd for local capital?
>
> I attended a two-day construction summit organized by All Kerala
> Government Contractors' Association in November 2005 organised in Hotel
> Windsor Palace in Kottayam. Listening to Varghese Kannampalli , the
> association's president one gathers an urgency in his voice.
>
> "We are standing on the footboard of a super deluxe bus, not allowed to
> enter the bus. We pick up and eat the orange peels thrown out of the bus. We
> have to rush forth into the bus. We need to take initiative for a liberation
> struggle (vimochana samaram)"
>
>
> In the construction summit held at Kottayam, local contractors realized
> the importance of possessing expensive machinery. They were contemplating
> the formation of equipment banks whereby five or six of them pool in money
> to buy expensive equipments. In fact, as part of the summit there was an
> exhibition of equipments and a presentation of their various uses and
> functions by representatives of Larson& Toubro Case Equipment Private Ltd.
> The presentation consisted of a promo of a few road-building equipments and
> an offer of discount of Rs. 40, 000 for the participants of the summit. The
> advertising jingle of a loader backhoe (L&T Case 851) heard in the summit
> makes for an interesting read.
>
> This is world's latest technology…It is technology that is proven in work
> sites across the world. Now it comes to you.
>
> Eight Five One is the One
> It is strong and sturdy
> Working all day long…
> L&T Case.
> It gives you more
> It helps you soar…
> Eight five one is the One.
>
> The L&T Case 851
> Is the brute with brain
> The marvel with muscle
> Its High-tech Hydraulics…
>
> The appeal is to the listener's masculinity and it explicitly invokes the
> man-machine relationship and a certain technical sociability which usually
> excludes women. But the lone woman contractor in the meeting and an engineer
> by training, Ms.Lata Kumari seemed to be the only participant who could
> comment in detail about these equipments. As she participated in the
> discussion, I overheard a contractor asking another: "Is that female a
> contractor? (Aa pennumbilla contractor aano?)".
> What I witnessed was a subversion of the terms of man-machine
> relationship, immediately recognized and acknowledged by the men with
> surprise and suspicion. To confront and negotiate global and big capital and
> the regime of gigantic machines in road building, the local contractor had
> to graduate from an individual entrepreneur at the mercy of a Kafkaesque
> bureaucracy of the public works department to a businessman who can summon
> men, machine and materials at short notice. The local contractors, most of
> whose entrepreneurship was shaped in an agrarian setting, seem to be
> struggling in this respect.
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> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2006 16:25:31 +0530
> From: ESG VSNL India <esg at bgl.vsnl.net.in>
> Subject: [Urbanstudy] [Fwd: Citizen intaraction meeting under JNNURM]
> To: urbanstudygroup at sarai.net, ECwatch <ecwatch at yahoogroups.com>
> Message-ID: <4433A223.1060405 at bgl.vsnl.net.in>
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