2019-20
Aditya Singh
Aditya was born and brought up in Ranchi, Jharkhand. After graduating with a degree in law from the National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi, he worked as a researcher and writer for two years. His research focused on public policy in the areas of health, education, and housing. As a writer, he has contributed essays and reviews to various journals and magazines at the intersection of literature, politics and culture. His interest in the urban lies in understanding how migration, labour and capital transform and affect social relations within a city, and how social movements can help different communities claim a right to the city.
Andrew D Souza
Andrew is a student of sociology who is keenly interested in emerging phenomena and structures in contemporary society. He is also interested in the fields of Science and Technology studies, the intersections of technology and ideology, and in social theory, urban sociology, and symbolism more generally.
Anupriya S
Anupriya hails from Kochi, Kerala, and is a graduate in Environment Studies from Maharajas Govt. College. After her graduation, she began a career in waste management but has always been intrigued by the complexity and the dynamics of urban spaces. She is currently working on projects that are sustainable, self-reliant and which involve community participation. She is trying to understand the many factors in urban spaces that will create social inclusion and sustainable livelihoods for all.
Apekshita Varshney
Apekshita first took the local train to Churchgate in Mumbai when she was 12 years old. Neither did the people make room for her, nor did the taxis halt. Everything was governed by such a sense of busyness and business – so starkly different than the semi urban area she came from. Since then, she has studied journalism, worked for media organisations, non-profits and the Government of Maharashtra. She failed in launching a hyper-local civic app that could make civic corporations more transparent, and in executing a campaign that wanted to change India’s urban laws. However, she developed a better understanding of the complexity of India’s urban challenge. She now wants to equip herself with the technical and analytical knowhow required to elevate the discourse on cities, and better shape how they are planned and managed.
Apoorva Dhingra
Apoorva is a student of international relations and a passionate feminist. Over the past three years, she has worked in education policy and legislative strengthening/governance and is now excited to pivot towards urban policy. Through this fellowship, she hopes to answer questions related to climate change, feminist-sensitive urbanisation, and sustainability. She is also looking forward to moving back to India, rediscovering her country as an adult, and applying her international learnings to problems at home.
Bagavanidhi M
Bagavanidhi has a Master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Madras. Born and raised in Thanjavur district, he moved to Chennai for his studies – an experience that changed him. The role of caste in the village context has made him think about its role in the economic, social and environmental inequalities among backward communities in cities.
His research interests include the flexibility of the caste system in the context of urbanisation. He is also interested in studying the intersections between caste and environment, modernisation and Indian society, and the social discrimination in educational institutions.
Chidananda Arpita
Arpita is an architect. Her first introduction to the urban was through an urban design project in college called Tawi riverfront development. Living in Bengaluru for two years has opened her eyes to the highs and lows of city life.
Her profession has restricted her to work with a certain class of people and a certain scale of projects, but she would like to move beyond the built-form. Through this fellowship, she is looking to work in the field of affordable housing and to contribute towards creating sustainable, inclusive and equitable spaces. She also hopes to understand the role of policy making and governance in the functioning of a city and develop a better understanding of how caste, religion and economy shape our societies. She is interested in fine arts, film and music.
Chirag Pramod Shahare
Chirag is from Nagpur, Maharashtra, but moved to multiple cities to complete his education and to work. He has a Bachelor’s in Engineering from Rashtra Sant Tukdoji Maharaj University, Nagpur. He has worked in the skill development sector in the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana scheme (part of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission) for the development of poor village youth. He believes that this fellowship will help him understand various aspects of urban migration.
Dhruv Chakraverti
Dhruv is an introvert who enjoys spending hours visualising the world that could be. A natural flaneur by temperament, he spends hours walking around any city that he visits observing its culture and imagining transformations that can improve living standards in a holistic manner. A historian by training from Ashoka University, his dreams of cities (past, present and future) drove him to spend time working in the Smart City team at the Greater Chennai Corporation. Born and raised largely in Chennai, Dhruv then took it upon himself to attain a grassroots level understanding of the diametrically-opposite water problems of Chennai, which is being hastened and intensified by the effects of climate change. Through this programme, Dhruv hopes to engage in the discourse around cities and urbanism more broadly, while also continuing his participation in public practice.
Ipsit Mohanty
Ipsit is a Psychology major with a Master’s in Disaster Management from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He has interned and worked in the social and developmental sector in Maharastra, Gujarat and Odisha. He is interested in cognitive mapping and urban form, light and space, understanding visual cultures, the iconography of urban life, and imagery of the classical and Modern period. Film has constantly intrigued him for its capacity to intensify the extraordinary characteristics of a place, matching striking images of the urban scene with the narratives of diversity. Long periods of committed cinephilia have formed his understanding and encounters of urban places the world over – a wistfulness for the images and accounts of movies viewed pervades his urban wanderings.
Mitali Moharir
Mitali has an M.A. in Development from Azim Premji University, Bangalore. After completing her B.A. in Indian and Western Philosophy, she moved towards social sciences in an attempt to look at and listen to the world closely. Mitali’s inclination towards trying to understand the urban comes primarily from her experiences of living and growing up in Mumbai. But what drives her to study it, is her academic training, extensive fieldwork carried across both urban as well as rural parts of the country and the narratives she heard from women and their families she met during the course of her research. Through this fellowship, she hopes for her research and analysis to evolve into something more nuanced, creative and sensitive. She believes it will help her ask critical questions, look for nuanced understandings and develop coherent responses to the complexities and politics surrounding the urban.
Neha Mujumdar
Neha was born and raised in Bangalore, and has worked as a journalist and editor. She holds a Master’s degree in Media in Development from SOAS, University of London, where she was a Felix Scholar. Her dissertation studied media coverage of the 2013 Ejipura demolitions. Neha’s interests include neighbourhood politics, everyday urban experiences, public transit, and tech policy.
Niranjan Kokate
Niranjan has a Bachelor’s in Production Engineering and Industrial Management from College of Engineering, Pune. While there, he was part of the Dramatics Club which performed street plays to raise awareness on issues like the importance of voting, gender equality, sanitation and road safety. The urge to work in the developmental sector led him to Teach for India. Teaching in a low income private school in Pune, he realised how language, culture and tradition influence learning outcomes in a classroom. Later he was part of Chief Minister Fellowship Program of Government of Maharashtra. Using his experience of working with private, non-governmental and governmental organisations he wants to pursue research in public policy. Through the Fellowship, he aims to develop skill set and tools necessary to achieve this goal. Niranjan is an avid reader and follows development in policy, economics, history, technology and philosophy.
Nishita Parmar
Nishita has a degree in Architecture from CEPT, but is more an artist at heart and contractor by mind. She is co-founder of an architecture practice COMPARTMENT S4. After her graduation, she sought out possible areas of intervention around the city, along with a group of like-minded friends. Their goal was to resolve persisting local problems of various complexities through their design. She has interacted with various stakeholders across levels of government, and heard stories from local bodies and people to realise that they are integral in the approach to design a built-form. She is a theatre enthusiast and is trained in Navrasas. Through this fellowship, she wishes to develop a sensitive understanding of relationships between place, people, politics, built-form and ecology.
Pratibha Malik
Prathibha is from Gurugram, Haryana and graduated as an architect from the Sushant School of Art and Architecture. At her internship, she felt that the active participation that is needed to change the world is not possible through a mainstream architecture job, and began preparing for UPSC Civil Services Examination in order to work in the field of policy making.. This helped her engage with many new disciplines, and she hopes to use this Fellowship to learn the skills and expertise to make a difference in the future.
Pratiksha Waghmare
Pratiksha is a graduate in Agriculture from Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth Akola and co-founder of VISU Farms and Studios in Wardha district of Maharashtra. VISU farms and Studio is an art organisation emphasising the collaboration of agriculture, horticulture and art in urban areas using urban agricultural plans and techniques.
She loves plants and has great interest in urban gardening blending art and the environment. She is keen to work on sustainable urban agriculture plans and climate resilient agriculture leading towards food security. Working with these multidisciplinary sectors has made her realise that the fields of agriculture, arts, and rural development are part of urban spaces and their collaboration can lead to a great future.
Prithvi Hegde
Prithvi grew up in Bangalore and studied at SPA, New Delhi. As a student, she engaged with the urban by documenting, designing in and living in the city. Her professional experience has been in interior and residential architecture, but she intends to transition to working in the urban space. She has been part of various initiatives that engage with public space design as well as gender. She has a deep love for watching and walking in the city and has recently taken an interest in urban mobility. She wants to map how people navigate the city and hopes to document the unique ways that people in Bangalore adapt to the stresses of commuting. Prithvi loves to swim, paint and read, and dabbles at a new interest every few weeks! At the Fellowship, she hopes to gain tools to understand the complex systems and negotiations that go into making a city.
Rana Paul
Rana was born in Siliguri in Jaipaiguri district, West Bengal, and raised in a migrated neighbourhood which was socially, culturally, economically and linguistically segregated with people having very limited scope to blend in with the rest of the town. He completed a Master’s in Geography from Banaras Hindu University with a specialisation in Applied Geography and Planning, where he developed a disciplinary interest in Human Geography He also has a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning from SPA Bhopal.
His research interests are inclined towards the intersection of the socio-cultural fabric of the people and their urban space and more specifically, to seek the position of different communities in a complex and heterogeneous urban spectrum. Through the Fellowship, he hopes to be able to understand contemporary urban issues more practically and raise his research questions in a more critical and constructive manner.
Reshma Mariam Georgi
Reshma is an architecture graduate from NIT Tiruchirappalli and recently finished her Masters in Urban Design from College of Engineering Trivandrum. She was born in Kerala and did most of her schooling in Abu Dhabi.
She chose architecture out of her desire to be creative as well as contribute to a meaningful experience in the built environment. However, it was her postgraduate experience, which introduced her to dealing with complex urban issues, understanding tangible and intangible aspects of cities, and an exposure to the ground reality, that helped her fully understand her interests. She looks forward to exploring the same in an interdisciplinary environment and is interested in participatory design approaches so as to create more inclusive development.
