Project Gallery
Property & Citizenship in Slums
My ongoing book project Permanent Slums argues that urban governance has reached an impasse, where policy imaginations and governmental practices are framed and limited by the slum despite desires for slum-free cities. I draw on ten years of field and archival research on the exemplary case of Hyderabad (India), an emerging global city, where slum improvement has been a central focus for decades but 30% of the population still lives in slums. The book reveals the contradictory effects of a slum impasse by asking: how did slums shift from being a problem to be eradicated to becoming a technique of governance? What does this slum governance entail for the politics and political economy of the city at large? Finally, from the perspective of slum residents, what are the structural opportunities and obstacles posed by slum governance in pursuing economic mobility and a politics of citizenship? I demonstrate that prevailing modes of governing poverty through slums attempts to permanently inscribe poor groups into racialized regimes of property and caste-stratified markets, thus legally producing second-class citizens.
Urban Lakes
Lakes and other urban water bodies have become commonplace as omens of urban futures in Indian cities. From the frothing lakes of Bengaluru, to the flood-prone nalas of Hyderabad, to the volatile coasts of seaside cities like Mumbai and Chennai, urban waters are uniquely characterized by flux and fluidity and are sites of ongoing life-making, competing meaning-making, and aspirational property-making. Hyderabad (India) is a city of lakes and streams, despite its reputation for being an arid place. Hyderabad’s lakes tell many stories; historical and cultural ; political, legal and economic ; and infrastructural and ecological . This collaborative project with Pullanna Vidyapogu examines the lakes as multivalent multi-dimensional geographies. We especially pay attention to lakes as caste geographies and as sites of accumulation.
Sanitation Infrastructure
As a Research Associate at Hyderabad Urban Lab, I conducted ethnographic research and contributed to collaborative projects addressing a range of topics related to sanitation such as public toilet management, the politics of community toilets, and the gendered differentials of access to sanitation. I helped coordinate and organize an online campaign called #DontHoldItIn to spread awareness on the massive shortcomings in public sanitation facilities for women. I also worked with community based organizations to support their advocacy programs and their movements to demand better infrastructures.
Housing Rights
Between 2014-2016, as a Research Associate on a Ford Foundation funded project anchored at Hyderabad Urban Lab, I conducted ethnographic research across three cities: Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam; collaboratively carried out analysis of policy discourse, geospatial data, and survey data; helped build relationships and networks among grassroots activists and organizations; among other project activities. The goal of the project was to bridge "1) the gap between local experience in different cities and state and national level housing rights strategies; 2) the gap between housing rights and allied rights such as rights to work, education, health and clean environment."
Low-cost Private Education
In 2015, I was the main Research Assistant on an Education International funded project on low-cost private schools and their interface with multinational edu-businesses. The objective of the study was to examine at various scales the ascendant edu-businesses and startups in Hyderabad providing tech solutions to schools, and to document the processes by which low-cost private schools were replacing public schools as the preferred option for poor families in the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana region. The goal was to provide concrete data and insights for the teachers, scholars and activists who are concerned by the rapid privatization of education across the world.
Open Source Ethics
Between 2012-2014, while pursuing an M.A. in Development Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences - Mumbai, I completed a dissertation project titled "Networking Change? The Culture of Free and Open Source Software Communities in India". My research was aimed at revealing the actually existing political and ideological positions that inform the everyday discourse on the fora of open source software developers. Based on interviews with thirty key-informants and discourse analysis of publicly archived online discussion groups, I argue that FOSS developers espouse a pragmatic politics interested in defending certain fundamental ideals and infrastructures such as open standards and net neutrality, while being agnostic about others such as intellectual property rights. A very early version of my research and academic writing, this dissertation is about about information technology, knowledge, collective action, community ethics, and other things in between.
Image: Christoph Niemann