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Today's Topics:

   1. 9.3.2002: Jari Mari: Of Cloth & Other Stories (Mumbai Study Group)

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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 11:58:42 +0530
To: Recipient List Suppressed:;
From: Mumbai Study Group <kshekhar at bol.net.in>
Subject: [Announcements] 9.3.2002: Jari Mari: Of Cloth & Other Stories

Dear Friends:

In our next meeting, we invite you to join a film-screening and 
discussion with documentary film-maker SURABHI SHARMA, producer and 
director of "JARI MARI: OF CLOTH and OTHER STORIES" (DV, 75 minutes, 
2001) which will be screened in this session.

Modern Mumbai was built on the economic foundations laid by its 
textile mills. Of late the city, or so it
seems, is being almost seamlessly transformed from a manufacturing 
center to being a significant node for
finance capital, driven by the service economy. The closure of 
textile mills and the conversion of their
real estate into palatial high-rises or luxurious offices, we are 
told, heralds the birth of the new
global-city. This film seeks to interrogate this public profile of 
contemporary Mumbai by listening to
the experiences of an almost invisible but crucial and expansive labour force.

Jari Mari is a sprawling slum colony adjacent to Mumbai's Chhatrapati 
Shivaji international airport.
Its narrow lanes house hundreds of small sweatshops where women and 
men work, without the right to
organise. Their existence is on the edge -- their illegal dwellings 
could be demolished, at any time, by
the airport authorities, and jobs have to be found anew everyday, 
from workshop to workshop. This film
explores the lives of the people of Jari Mari, and records the many 
changes in the nature and organisation of Mumbai's workforce over the 
past two decades.

The decline of organised labour in the "formal" sectors of the 
economy forces an acknowledgement of an
entire stratum of labour that has always existed but consistently 
ignored. Workers working in conditions
reminiscent of early industrial sweatshops build and sustain today's 
economic systems, but remain outside
the pale of recognition, security and rudimentary benefits. Their 
labour is integral to our "post-modern","post-industrial" and 
"globalised" times. The extensive informal economy in Mumbai thrives 
and
reproduces itself by underpaying and overworking its workers, and 
feeds off the misery and absolute poverty it creates.

And yet the real point of the informal economy is not poverty. The 
labour of the poor, working in
dehumanising conditions, is inextricably integrated to global 
economy, finance capital and the service sector.The deprivation of 
the working poor is neither a consequence of unemployment nor a 
reflection of their skills or ability. Contrary to the idea that 
poverty is a manifestation of economic redundancy, the down and out 
produce wealth and sustain development without sharing, justly and 
fairly, in the prosperity and well being they have significantly 
increased.

SURABHI SHARMA studied at St Xavier's College and the Sophia 
Polytechnic, and graduated in film direction from the Film and 
Television Institute of India, Pune, in 1997. She has worked in 
theatre groups and acted in plays, as an associate director, and 
"Jari-Mari: Of Cloth and Other Stories" is her first independent 
film. It was recognised as the third best film at the festival Film 
South Asia 2001 in Kathmandu, Nepal, and was selected for the New 
Asian Currents section of the Yamagata International Documentary Film 
Festival 2001 in Japan.


This session will be on SATURDAY 9 MARCH 2002, 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 in 2002

23 MARCH 2002
"Girangaon: The Past, Present and Future of Mumbai's Textile Mills 
and Mill Workers"
Participants 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
"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.



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 Rohini Hensman, 
of the Union Research Group, Mumbai; Mrs Jyoti Mhapsekar, Head 
Librarian, Rachana Sansad and Member, Stree Mukti Sanghatana.

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), 4142843, <kshekhar at bol.net.in>; PANKAJ JOSHI, 
Conservation Architect, Lecturer, Academy of Architecture, and PUKAR 
Associate, 8230625, <pjarch at vsnl.com>.


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