Sachitha Kondath
Sachitha has a Master’s degree in Social Work from Christ University, Bengaluru. She has worked with Amnesty International, India, as a researcher and campaigner for the Criminal Justice Program that focused on bail reforms. She has been part of monitoring shortcomings of various state mechanisms that victimise marginalised undertrial prisoners in availing their legal rights and has worked towards amending the existing bail law.
Being a city dweller, all her life has helped her witness and forced her to question the transformation of the urban and its complex inequities. She is curious to understand how caste and identity interact in the economy and its implications on governance and wants to explore how migration and housing pan out in the larger scheme of development. She aspires to be a practitioner who can have a nuanced problem-solving approach and wants to explore strategic leadership in the urban space.
Samriddhi
Samriddhi hails from Patna, Bihar. After completing her undergraduate studies in Economics from Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi, her interest in working at the grassroots led her to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She completed her post-graduate degree in Social Work (Criminology and Justice) at TISS and an L.L.M in Law and Economics (EMLE) from University of Hamburg, Germany and Ghent University, Belgium.
As a student in Europe, she had a an opportunity to work with a tech startup, where she explored the possibility of reform in various sector through blockchain and other digital technologies. Her research interest lies at the intersection of Economics, Environment, Law, and Technology. Through this Fellowship, she aims to put together all the knowledge and experiences that she has gathered over the years. In her free time, she enjoys painting, reading, writing and travelling.
Sanskruti Landage
Sanskruti is a student of Design and is highly passionate about concurrent fields. She believes that provoking one’s thought process is an important element in life, and tries to portray the same through her work. While working on her dissertation, she realised that designers control the conceptualisation of the majority of products that go out in the market today, which is why every designer has a responsibility towards the planet as a whole. This led to a curiosity of understanding innovators who work for the climate, and encouraged her to unlearn and learn to explore grassroot movements. She is now keen to understand the urban environment and its effects. When not in her design pensive mode, you can see her reading, listening to music and dancing her way through mountain trails.
Shaina Patel
Shaina is a nature-loving, curious human who believes that stories backed by data can move people to action. In her free time, she can be found trekking in the hills of Maharashtra, cycling in the city, or playing ultimate frisbee on the beach.
With an Honours in Economics from St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai, she plunged into the fascinating world of data. Working with Bloomberg Philanthropies and United Way made her realise that data combined with technology can be leveraged to solve the world’s most pressing problems. So, she taught herself to code. She is currently a Director at Women Who Code, a non-profit dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers. Shaina is interested in studying how Public-Private Partnerships can help drive infrastructure solutions. Through the Fellowship, she hopes to deepen her knowledge of the urban and development.
Shrishti Chatterjee
Shrishti is a communication designer who hopes to create work that is people-centric and visually delightful. She is a Fashion Communication graduate from the National Institute of Fashion Technology and has since worked with Elephant Design to develop design systems and visual identities for food brands. Having grown up in multiple cities, she would like to examine the role that design can have in shaping urban spaces that are inclusive and sustainable and in creating pockets of joy and respite in cities. Shrishti is a film enthusiast who likes developing stories for the screen. She also enjoys being in the outdoors, painting with water colours and playing board games.
Shubham Kushwaha
Shubham is a media professional from Allahabad (PrayagRaj) district of Uttar Pradesh. He has a Master’s in New Media Communication from the Central University of Himachal Pradesh, a beautiful place in the lap of Dhauladhar mountain range. He has directed some documentaries and has worked as a reporter with Daily News, Allahabad and trainee news editor in Dainik Jagran, Dharamshala. He has also done certification course in book publishing from National Book Trust. He has a profound interest in politics, law, and governance. After completion of his Fellowship in IIHS, he wishes to pursue research in development studies especially in city planning and governance structures of cities and rural areas. He is a food-aholic so make sure you bring some of your traditional sweets when you meet him.
Vibhor Dubey
Vibhor graduated in Electronics and Telecom Engineering from NIT Bhopal. He worked in Sales & Marketing for a SaaS company, writing business documentation and piloting marketing campaigns. Post this stint, he worked with an NGO as a teacher in a Govt. school on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. His inclinations find him walking the bridges between seemingly disparate academic disciplines. Esther Dufflo, William Rouse, Lans Pritchett, Roger Martin, Fritjof Capra – he repeats these names in his sleep like Arya Stark but with a slightly different intent, hoping to finish reading all their works. He is angling his way to pursue a career in strategic design, hoping to work towards better human systems and scale problems in the endgame. He vicariously enjoys art, architecture, music, cricket, and humans fighting in octagon cages. He has an active interest in reading, writing, and poetry. He has enduring gratitude towards Stan Lee for more than one reason. Excelsior!
Viswanathan Sridhar
Viswanathan, an architect, has been in love with and fascinated by people and their spaces, from their dwellings to their cities. Having lived in Chennai all along and touring Indian cities, has left him thinking about their survival, sustainability and resilience as conglomerations. His strong research interests let him explore the planning and saturation of Tier II urban cities and the opportunities that arise in nodes and pockets of the city to make it a happy and liveable space. The Fellowship, he believes, will help him move a step closer into making this happen. He curates urban livelihood stories at.
2018-19
Abhishek Kumar
Abhishek, who hails from Ranchi, Jharkhand, is a development professional, and has worked on several government flagship projects. These include the Swachh Bharat Mission, Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojna, Livelihoods Mission, and Skill Development. Most recently, he worked as a district consultant with the Tata Trusts on the issue of sanitation and hygiene. He holds a postgraduate degree in social work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
Abhishek’s postgraduate research focused on themes like trafficking, migration, forced labour and marginalisation. At present, he is interested in welfare policy and planning, policy implementation and sustainable inclusive development. He hopes to better understand urbanisation, urban governance, gentrification in the urban sphere, urban housing, and the economics surrounding urban reality.
Adhip Amin
Adhip has a degree in Economics. He worked as a Research Associate at the Takshashila Institution, writing about urban economics and governance. While there, he was also involved with the Bangalore Civic Leadership Incubator Programme (B.CLIP), jointly organised with the Bangalore Political Action Committee (B.PAC). B.CLIP trains municipal activists and aspiring corporators in urban economics and urban economic practice. He then went to LSE, from where he graduated with an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy in 2017.
Adhip is passionate about urban spaces and psychological wellbeing, mental health, the economics of urbanisation, and the social sciences in general. He lives in Bangalore where he shares a room with Neemboo, an affable yet stubborn golden retriever.
Akash Chandan
Akash hails from Shivamogga, Karnataka. After studying computer engineering from PESIT, his interest in psychology and behaviour led him to NID to pursue a Master’s in human–computer interaction. With two years of professional expertise as a user experience designer, he has worked on personal finance, IOT, healthcare and more. He believes digital interventions in urban problems can change the way cities are planned as well as the behaviour and interactions of the people inhabiting them.
Through his research, ideation and prototyping, he aims to bring design-oriented solutions to real-world problems. At the IIHS Urban Fellows Programme, he hopes to expand the domains of problem space and explore new perspectives as a designer in information visualisation, communication design, system design, and interaction design fields.
His observations, ideas and thoughts are shared at www.akashchandan.com.
Amarinder Arora
Amarinder is an architect who is fascinated by cities at large, and engages with them through multiple lenses. He has always been motivated to work in the social development sector, actively exploring different ways to make a city more inclusive. For his undergraduate thesis he worked on the rejuvenation of a fishing village in Mumbai. This marked the start of his journey into questions of the urban.
In order to continue working and engaging with people and the city, he volunteered to build a school for the children of the Yamuna Khadar settlement in Delhi.
Over the past year, Amarinder has been working with the mHS CITY LAB, a social enterprise that attempts to address the safety and affordability of housing for the urban poor in India, as a community architect and project coordinator.
Amarinder thoroughly enjoys a quiet saunter down the roads of any city as this inspires him to write. He is particularly passionate about performance and visual arts. He strives to bring this creativity to everything that he engages in.
Anuja Kadam
Anuja is an Economics graduate from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. After her Bachelor’s, she pursued a consulting career with one of the global Big4 auditing and consulting firms.
Anuja has a passion for civil services, especially development issues driven by education, health and sanitation. As an academic project, she conducted a semi-ethnographic study of the informal market in Mumbai and drafted a ‘Theory of Change’ for a public charitable trust in Pune. She has also co-authored a research paper examining the direct cash transfers in India and the conditional cash transfer scheme Bolsa Familia in Brazil. She is into learning new things, one kick or stroke at a time, and as a former athlete, can probably beat you in a 100 metre dash. Her current loves are football and playing the violin.
Chandni Parekh
Chandni is a lawyer, almost a company secretary, a spiritualist (practising open religion), an aspiring reformist, and an environmentalist. Being born and brought up in cosmopolitan Pune in a traditional Gujarati Jain family helped her understand the disparities and diversity that underlie society, which has influenced her life choices.
The five years Chandni spent at ILS Law College made her realise that the degree she had chosen was more powerful than she had imagined. After Law College, however, like many of her peers, she decided to give corporate law a shot, but realised early on that that was not where her interests lay and that she wished to apply her degree to something more meaningful. Through this fellowship she aims to learn about various aspects of urban sustainability and how law can contribute to it.
When not thinking about law, one can find Chandni reading novels, learning a new language, and watching films and series from all over the world.
Chandu B Prasad
Chandu is a graduate of the School of Public Policy and Governance, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad. He has a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Governance with a specialisation in Urbanisation. For Chandu, his transition from a small village in the Kollam district of Kerala to the city of Thiruvananthapuram and then to the metro city of Hyderabad raised several questions about cities and urban life.
His research interests include the interface of urbanisation and the environment, with specific focus on smart cities and the informal workforce. He is also interested in studying the intersections between state and market, and social discrimination and human development. He hopes to gain a further understanding of identity, caste and religion in cities through the Right to the City framework.
Dheeraj Joshi
Dheeraj is from Mysuru, Karnataka. He completed his Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering from Maharaja Institute of Technology and Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning from the School of Planning and Architecture, University of Mysore. He found that he was bored with the curriculum’s numbers-based approach to engineering and realised that he was more interested in the functions of structures and their relationships with space, people and human life, and nature and the environment. He therefore chose to take up urban planning. Its interdisciplinary nature opened him up to the different layers and dimensions of the urban. Looking at migration and the situation of migrants in the city led him to develop an interest in sociology and psychology.
