Right to the City - Question of Cities

Zero-fare is women’s ticket to freedom, work, and study

After Delhi rolled out its zero-ticket ride for women in 2019, Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana followed. Early reports suggest that it has dramatically increased women’s use of buses, and how and why they commute. It has led to…

Building bridges: Why it need not be street vendors versus cities

Though a cityscape is nothing without its street vendors and they are an integral part of a city’s economy providing many services…

We, the people, must fight to save our cities and ourselves

Governments and authorities are the custodians of our ecology but, in the past few years, people have resisted and protested actions of…

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.…

How cities are changing from ‘patriarchy in stone, brick’

Innumerable studies have revealed alarming data on the rising crimes against women in public spaces. Aiming to make the outdoors safer, a…

See the frayed symbiosis between Mumbai and its shrinking forests

The Adivasis living in Mumbai’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) and Aarey Forest, given their deep relationship with the natural forest, struggle…

A new urban agenda for India built on reflections of the last decade

Since 2014, cities have found a special focus in the government’s policies and programmes. But how did some prominent programmes like Swachh…

M-East Mumbai: Votes don’t improve lives but they vote anyway

The cramped, polluted and neglected civic ward in the city, which houses migrant workers and project-affected persons displaced from other parts of Mumbai, shows the failure of politics to respond to people’s needs, in a sense. The triad of roti-naukri-makaan…

The best of QoC 2023

As 2023 comes to a close, it is customary to compile year-end lists of the work done throughout the year. At Question…

Delhi’s double whammy of heat and polluted air demands review of Heat Action Plan

If air pollution is hazardous and deadly for people, then poor quality air combined with high temperatures is worse, as seen in…