Settlements In India Research Articles

A Review of Environmental Conditions between Planned and Unplanned Urbanization with Special Emphasis on Kalyani and Ranaghat Urban Areas

Urban settlements in India are generally classified as planned or unplanned as opposed to planned or unplanned urban areas due to land use and taking into account various factors including physical social and economic considerations and land use patterns. Rapid urban growth in India, mostly in an unplanned fashion, is currently a major problem. Urban growth occurs through replacement of vegetation, agricultural areas, wetlands, etc. This results in an unprecedented increase in heat, which dominates the microclimate of urban areas and creates an environmental crisis. Geospatial technology plays a unique role in planned and unplanned urban areas of West Bengal by monitoring spatio-temporal changes in urban heat by estimating land surface temperature and analyzing built-in indices of vegetation cover. It can be classified as NDVI and NDBI suggests that urban heat is controlled by surface character which is analyzed for proper planning for sustainability of urban areas

Mental health on two continua: mental wellbeing and common mental disorders in a community-based cross-sectional study with women in urban informal settlements in India

BackgroundWe considered the suggestion that mental health is the product of two intersecting continua: psychological distress and mental wellbeing.ObjectivesTo understand prevalences of low mental wellbeing, depression and anxiety, and examine associations between them and with sociodemographic variables.MethodsIn a cross-sectional survey in informal settlements, 4906 women aged 18–49 years answered questions on mental wellbeing (Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale: SWEMWBS) and symptoms of depression (Patient Health Questionnaire: PHQ-9) and anxiety (Generalised Anxiety Disorder: GAD-7). We used regression models to examine associations of lower mental wellbeing with symptoms suggesting moderate-to-severe depression and anxiety, and with sociodemographic characteristics.ResultsAbout 15% of women reported symptoms of low wellbeing, 9% symptoms of moderate-to-severe depression, and 6% symptoms of moderate-to-severe anxiety. Women with low wellbeing did not necessarily report symptoms suggesting anxiety or depression, and women with anxiety or depression did not necessarily report low wellbeing. In adjusted models, poorer and less educated women were more likely to report low wellbeing. Symptoms of anxiety or depression were more likely to be reported by widowed, separated, or divorced women, women who were in paid employment, and women who used drugs or alcohol themselves or whose partners did. Women with low wellbeing had at least double the odds of reporting symptoms of moderate-to-severe depression or anxiety than women who reported greater wellbeing.ConclusionThe findings support the idea of two continua of mental health. How individual women cope with mental illness and nevertheless enjoy a state of wellbeing deserves more study.

Independent mobility and outdoor play time: Insights from urban informal settlements in India

This study assesses differences in children's independent mobility and outdoor play time between two urban informal housing settlements within India's in-situ slum redevelopment policy. This redevelopment policy involves replacement of existing slum housing with new apartment-style structures at the original site. One of the settlements under study has undergone redevelopment, while the other remains on the waitlist for redevelopment. Additionally, the study explores potential gender-based variations in independent mobility and outdoor play time, shedding light on the distinct effects of redevelopment on boys and girls. Questionnaires were administered to mothers, addressing aspects such as independent mobility licenses, the range of independent mobility, the age at which mobility licenses are granted, and the duration of outdoor play of children. Findings show that children in slum settlement were reported to have more mobility licenses, broader independent mobility range, and earlier licenses than children in redeveloped settlement. Gender differences are evident, with girls in redeveloped settlement receiving mobility licenses later than both boys and girls in slum settlement, but boys' age at which they received independent mobility licenses remained consistent regardless of their place of residence. Boys in the redeveloped settlement engage in more outdoor play time than boys and girls in slum settlement. Conversely, girls in slum settlement participate in more outdoor play time than those in redeveloped settlement. These findings have important implications for slum redevelopment policies, highlighting the need to consider morphological aspects of residential environments that support girls' outdoor play time and independent mobility. It is crucial that these considerations be integrated into the design of redeveloped settlements to ensure equitable development of children in such communities.