As a regular bicycle user, Dheeraj also takes an active interest in urban transportation. He looks forward to improving his skills and exploring interdisciplinarity through the fellowship programme. His hobbies include reading, travelling, hiking and cycling.
Gauri Nagpal
Gauri’s work seeks to find a space between academia and artistic practice. Her interests, both conceptual and formal, lead inquiries into identity, memory and nostalgia. She explores these across media ranging from video, sound and installation, to illustration and graphic design. Having graduated as an Information Artist and Designer from Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, she hopes to release the tension between the outcomes of research and art based practices.
Gauri attempts to reimagine the applications of various media by placing them in diverse contexts and to expand their capacity such that her work is accessible to a wider audience.
Irawati Anand
Irawati has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science. She has also studied economics and sociology as part of her undergraduate course and has a keen interest in philosophy. Her hometown is Pune, where she has worked with a number of NGOs that are active in the city, particularly those working in the fields of menstrual health and education.
Irawati has learnt Mandarin and German. As part of her objective to acquire an in-depth understanding of data analytics in the field of public policy, she has been honing her ability to do quantitative analysis in the political sector as an intern in a private firm.
Kedar Nagarajan
Kedar was born and raised in Bangalore. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Media from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai with a major in journalism. Since graduating in 2015, he has worked with the Indian Express and Caravan in New Delhi. At the Indian Express, he covered the environment, municipal corporation and higher education. At Caravan as a web reporter he covered education, crime and grassroots politics in western Uttar Pradesh. He is a big music fan, tries to be an avid reader, and is currently attempting to enhance his skills so as to root his journalistic work in the urban.
Krati Airan
Krati obtained a B.Tech in Civil Construction from CEPT University, Ahmedabad in 2017. She works on building energy efficiency as a Research Assistant at the Centre for Advanced Research in Building, Science and Energy (CARBSE) at CEPT University. She wishes to enhance her career in the field of sustainable development and contribute towards making the world a better place to live in.
Kritika Jain
Kritika did her Bachelor’s in Architecture from SRM University, Chennai, where she discovered the Pandora’s box that is the ‘urban’ while working on various projects. She spent six months studying Lucknow’s Kaiserbagh Palace complex for her dissertation, which explored the potential for urban interventions in areas of historic and cultural significance. Kritika’s work as Licensee and Curator at TEDx Chennai helped her understand the stories that can effect change in the urban environment. To understand how strategic leadership can affect urban development, she joined Takshashila for a short course in public policy in 2018. Originally from Calcutta, Kritika is a local to Chennai, Pondicherry, Bangalore, Agra and Delhi as well. Having grown up and travelled in the old parts of many cities in India, she is increasingly concerned about the ‘livability’ and ‘walkability’ of Indian cities. She likes solo travelling, sketching in cafes and observing people and culture. She hopes to help communities and cities grow, using her learnings at UFP to understand urban planning, policy and governance.
Maheep Tripathi
Maheep is a graduate in Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering from BITS Pilani. He honed his technical know-how in electronics through his internships at various technical institutions and his work as a hardware engineer for a major American chip-maker. He is currently interested in figuring out his role as a political citizen and an economic value-creator—one that is tied to his identity of being an Indian and its various unique advantages and opportunities. He enjoys playing the devil’s advocate—at frivolous discussions as well as in real life—and spends his time consuming human commentary on the human condition.
Malay Kotal
Malay was born and brought up in a small village in West Bengal and moved to a city to pursue his higher education. He completed his Bachelor’s in Geography (Honours) from Vidyasagar University, West Bengal. He then joined the MA programme in Geography at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, which promised to take an interdisciplinary approach to Indian society. During this time he developed a research interest in issues of the contemporary urban and worked on several term papers dealing with problems of urbanisation and urban planning in India.
His rural background has given him a different perspective from which to look at the complexity of urban life. He is eager to learn new ideas and concepts, and passionate about doing research on subaltern urbanism and the role of space in urban planning.
Mukta Deodhar
Mukta was brought up in Pune and studied at Fergusson College. During this time, she was able to explore the rich cultural heritage of the city and became curious about the factors that come together to give any city its vibrancy and identity. She found her passion in the learning space of Bhoomi College, Bengaluru, where she spent the last year exploring sustainability. A ‘voluntourist’ by heart, she loves to work for worthy causes and meet interesting people. She is convinced that urbanisation is inevitable, and hopes that through the UFP she will develop a holistic understanding of how this transition can be made as sustainable as possible.
Naksha S
Naksha is an enthusiastic and ardent learner and a diligent worker. She believes that action in the present can help build a better future. She has a Bachelor’s degree in architecture from CEPT University, Ahmedabad. She has worked with Urban-Think Tank on the development of design schemes for incremental housing for townships in Cape Town.
Naksha is interested in understanding the intersections between IT and the organic mechanisms of cities. She wishes to explore how technology can deal with contemporary complexities of our society. Apart from these academic engagements, she loves to discover new places, record experiences through sketching, and share them through writing. She believes in collective learning and standing for the rights we are entitled to.
Neha Abraham
Neha’s interest in the urban began with her involvement in protests at Kathputli Colony, Delhi’s first case of in situ redevelopment. Interactions here offered a glimpse into how various stakeholders approached a housing problem—activists, the community and DDA alike. She enjoyed making connections between these experiences and the theory she read in her Urban Sociology classes.
She then spent three years working with an NGO skilling urban communities for employment and income generation. Gaining first-hand access to various infrastructure and service-related problems on the ground, she began writing journalistic pieces about these for online publications. Realising the importance of understanding the seemingly dominant mainstream narrative of ‘economic’ development, she also began reporting on business and the economy for ASSOCHAM TV.
Through the fellowship, Neha hopes to gain a fresh perspective from the interdisciplinary approach, which will enable her to write insightfully about the urban. She has a BA in History from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, and an MA in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics. She enjoys exploring folk culture, food, music and religion.
Priyam Vadaliya
Priyam is a systems thinker, researcher and design nomad. She is originally from Gujarat, but since her graduation she has been travelling and shifting her base whenever she has come across interesting working or learning opportunities. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Product Design from the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. Post her graduation, she has been freelancing and applying her expertise to a variety of projects. Some of these projects are ‘Social Innovation in Infant Nutrition and Breastfeeding’, ‘Innovate Inside: Towards creative prison industries’, and ‘Low Energy Lifestyles for Sustainable Living’. She recently finished a six-month-long work-fellowship at Dalberg Design, Mumbai.
Priyam believes in interdisciplinary collaborations and is excited by the mutations the design process undergoes in different contexts. Her growing interests revolve around design for changing mindsets, system thinking, participatory design and data visualisation.
Priyanka Saha
Born and brought up in Calcutta, Priyanka has always been fascinated with the changing dynamics of the cityscape. In her Master’s dissertation as an art history student, she has explored the city of Calcutta through the ideas behind Vivan Sundaram’s installation at the Victoria Memorial, titled ‘Structures of Memory: Modern Bengal’. She wishes to develop discourse on the site as archive, and explore the city itself as a geographical and political archive. Her ultimate aim is to be able to create a visual dialogue between the city and its people, keeping the ideas of sustainability and communicability in mind.
Rajeswari Parasa
Rajeswari has recently completed a Bachelor’s in Geoinformatics at Andhra University, Visakhapatnam. She was born in a town in the East Godavari district of Andhra, but was brought up in different parts of the country. Coming from an academic background in geospatial sciences, she finds it interesting to analyze and understand the dynamics of a place from a location-based approach. Through her internship at an oil analytics company, she has worked on building geospatial models to understand and determine how various spatial features interact in a region. She now wants to work on fronts where technology solves social problems. She strongly believes that embracing diversity, in all its forms, is very important for sustainability of a system. The diversity statement of UFP and its interdisciplinary nature are what drew her to the Programme. When she’s not working on any project, she reads almost anything she can lay her hands on even if it’s a kids’ story book or travelogues from far off lands. She likes to explore cafes and restaurants and believes that good food is like music to taste buds.
Ravindra Singh
Ravindra was born and brought up in Jalor district, Rajasthan, which has the lowest literacy rate in the state. He completed his graduation in Geography, Hindi Literature and History from the Government PG College, Jalor, where he was an active member of the National Service Scheme and visited several slum sites in the city. During his Master’s at the Central University of Punjab he participated in socio-economic surveys of Bathinda city’s slum areas, which exposed him to various kinds of inequalities in a city. His interest in the domain of the urban developed over the course of his postgraduate study of the Geography of Urban Systems and Planning, which introduced him to different types of urban transformations. He is also interested in studying the relationship between caste and the city, which is particularly complicated in the case of Rajasthan.
Riddhi D’Souza
Riddhi is a law graduate from the National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi, where she specialised in International Law and Human Rights. She has worked with Amnesty International, India, as campaigner and legal researcher for the Access to Justice Programme. She has monitored various failures of the state in protecting undertrial prisoners’ fair trial rights and worked towards the amendment of existing bail laws that victimise people who are unable to afford bail. The cumulative effect of her work is her keen interest in the ability of laws to protect socially and economically vulnerable people who may be rendered even more vulnerable as a cost of ‘development’.
She hopes the Fellowship will help her achieve a multidisciplinary and nuanced understanding of urban development and its problems. In the future she plans to work on policy imperatives that can facilitate social mobility like access to affordable and durable housing and public health initiatives.
Saba Ahmed
Saba has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Delhi University and a Master’s degree in Development Studies from Ambedkar University, Delhi. She worked on a pilot project under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Assam, as part of her MA internship. Her Master’s dissertation was a study on the role of education among the tea tribes of Golaghat district, Assam. Intrigued by the linkages between conflict, security and development, she took up an MPhil in International Studies with a specialisation in the South Asian Region at the MMAJ Academy of International Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia. She has recently completed a post graduate diploma in Human Rights, International Humanitarian and Refugee Law from the Indian Society of International Law and has authored papers reflecting on the policies of the present government. Though she has worked with different non-governmental organisations, her training has been largely theoretical. She now wants to transition to the role of a practitioner.
Born and brought up in Delhi, she enjoys exploring new places on her own. She is an avid reader and passionate writer with a keen interest in studying migration, inequality and notions of security in urban spaces.
