In this third year, the Student Stipendship programme was further redesigned to include to more support from senior researchers at Sarai and greater public interactivity through regular postings on the urbanstudygroup list. Students were now expected to make a minimum of 5 postings on the list, outlining not only their research question but also the process of doing research and the primary and secondary materials being drawn upon to address their research agenda. The period of fellowship was also increased from 6 to 9 months and the extent of financial support raised from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 15,000. The number of workshops increased and now included a preliminary workshop where students were introduced to critical literature in the field through lectures and presentations; an intermediate workshop where they discussed selected readings and present a brief synopsis of their papers and a final workshop where they made presentation of their own research findings. Workshops were organised in Delhi (January) and Bangalore (July) and final workshop again in Delhi(August). The first workshop had a combination of open interactive sessions on urban research, field work, problems and perspectives in archive based research. The second workshop aimed at establishing a linkage between ongoing research work and the existing literature on urban research. Researchers were asked to provide commentaries on selected readings from the reading material which was distributed among them during the first workshop. Researchers were also taken on the field trip of the IT corridor in Bangalore with a view to providing them first hand experience to understand emerging land-use patterns and the politics through which these developments are secured. Senior Bangalore based researchers and Sarai collaborators Solomon Benjamin and Asha Ghosh acted as field guides. Researchers also presented a brief synopsis of their papers and Sarai researchers and collaborators provided guidance on how to organise their research materials into cogent intellectual arguments. In the third and final workshop, researchers not merely made presenatations but also performed associated responsibilities i.e chairing sessions, moderating discussions and acting as discussants to individual papers.

ABSTRACTS

1. Prasad Khanolkar
Duplicacy- Robin Hood of the Global City
Prasad investigates into the dynamics of duplicacy and reconceptualise its role within Mumbai as the ‘Robin Hood of the Global City’. The research paper will collect stories of the Robin Hood who takes up different roles in city i.e. an architect, a software programmer, a fashion designer, etc and uses the tactics of duplicacy to make aspirations affordable for the common man. And, manages to tweak a number of dominant discourse set up within the urban context.

2.Sebastian Rodrigues
The Rise of Critical City Fortnightly newspaper: It’s Origin, Relations with the Local Political and Corporate Actors and Its Impact on the City Dwellers: A Case Study of “Vasco Watch” in Goa’s Port Town of Vasco da Gama. Goa
This study aims to critically examine various pressures that operate on a critical city fortnightly ‘Vasco Watch’ in Goa’s Port town of Vasco da Gama. Looking at the fortnightly and conducting interviews with its readers, the research will focus on the unique tensions in the port town arising out of dominant development models.

3.Abeer Gupta
The transformation of the nation of National Identity within changing urban scenario and its representation in Govind Nihalani’s films; An exploration of Dev
Anchoring on the film ‘Dev’, the proposal is an attempt to look closely at characters, plot and the structure of events as well as evolutionary aesthetics of their construction as seen in the film. The research will mobilise a wide range of source material ranging from cinematic and literary representations on the issue of national and communal identities to interviews of the people associated with film production.

4.Prashanti Ajgaonkar
Combating Malaria – The experience of panaji City
The project aims to look at the construction of the identities of insider/outsider and its conflict around Malaria. Conceptualizing Malaria as a powerful weapon in the political and social discourse and in the experience of Panaji city, Prashanti will study the effects of various initiatives of Malaria Research Centre on socially fractured Goan landscape.

5. Sushmita Sridhar
Visualizing Space and Spatialzing Vision: A study of Public Space in Bangalore
Sushmita wishes to study and document urban visual public spaces in Bangalore and try understand urban identity at the crisscrossing of gender, nation and visuality. Through photographs of urban public spaces like the interiors of bars, pubs and restaurants as well as streets and market places, the objective is to engage with issues i.e. popular aesthetics, questions of body,vision and Bangalore’s specific geo-cultural identity.

6.Vinita Verma
Urban Development in Delhi 1900-1950
Vinita aims to examine physical and spatial arrangements and the role of power structures influencing urban development in Delhi during 1900 to 1950. The study tries to explore questions like, what constitutes the imperial gaze in the formation of urban planning?How did colonial encounter affect the landscape of the city around the issue of segregation? How has this landscape changed with the partition of Indian sub-continent?

7.Ninad Pandit
Recoveries, Renewals, and Appropriations: A Study / Story of Public Space Creation in Mumbai
An intervention in theorizing public space, Ninad proposes to point toward the inadequacy of existing theoretical models of public domain in understanding the complex ways in which space is perceived, imagined, created and occupied in Mumbai. Highlighting the method of archiving information about the moments and spaces when /where the public domain gets constructed by negotiations and interactions, the intention would be to find ways of mapping and archiving the several imaginations of ‘public’. ninad.

