Delhi Development Authority Research Articles

Public Perception of Urban Green Spaces and its Tree Diversity in Delhi

The relationship between man and nature plays an important role in the everyday lives of human societies. Places like Delhi and its people face major challenges and issues of urbanisation affecting their health and well-being. Urban greens such as parks play a major role in bringing greenness into the lives of urban dwellers. Trees are seen as a major green component in the urban greens. This paper attempts to understand how public sees green spaces and their uses. Tree diversity index (The Shannon Index also known as Shannon Weiner Index, is a statistical index that measures diversity by estimating species richness and evenness.) canopy cover, and tree trunk diameter have been taken as indicators of greenness of park. Tree distribution at the species level is studied in one of the parks managed by Delhi Development Authority as ‘Landmark greens’. The park users’ perception is studied using an ethnographic method. Whereas the Shannon index is 2.2, which is a moderate value, 50 per cent of the visitors could only identify the popular species namely Neem, Banyan, Ashok, and Peepal. People are aware of the potential benefits of trees and plants or the role of green spaces in their overall well-being. Some of the visitors are the regular ones as they use the park with a purpose to heal from respiratory tract infection, obesity, diabetes, and palpitation, while there are 22 per cent visitors who found the park unsafe during certain instances.

Urban Farming, Planning and Environmental Jurisprudence in Delhi

This article analyses the manner in which bourgeois environmentalism and aspirational urban planning have brought about a recalibration of justice for agrarian communities along the Yamuna in Delhi. Bela Estate, the research site, is one such agrarian community in the urban segment of the Yamuna. Following a ban on the farming of edible crops in this region, pronounced by India’s apex environmental court in 2015, the Delhi Development Authority has conducted multiple demolition drives for nearly a decade now to evict farmers and clear their land for redevelopment. Utilising archival sources and based on a close reading of planning documents and court judgements, this article contributes to discourses of public interest in the wider context of development and law. More specifically, it decodes the ongoing contentions involving farmers, planning agencies and the judiciary in this region as symptomatic of the larger erosion of social justice in an urbanising, aspirational India that undervalues the role of nature-based livelihoods in Indian cities.

Problems and challenges faced by economically weaker section and disadvantaged group parents under reservation of 25% seats in private schools

The Right to Education Act considers free and compulsory education for age bracket 6-14 years for every child as a fundamental right as well as Private Schools earmark 25 percent seats for children belonging to Economically Weaker Section and Disadvantaged Group. “12 (1) (c) clause of Right to Education Act, 2009 states a school belongs to specified category and an unaided school not receiving any kind of aid or grants to meet its expenses from the appropriate government or the local authority shall admit in class I, to the extent of at least 25% of the strength of that class, children belonging to weaker section and disadvantaged group in the neighbourhood and provide free and compulsory elementary education till its completion.” Various reports have shown that despite the governments' directives, policy is not implementing properly and parents of children belonging to EWS and DG Parents facing numerous problems and challenges. So, it is paramount to study the perception of parents of children of EWS and DG category as well as challenges and problems faced by parents of children belong to EWS and DG category. This is a qualitative research. Data was collected through survey method. In the present study, four private schools got DDA (Delhi Development Authority) Land were randomly chosen from the list of schools. Sample comprises 100 EWS and DG parents (25 EWS and DG parents in each school) of these four schools. Semi-structured Interview Schedule for EWS and DG parents was conducted to critically study various aspects. Data was analyzed qualitatively using narrative analysis. The study concluded EWS and DG parents stated that they are happy with their child’s admission in private school but they find it hard to bear the extra additional expenses which are regular feature of these schools. Income limit should be raised. EWS and DG parents find academic standards of school are high and their children are facing content and language difficulty. This policy is giving an opportunity to different sections of society to integrate.