Saniya Lopes
Saniya grew up in a small town on the outskirts of Mumbai. She obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Sociology at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai out of a desire to study the relationship of individual existences to society as a whole. She went to on complete a Master’s in Economics from the University of Mumbai.
Her daily train journeys from the semi-urban suburbs to the mega-city of Mumbai helped her develop a fascination with urban communities that extended beyond the classroom. She saw cities as both vibrant and unequal spaces, and came to question the contrasts inherent in the process of urbanisation. Her exposure to areas of study such as the urban, transportation and environment economics, and her internship experience with conservancy workers gave her a sense of the nature of socio-economic hierarchies, and of the core problems of urban spaces. She is interested in studying the challenges of emerging cities and analysing how best practices adopted in cities across the world can be applied to solve these challenges.
Saranya Sasindran
Saranya is a graduate in Civil Engineering from Cochin University of Science and Technology. A native of North Kerala, she grew up in the Middle East before moving back to India. Living in both thriving global cities and fledgling metropolises gave her a unique opportunity to observe the process of urbanisation and experience the different facets of urban issues first hand. She has interned with the upcoming Kannur International Airport and the Kerala Irrigation Department, where she gained insights into the processes of planning, administration, and management of public resources. The experience also helped her understand the challenges faced in the implementation and execution of infrastructure projects. She is deeply passionate about sustainable development. Her academic project work on self-healing concrete and sponge cities dealt with innovations in urban sustainability.
Saranya is an avid reader and adores animals. She also enjoys travelling and is a vocal advocate of responsible, low-impact tourism.
Shilpy Mehta
Shilpy was born and brought up in Jammu and trained as an architect from IPSA, Rajkot,Gujarat. The projects she worked on during her Bachelor’s varied from designing housing for economically weaker sections of society to designing urban scale institutional projects. Her keen interest in the socio-economic and socio-political aspects of cities, her love for her home city, and her desire to establish a connection with the land were the ideas that came together in her undergraduate dissertation, ‘Making of an Organic City: A case study of the Old City of Jammu’. She believes that there is a stark imbalance between what we are taught in the classroom and what we are expected to produce in the field, and is eager to find a balance between the two in the course of the fellowship.
Belonging to a family of artists, Shilpy is inclined towards art and music. She loves reading, travelling, and being involved in discussions.
Siddhant Kalra
Siddhant has a Bachelor’s degree in Literary and Cultural Studies from FLAME University, Pune. After graduating, he worked as an independent writer and researcher for two years. During this time, he wrote for various national publications about protests, land issues and history. His interest in Delhi made him a part of multiple projects exploring the city’s cultural history, ethnic composition and migratory patterns. He likes to spend his time thinking about issues surrounding sustainability and exploring various creative media.
Smriti Singh
Smriti was born and brought up in Roorkee, a tier-two city in the state of Uttarakhand, and graduated with a degree in architecture from Dehradun.
She has worked as an architect with Spidergrass Collective in Shimla and as a project assistant with Recity, Mumbai. She has worked on a range of housing, conservation and waste management related projects, and has conducted research on the phenomenon of urban floods, particularly in the context of Mumbai. Her forays into urban practice helped her develop an understanding of the politics of land use and wetlands, and the importance of participatory development strategies in formulating interventions. She is a traveller at heart and loves to explore different aspects of a place through photography, writing, film and art. Her research interest lies in exploring how gender, class, caste and ability related identities are the bases for exclusion, marginalisation and violence in both public and private institutions. She is also deeply interested in land politics within the housing sector and in how architecture and urban design can be used as tools to create an inclusive city fabric. She believes the UFP will help her connect the dots and fill the gaps in her understanding of the city.
Sukrit Nagpal
Sukrit’s interest in urban informality and governmentality emerged during his Master’s in Development from Azim Premji University, Bangalore. Through the programme, he pursued two internships that brought to light a sense of the city that was vastly different from familiar, intimate spaces. These introduced him to issues that did not otherwise find mention in mainstream characterisations of the Indian urban growth story: informal settlements, the relationship between citizenship and land tenure, the incorporation of local issues in electioneering, and the politics of institutional remedy in context of Indian cities. After his Master’s, Sukrit began his career working for a development evaluation firm where he worked on projects in the field of education, life skill building, and women’s occupational health. The nature of work and travel allowed him to delve into the heterogeneity of cities and towns in India. Bolstered by this, he switched jobs to work at Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) where he spent two years working with residents of informal settlements in three cities: Ajmer, Jhansi and Muzaffarpur.
Tejaswi Subramanian
Tejaswi is curious about how people interact with each other economically and emotionally, as well as with their natural environment. She has worked in the field of sustainability and inclusion, and has a deep interest in these subjects. She graduated in 2012 with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Stella Maris College, Chennai. In the future, she hopes to work on creating communities that are inclusive by design, especially for children, senior citizens and the differently abled. She is also exploring ideas for a closed loop fashion economy.
Vivek D’souza
Vivek is from Mumbai and holds a graduate degree in economics from St. Andrew’s College of Arts, Science, and Commerce and a postgraduate degree in politics from the Department of Civics and Politics, University of Mumbai. He has worked with several local, regional and international youth-led movements. His work has been concerned with the upliftment of some of India’s most vulnerable groups like Dalits, refugees, Adivasis and women. He has also taught street children and conducted capacity building workshops for youth on education, gender equality, human rights and peace and conflict.
Vivek is the Advocacy and Policy Coordinator for The QKnit, an Indian LGBTQIA+ collaborative, where he organises capacity building activities and oversees the implementation of critical queer-focused projects. He has been awarded the prestigious Praja Elected Representatives Fellowship in Mumbai. Vivek’s research interests include urbanisation, urban governance, the city and development, and the environment.
Yamini Suresh
While pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in Physical Planning from School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, Yamini realised the importance of tackling urban issues which lead to inadequate city planning. Growing up in a humble Malayali home in Abu Dhabi, and later moving to Delhi helped her recognise that urban inequality and spatial injustice were issues that were common to a diverse set of cities. As a student, she had the opportunity to intern at the Urban Development and Housing Department, Gangtok and the Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi. Yamini is a native of Thrissur, Kerala, and her thesis entitled ‘Integration of Hallmark Events for City Development’ focused on the famous annual festival ‘Thrissur Pooram’ and its implications
on the city.
Yogesh Saini
Yogesh was born and brought up in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, and went on to study architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. He discovered his interest in exploring human settlements in his initial years of architectural education. He has been involved in the documentation and analysis of a wide range of rural and urban areas as part of various academic and non-academic projects.
Driven by an inclination to work for the marginalised sections of society, Yogesh’s Bachelor’s dissertation focused on the challenges faced by homeless people in Delhi and strategies adopted for their shelter. He interned at People in Centre Consulting, Ahmedabad, which further motivated him to work towards sustainable and equitable development. The desire to bring positive change in society at large has fuelled his interest in subjects like sociology, urban planning, policy-making, economics and history; hence the Urban Fellows Programme.
Yogita Bangar
Yogita was born in Marout, a small village in Haryana’s Jhajjar district. Jhajjar, till very recently, had the worst sex ratio in the country. Having spent the majority of her childhood in the village, she often witnessed gender-based discrimination in the form of female foeticide, denial of education, dowry, bride buying, honour killings and caste-related hierarchies. Her experiences and privileges led her to pursue a career in law and she recently completed a Master of Laws in Human Rights course from NLSIU, Bangalore. She has worked on issues ranging from environmental conservation and tribal rights to gender justice and legal aid. Recently at NLSIU, she was part of the drafting committee for two legislations for the Government of Karnataka: one on ‘devadasi’ women and another on slum dwellers’ land rights. She is passionate about world cinema, art, history and criminal litigation. Through this fellowship, she wants to understand the various aspects of urbanisation which impact crime rates in cities.
2017-18
Abhishek Sekharan
Abhishek recently acquired a postgraduate degree in Applied Economics from the Centre for Development Studies. Born and raised in Delhi, he has also lived in Bangalore, Madurai and Kochi which have together sustained his fascination with the urban. His time at the Centre motivated him deeply to cultivate interdisciplinarity in thought while addressing multilayered issues as the cities of India undergo an unprecendented transition into crowded metropoles and peripheries stricken with poverty and rampant inequality. His postgraduate thesis was centred around probing the multiple mechanisms which shape labour agency among migrant labourers in Thiruvananthapuram city. He is currently interested in studying the complex networks and intersections between labour, capital and the state in urban India which have manifold implications. He also seeks to explore the gender politics at “workplaces” especially under the emerging forms of production relations and organizational structures in order to expose the continued disadvantage of gender and sexual minorities in India.
He is a co-author in a paper that explores the politics of governmentality of the body in queer social media spaces as it gets shaped by the bourgeoning Malayali middle class in Kerala. His research interests cover a broad range of topics concerning the role of technology, media, labour and gender relations in shaping the urban geographies of capitalism in India.
Aila Bandagi Kandlakunta
Aila has a Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences majoring in sociology, psychology and economics and a specialisation in post reform transformations in India. She has a master’s degree in Development Studies with a specialization in Urban Studies and Conflict Studies. Wanting to find her passion, she has taken up research projects in the fields of handloom weaving in B.A and conditional cash transfer schemes in M.A at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad. Having lived in a city which was described as world class but could not survive a summer without deaths and monsoon without houses flooding, she decided to do whatever she can, to improve the cities of the world. Having interned with a variety of NGOs, government departments, corporates and research organisations, she identifies action based research as her strong suit. Being a cultural enthusiast, she believes in using creative mediums such as theatre, dance and films as tools for social change. While being a passionate writer and avid reader, she also deeply enjoys travelling and food.
Aishwarya K S
Aishwarya was born and brought up in Bhubaneswar but went on to pursue higher studies and work opportunities in other cities. She is a passionate environmentalist who believes in the importance of integrating environmental sustainability while addressing issues in every sector. She completed her Master’s degree from TERI University, New Delhi and went on to work in an environmental NGO in Mumbai. She is an avid reader, extremely fond of animals and a keen learner who is always up to explore new avenues.
