Shelter in India, presented for the first time the argument (just after the 1987 Bruntland Commission report) that shelter was much more than just a basic need but a powerful integrating concept to enable sustainable national development. It presented evidence based on a 35 year review of policy that formal rural and urban housing programmes in India had limited impact and house building by people was the dominant mode of production. Hence, if change was to be implemented both the state system and the private sector would need to provide infrastructure, resource, institutional and technological support to a people and community led activity.
Knowledge Gateway
Books, reports, journal articles, policy papers and more from three decades of IIHS research — browse or filter by type, theme and school.
FILTER:
ALL PUBLICATIONS
- 01/01/1994
Beyond housing: Child and community centered habitat transformation
The volume is one of the first international publications to link the improvement of the built environment on the ‘world of the child’. It underlines the need for the integration of a child focused perspective into human settlement programs worldwide and presents an integrated method of child-centred program appraisal.
The volume articulates the role of habitat and housing processes as ‘organising principles’ and entry points into the process of social mobilisation and poverty alleviation, through a mixture of perspective papers and detailed case studies from child focussed development, the Rights of the Child to technology, finance and project management. The cases are primarily from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal and India, with a few other international examples
- 01/01/2010
Recovering from earthquakes: Response, reconstruction and impact mitigation in India
Earthquakes come without warning, and often cause massive devastation, resulting not only in the loss of property but also of lives. Many of the survivors suffer from intense and lasting psychological trauma. This book covers the experience of recent earthquakes in India, and what has been learnt (and what we have failed to learn) in the process of managing the aftermath in each case. This includes immediate medical attention, long-term mental health care, and the reconstruction of housing and infrastructure in both rural and urban areas.
- 04/01/2008
Swept off the map: Surviving eviction and resettlement in Delhi
In January 2004, the Tourism Ministry of the Government of India announced its plan of developing a 100-acre strip of land on the banks of the Yamuna into a riverside promenade, to be marketed as a major tourist attraction in the lead-up to the Commonwealth Games. In February and April 2004, homes and community buildings in this area were razed to the ground leaving thousands of people homeless. This book, the outcome of a two year long research study, tracks the lives of nearly 3,000 of these evicted households who were relocated to Bawana on the margins of the city, and describes their struggle to live with dignity in the face of assaults on their identities, homes, rights and lives. The book presents data and evidence on a wide range of social and economic indicators to show how eviction and resettlement have eroded the rights and undermined the livelihoods of resettled families, leaving them in a state of permanent poverty from which escape seems unlikely if not possible.
A critical expose of the human consequences of the push to make Delhi a ‘world-class city’, Swept off the Map raises uncomfortable questions about present trends in urban development and makes a powerful case for bringing the voices and views of all citizens — not just the elite (or aspiring-to-be-elite) classes — into debates on the future of the city.
- 22/11/2011
Urban India 2011: Evidence
India’s urban transition, a once in history phenomenon, has the potential to shift the country’s social, environmental, political, and economic trajectory. It could catalyse, the end of calorie poverty if post-1989 China is any example. It could deepen democracy and human development, leading to more Indians living longer, better quality and better educated lives. It could enable the transition to a less resource intensive development, with lower throughputs, footprints and nvironmental impacts that could reshape global trends because of India’s demographic and economic size. But these are only aspirations. Hard evidence indicates that much work needs to be done to realize these opportunities over the next twenty to thirty years.
- 01/01/2014
Climate change 2014: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability
This latest Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will again form the standard reference for all those concerned with climate change and its consequences, including students, researchers and policy makers in environmental science, meteorology, climatology, biology, ecology, atmospheric chemistry and environmental policy.
- 01/01/2015
Urban India 2015: Evidence
The second edition of IIHS’ urban atlas series is entitled Urban India 2015: Evidence. The themed urban atlas covers a set of sectors: socio-spatial demographics, transport, energy, affordable housing, water supply and sanitation, urban economy, and poverty, inequality and exclusion.
- 01/01/2016
Urban India 2016: Evidence
Over the last decade, political, economic and policy discourses around sustainable and inclusive development in India have slowly veered towards the opportunities offered by India’s urban transition and its potential to create jobs, and accelerate inclusive economic development and social change. The counterpoint is that Indian cities are witnessing an increasing concentration of wealth, poverty and inequality, along with poor living, working and environmental conditions (IIHS, 2011, 2015), and the gap between larger and secondary cities, and large and small cities may be widening.
- 01/01/2016
In the public’s interest: Evictions, citizenship and inequality in contemporary Delhi
Like many cities in the Global South, New Delhi has not been built by architects, engineers or planners, but by residents themselves. One form of such auto-construction is the basti—an urban settlement that houses income-poor residents. A basti marks years of an urban life, built slowly and incrementally. It is more than a ‘slum’—it is a claim to development and citizenship. In the moment of the basti’s eviction, this claim is erased, signifying a closure for the political, legal, social and economic negotiations that allowed a vulnerable citizenry to settle and survive for decades.
Contemporary Delhi is a city scarred by the evictions of bastis. Ironically, many of these evictions were ordered in Public Interest Litigations by the Indian Judiciary. How did a judicial innovation introduced precisely to enable the marginalised to seek justice become an instrument of their exclusion? Drawing on an archive of court cases that resulted in evictions in Delhi from 1990 to 2007 as well as ethnographic research with basti residents and social movements resisting eviction, In the Public’s Interest shows how evictions have been fundamental to how urban space is been structured and produced, and asks what they tell us about the contemporary Indian city.
Students and scholars of sociology, urban studies, development studies and geography will find this book engaging and useful.
- 01/01/2017
The urban food system of Bangalore, India
Bangalore (officially Bangaluru) is one of India’s fastest-growing cities. It is now the fifth-largest urban agglomeration in India, and the capital and primate city of the state of Karnataka in terms of area, population and economic output. With no natural features restricting its development, Bangalore’s spatial growth patterns are characterized by urban sprawl. Although it accounts for only 0.4% of the area of Karnataka and about 16% of the total population of the state, Bangalore has the highest district income in the state, contributing approximately 34% to Gross State Domestic Product at current prices and is a magnet for investment and employment in Karnataka. The history of Bangalore is marked by two significant political developments: the Vijayanagara Empire in the 1500s and the British Empire in the 1800s. The patterns of urbanization that emerged from both forms of control – the British and the royal families – shaped current-day Bangalore. This report provides an overview of the city focusing on demography, spatial and physical growth, and governance structures. Although the focus is largely on food-related issues, it also provides a larger contextual picture of the city’s evolution. While there is currently little detailed information available about Bangalore’s food economy, or the larger food sector at the city scale, the report also includes information about national and regional policies and programmes that have an impact on local systems.
- 01/01/2017
Land records modernisation in India: An institutional, legal & policy Review
During 2014–2015, a team of researchers at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements conducted a series of primary and secondary studies on land record modernisation initiatives across five states of India: Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Karnataka. Based on extensive on-ground research, this work is part of a five-volume set that presents a review of land records management processes, the status of current efforts to modernise land records, and relevant legislative changes.
This work provides an institutional, legal and policy review of crucial aspects of land records modernisation systems at the national level.
- 01/01/2017
Land records modernisation: Bihar
During 2014–2015, a team of researchers at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements conducted a series of primary and secondary studies on land record modernisation initiatives across five states of India: Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Karnataka. Based on extensive on-ground research, this work is part of a five-volume set that presents a review of land records management processes, the status of current efforts to modernise land records, and relevant legislative changes. Each volume is situated in the larger historical background of land and revenue relations in the respective states.
This work pertains to Bihar.