8.Gaurav Dikshit and Rajiv G.V.
Migration into Dr Mukherjee Nagar: Community, identity, and space in a peculiar urban phenomenon
The Proposal aims at Dr. Mukherjee Nagar in Delhi as a locality typifying a pecular urban phenomenon produced by the concentration of a migrant, ‘outsider’ student community: How such a space organises and manages itself, and what patterns of community networks, identity formation and civic design, it generates? dikshit_gaurav@hotmail.com.

9.Dhananjay Singh
Bhikhari Thakur aur Calcutta [ Hindi]
Dhananjay attempts to look at the socio- cultural dynamics of community of migrant labourer of Calcutta in 1930s -1960s by focusing on a figure performer, Bhikhari Thakur. Known for his plays i.e. ‘Bideshiya’, ‘Birha- Bahar’ Bhikhari Thakur, his life and works allows an entry into the everyday cultural life of this community.

10.Sanjeev Ranjan Mishra
Gyan Vinimay ki Nai Taknikain aur Mail Banate Dalit [Hindi]
Knowledge exchange has never been a caste -neutral process in India. New technologies have redefined the whole process. Sanjeev wishes to look upon the genealogy of the established code of knowledge exchange and to know how the code is being restructured through the interaction of dalits with the new technologies, particularly inter-net in a small town of Darbhanga, Bihar.

11.Nishant
Mitti Ke Log[Hindi]
In the process of modernization, the ‘kumhars’ ( potters) of Delhi are pushed to lead a marginalised life. Forced away from their traditional land, they are unable to cope the challenges posed by the artifacts coming from neighbouring states. In the context of such relationship between the community of the potters and the city of Delhi, Nishant, wishes to ask, what caused the decline of the potters in Delhi and how can a new lease of life be infused in this dying art.

12.Susmita Ghosh
Reshaping Masculinity
Recently the popular media is representingthe images of urban men which is apparently a departure from gender stereotype. Though a deeper insight might give us a picture of ‘neo-traditionalism’. The research focuses beyond the usual terrain of content analysis to a survey among urban men, who are interpelleted by these images and negotiate with them in their everyday life.

13.Sajan Thomas
Information Economy And Labour rights: A case of Software Technopark in Thiruvananthpuram, Kerela
The study is oriented to delineate prospects of trade unionism among IT labourers, who are caught in the web of mobile capital and largely immobile labour. Alienation, health and psychological problems associated with the community of people involved in software production and the impact of IT labourers on urban life ( in the context of Thiruvananthpuram, Kerala) are some of the concerned themes of the research.

14.Manasi Kumar
Mapping The Agape:Following the Footprints of the Rubble of Riot and Violence of Earthquake

On the backdrop of two disasters, 2001-earthquake and 2002-riots, the attempt would be to trace and explore the psychic composition of the recent violence in Ahmedabad with a view to deepen the discourse around communal trauma.
How does the communal dimension of trauma emerge as one of its distinctive clinical signatures? The questions that haunt the city are: will the violence merely linger in the individual memory or be part of a collective depository? And how would the city locate its victims and how would it look at the guilty?

15. Priyasha Kaul
Communal Violence and Exclusionary Urbanism
The endeavour is to examine the impact of the 1984 anti-Sikh carnage of Delhi, in the lives of the survivors and the history of the city. Priyasha wishes to highlight the intersectionality of communal violence with the categories of gender, class, locality and religion along with the discourses of state, nationhood and citizenship.

16.Ashim Khan and Shweta Pandit
A Study of Shani Bazaar (The Saturday Market) at Shahpur Jat, Hauz Kas
The research proposes to map the dynamics of small-scale, unorganised, ephemeral Saturday market of Shahpur Jat, Delhi. The plan is not merely to produce a thick account of everyday life of the market but, also to investigate the official and unofficial guilds and managers who run the bazaar.

17.Justin Mathew
Labour in a Colonial Port City: Mistries of Bombay Port 1870-1914
This study is an attempt to understand how the western civil engineering skill and labour policies constructed the body of the ‘Mistries’, new kind of skilled labour in the Bombay port. The role of the material organisation of the Bombay port in the formation of the identity of the ‘Mistries’also has to be analysed. The Indian Port Acts, Dock Labour Acts, Bombay Port Trust and Municipal Corporation records, emigration files, Parliamentary Debates, Bombay Gazzette, textual reading of the material organisation of the harbour are the major sources of this study.

18. Rinku Pegu
At Home and the World : Negotiating Citizenship in Contemporary Nowgong
Focusing on the contested field of citizenship in small town of Assam, the study attempts ask, does the spatial inclusion of peripheral zones into the formal urban space engender bonding and a sense of belonging, particularly when the peripheries are peopled by ‘immigrants’ and their descendants?

19.Bindu Menon Mannil
Historical Anthropology of Early Cinema Practices in Malayalam Speaking Region
The study attempts to produce a historical anthropology of early cinema practices in malayalam speaking region by focusing on the emergence of audiences, exhibition spaces and film going cultures in Thiruvananthapuram from 1920s to 1960s. This involves an understanding of the sensory environment of cinema halls, historical conditions of colonial rule and locating the figure of audience in various institutional and cultural processes of the period.