Anahita Ganjoo
Anahita is a graduate of Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Contemporary Art Practice. She likes thinking/talking about art history, cinema, cultural narratives, ethnography, spirituality, gender identity and intersectional feminist thought. She is currently trying to think of ways to convert to an organic and sustainable way of life.
Ananya Biswas
Ananya graduated from Presidency College, Kolkata with Sociology Honours in 2013. She then moved to Mumbai to complete her Master’s from the University of Mumbai. Thanks to Shantaram! She was associated with the Public Systems Group at IIM Ahmedabad for two years as an Academic Associate. She is enthusiastic about cities, culture and people. She is specifically interested in ‘adda’ (a social gathering unique to Kolkata for discussing current affairs especially after work) and sexuality through the lens of what Habermas called ‘public sphere’. A theatre, film, fashion and politics enthusiast, Ananya loves to understand Southern cities, Urban Politics and Urban fashion through these modes of practices. Ghatak’s films on Partition and trauma drew her to study Global Cities in the wake of new immigration policies, neo-international boundaries. Kamaladevi’s works taught her resilience and how strength can weave beauty in a seemingly unjust world and need not be masculine at the same time. Finally, IIHS inspired and helped her put together all of these through a spatial story perspective.
Graduated from Presidency College, Kolkata, Ananya moved to Mumbai to complete her Master’s in Sociology from the University of Mumbai. Thanks to Shantaram! She was then associated with the Public Systems Group at IIM Ahmedabad for two years. Enthusiastic about cities, culture and people, she is glad to have herself landed in UFP. She is interested in handlooms, handicrafts and livelihoods – the second largest provider of livelihoods in country. But what bothers her is the politics and a certain kind of Urban Dream which has unfortunately forced the sector into being called the ‘sunset industry’. Thus she would want to work at the sector through a more policy level intervention and will continue working till she sees the ‘sunrise’.
Ananya Ramesh
Ananya sought to pursue a career as an architect and received her Bachelor Degree in Architecture from RV College of Architecture. Training and working as a professional, highlighted the niche clientele of architects. This drove her to condition herself to work in co-operation and collaboration with the various stakeholders of our living environment. She completed a dual-master programme at the Bauhaus University Weimar and CAUP, Tongji University Shanghai, gaining experience in urban planning and research.
A Bangalore local and brought up with an armed forces background, Ananya travelled across the country absorbing the diversities and complexities of the Indian context. Living abroad for her masters, was a learning experience beyond academics. The systemic processes of cities, governance and administration, citizen engagement, partnership between academia-research-practice, implementation and enforcement strategies, were among other aspects that she observed first hand. Through UFP, she would like to gain the skills to apply these lessons to the local context. Her research interests include urban governance and its socio-spatial manifestations, urban mobility including pedestrianisation and intermediate public transport, role of land markets and real estate in urban growth and collaborative planning. In addition to her academic pursuits, Ananya is a Bharatanatyam dancer and Carnatic Classical singer.
Anish Mannam
Anish did his Bachelors in Civil Engineering and Masters in Chemistry as part of a dual degree programme from BITS Pilani. During his civil services exam preparation, he realized that interdisciplinary approach is needed to solve the current challenges faced by humanity. His major focus is on resources management which is interlinked with Environmental Conservation and Sustainable Development. With training in technical background and interdisciplinary knowledge from sectors of Law, Humanities, Governance, Economics he believes several issues could be solved with appropriate research, data analysis and implementation.
Anubhav Pradhan
Anubhav Pradhan is a doctoral candidate working on colonial ethnography and the British imagination of India under the supervision of Prof Baran Farooqi in the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia. He has served Primus Books as its Senior Marketing Editor, and the Department of English, Bharati College, University of Delhi as an Assistant Professor. His M.Phil dissertation, on articulations of space and denial in contemporary Delhi, was under the supervision of Prof Simi Malhotra: he continues to engage with various aspects of Delhi’s convoluted urbanisms. He enjoys walking, reading, writing, and armchair debating; is interested in the conception, production, and dissemination of cultural artefacts; and is a strong votary of sustainable development and the preservation of Delhi’s (in)tangible heritage from ruthless development. He may be contacted at anubhav.pro18@gmail.com.
Apoorva Sharma
Apoorva’s experience of studying architecture in CEPT University, opened up many layers of the city for her. She did her training in Shanghai and exchange at TU Delft. She has traveled across Asia and Europe, and loves discovering places on foot and recording her experiences through sketching and writing. She believes creative processes have the potential to transform our cities through exploring alternative futures. In this regard, she has worked with ‘People in Centre’ to prepare a training program for rural construction workers. She also co-mentored and/or assisted workshops on design thinking. Her current work interest is on repair and retrofit of buildings and the embedded processes involved.
Bhargav Oza
Bhargav was born and brought up in Rajkot, Gujarat. While pursuing his Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration (Honours) from Ahmedabad University; he participated in extra-curriculars like skit, mime, creative writing competitions, elocution and extempore, he headed the editorial team of the college’s wall and print magazine – Drishti and was part of the college’s Event Management Team; and developed perspective and confidence to face future uncertainties. He also participated in a social science research project on Dalit atrocities in the Kheda and Anand districts of Gujarat. He has written and presented papers at national and international conferences. In 2014 he joined M.A. in Society and Culture programme in IIT Gandhinagar which promised an inter- disciplinary approach to knowledge. He worked on his writing skills and continued presenting papers at conferences. His dissertation was on ‘Role of caste and class in shaping up urban neighbourhoods of Chandkheda and Ranip in Ahmedabad’. Some of the courses like Paradox of Indian Democracy; History of Dissent; Humanism, posthumanism and anti-humanism; etc helped him build a foundation in social sciences as well as expanded his interest areas into diverse
disciplines like political theory, history and philosophy.
His internship project was tiltled ‘Financialisation of domestic economies’. He joined Unnati – Organisation for Development Research, as a Programme Associate and worked on a project titled: “Ensuring Nutrition Security and Buliding Resilience amongst Dalit and Tribal Communities in the Thar Desert”. He feels that Urban Fellows Programme at IIHS is a good opportunity for him to return back to his selfcommitment to academics.
Divya Chand
Divya hails from the city of Nagpur in Maharashtra and studied architecture at the School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi.
As an architecture student, many of her initial projects focussed on urban areas to document and analyse them, with much work done in the walled city of Old Delhi. Her academic dissertation dealt with the perception of cities (Shahjahanabad in particular) shaped by the written word, specifically travel-writing over the centuries. Other projects in the urban context dealt with designing high density environments and studying the impact of large scale urban construction environments on the city. She was involved in organising a few events and heritage walks in Delhi while studying architecture.
In 2016, she interned at Wonder Grass Initiative in Nagpur and worked hands-on with bamboo to design affordable and eco-friendly, prefabricated cottages and sanitation units. Her architectural thesis was the proposal of a Cultural Centre and Tourist Retreat in the fringes of Aizawl city in Mizoram, which is an exploration of sustainable Bamboo-construction technologies that would be relevant in an urban scenario.
She loves to walk in the city, read about new places and explore them, write and photograph. She enjoys creating things and her intent is to work towards understanding the complexities and heterogeneity of neighbourhoods in Indian cities and arrive at agreeable solutions to steer urbanisation in a positive direction.
Edwin Thomas
Edwin Thomas is from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Growing up as a proud Malayali belonging to a middle class family in the Middle East helped him understand how extreme class inequality and modern slavery operate in the backyard of glitzy development. Furthermore, his interest in issues like gender and sexuality, HIV/AIDS activism, American politics and international relations led him to pursue a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, English Studies and Psychology from Christ University, Bengaluru. Since then he has worked as a Sub-Editor and contributor for Youth Ki Awaaz in New Delhi and as an Editorial Assistant for Raintree Media. During his tenure at YKA, he helped bring to national spotlight a sexual harassment scandal at his alma mater. Currently, his bias towards translating larger human rights issues into parts like access to healthcare, basic government services and equitable allocation of resources has put him on a path to a career in human rights advocacy. However, his inability as a trained journalist to understand key issues in more complex terms led to an interest in subjects like urban policy and eventually, the UFP.
Evita Das
Evita Das is a development studies graduate from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Her previous research was on Looking Back “Secularism” and “Democracy” in Muqaddimah. She has always been inquisitive in history of discourses, spaces and the evolution of it. Currently working with Jan Sahas in a rural area on caste and religion, she thinks it is very important to understand the right to city in the urban spaces through the caste and religion lenses.
Karthik Bhaskara
Like in most Indian households, Karthik was encouraged to run the traditional rat race of doing an engineering and landing a job. After his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from NITK Surathkal, he ended up as a business analyst with Capital One. During the one year at capital one, he took a step back and tried to understand the reasons for running this race and whether this is what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. This line of introspection lead him to abandon the lucrative corporate career and explore the expanses of knowledge this world has to offer. The Young India Fellowship offered him an ideal foundation to discover his true passions which was urban sustainabilty. After the fellowship, he worked with the Indian Institute for Human Settlements exploring and understanding the city of Bangalore. He is a self proclaimed “lifelong student” and a nostalgic Bangalorean. He aims to learn urban sustainabilty in ways he can apply to truly make urban spaces more sustainable from the ground level. His hobbies are centered around adventure sports and travel. He practices an ancient form for marital arts called “Sailum”. He is a certified open water scuba diver and a biker.
Leona Dsouza
Originally from Mangalore, Leona has lived between the Middle East, Bangalore and Mumbai where she graduated from St. Xavier’s College. While in college, she studied English Literature and Anthropology, focusing on narratives of the city, globalization and identity. Later she went on to wander through the corporate world for a few years working as a writer, only to find her way back to those subjects and themes from her academic days. Growing up in a single parent household, Leona’s interest in women’s issues is of special importance and through the fellowship she hopes to tackle the questions of equal access, self-empowerment and marginalization.
Malavika Narayan
Malavika holds a post-graduate degree in Political Science from Delhi University. She was born in Kerala and did most of her schooling from Rishi Valley in Andhra Pradesh. During her five years as a student in Delhi, she was associated with the Peoples Union for Democratic Rights which introduced her to the practical real-time operations of power and sharpened the theoretical perspectives learnt in class. A starker picture of the failings and shortcomings of democratic citizenship ironically strengthened also belief in it as a system capable of realising and sustaining a more equal and just society. Her interest now is to practically orient her ideals by acquiring a technical training geared towards effective intervention in social problems. Since research and writing is what she enjoys the most, she hopes to use this as the key mode of practice to engage from the field, and develop a more grounded knowledge base which can later enable policy work.