Applied Theatre: Research-Based Theatre, or Theatre-Based Research? Exploring the Possibilities of Finding Social, Spatial, and Cognitive Justice in Informal Housing Settlements in India, or Tales from the Banyan Tree

This article draws on a twenty-year relationship of short-term interventions with Dalit communities living in informal settlements, sub-cities and urban villages in Mumbai, that have sought to create public theatre events based on research by and with communities that celebrate, problematise and interrogate sustainable urban living. In looking back over the developments and changes to our working methods in Mumbai, I explore how the projects priorities the roles of the community as both researchers and artists. I consider where a specific applied theatre project, which focuses on site specific storytelling with Dalit communities in Worli Koliwada and Dharavi, functions on a continuum of interactive, participatory, and emancipatory practice, research and performance. Applied Theatre practices should not and cannot remain static, they need to be constantly reformed and as practitioners and researchers we need to constantly re-examine the ways in which we work. This chapter poses two central questions: firstly, can this long-term partnership between practitioners, researchers and artists from the UK and India working with community members genuinely be a space for co-creating knowledge and theatre? And secondly, if so, is this Theatre-based Research or Research Based Theatre? I interrogate Applied Theatre’s potential to create a space of cognitive justice, which must be the next step for applied theatre, along-side its more widely accepted aims of searching for social and spatial justice and which places the community as both artists and researchers. The Dalit social reality is one of oppression, based on three axes: social, economic and gender. The chapter explores how working as co-researchers and the public performance of their stories has been a form of ‘active citizenship’ for these participants and is a key part of their strategy in their demand for policy changes. In looking forward I ask how working in international partnerships with community members can promote cognitive justice and go beyond a merely participatory practice. I consider why it is vital for the field that applied theatre practice includes partners from both the global south and north working together to co-create knowledge, new methods of practice to ensure an applied theatre knowledge democracy. In doing so I will discuss if and how this work might be considered to be Theatre-based Research.

How Rohingya refugee parents support children’s prosocial development in crisis-affected and resettlement contexts: Findings from India and Canada

Abstract We know little about how parents protect and promote children’s prosocial development during humanitarian crises. This qualitative study examined Rohingya refugee parents’ psychosocial perspectives and the processes they use to socialize prosocial values and behaviours in their children. Interviews (descriptive and in-depth qualitative) were conducted with 100 parents living in a refugee settlement in India (n = 100 descriptive; n = 5 in-depth) and 4 parents resettled in a mid-sized Canadian city (n = 4 descriptive; n = 4 in-depth). An inductive, ‘contextualist’ thematic analysis (TA) was conducted on the in-depth interviews to develop three overarching themes: (1) parents’ prosocial values and beliefs; (2) environmental conditions influencing parents’ available pathways for promoting children’s prosocial development; and (3) parents’ prosocial socialization and protection practices. The findings indicate that parents’ prosocial beliefs and contextual factors inform their parenting decisions and practices. Recommendations are provided for enriching parents’ capacity to promote child prosocial development in contexts of adversity.

Assessment of Fire and Life Safety in Rural Settlements in India

Assessment of Fire and Life Safety in Rural Settlements in India

The Future of Payments and Settlements in India: The Role of Signal Processing

The Future of Payments and Settlements in India: The Role of Signal Processing

Natural ventilation versus air pollution: assessing the impact of outdoor pollution on natural ventilation potential in informal settlements in India