Slum-free city planning versus durable slums. Insights from Delhi, India

ABSTRACTWe bring a challenging perspective to slum studies in Delhi, India, by contrasting the attempts at ‘slum-free city planning’ (referring to housing programmes for the urban poor) with the ‘durability’ of certain slum settlements. We examine national and local factors that temper the impact of macro-forces of neoliberalism and globalisation on slum clearance in Delhi, including institutional fragmentation, political networks, and social mobilisation. Based on two settlements selected by the Delhi Development Authority to implement its strategy of slum redevelopment under public-private partnership, we show how space-specific configurations and the interplay of actors may contribute instead to the entrenchment of slums. At the settlement level however, ‘durable’ does not mean permanent. Yet, at the city level, slum rehabilitation in partnership with private developers presents serious limits, questioning the emphasis put on this strategy to provide sustainable housing for the urban poor.

Analysing the Influence of Improved Situation, Capability Level of Actors and Flexible Process Workflow on Public Value of E-Governance Projects in India

An emerging approach for assessing performance of public services is based on public value. Many existing studies have, however, measured public value in the context of online services. In India, most of the public services are still not fully e-governed. Due to the absence of an end-to-end IT-enabled service delivery mechanism, physical presence of citizens is still required to avail public services in many cases. A citizen during his visit to a public organization faces a ‘Situation’, interacts with ‘Actors’ and follows a ‘Process’ or a set of processes. It is conceptualized that citizens’ perception based on situation—actor—process (S–A–P)-related variables is expected to influence public value. In this article, S–A–P-related variables and their likely relationship with public value have been analysed based on a service of housing department of Delhi Development Authority. The study also aims to identify dominant actors who may be playing a critical role in the process of service delivery. It is expected that such actors may influence the service delivery time due to their dominance over the process. A dominance matrix showing ranking of different actors involved in the process of selected service has been presented by using an Interpretive Ranking Process method. The study is expected to benefit planners and implementers in terms of improved public value and delivery of public services on time.

Contractual Damages: Kailash Nath Associates v Delhi Development Authority

The Supreme Court judgement, Kailash Nath Associates v. Delhi Development Authority consolidates the law on award of liquidated damages and stipulations on penalties. Contractual damages are to cover losses and not to profit from or penalise the party in breach. Stipulated amounts in damages or penalties are appraised by the courts and only a reasonable compensation is given. Earnest money, and its forfeiture, stood distinct. It could be forfeited without appraisal. The case integrates the different categories and re-states the principles for award of damages.

Revival of Hauz Khas Lake in Delhi: Approaches to Urban Water Resource Management in India

<p>The decline of urban water bodies in India needs to be arrested for sustainable water management in rapidly expanding Indian cities. Reuse of water after partial recycling can reduce environmental stress. Delhi, the Indian capital, has a number of surviving water storage structures built by successive rulers over centuries to tackle water shortage in the summer. In modern Delhi, a fourteen million plus city, water is supplied through technological networks, hastening the decline of the old water storage structures. The old lakes are choked with filth and the step-wells are heaps of rubble. The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) have undertaken a project to revive a 700 year-old water body, lying dry for decades, the Hauz Khas Lake, with treated sewage water. The idea was to raise the groundwater table and restore the natural environment of the lake, a past habitat for water birds. This paper attempts to evaluate the immediate impact and the long-term sustainability of the effort through discussions with technical personnel, field observations and interviews with local residents. Manuals and progress reports of the concerned organizations are used as secondary sources. The paper also examines the views of government officials and NGOs regarding the role of other similar projects in alleviating Delhi’s water shortage.</p>

South Asian vernacular architecture

The idea for this monograph was first suggested by Dr Michael Brett-Crowther in 2009, and an attempt was made in 2010. Together with Mr A. K. Jain, (former Commissioner, Delhi Development Authority...

‘The destiny of this city is to be the spiritual workshop of the nation’: clearing cities and making citizens during the Indian Emergency, 1975–1977

The urban clearance programmes that were pursued on a vast scale during the Emergency are frequently alluded to by historians but remain poorly understood. In particular, historians have reproduced the assumptions and limited scope of the Shah Commission of Inquiry, which published its reports on the Emergency in 1978. Histories of the Emergency's urban policies have, therefore, focused overwhelmingly on Delhi and north India, on the demolition of buildings, and on the role of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's son, Sanjay Gandhi, as instigator of these policies. This article uses case studies to demonstrate that these policies were not limited to Delhi and its environs, and to show that a concentration on the demolition of buildings has led historians to neglect the clearing of unwanted people from India's cities. The article goes on to reassess the thinking that underpinned these policies through a case study of Jagmohan, the head of the Delhi Development Authority during the Emergency. It shows how his ideas on urban aesthetics and civics informed the urban clearance programmes and how these authoritarian republican ideas suggest a way of rethinking the history of the Emergency as a whole.