Neha Lal
Neha was born and brought up in Delhi and completed her Masters in Sociology from Delhi University (D.U.). With interests ranging from urban history, spatial practices to issues of governance and sustainability, she completed her M.Phil from Delhi School of Economics at D.U on urban aesthetics and policy planning in millennial Delhi. She loves to read on and walk through cities and wishes to work within the intersections of urban practices and policy regimes. She has earlier worked on research projects and documentaries on Delhi’s urban history and contemporary challenges with themes like urban housing and design, gentrification in urban spaces, wall art, river ecologies and land use.
Nirupama M Vidyarthi
Nirupama M Vidyarthi, is a fresher architect from Bangalore. One of her first introductions to urban study was while working on an architectural competition in her 2nd year of architecture, she has since then explored this interest through courses, competitions and voluntary work. Cities are our points of impact where we can affect a positive transformation and being passionate about environmental activism right from school. She looks forward to bringing about a change in society especially by addressing environmental concerns. Through her experience of working in landscape firms, she has been introduced to aspects of ecological planning, and hopes to understand other facets like that of sociology, culture, human-development, economics and policy through the course of the Urban Fellow Programme.
Nooreen Fatima
Nooreen comes from a humble family in Allahabad. She is an architecture graduate from Faculty of Architecture & Ekistics, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and recently finished her Masters in Urban Design from School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi.
In her 7 years of academic experience she engaged herself in multiple urban research and design projects that led her to analyse the socio-cultural, economic and political context of habitable settings in India, made her connect with people and understand the challenges faced in an everyday Indian city. Her post-graduate research work ‘Perception of Sex Workers in Khidki Village’, ‘Social value of urban spaces: Case of Anupam Market and Saket District Centre’ and ‘Is this a city? Case of Khidki Village’ led her to understand the unjust, highly prejudiced and complex socio-political landscape of Indian cities and motivated her to voice these urban conditions to bring a change in the status quo.
During her work as an architect, she engaged in multiple community driven architectural projects such as primary school, artisan centre, mosque etc located in villages outside the city limits.
Her research interest lies in spatial injustice, politics of space, informal system of governance in Indian cities, socio-spatial patterns etc. She is an active researcher, travel enthusiast and likes to keep a travel journal. She also finds her interest in urban sketching and abstract portraits.
Pallab Deb
Pallab was born in Silchar, Assam, where he stayed till he completed his 10+2 level education. After spending a year in Guwahati, he joined B.A. English (Honours) course at Kirori Mal College, Delhi University, and then changed tracks to do his Masters in Sociology from Delhi School of Economics. While he had always been interested in the urban and how identity politics get mapped onto the geography of the city, the Urban Sociology and Symbolism papers during his masters course helped him hone his ideas. To this end, Pallab has been part of two research projects; one looked at the interplay of the urban space and context-specific performances of cultural artefacts, while the other looked at the role of time and space in the formation of identities by looking at the identitarian politics and problems of self-perception within the Sylheti community in Barak Valley, southern Assam. He hopes that the Urban Fellows Programme will help him gear his theoretical interests towards more practice-oriented outcomes through its inter-disciplinary course structure.
Pragya Priyadarshini
The two words that are sure to lure Pragya into any learning adventure are ‘inter-disciplinary’ and ‘problem-solving’. Pragya studied visual communication at NIFT Bangalore and took her graduate project about menstrual health awareness and sustainable menstrual practices into villages surrounding the Auroville bio-region, while working with multiple NGOs in Auroville for a year. Before UFP, Pragya was working as a researcher with a design thinking and business innovation firm in Pune, specializing in megatrends-forecasting and ethnographic storytelling. She has also had a brief stint with The Hindu, with bylines ranging from cultural narratives to fashion forecasts.
A self-proclaimed ‘people-nerd’, Pragya likes studying people, communities & cultures and creating smart design strategies for them. She also takes keen interest in mental health awareness, development led displacement, systems thinking and social design.
Though a Garhwali by descent, Pragya is a child of multiple migrations- including her own- in search of education, experiences and jobsstarting from Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh to multiple cities including Bangalore, Chennai, Auroville & Pune. She takes pride in her eclectic aesthetics, cross-cultural exposure and in her voracious appetite for knowledge.
Priyakshi Gogoi
Being born and brought up in a village of Sivasagar district in Assam, Priyakshi did her graduation in economics from Guwahati University. Having been part of a student political organization since school days, she had a continuing wish to work in the social sector and so joined the NGO Society for Social Transformation and Environmental Protection. For the next three years, her work was mainly with street vendors which allowed her to get a grounded perspective on the problems faced by informal workers and other livelihood issues in urban areas. She also worked on the issue of women and child health among tea garden workers. To further consolidate her knowledge to work in this sector, she did a masters in social work through a distance learning program. Through this fellowship, she hopes to bring together her theoretical and practical insights, and polish her skills to better contribute to more equitable development practices.
Sabika Abbas
Sabika is a performative poet who is the founder of an initiative called Sar-e-rahguzar: Poetry on the streets. She has been a student of history and conflict studies. She is deeply influenced by the feminist and queer rights movement. She also works as an alternative educator and aims to start her own alternative school.
Sabika Zaidi
Sabika is from Delhi and has completed her higher education there as well. Her degree in Architecture from Jamia Millia Islamia, taught her valuable design skills and also instilled a consciousness to observe and question status quo around her. She has worked on several academic and professional research-oriented projects which gave her the opportunity to comprehend a range of issues faced by people living in urban settlements across North India. As an architect and urban practitioner, she looks critically at ideas that strive to achieve universal welfare in the context of Indian cities. With a belief that targeted welfare programmes can achieve higher levels of inclusion and equity, she wishes to learn to sensitively approach the various complex and layered situations of the urbanizing centers of India.
Sachinkumar Rathod
Sachin has done under-graduation in Criminology, Political Science and Kannada Literature from Karnataka College Dharwad. Recently, he completed a master’s in Public Policy and Governance from Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. During his two years at Azim Premji University, he has been exposed to interdisciplinary, systematic empirical research methodology, which has given a meaningful direction to his interests. He has worked as an intern with WRI-India and Indian Housing Federation, Bengaluru. He has undertaken an independent field study on ‘Drink and Drive’ in Bengaluru. He has also explored his interest in cricket, athletics, theatre and story-telling adherent to human life. Apart from this he is also active cadet of NCC. He participated in the ‘Thal Sainik Camp’, New Delhi and was awarded for excellency in the firing competition. He comes from a rural, Kannada background, which he uses as his strength rather than weakness.
Sarat Chandran
Sarat graduated as an architect from the School of Architecture and Planning, Chennai in 2016. He became interested in archaeology and then history during the final year thesis, which subsequently led to reading up on sociology, political science and economics. Uncertain about taking up a career in architectural practice, he wishes to take forward his interests in the social sciences for real world applications. He has volunteered for the 2016 edition of the Kochi Muziris Biennale, a contemporary art exhibition in Kochi and also helped as a research assistant for an impact assessment report of the same. He believes in the power of design thinking to solve the world’s problems. He also occasionally writes for ArchiBlab, an architecture student blog.
Satya Oza
Satya Oza was born and brought up in the UNESCO Heritage City of Ahmedabad. His parents- social workers- and grandparents- academicians-inspired him to take the field of humanities. Thus, he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad and post-graduate degree in Development Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He was exposed to urban issues in Ahmedabad at a young age when he volunteered for rehabilitation of the displaced people of Sabarmati Riverfront project in 2007. His mother’s work with the 2002 Godhra riots survivors also impacted him deeply and he chose the issue of the rehabilitation of the survivors as his dissertation topic. He then worked with Aajeevika Bureau in Surat and Mumbai on another urban issue- migration. Here, he tried to improve the living and working conditions of migrants from Odisha and Uttar Pradesh through worker-led collectives. Based on his experiences with a variety of urban issues, he wants to explore the possibility of a community-driven approach as an important factor in
sustainable and equitable urban development and planning.
Shruti Yerramilli
Shruti is an economist by training, a language and food history enthusiast, and a traveler by design and default. She grew up all over India and had the opportunity of calling many of its cities, home. Each city was a case study on the survival of societies at the confluence and sometimes intersections of social norms, political climates and institutional strength. How individuals viewed their place in the system in the sense of entitlements, duties, and ownership also varied. These individuals have always been the focus of her interests, particularly new entrants like herself. Subsequently, as part of the MGG Academy, Advanced Professional Training Programme, with the German Development Institute, she studied the idea of migration. She interacted with several people, many who identified themselves as migrants, expats or refugees, to understand the basis of the sense of association with a place or city and the delicate balance between an incumbent’s desire to protect the original colours of the social-cultural fabric and the entrants need to lend newer hues to it. Urbanization as a process is also at the heart of this question. Through this fellowship, she hopes to build on her learning and contribute to a pool of actionable solutions towards sustainable and equitable living spaces.
Siddhant Nowlakha
While Siddhant should have been a practicing Chartered Accountant today, well into his 5th year of professional career he took a decision back in 2011 to retreat. Starting another innings from scratch he lived what he calls now ‘a year of many things’. That year he wanted to serve in the Army, join the IAS, be a journalist, rescue stray animals, do fashion modeling, work in a youth NGO, align to political activism and study linguistics. By the end of this churn however, he signed up for Graduate School in Bangalore to study Development.
Two years at Azim Premji University gave him a chance to experiment with his interests, develop academic perspective and get ready to confidently research and interact with his subjects. His academic interests lie in forest governance, water policy & urban environment. Some of his residual interests are in livestock, handicrafts, non-Abrahamic religions and cinema. He manages a small firm that works with art direction teams to source and create studio & outdoor sets for movies. Besides, he is now looking to develop a research platform called Buffer Areas Research that would subsume and institutionalize all his academic work. At UFP, he hopes to be taking up questions in urban ecology & sustainability where he will try to collaborate with other disciplines, like engineering, ecology and history to devise useful methodology or find comprehensive solutions for one of the many problems that our cities face today.
