Movements - Question of Cities

Jal Satyagraha: From water conversations to water conservation and justice

Drawn from the ‘swaraj through satyagraha’ concept of India’s independence movement, the struggle for water access and equity has spread across rural India. It’s time for Jal Satyagraha to take shape in cities too given the water crises, top-down water…

To record and remember changing cities is to resist their erasure

As cities transform with breath-taking speed and the shiny new replaces the fading old, resisting the physical change is impractical and untenable.…

Watching over the water of our lakes and wetlands

Thane and Navi Mumbai, old and new cities respectively which are often overshadowed by Mumbai, have seen their ecological abundance of rivers,…

‘Resistance is needed for government to perform its basic duties’

Eminent environmentalist Ravi Chopra resigned from the Supreme Court-appointed high-powered committee to supervise the Char Dham road-widening project in 2022 as an…

Why Pune’s riverfront development is a bad idea

The controversial project, spanning 44 kilometres of the Mula, Mutha and Mula-Mutha, aims to construct embankments, walkways, plazas, access roads, gardens and…

Green movements as guardians of Pune’s nature

Individual efforts and collective actions by Punekars to save Pune’s ecological heritage in the past few years have brought hope to the…

How Punekars fought for their hill, Vetal Tekdi, to save its ecology

Pune’s citizens have been fighting to save Vetal Tekdi, the city’s lungs and a popular open space, from being destroyed for developmental…

Nivara Hakk then and now: The struggle for housing rights

As slums were demolished in massive operations and slum dwellers summarily evicted, often out of Bombay (as it was called till 1995), in the 1980s, a smorgasbord of organisations emerged to protest this. Nivara Hakk Suraksha Samiti, a collective of…

How Vadodara’s citizens joined forces to save the iconic Vishwamitri river

The highly polluted Vishwamitri river in Gujarat’s Vadodara was dying and the municipal corporation floated the idea of a riverfront which would…

“The NGT order on Ennore, though important, is a paper victory. The fisherfolk, primary protagonists of this struggle, have to be involved in its implementation”

Ennore wetlands are key to Chennai's flood mitigation and preservation of fresh water aquifers, and home to fisherfolk. Over the years, the…