Despite the proven benefits of natural ventilation (NV) as an effective low-carbon solution to meet growing cooling demand, its effectiveness can be constrained by poor outdoor air quality. Here, we propose a modeling approach that integrates highly granular air pollution data with a coupled EnergyPlus and differential equation airflow model to evaluate how NV potential for space cooling changes when accounting for air pollution exposure (PM2.5). Given the high vulnerability of low-income populations to air pollution and the dearth of energy and thermal comfort research on informal settlements, we applied our model to a typical informal settlement residence in two large Indian cities: New Delhi and Bangalore. Our results indicate that outdoor PM2.5 levels have a significant impact on NV potential especially in highly polluted cities like New Delhi. However, we found that low-cost filtration (MERV 14) increased the NV potential by 25% and protected occupants from harmful exposure to PM2.5 with a minor energy penalty of 6%. We further find that adoption of low-cost filtration is a viable low-carbon solution pathway as it provides both thermal comfort and exposure protection at 65% less energy intensity—energy intensity reduced to 60 kWh m−2 from 173.5 kWh m−2 in case of adoption of potentially unaffordable full mechanical air conditioning. Our work highlights ample opportunities for reducing both air pollution and energy consumption in informal settlements across major Indian cities. Finally, our work can guide building designers and policymakers to reform building codes for adopting low-cost air filtration coupled with NV and subsequently reduce energy demand and associated environmental emissions.

One Star Away

One Star Away is a highly dramatized true story written from the perspective of the child Ziuta, the author's mother, as she recalls her traumatic deportation with her family from eastern Poland to Siberia at the start of World War II. She and her family's subsequent escape and journey through the Soviet Union and the Middle East and settlement in India before coming to America is still a little-known story that deserves recognition in the history books. This reviewer's own family story is similar to that of the Nowicki family and, in an interesting twist of fate, intertwined.Normally, self-published books do not warrant much attention in the publishing world but given this engaging true account, minor copyediting mishaps can be forgiven as we move through the more compelling and important aspects of the story.We are introduced to Ziuta as a nurse in charge of the Shah of Iran when he is being treated for cancer in 1979 in America. He will only engage with Ziuta because she tells him how grateful she is for Iran (then Persia) for helping her and her family along with hundreds of Polish refugees fleeing the Soviet Union during World War II. Ziuta then proceeds to tell him her family's story.76 Polish American StudiesThe Nowicki family, all eight of them, was unceremoniously uprooted from their home in the Wołyn Province (today in Ukraine) at 3:30 a.m. on the night of February 10, 1940, by Soviet soldiers in what was the first of several deportations of Poles residing in then eastern Poland (today Belarus and Ukraine). Ziuta was eight years old, the fifth of six children.The horrifying conditions of such a journey to the Siberian Gulag has been told in numerous accounts, but this child's perspective makes the conditions seem even more real and horrifying. Through her family's strong support for each other and faith in God, they arrive at the camp that is to be their home for the next nearly two years. At the camp, life is extraordinarily harsh with constant hunger, hard work, assailment from various pests and the never-ending cold. Ziuta witnesses the death of her friend Kasia. “Ziuta sat up on her bunk, relieved to be awake. Nightmares had plagued her sleep. There were many variations, but the night terrors always ended the same way; Mama was gone. Ziuta wanted Mama to wrap her arms around her and promise she would not end up like Kasia.”Their escape from the camp, however, through the harsh land (“The Inhuman Land”) is marked by far worse conditions than the camp, and it is miraculous that they make it to relative safety in Persia. There they are separated as one brother enlists in the Polish Army, as well as the father, while Ziuta and her sisters are sent to India for safety, and their mother and another son stay behind due to the mother's poor health.With much introspection and internal thoughts and feelings by Ziuta, we can sense the effects of what is happening to her and her family, and we become increasingly engaged in the story. Some historical perspective is provided, but this is mostly a human story. Much emphasis is placed on prayer and staying close to God, and this belief in God becomes their saving grace.A great deal of the story takes place in India where the benevolent and much-loved Maharaja Jam Saheb Digvijay Sinhji provides desperately needed refuge for the many orphaned Polish children as the war rages on. In India, through the Maharaja's generosity, life for Ziuta becomes more or less stable as she has plenty to eat, attends school, enjoys the Polish scouting programs with her friends, and is enthralled by the beauty and mystique of India and Indian life.Many photos of the family from their time in Persia, India, and eventually America accompany the text, and it is within those photos that this reviewer's own sister, Mira (Mirosława) Zimmerman, is pictured with Ziuta while in India. These photos provide an interesting perspective and add authenticity to the story, as well as being an important historical record.As the survivors of that era pass away, as Ziuta did in 2018 after attending a reunion of surviving orphaned Polish children in India, such important stories of that era should be recorded in whatever way possible to preserve that compelling history.

