Event Recap

The IMF’s World Economic Outlook estimates that the Indian economy will grow by 7.8 percent in 2019, making it the world’s fastest-growing economy in both 2018 and 2019. With 1.2 billion people and the world’s third-largest economy, India has become a global economic giant.

While India’s progress has been significant, it still faces considerable challenges in terms of poverty and inequality, energy access, pollution, and infrastructure development. Recent reforms aim to empower the people, especially the poor, with universal access to education and health, and facilitate their full participation in their nation’s economic growth.

The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) and the Tata Center for Development at UChicago(TCD) welcomed Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India, to discuss the short- and long-term economic opportunities and challenges facing India. Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Professor of Economics, the College, and the Harris School, and the Director of BFI, moderated the conversation.

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The two-day conference highlighted some of the layered challenges facing India’s slums.  Anup Malani, the Lee and Brena Freeman Professor at the University of Chicago Law School, harped on the fact that slums are not just a product of limited state capacity but a withdrawal of what limited capacity there is.

Adam Chilton, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, presented various socio-economic factors responsible for the growing demand for slums. Debolina Kundu, Associate Professor at the National Institute of Urban Affairs in New Delhi, argued that as opposed to the general perception, urban growth in India is witnessing a southward trend and rural-urban migration is also on decline.

While Amita Bhide, professor at the Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai pointed out how slum development narrative in Mumbai is centered on how to make it feasible and profitable for real estate developers, Pratima Joshi of Shelter Associates in Pune explained how granular data guides local government when it comes to giving access to improved sanitation and other essential services in slums.

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The experts, who participated at the roundtable, called for exploring multiple approaches to water quality monitoring and setting standards for the country to follow. A national water quality monitoring protocol, they felt, could be one of the ways to guide institutions on how to increase efficiency and accuracy of monitoring.

The experts also recommended developing a Water Quality Report, which can be a reference document for policymakers as well as those working in this domain. It was suggested that documentation of good practices can convince government about the transformation that can be brought.

The experts also proposed creation of a network of hydrologists, doctors, technology people and social entrepreneurs who would collaboratively look at every component of water monitoring.

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Traditionally, river water quality is looked at in isolation, without understanding its socio-economic cost. As a logical extension of Water-to-Cloud Project, under which researchers at the University of Chicago monitor water quality of several rivers in real time through automated, mobile sensors, the Tata Centre for Development at UChicago collaborated with the Centre for Community Knowledge (CCK) at Ambedkar University and Ashoka University to understand the concerns of the riverine communities and correlate data on water quality with the ground reality.

The event, ‘Revitalising Yamuna: Alternate Imaginations’, hosted at the UChicago Center in Delhi on May 11, comprised a photo exhibition, film screening and a panel discussion, along with presentations of research projects.

The CCK at Ambedkar University has been documenting memories, people’s voices, and experiences of the Yamuna river under their project ‘The River and the City’. Their stories were woven together into a 30-minute documentary that brought forth the realities of various riverine communities that associate themselves with the Yamuna. It portrayed myriad understandings and experiences of people as and when they remember the river and points of connection with it or the lack thereof.

The University of Chicago, in collaboration with the Young India Fellows at Ashoka university, had conducted a four-month-long field study to understand the impact of river pollution on health and livelihood of communities living on the banks of Yamuna in Delhi. The results that emerged from this study were presented during the event.

A photo exhibition on People of Yamuna displayed various themes that point to the connections and disconnections between the river and the residents of the city. It put forth how the Yamuna as a water body has changed over time; from its course to pollution load.

The panel discussion on ‘Connections and disconnections between the river and the residents of the city’ witnessed the coming together of experts on sociology, anthropology and biodiversity conservation as well as the riverine communities on the same platform.

The panel, moderated by Surajit Sarkar, Assistant Professor at Ambedkar University, had Neha Sinha, Reema Bhatia, Meeta Kumar, Bhim Singh Rawat and representatives of the communities living along the Yamuna. It deliberated on changes observed in the river over the years and encouraged individuals and communities to reconnect with it.

More event-related photos at our Flickr album.

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The discussion centered on the importance of bringing innovative research ideas to the foreground of public policy discussion and leveraging them to effect change on the ground.

The panel comprised AK Rastogi, Chairman of Jharkhand Pollution Control Board; Michael Greenstone, Faculty Director at TCD at UChicago; Dr. Sudhir Nair, Professor of Surgical Oncology, Tata Memorial Centre, and Dr. Nishant Agrawal, Director of Head and Neck Surgical Oncology, University of Chicago Medicine.

The discussion was moderated by renowned television journalist Faye D’Souza.

It was an opportunity for TCD to showcase some of its work around industrial air pollution and early detection of oral cancer, which are guided by the objective of translating research into action on the ground.

TCD has been conducting and disseminating research on energy, environment, health, urban development and other developmental challenges in India, forging collaborations with government agencies and academic institutions.

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“Slum dwellers often pay dramatically higher costs for basic services, which results in a so-called ‘poverty tax’, which affects social mobility and a range of socio-economic outcomes,” said Adam Chilton, Professor at University of Chicago Law School. He was sharing observations from a collaborative study with the Tata Centre for Development at UChicago at the conference.

In informal settlements, where there is no public provisioning of basic services, prices of electricity appear to be three times higher than market rates and water prices can be up to 100 times higher, Chilton argued. According to him, higher cost of basic services in slums leads residents to use less of those services than would be optimal. Washing hands with water after using toilets or before having food is not realistic.

Anup Malani, professor at University of Chicago Law School, who has been studying electricity market in Mumbai slums, showed an example of poverty tax. His initial observations suggest that household in a slum in Mumbai consumes around 80kwh of electricity per month. Electricity supply from a formal connection costs between INR 201 – 376. However, the residents end up paying between INR 1500-2000.

Telling the story of another informal settlement in Mumbai, Amita Bhide, Professor and Dean, School of Habitat Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Science, shared how systematic public under-provisioning is leading to significant out-of-pocket expenditure in Mumbai’s Cheeta camp, a large informal settlement with a population of about 80,000. There are 60 contractors, operating largely in this area, she observed.

While Professor Luis Bettencourt of Santa Fe Institute explained how his team analyses community maps, satellite imagery and municipal data from a dozen cities around the world to create a tool that allows local organisations to improve underserved urban neighborhoods, Anand Sahasranaman of KREA University observed that slums in larger cities in India have better access to basic services like water, toilet and electricity as opposed to the ones in smaller cities.

Richard Green of University of Southern California argued that the percentage of total internal migration in India between 2001-11 was much higher (3.82%) as compared to previous four decades. On a similar note, Amitabh Kundu of Research and Information System for Developing Countries observed a significant decline in proportion of urban population living in slums. “Only the slightly better-off and skilled people are migrating from rural to urban centres,” he stated.

Neelanjan Sircar of Centre for Policy Research shared insights on his study that looked into the question: why aren’t women entering the urban labour force in India? Ajay Shah of National Institute of Public Finance and Policy presented a case study on Chennai floods that is looking into the impact of disasters on urban poor who don’t have the financial resilience to deal with disasters.

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