Sophia Thomas
Sophia Thomas is a public health professional from Bangalore. She is a dentist by training and has completed her Master of Public Health (MPH) from Christian Medical College, Vellore, Tamil Nadu. In the course of her public health training, she had the opportunity to work and understand public health problems in different settings – tribal, rural and urban. During this time, her research interests were: child and adolescent health, HIV/AIDS affected communities, urban health, dental public health, gender disparities in health and the health policies governing these issues. After completing her public health training, she worked at the Institute of Public Health, Bangalore in two projects – Emerging Voices for Global Health Program and Urban Health Action Research Project. In the urban health project, she was introduced to the multi-factorial problems affecting the urban poor suffering from noncommunicable diseases. Poor social determinants of health, often led them to prioritize better housing, higher employment opportunities, ease of availability of social security schemes, above their health and wellbeing. She believes that improving the social determinants of health with collaborative efforts between the health and non-health sectors can alleviate poverty and improve overall health and well-being of the urban poor communities. She hopes to work towards improving the health conditions of migrant workers in the cities, especially women and children by generating evidence through research studies, which can help in formulating migrant friendly health policies. She derives strength and support from her family & friends, who continue to inspire her in endeavors for social justice.
Vikas Kumar
Vikas was born in a small village Barhetta, in the Aurangabad district of Bihar. He belongs to a family of migrant laborers. He and his family moved to Delhi (Rithala), about 13 years ago in search of livelihood. He studied in a government school and chose to pursue history for his advanced studies. He acquired Bachelors and Masters degrees in History from Hindu College, Delhi University. After having spent more than a decade in Delhi’s Rithala, Vikas has experienced problems like lack of proper housing facilities, prejudices and discrimination on the basis of region, exploitation and physical violence at several occasions perpetuated by the landlord and factory owners, who could be described as ‘petty bourgeoisie’. These prompted him to claim that urban spaces like Delhi are not a safe space for the migrant laborer and is full of difficulties and hardships. Already facing major disadvantages of being away from their homeland, migrant laborer families in Delhi go through problems like exploitation and physical violence. Besides doing petty jobs at various factories, Vikas also taught at a school in Amba, his native village town. There he endeavored to integrate lessons taught in schools and events of socio-economic and political importance that occurred outside the school, in society at the grass roots level. Having lived a life of a migrant laborer, he is inclined towards research in the studies of labour. He finds work on ‘subaltern histories’ fascinating. Watching movies and listening to music are his favourite hobbies, besides indulging in long gossip sessions with close friends.
Vrashali Khandelwal
The idea of bringing research and practice together has been at the core of Vrashali’s professional passion for development. While pursuing her Masters at Azim Premji University, she developed an immense interest in the domain of policy design. Her associations with Narmada Bachao Andolan, Public Affairs Center and the Government of Haryana enabled her to formulate a deeper understanding of governance & democracy and establish the linkages between design and implementation in a more nuanced manner.
The interdisciplinary nature of Urban Fellowship Program at IIHS has allowed her to attain the necessary skill set and vocabulary to communicate with multiple stakeholders from varied backgrounds. The fellowship has given her a way to move forward while acknowledging the complexity of meta-narratives that exists. In the process, she has picked up the invaluable lesson of holding on to hope.
2016-17
Ajai Sreevatsan
Eight years ago, fresh out of engineering school, Ajai made a promise to his father. It was a promise that changed his life and gave him a career. He promised him that he will do science through journalism. That he would not just write about the truth – but show it, prove it. That he would bring the math and engineering he had learned into the world of words that he wanted to inhabit. It got him into journalism school and allowed him to pursue a dream. Talks of “becoming a writer” were far too revolutionary in his family. Like most Indian parents, his parents thought he’d end up as a doctor, engineer or a failure. And writing meant failure coupled with poverty. Number crunching and investigative grunt work was his savior. It was the only thing that sounded respectable to his family. They believed that he will write books on research methodologies one day.
During the initial three years he worked as an urban reporter for The Hindu in Chennai, he often thought about the promise he made to his father. He regularly used the power of numbers in his reporting to go beyond the rigid (but sometimes necessary) constraints of objectivity. He thought of his father when he won the McCormick Fellowship to report on national security issues out of Washington DC. Seven years, more than 600 news stories and a 9,000 mile trip to graduate school later, he thinks his father regrets the fact that he once placed conditions when Ajai asked him if he could follow his heart. But he did show faith. He believed in his choices. And him. The least Ajai could do in return is to do journalism that will make his father proud.
Ajai’s deep and abiding passion for investigative journalism and issues related to governance, thus, stems from the dreams of his father. And a promise that he has tried to keep. His experience documenting stories in both rural and urban India has taught him that India’s failings are primarily issues of governance, or the absence of it. In contrast to the encouragement of Panchayati Raj institutions at the rural level, urban India has no effective local governance mechanisms. He strongly feels that the current process of urbanisation in India cannot be equitable without strengthening participatory governance. He hopes that the skills and knowledge gained from the UFP will enable him to effectively intervene and advocate on behalf of those whose voices are not heard.
Ajeet Kumar
Ajeet was born and brought up in the very small village of Dihwa in Aurangabad District, Bihar. After his early education in the village school he moved to Gaya and then to Patna for high school. Although his parents are not educated, he completed his Bachelors of Commerce from Delhi University.
Here he found many opportunities to visit slum areas in Delhi like Jahangirpuri, Seemapuri and J.J.colony regularly. Every time he visited families in these places, he felt at home because of his own similar family background, far from the city lights of Delhi. Although his academic background is in Commerce and he was originally interested in a career in Business, he decided to move into the Development sector because of several incidents that moved him: the living condition of people who have migrated from Bihar in search of jobs and who live in very poor conditions in cities, which he has experienced first-hand; the condition of urban migrant labour that he saw during his industrial visits as part of his course; and the condition of his family and village, where people have high hopes on him. His current areas of interest are in urban settlements, livelihood creation and empowerment.
Aman Verma
Aman recently graduated from Symbiosis Law School, Noida, with B.A.LLB (Hons.) and is presently interning with Youth for Seva, an NGO in Bangalore, where he teaches English to high school students at a government school. Born and brought up in Delhi, cultural and extra-curricular activities in school exposed him to the social and economic conditions in the country. Internships and research projects during law school gave him an opportunity to serve with leading advocates and NGOs working in the social sector. During one such internship he worked with the Narmada Bachao Andolan in Madhya Pradesh. Observing the condition of displaced people and selfless service of the activists, he was motivated to align his areas of study and research toward issues plaguing development policies. His association with a college aided research project on land acquisition laws acquainted him with the huge disconnect between the law and ground realities. On the basis of these and numerous similar experiences, he is inclined to study the relationship between various social and economic forces and the political process.
Apurva Olwe
Apurva was born and brought up in Mumbai. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work, and a Master’s degree in Women’s Studies from TISS Mumbai. She loves travelling, trekking, yoga and meditation. She has also worked as a student coordinator with the Photography Promotion Trust, Mumbai. She uses photography as a social medium, inspired by her father, Sudharak Olwe who has used photography to document the horrors faced by conservancy workers in Mumbai. She would like to use her education and experience to take his work forward. As a social work student, and a feminist, her larger goal is to change the condition of women in India and to empower people to help themselves.
Asaf Ali Lone
Asaf Ali Lone belongs to the Kashmir Valley. He has done his B.A. (Hons.) in Arabic from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has recently completed his M.A. in Society and Culture from IIT Gandhinagar. He is interested in interdisciplinary approaches to knowledge. As a student and a learner, he has tried to cross disciplinary boundaries to enhance his skills and learning. In the future, he aspires to pursue research, which will enable him to build new approaches towards interdisciplinary learning in the Social Sciences and Humanities. His research interests are Urban Studies, Intersectionality, Men and Masculinities, Memory and Violence, Kashmiri Music and Folk Literature, Protest Songs, Arabic Music, and Postcolonial Historiography.
Ashwathy Anand
Ashwathy is an architecture graduate from School of Planning & Architecture, Bhopal and is passionate about Urban Design and regeneration of Indian Cities. From Kerala but brought up in Delhi, she has always been drawn to the multitude of layers that lay hidden in our Indian cities waiting to be explored. Following this interest, she has collaborated on many papers, competitions and workshops focusing on Indian cities and particularly Bhopal. Earlier published papers have addressed the transformation of Indian cities in the new global economy and detailed the re-development of specific areas within the old city of Bhopal for its revitalization. On graduation, she has worked as an architect on the development of the City Heritage Plan for Mathura under the HRIDAY scheme, mainly focusing on the Heritage conservation of tangible and intangible assets along with gap assessment of existing urban infrastructure.
Chandni Arun N Parekh
Professionally trained as an architect, Chan completed a postgraduate degree in Visual Art from Ambedkar University, Delhi. Located at the intersection of critical study of space, politics of representation, and gender and sexuality, Chan is interested in researching how urban housing is understood and reproduced as a site that actively rehearses casteist-patriarchy in India; further, how these conceptions structure and inform spaces of habitation for students and alternate/non-families. Chan has just begun to explore archival theory and research methods as integral to their research inquiry in the study of feminist urban geographies of home. They are also interested in – and their own research-artworks often explore – abstract art, surrealism and psychoanalysis, and photography (especially, selfportraiture and transgender attentions with(in) urban settings) as a research methodological tool.
Chandrakanta Patel
Chandrakanta is from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering, and is now teaching civil service aspirants at an institute in Jabalpur. As an urban resident, she has been interested in the social causes and roots of begging as an urban phenomenon in Indian cities. She would like to understand further the reasons behind why people start to beg, and the relationship of their activity with urban unemployment, housing issues, discrimination, and migration. She feels that our understanding of urban issues has to move beyond a legalistic or planning-centred approach and towards a social and human-oriented perspective. She hopes that being part of the UFP will allow her to identify problems with greater sensitivity, which is the first step to arriving at solutions.