Planning Delhi ca. 1936–1959

This article looks at the growth and expansion of Delhi during the eventful period 1936–59. It examines how the sovereign state came to acquire vast new legal powers to regulate the city, the economy and the polity through the course of managing World War II, the Transfer of Power and finally Partition. In the case of urban planning, the process of increasing state control over land, urban development and the built environment started specifically in 1937 with the establishment of the Delhi Improvement Trust and culminated with the formation of the Delhi Development Authority in 1957. At the same time the article also shows that despite this, Delhi's actual growth in this period often sidestepped state plans with the city's urban expansion being moulded by the impact of global events; emerging through the everyday actions of a vastly increased urban citizenry, especially following Partition, and also by the unexpected playing-out of increasing and exaggerated institutionalised state power itself, as described in the article.

Quality of Life in the City of Delhi: An Assessment Based on Access to Basic Services

The quality of life is a fundamental aspect of development and advancement of human societies. However, measuring and expressing the quality of life in any given setting has proved difficult because it includes multiple dimensions. Further, methods based on questionnaire surveys have to contend with responses that are inexact and difficult to quantify. Here I estimate the quality of life of people living in the Indian city of Delhi using fuzzy sets theory, an approach that is designed to handle inexact or ‘fuzzy’ outcomes. Using a stratified random sample set of 330 households, I compare different locations in Delhi based on their access to seven basic services that is assumed to depict the quality of life. I found that the majority of services (in particular, the overall maintenance and transport services) are poor in resettlement colonies, unauthorised colonies, and urbanised villages. The quality of services improves in colonies under the jurisdiction of the Delhi Cantonment Board, the New Delhi Municipal Council, and approved colonies of the Delhi Development Authority. The overall patterns suggest that the differences in satisfaction and access are primarily influenced by location, and within each location they are influenced by economic conditions. Over 36 % of Delhi’s households, which are classified as ‘definitely poor’ and ‘extremely vulnerable’, may be deprived of transport services, around 44 % are deprived of overall maintenance services and over 29 % lack well-maintained green spaces in their neighbourhood. The analysis should draw the attention of policymakers on spatial aspects of development planning.

In Midnight's Children, the Subalterns Speak!

My main point in this article is to suggest that even though the subalterns “do not speak directly in archival documents which are usually produced by the ruling classes” (Chakrabarty, “Small History” 478), they speak nonetheless in bits and traces within the elite discourses. Wherever the elite speak, the subaltern speaks as well because “supplementarity” is the condition of their possibility.1 “Man is aristocratic,” Antonio Gramsci argues, “because he is the servant of the soil” (80). Just like other structural opposites, the subaltern constitutes the elite not by being outside the domains of modern knowledge production but by inhabiting them. It is, therefore, hard to imagine the one without imagining the “other.” I do not at all mean to suggest, however, that the subalterns are able to speak for themselves or to suggest that the intellectuals’ role is now over, but to submit that there is a more complicated nexus between the rulers and the subalterns than it is often thought. In his article “The Impossibility of Subaltern History,” the critic Gyan Prakash argues that the subaltern refuses to be outside modernity, and the discourse that puts him or her outside history is indicative of the will of those who practice such exclusionary discourse. He further contends,

Community action planning in East Delhi: a participatory approach to build urban disaster resilience

