By Iain Payne on March 12th 2020
Faced with the profusion of illegal construction in Vasai Virar on the northernmost periphery of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, civil bureaucrats in the Vasai Virar City Municipal Corporation (VVCMC) must integrate the official logics of property and law with tacit ‘extra-legal’ knowledge and discretion to construct, and at times deconstruct, the city. These informal logics […]
By Kedar Nagarajan on March 12th 2020
Plot 138 A & B in Mankhurd is the site for what was meant to be temporary housing for people displaced due to the Mumbai Urban Transport Project II. Originally constructed to house these displaced residents before allotting them permanent tenements, it has turned into a permanent home not just for those displaced by MUTP […]
By Vanshika Singh on January 30th 2020
Scrap work is the linchpin of livelihoods for many who think Hyderabad is ‘’the sone ki chidiya’’ (The Golden Bird) that will not let anyone sleep on an empty stomach. Many find in Bholakpur, their place in the city, as they segregate, process and recycle plastic waste in the city – the junk for which […]
By Vanshika Singh on January 17th 2020
As we desire our cities to be clean, they must salvage, sort, sequester and refabricate the unending waste. Bholakpur in Hyderabad, does precisely that. All manner of solid waste – plastic, metal, raw hides and electronic refuse are processed, recycled and circulated back into the economy by a complex repertoire of techniques and tasks. Furthermore, […]
By S Bharat on December 16th 2019
This article is the third part of a three part series reflecting on the archiving process undertaken to create the Kolkata Urban Archive. Access the second and first parts. One of the most common questions I ask of people, as an archivist, is “what is this document”, usually while holding up a piece of paper. Typically […]
By S Bharat on December 16th 2019
This article is the second of a three part series reflecting on the archiving process undertaken to create the Kolkata Urban Archive. Access the third and first parts. “That every document comes layered with the received account of earlier events and the cultural semantics of a political moment makes one point clear. What constitutes the […]
By S Bharat on October 1st 2019
This article is the first part of a three part series reflecting on the archiving process undertaken to create the Kolkata Urban Archive. Access the second and third parts. Even where archives strive to fill gaps in our collective memories, retrace the expulsions and silencings that produced the conditions of possibility for the present, the form […]
By Manish on August 23rd 2019
The law, in presence and absence, pervades all aspects of everyday life. All our actions and interactions, especially in relation to the State, are either in conformity with or in opposition to some legal code or framework. As a “counterpart of the unwritten”, the law gives us a useful way to understand tacitness: as something […]
By Dipon Bose on July 20th 2019
I am analysing urban settlement patterns and processes of mixed use auto- constructed neighbourhood at Chintal Basti, Hyderabad. These series of images represent the clan-based in-situ timeline of autoconstruction of my respondent, Bhikaram V’s house and neighborhood. They track 80 years of changes in the built environment in terms of materials and processes. […]