[Reader-list] 24.11.2001: Women Rag-Pickers

[Mumbai Study Group]

Dear Friends:

With warm greetings to all of you for a happy and prosperous Diwali, 
in our next meeting we welcome Ms JYOTI MHAPSEKAR, who will narrate 
her experiences of organising women rag-pickers, their role in the 
city's economy, and related issues of environment and solid waste 
management in Mumbai.

Ms Mhapsekar is a playwright, activist, and works as the Head 
Librarian of the Rachana Sansad, Mumbai. She is one of the founder 
members of Stree Mukti Sanghatana, Mumbai, and for the last three 
years she has been organising women rag-pickers in several wards of 
Mumbai for their overall social upliftment and empowerment, to 
generate revenue and providing employment for themselves, and to 
relate their situation to larger environmental concerns in the city, 
such as vermiculture projects at the Deonar Dumping Grounds.

This session will be on SATURDAY 24 NOVEMBER 2001, at 10.00 A.M., on 
the SECOND FLOOR, Rachna Sansad, 278, Shankar Ghanekar Marg, 
Prabhadevi, Mumbai, next to Ravindra Natya Mandir. Phone: 4301024, 
4310807, 4229969; Station: Elphinstone Road (Western Railway); BEST 
Bus: 35, 88, 151, 161, 162, 171, 355, 357, 363, to Ravindra Natya 
Mandir, 91 Ltd, 305 Ltd, A1 and A4 to Prabhadevi.


MUMBAI STUDY GROUP SESSIONS, 2001-2002

8 DECEMBER 2001
"Critical Publicity/Public Criticism: Reflections on Fieldwork in the 
Bombay Advertising World"
by Dr William Mazzarella, University of Chicago Dept of Anthropology, U.S.A.

22 DECEMBER 2001
"Shanghai and Mumbai: Sustainability of Development in a Globalizing World"
by Dr Tapati Mukhopadhyay, Siddharth College Dept of Geography, Mumbai

12 JANUARY 2002
Harini Narayanan, University of Illinois Dept of Urban Geography, 
Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A.

26 JANUARY 2002
"Food Security in Mumbai and Thane: A Study of the Rationing Kruti Samiti"
by Mayank Bhatt, Journalist and Research Associate, Institute of 
Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, U.K.

9 FEBRUARY 2002
"Party Politics in Mumbai: A Panel Discussion on the Eve of the Civic 
Elections"
Participants To Be Announced

23 FEBRUARY 2002
To Be Announced

9 MARCH 2002
Film Screening of "Jari-Mari: Of Cloth and Other Stories"
with Surabhi Sharma, Producer and Director

23 MARCH 2002
To Be Announced

13 APRIL 2002
"Gender and Space in Mumbai"
by Shilpa Phadke, Visiting Lecturer in Sociology, Nirmala Niketan 
School of Social Work, Mumbai
and Neera Adarkar, Architect, Adarkar Associates, Mumbai

27 APRIL 2002
To Be Announced


ABOUT the MUMBAI STUDY GROUP

The MUMBAI STUDY GROUP meets on the second and fourth Saturdays of 
every month, at the Rachana Sansad, Prabhadevi, Mumbai, at 10.00 A.M. 
Our conversations continue through the support extended by Shri 
Pradip Amberkar, Principal of the Academy of Architecture, and Prof 
S.H. Wandrekar, Trustee of the Rachana Sansad.

Conceived as an inclusive and non-partisan forum to foster dialogue 
on urban issues, we have since September 2000 held conversations 
about various historical, political, cultural, social and spatial 
aspects of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Our discussions are open 
and public, no previous membership or affiliation is required. We 
encourage the participation of urban researchers and practitioners, 
experts and non-experts, researchers and students, and all 
individuals, groups and associations in Mumbai to join our 
conversations about the the city.The format we have evolved is to 
host individual presentations or panel discussions in various fields 
of urban theory and practice, and have a moderated and focussed 
discussion from our many practical and professional perspectives: 
whether as architects or planners, lawyers or journalists, artists or 
film-makers, academics or activists.Through such a forum, we hope to 
foster an open community of urban citizens, which clearly situates 
Mumbai in the theories and practices of urbanism globally.

