Feature Article

Europe's energy consumers will find themselves paying a high price for Germany's decision to get out of nuclear power.

While the outcomes of the Lok Sabha and the state assembly elections have been well documented and analysed, little is known about the electoral geography in urban areas. In discussing the conflicting interests of local politics and urban development, this article places the definition and understanding of what is “urban” in the context of the 74th constitutional amendment, and also looks at the expectations from and the progress on the reforms agenda of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.

Hidden behind city branding exercises through large projects are acts of land capture and slum demolitions by a predatory local state and crony capitalism. In the policy arena, meanwhile, the urban, and particularly the metropolitan story has been one of deliberate confusion, and fragmentation of policy and implementation. The promise of rapid city transformation has not been met through the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, which does something for infrastructure and something for housing but all in an uncoordinated project-by-project manner.

Examining the Marathi translation of The Communist Manifesto published in 1931 and situating it in the socio-historical context of workers’ movements in Mumbai in the 1920s and 1930s, this paper argues that the so-called subordinated classes engaged with it and created a workers’ public that was in conversation with the elite public sphere. But it holds that the vernacular version had to navigate the structures of language and a social structure in which caste was an important feature to make itself comprehensible to other intellectuals, trade union leaders and workers.

Arguing that the initial years of the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board were dominated by the priorities of the then ruling party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, whose government created it in 1971, this paper points out that shelter policies in the state had a formal orientation away from eviction and resettlement and towards in situ tenement construction, alongside an informal tendency to protect and reward those groups of the urban poor that the party was trying to court for votes.

Despite their relatively modest economies, some of the basic population health indicators of Kerala and Sri Lanka are similar to that of the developed nations. Following a review of recent evidence on infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases, mental health and suicides, and maternal mortality, this paper argues that there are challenges arising from declining investments in the public health sector (and increasing privatisation) and inadequate attention to the social determinants of health. It also lists suggestions for policy and a research agenda to further health equity.

India’s “bypass” approach to urbanisation seeks to decongest its post-colonial metropolises by building new towns for a new economy of knowledge-based activities and businesses driven by global capital on their fringes. The globalised economy, hegemonised by immaterial labour, creates conditions for these new towns to culturally secede from their national or regional location and align themselves with the global cities.

Drawing on the literature on controversies, especially on the health risk assessment of genetically modified organisms in Europe, and long-standing debates in science and technology studies, this article argues that science-based risk assessment has inherent limitations, however rigorous, independent, and peer reviewed the work may be. In this context, the debate on Bt brinjal needs to broaden its frame from science-based assessment of consequences to evaluate society-oriented causes and objectives. We need to ask questions such as: What kind of society do we wish to live in?

The criticism of the Supreme Court’s decision to reject the curative petition on the Bhopal gas judgment is based on an inadequate understanding of the process. In fact, the Central Bureau of Investigation will be better off seeking an enhancement of the punishment under the 2010 judgment than in pursuing the criminal revision petition.