Mumbai

Little is known regarding how women politicians at the local level experience and influence everyday political work. This paper remedies this gap by focusing on narratives from 14 women corporators in the newly formed Vasai–Virar City Municipal Corporation in the context of expanded electoral representation for women in cities. The conceptualisation of women corporators’ agency as enabled by nested structures of subordination, situated at the intersection of gender and agency, helps understand the discursive and practical conditions within which women corporators in a non-metro Indian city arrive at varied forms of aspiration and capacities for action.

How should we distribute land areas between amenities— schools, hospitals, parks—and private plots for homes and jobs? What is the ideal proportion for each? We need to do this for two different situations, greenfield sites and brownfield sites. In greenfield sites, where we start with vacant land, we have considerable freedom to choose our proportions, and the ideal we have selected will be a very useful guide for new area planning. Even for brownfield sites, a notion of what would be ideal proportions for land distribution between amenities and buildable plots would be a useful guide. The article attempts to extract guiding principles and concludes with a detailed study of the redevelopment of BDD Chawls at Worli, Mumbai.

This article explores the key features of contemporary floor space index policy in Mumbai to contribute to the ongoing debates and provide the context for evaluating the proposed urban policy changes. Contemporary FSI in Mumbai exists in a policy network of exemptions, incentives, and development rights.

The Truth Machines: Policing, Violence, and Scientific Interrogations in India by Jinee Lokaneeta, Orient BlackSwan, 2020; pp xiii + 250, price not indicated. 

Musicophilia in Mumbai: Performing Subjects and the Metropolitan Unconscious by Tejaswini Niranjana, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2020; pp xii + 225, ` 695.