Previous sessions have hosted presentations by the following individuals:

Kalpana Sharma, Associate Editor of The Hindu; Kedar Ghorpade, Senior 
Planner at the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority; Dr 
Marina Pinto, Professor of Public Administration, retired from Mumbai 
University; Dr K. Sita, Professor of Geography, retired from Mumbai 
University, and former Garware Chair Professor at the Tata Institute 
of Social Sciences; Dr Arjun Appadurai, Professor of Anthropology at 
the University of Chicago, Director of Partners for Urban Knowledge 
Action & Research (PUKAR), Mumbai; Rahul Srivastava, Lecturer in 
Sociology at Wilson College; Sandeep Yeole, General Secretary of the 
All-India Pheriwala Vikas Mahasangh; Dr Anjali Monteiro, Professor 
and Head, and  K.P. Jayashankar, Reader, from the Tata Institute of 
Social Sciences Unit for Media and Communications; Dr Sujata Patel, 
Professor and Head, Department of Sociology, University of Pune; Dr 
Mariam Dossal, Head, Department of History, Mumbai University; 
Sucheta Dalal, business journalist and Consulting Editor, Financial 
Express; Dr Arvind Rajagopal, Associate Professor of  Culture and 
Communications at New York University; Dr Gyan Prakash, Professor of 
History at Princeton University, and member of the Subaltern Studies 
Editorial Collective; Dr Sudha Deshpande, Reader in Demography, 
retired from the Department of Economics, Mumbai University and 
former consultant for the World Bank, International Labour 
Organisation, and Bombay Municipal Corporation; Sulakshana Mahajan, 
doctoral candidate at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban 
Planning, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, U.S.A., and former 
Lecturer, Academy of Architecture, Rachana Sansad; Dr Rohin Hensman, 
of the Union Research Group, Mumbai.

Previous panel discussions have comprised of the following individuals:

S.S. Tinaikar, former Municipal Commissioner of Bombay, Sheela Patel, 
Director of the Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres 
(SPARC), and Bhanu Desai of the Citizens' Forum for the Protection of 
Public Spaces (Citispace) on urban policy making and housing; Shirish 
Patel, civil engineer and urban planner, Pramod Sahasrabuddhe and 
Abhay Godbole, structural engineers on earthquakes and the built form 
of the city; B. Rajaram, Managing Director of Konkan Railway 
Corporation, and Dr P.G. Patankar, from Tata Consultancy Services, 
and former Chairman of the Bombay Electric Supply & Transport 
Undertaking (BEST) on mass public transport alternatives; Ved Segan, 
Vikas Dilawari, and Pankaj Joshi, conservation architects, on the 
social relevance of heritage and conservation architecture; Debi 
Goenka, of the Bombay Environmental Action Group, Professor Sudha 
Srivastava, Dr Geeta Kewalramani, and Dr Dipti Mukherji, of the 
University of Mumbai Department of Geography, on the politics of land 
use, the city's salt pan lands, and the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) 
Act; Nikhil Rao, of the University of Chicago Dept of History, 
Anirudh Paul and Prasad Shetty of  the Kamala Raheja Vidyanidhi 
Insitute of Architecture, and members of the various residents 
associations and citizens groups of the Dadar-Matunga, on the 
history, architecture, and formation of middle-class communities in 
these historic neighbourhoods, the first suburbs of Bombay.


CONTACT US

We invite all urban researchers, practitioners, students, and other 
interested individuals to join us in our fortnightly conversations, 
and suggest topics for presentation and discussion. For any more 
information, kindly contact one of the Joint Convenors of the Mumbai 
Study Group: ARVIND ADARKAR, Architect, Researcher and Lecturer, 
Academy of Architecture, Phone 2051834, <adarkars at vsnl.com>; DARRYL 
D'MONTE, Journalist and Writer, 6427088 <darryl at vsnl.com>; SHEKHAR 
KRISHNAN, Coordinator-Associate, Partners for Urban Knowledge Action 
& Research (PUKAR), 4462728, <pukar at bol.net.in>; PANKAJ JOSHI, 
Conservation Architect, Lecturer, Academy of Architecture, and PUKAR 
Associate, 8230625, <pjarch at vsnl.com>.