Spatio-temporal patterns of tropospheric NO2 over India during 2005–2019

Air pollution is the leading environmental health risk factor globally. Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is a criteria pollutant associated with adverse health effects. In India, the focus has been mostly on ambient PM2.5; hence understanding the space-time variability of NO2 and the potential role of different NO2 sources are required. This work aimed to address these two gaps by first examining a long-term spatial heterogeneity of NO2 and linking it to the major contributing sources (e.g., power plants and industries) over the Indian region, and secondly by examining the variability in land use patterns and its changes over the years 2005–2019. We analyzed tropospheric NO2 vertical columnar densities (VCDs) from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) onboard the Aura satellite at a resolution of 0.1° × 0.1° for the period 2005 to 2019. We calculated linear trends in tropospheric NO2 VCDs and performed a significance test to ensure real changes. We also analyzed Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) data to identify the land use as ‘high-density urban,’ ‘low-density urban,’ ‘rural,’ and ‘no settlement.’ The spatial analysis found higher tropospheric NO2 VCDs (>5 × 1015 molecules/cm2) in eastern (coal belt with many power plants) and northern India, along with a few locations in central India. The change in tropospheric NO2 VCDs during the last 15 years showed an increasing trend (>2 × 1013 molecules/cm2) in most parts of India. Whereas during the last decade (2010–2019), the annual average trend over the country had reduced by up to ∼76% relative to 2005–2009. Tropospheric NO2 VCDs increased by 12.5%–29.6% from 2005 to 2019 across all levels of land settlement in India. Our study suggested considering NO2 as an important pollutant in addition to PM2.5 and developing a NO2 exposure model for further health impact assessment studies.

Physical and mental health impacts of housing improvement: A quasi-experimental evaluation of in-situ slum redevelopment in India

The present study conducted a quasi-experimental, pre-post evaluation to investigate the influence of housing redevelopment of informal settlements on residents’ health and well-being and to identify the role of improvement in housing quality in health impacts. In total 125 women from three housing settlements in India (intervention and wait-listed control groups) participated in the study before and after redevelopment of their settlements. In the intervention group, an informal settlement housing was replaced with low-height apartment-style housing at the same site, resulting in improved housing quality. The study measured physical health, mental health, and quality of life scores of women before and after housing redevelopment, and concurrent housing quality improvement, and compared them to a wait-listed informal settlement. The health and quality of life scores improve two-and-a half years post-redevelopment in the intervention group in comparison to their pre-redevelopment scores. Health also improved in the wait-listed group but only for a subgroup which saw housing quality improvement. Further analysis shows that improvement in housing quality explains the change in health post-redevelopment, thus providing evidence for salutary impacts of improving housing quality.

Trusts on the monsoon winds: Parsi transnational religious philanthropy

Trade brought the Parsis to Hong Kong and a small group remained and settled after the British took over the island in 1841. Profits from the China trade made millionaires of several of Bombay’s ‘illustrious’ philanthropists and helped to build some of this city’s founding infrastructure. The ties between the two colonial ports were never severed, and recent years have seen a resurgence of funds transferred from Parsi charitable trusts in Hong Kong back to Mumbai and other settlements in India. Unlike the profits from individuals, these funds are funneled through charitable trusts. This article will articulate a transregional Indian Ocean world that is formed not only through the movement of people and goods, but by community giving and city building, through the temporal giving of the trust. It will show how this historical and contemporary giving has become an idiom of transnational placemaking between these two port cities.