The paper addresses disaster risk of an urban community in a mega city, which experiences high risk to natural hazards. The Community Action Planning (CAP) tool is used in this case. It has been developed from five resilience dimensions (physical, social, economic, institutional, and natural), 25 parameters and 75 actions. A detailed CAP structured questionnaire survey was conducted with 89 Residential and Welfare Associations (RWAs) in East Delhi, India situated in three types of settlements: planned Delhi Development Authority (DDA) housing and societies, colonies, and urban villages. The result identifies and prioritizes 32 actions as important for all three settlements. The result shows both consistent and inconsistent responses from RWAs. To give some examples, parameter S3 is “tasks to reduce number of people suffer from water borne diseases after a disaster”. In response to this parameter, approximately 80% of total respondents prioritized action (A1), “promoting people to take preventive measures after a disaster”. It shows consistent response from all three settlements. However, parameter S5 is “tasks to improve the awareness and knowledge about threat and impact of disasters”. Approximately 40% of total respondents prioritized A1, “organizing training program for awareness and knowledge building”. This action was prioritized in planned DDA housing and societies (56%) as well as in colonies (52%). However, none of the respondents from urban villages prioritized this action. These responses show inconsistency in response to specific action. In addition, the study shows the potential impact of CAP process for other communities in cities that are experiencing disaster risks and impact of climate change.

Case Comment: Delhi Development Authority vs. R. S. Sharma & Co.

In Delhi Development Authority v. R.S. Sharma, the Supreme Court of India has comprehensively laid down the law relating to setting aside arbitral awards under Section 34 of the Indian Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 contains seven grounds for setting aside arbitral awards. The Supreme Court has drawn principles from previous cases and has laid down certain unenumerated grounds for setting aside arbitral awards.

Some Problems in the Co-ordination of Planning: Managing Interdependencies in the Planning of Delhi, India

Inter-organisational co-ordination is significant for the effective delivery of the planning function because successful preparation and implementation of planning policies and controls depend on a number of other organisations. This paper presents an analytical framework containing mechanisms and dimensions of co-ordination among the various interest groups, which are then applied to the planning practice pursued by the first development authority of India, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). It is shown that the lack of inter-organisational co-ordination has either slowed down or simply stopped development in the metropolitan area.

Subsidies and Organisational Reform—A Study of Delhi Development Authority

Subsidies and Organisational Reform—A Study of Delhi Development Authority

Housing and Land Policies in Delhi

Land and housing policies in New Delhi have great significance in urban policy. When the Delhi Development Authority was given substantial powers to purchase land and plan its use, it had the poten...

Scope Twin-Tower Complex, Delhi

The twin-tower office complex under construction at Laxmi Nagar, Delhi is a part of the District Centre being developed by the Delhi Development Authority. The structure is in the form of two high-rise curvilinear tower blocks, rising above a four-storey circular podium block and includes two basements for parking and a central mushroom. Both towers are of different heights, the taller tower with a total of 22 storeys and the other tower with a total of 17 storeys, including provision of a heliport over the terrace. The total built-up area in both the towers, the four-storeyed low level structure and the two basements, is over 100,000 square meters. The diameter of podium structure at its base is about 110 m, which gives an idea of the large size of the structure.

Delhi housing and planning experiences

Delhi, the third largest metropolis and the national capital of India, has a multitude of unique problems. Its experiments over the last three decades would be worthwhile material for study by city planners. Over the years, in order to ensure quick physical development and additional employment generation, the government, inadvertently patronized the creation of industrial/ commercial complexes on an alarming scale in a city which should have logically remained an administrative centre for the country. A number of such decisions have caused a population explosion in Delhi forcing the planning authorities to expand the city limits far beyond its economic threshold. This paper, while describing the role of the Delhi Development Authority (one of the largest planning authorities in the world), introduces some of its recently developed satellite townships which are expected to act as a counter magnet to Delhi. It will be worthwhile for the readers to compare similar experiences whether or not such horizontal sprawl indeed helps to contain population growth and development unless adequately supported by policy decisions. (Ed.)

A Study of Housing and Urban Planning in Delhi

Public Administration and DevelopmentVolume 17, Issue 4 p. 256-269 Article A Study of Housing and Urban Planning in Delhi P. K. B. Singh, P. K. B. SinghMr P. K. B. Singh is an excutive of the Delhi Development Authority. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the authority.Search for more papers by this author P. K. B. Singh, P. K. B. SinghMr P. K. B. Singh is an excutive of the Delhi Development Authority. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the authority.Search for more papers by this author First published: 01 October 1978 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1978.tb00488.x Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume17, Issue4October 1978Pages 256-269 RelatedInformation