Indeterminate Liminality and the Refugee Journey: Partition and Hindu Sindhi Women’s Life Narratives

AbstractThis article explores the refugee journeys of Hindu Sindhi women who were displaced during the 1947 Partition, and the continuing sense of liminality, or ‘in-between-ness’, engendered by their displacement. Refugee journeys are most often framed as a transformative, connective phase between homeland and hostland. However, in these life narratives, the journey did not emerge as an ‘in-between’ connective phase but instead stretched beyond arrival and settlement in India. This article thus proposes the concept of ‘indeterminate’ liminality for the protracted refugee journey, through a focus on its spatial and temporal aspects. The idea of journey emerges as a scaffolding for these women’s life narratives, as a series of multiple movements and claims to home spaces as they navigated gendered threats and uncertainties. The connection and intersections between past and present in their life narratives demonstrate how the liminal experience is not temporally bound between departure and arrival but extends across the life course.

Facilitating the prosocial development of Rohingya refugee children

Prosociality is essential for the success of human societies. Children’s prosocial development is found to increase in contexts that foster collaboration or emotion perspective taking and is negatively affected by exposure to extreme psychosocial trauma and adversity. Based on these findings, we assessed the effect of collaboration and emotion perspective taking on three types of prosocial behavior—helping, sharing, and comforting—in Rohingya children living in a refugee settlement in India (N = 122; age range = 4–11 years). Half of the children were born in Myanmar (i.e., experienced forced migration from genocide), and half were born in the refugee settlement after their families left Myanmar. We also included a small sample of Rohingya Canadian children (N = 20; age range = 3–12 years) as a within-culture comparison of overall levels of prosocial responding, which were higher in this group relative to children in a refugee settlement. We assigned children in the refugee settlement to one of three conditions—Collaboration, Emotion Perspective Taking (intervention conditions), or Drawing (control condition)—and assessed the three types of prosocial responding following the intervention. Prosocial responding was highest after Collaboration for children born in the refugee settlement and was highest after Emotion Perspective Taking for children born in Myanmar. Overall, these findings point to the potential prosocial benefit in refugee contexts for intervention programs that are responsive to children’s lived experience.

Religious Identity and Imperial Security: Arming Catholic Slaves in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Portuguese India

Abstract In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, enslaved Africans and Asians bolstered the population of Portuguese imperial settlements in India. Purchased for a variety of occupations, their presence partially solved the problem of “peopling the empire” in a context of imperial insecurity. Valued for their capacity to fight in times of crisis, the Portuguese armed their slaves repeatedly. This tendency to arm their slaves has often appeared in the secondary literature. However, the religious dimension of arming slaves has not been explored. In the colonial imagination, conversion to Islam threatened slaves’ military loyalty. Fleeing the empire to Muslim-ruled states, slaves who became renegades represented the fears of Portuguese colonial society – fears of being overtaken by the surrounding states. Imperial anxieties about religion and security shaped inquisitorial responses to slaves’ conversions to Islam and crept into the discourse of ecclesiastical council records advocating for the baptism and Christian instruction of slaves.

A microgrid for the secluded Paana Theertham Kani settlement in India

Abstract Recognizing the importance of electricity as a driver of rapid economic growth and poverty alleviation, India aims to provide access to all households by 2030. Despite the best efforts of state and federal governments to meet consumers’ electrical needs, budget constraints, inefficient operations and massive loan burdens have hampered their efforts. Aside from these concerns, rural India, which accounts for 65% of the population, is plagued by a slew of issues, including low electricity demand, a low load factor and the expectation of cheap electricity. These concerns bind the authorities’ hands, preventing them from moving forward. As a result, this project aims to model an autonomous microgrid system that integrates three potential renewable-energy systems, namely wind, sun and hydrokinetic, to provide electricity for a remote society. It starts with assessing the region’s electricity needs with its inhabitants. The HOMER Pro platform creates a cost-effective microgrid based on the demand estimate. The components of the microgrid include 6.4-kW small wind turbine (SWT) groups, 4.4-kW solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, a 5-kW hydrokinetic water turbine, battery storage and a converter. The project is unique in that it considers site-specific initial capital costs, replacement costs, and operation and maintenance costs of the renewable-energy systems, and it does not include any environmentally hazardous energy system. The successful optimization results in terms of levelized energy costs are $0.0538, $0.0614 and $0.0427/kWh for wind, solar and hydrokinetic components, respectively, without any environmental issues.

Setting the wheels in motion: Re-examining ceramic forming techniques in Indus Civilisation villages in northwest India

The invention of rotational devices contributed to a range of developments in craft production technology, perhaps most visibly in the various forms of potter's wheels. These technological innovations, and the adoption or non-adoption of those innovations, carry economic and social implications, which are significant for understanding past human behaviour. There has been debate around the introduction and use of the potter’s wheel in South Asia's Indus Civilisation for almost a century, and opinions remain divided. This paper considers the emerging ceramic traditions identified at two Indus settlements in modern Haryana, northwest India. It presents evidence demonstrating that Indus Civilisation potters utilised multiple forming techniques for producing ceramic vessels and explores the evidence for the use of rotational gestures and rotational devices in regional ceramic production industries. Two dominant technological traditions are outlined, along with the implications of this discovery and future research opportunities.

A method to measure perceived tenure security in low-income settlements in India

ABSTRACT The nature of tenure ‘contracts’ that exist within the low-income settlements involves more than title deeds. Accordingly, ‘tenure security’ manifests itself beyond legal or de jure construction as it also involves de facto forms of tenure and dweller’s perception of security. The perceived tenure security is in turn a function of people’s lived experiences which shape the trust they may grant to the future effectiveness of land tenure arrangements. Contextual and historical factors, ranging from political patronage to market pressure to policy provisions, govern the perception of tenure security which usually gets overlooked in policy formulations. With a focus on Mumbai and Jaipur in India, this paper aims to generate and examine the viability of a list of indicators that influence perceptions of land and housing tenure security. The intention is to engender a method towards housing solutions beyond the unidirectional aim of titling and in favour of incremental approaches.

The role of digital technologies in recording values of human settlements: testing a practical Historic Urban Landscape approach in China and India

ABSTRACT UNESCO’s 2011 recommendation on Historic Urban Landscapes (HUL) advocated for an integrated, holistic approach to heritage places, in terms of how they are conceptualised and how they are recorded and managed in practical terms. Digital technologies offer increased capacity for recording places of all kinds, especially in terms of the physical environment and increasingly within heritage settings. Diverse case studies from China and India representing challenges in historic environments aim to test how a combination of the latest technologies and their current deployment better work toward goals within the HUL imperative. Further, we investigate where HUL approaches cannot be met by current technologies or analysis of digital data, providing a clear set of goals for future technologies or data interpretation that can work towards a more holistic capturing of place. This study analyses the interpretation of digital data in two different cultural settings between 2017 and 2018 – a historic water town in China and an informal settlement in India. Both cases employed digital technologies, including 3D laser scanning, photogrammetry, digital photography, video and audio recording to capture both the physical attributes of human settlements and how those places were used, reflecting residents’ values and cultural practices. Findings suggest that digital technologies are useful tools to illustrate layers of value beyond the built environment by connecting physical, social and cultural landscapes and associated place attachment. The combined use of various digital technologies helps to reveal interconnected place values and support better solutions for more sustainable and equitable development.

Coastline and River Banks Erosion prediction using Image processing

In recent years the people are aware of the threat posed by river banks and coastal erosion. In several parts of the world, national and local governments are planning strategic management strategies in response. A thorough knowledge of coastal processes is an essential component of the planning process. Coastline erosion prediction is a process of estimating the future coastline and river banks. It is crucial to understand and predict large-scale, longer-term coastal changes, in order to manage the risk of 33 coastal settlements in India. The ecstatic sea level rise due to global warming is predicted to be about 18 to 59 cm by the 2100, which necessitates identification and protection of vulnerable sections of coasts. Research has been conducted for identification of coastal erosions and predicting changes in the coast line but none involves computerized technique for erosion prediction. Hence, we propose an innovative and practical method of predicting the changes in the coastline by using computer tools. The main aim of this project is to predict the coastline erosion efficiently by analyzing the images recorded through google earth. The absorbed images from google earth are feather processed and the transformed images are used for predicting the changes using SSIM tool.