Haifa Zubair
Haifa is a Development Studies graduate from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. She has gained an interdisciplinary learning experience in economics, political science, and sociology. Her research interests lie in themes of urban citizenship, informal economies, and everyday identities and urban marginalisation. Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology, her forays into contemporary political sociology have opened up wider questions of power and politics. A native of North Kerala, Haifa wrote about the complex operations of Hawala Networks in the Kerala Economy for her Master’s thesis. During her internship with Thomson Reuters, she conducted extensive research on the present legal and policy gaps in minority spaces in South Asia, which framed her insights on politics of policy governance. She had also worked in the capacity of Consultant- Editor for an upcoming book on governance. She hopes to work towards positive transitions in social and political space, both in the capacity of research through incorporating gender perspectives and on a personal level, by challenging conventions. Being an advocate of responsible travel, she respects the natural state and culture of each place she visits. She usually reads, and occasionally blogs.
Jayati Narain
Jayati is from Delhi, and completed much of her education in the city. After her Master’s degree in Sociology, she worked for a year at a public policy think tank in Kochi, Kerala on issues relating to urban governance and development. Through the course of her studies and work, she has had the opportunity to work on projects across a spectrum of issues, such as displacement & resettlement, the impact of landholding on the sex ratio, wall art & graffiti, the impact of urban growth around ancient monuments, and the challenges of urban governance. While she has been able to study and understand a range of issues, she has found herself most drawn towards questions relating to the affective qualities of physical space.
Kavina Patel
Kavina is from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, and a recent graduate from CEPT University with a bachelor’s degree in Urban Planning. As an urban planner, participatory planning and governance are two aspects of planning that most interest her and that she wishes to study further. Her research focuses on the effectiveness of participatory local governance in Pune, Maharashtra. She was the co-founder of a start-up, which dealt with real time automation of traffic counting called ‘Transpose’. She plans to take forward her experience that she has gained with the start-up to explore other aspects of planning.
Md. Mahtab Alam
Mahtab is an activist and a writer and has been working on issues of human rights, minority rights, counter-terrorism, development and developmentinduced displacement for the last decade. From Supaul, a small town in northern Bihar, he moved to Delhi at the age of 14 to study further. His keen interest in issues of marginalization and justice made him take up activism, first as a student and later on as a human rights activist. He completed his graduation in Political Science from the School of Open Learning, Delhi University in 2014. He had earlier tried his hand at studying Commerce and Economics at Jamia Millia Islamia, but his activism got the better of him. Mahtab was most recently a senior campaigner with Amnesty International India, where he coordinated the Human Rights Defenders Project. He has also worked with various civil and human rights organizations, such as the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN), the Association for the Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) and the Coalition for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (CPHRD). An avid reader and a bibliophile, he has extensively written on the issues of democracy, development, resistance, communalism, media and literature. In the long run, he plans to work in the urban space, and has founded Café SolidariTea, which is an initiative for Learning, Dialogue and Solidarity that is rooted in the Jamia Nagar locality of Delhi. He blogs at mahtabnama.wordpress.com and can be followed @MahtabNama
Nikhil Jain
Nikhil completed a degree in Mechanical engineering and joined the Young India Fellowship to learn things that weren’t taught in the conventional curriculum. The liberal arts program helped him develop perspective and understand the power of questioning. He has worked with Flexing It as a Product Manager, designing and managing online products, and with Playment as a Program Manager. He likes to travel, trek and climb new peaks, exploring and learning about culture and nature.
Nikhila Anoth
Nikhila has been working in the media industry for the past five years in TV and advertising in London (UK), Casablanca (Morocco), and currently in Bombay. Among the various media projects she has been part of, the most influential has been factual TV documentaries on mental health issues for the BBC. Being inspired by narrative-driven storytelling in the non-fiction genre, she worked on few documentary short films during volunteering stints in organizations in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh. Recent fieldwork with All India Union of Forest Working People, as part of a workshop on contemporary social issues with Sambhaavnaa Institute in Palampur, exposed her to various developmental issues in some of the forest regions in India. Drawing parallels from this experience, she has developed an interest in urban issues related to sustainable and inclusive development. Nikhila’s research interests are in public transport services, urban agriculture and affordable housing projects in cities. She is a graduate of Miranda House, Delhi University and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. She enjoys Asian cinema, traveling and learning languages.
Niyati Dave
Niyati graduated from Smith College with a BA in the History of Art and Architecture and has worked as a Research and Education Intern on a community based research project at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. She is interested in thinking about cities holistically, as a set of socio-political, economic and social-ecological entities. Her particular focus is on understanding how the social and political implications of the built environment impact and mediate access to spaces and services for women and marginalized communities.
Ooha Uppalapati
As a student of architecture for five years and a professional for two, Ooha has been biased towards the definition of spaces as inhabited and interacting entities, as opposed to purely independent built forms. The collectives of small identities representing a larger common identity, Indian cities have been central to her experiments and learning in this direction. Her limitations as an architect in understanding cities led to an interest in subjects like history, sociology, economics and philosophy. Added to this is the experience of living in three different cities in different phases of her life: Vijayawada on the banks of river Krishna, Bhopal and its beautiful lakes and Ahmedabad, have each been a rich and unique experience. They showed her how habits and rituals define and distinguish an environment as much as and sometimes even more than the physical entities do. She now intends to document and analyse cities as carriers of people, their daily lives and traditions along with the buildings, roads and bridges they occupy. Some distance into this assignment she also aspires to be equipped enough to be able to introduce such elements into these complex systems that can contribute to the design of a cultural progression.
Pawan Paramanandan
Pawan graduated as a Mechanical Engineer and was attracted by the diversity that a career in the civil services provides. He firmly believes that the future of our cities is connected to our governance institutions at the local, state and national level and the human capital that these institutions possess. He finds the UFP to be a very promising program to gain experience and skills to engage with the major challenge of urban transition in India. He is particularly interested in understanding our institutional structure, as rooted in the constitution and the possible reforms that would enable them to function effectively under a dynamic environment while leveraging the resources and expertise in civil society and in citizens themselves. He is also curious to learn how policy decisions made by the government impacts the lives of people on the ground, and in the potential of our cities to effect social change. As a Bangalorean who has witnessed the city’s environment deteriorate under the crushing demands of economic growth, he would also like to contribute towards finding sustainable solutions to our urban problems.
Pranav Kuttaiah
Originally from Bangalore, Pranav moved to Mumbai to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from St. Xavier’s College. While in Mumbai, he took a keen interest in issues concerning urban development and human rights having been strongly influenced by the Ambedkarite movement in the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra. In college, he took up projects concerning the urban poor in the Greater Mumbai region and also took to teaching underprivileged children. On graduating, Pranav received the Abdul Ansari Memorial Prize for ranking first in the Bachelor’s of Journalism program, and was further selected for a yearlong exchange program at the Paris School of International Affairs in France. While in Paris, he broadly focused on human rights issues in the European context and was influenced by the ideas of European anti-racism movements as well as his professors like Christophe Jaffrelot and David Rieff. A journalist at heart, Pranav has previously worked with The Hindu and The Hindustan Times in Bangalore. He is fluent in English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam, and is currently pursuing an advanced level in French. He wishes to further his understanding of development practice to sensitize and sharpen his writing and scholarship from a feminist and anti-caste perspective.
Priyanka Gajbhiye
Priyanka comes from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. She completed her Bachelor’s in Engineering from the Institute of Engineering and Technology, Indore 2014. Priyanka chose to work in the social sector instead of the private sector, as she believes that this would be far more fulfilling for her. She has most recently worked as an IRC coordinator at Samhita Community Development Services in Bhopal, funded by UNDP. This project gave her an opportunity to work with people living in several slums in Bhopal and understand their background and daily challenges like education, livelihoods, and access to basic amenities. Priyanka’s role model is her mother. She believes in learning from people and circumstances at every step of her life. Her biggest strength is her positive attitude towards life.
Pushkal Shivam
Pushkal Shivam graduated with an Integrated Masters in Development Studies from IIT-Madras. He is mainly interested in urban transformation. His current research interests concern the politics of land, infrastructure and how they intersect with sacred spaces and has published his work in Economic and Political Weekly, The Hindu and The Times of India. As part of his most recent project, he is looking at the occupancy of ‘public land’ in the context of acute acquisition for industrial purposes. In his earlier role as a journalist, he mobilized the Right to Information Act in his reportage on urban politics. He has worked with organizations such as The Hindu and Transparency International.
Sai Ratna Chaitanya Gurugubelli
Sai Ratna Chaitanya graduated as an architect in 2015 from S.V.C.A Hyderabad. He worked as a Junior Architect with a design firm in Bangalore where he was part of teams working on preparing station accessibility plans for two metro stations in Bangalore, and vision documents for two prospective smart cities in Tamil Nadu. He also worked on small competitions where the team looked at place-making possibilities in the neighborhood of Domlur in Bangalore. Along with a few other regular contributors he writes on “loveofz”, a blog dedicated to the bus based public transport scene in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. He is currently working with the Hyderabad Urban Lab on a project to make sense of public transit data in Hyderabad.
Saubhagya
Saubhagya belongs to a farmer family from a foothill hamlet in the central Himalayas. After studying at a residential school in Nainital, he completed a Bachelor’s in Architecture from Dehradun. He received professional training at Anangpur Building Centre, Faridabad (NCR) and Mozaic Design, Goa, where he was introduced to urban development methodologies. He has been practicing in the remote Himalayas, where his interests lie in issues relating to Ghost Villages and the migration/reverse-migration extensively happening in the central Himalayan region. Other than this, Saubhagya has been a part of developing AI & 3D for various computer games, with a special interest in the development of artificially intelligent frameworks. He is also an amateur documentary filmmaker. He finds the methodologies and ideas of modern India by Laurie Baker as one of his inspirations and influences, which, he believes, if combined with modern day technologies would definitely be a step forward towards building resilience.
Sindhuja Janakiraman
Sindhuja is an architect based in Chennai. Her inclination to study and work on urban issues started during her undergraduate degree through her dissertation research on design as a mitigation tool for disaster-struck cities/towns, and also when she worked closely with a fishing community in North Chennai as part of her thesis. After her graduation, she volunteered in post- earthquake rehabilitation projects in Nepal such as transitional shelters and schools for remote villages. She has been working with Triple’O’studio in Chennai on a range of projects including the redesign of an iconic road junction, conducting heritage walks as part of conservation measures under “Houses of Mylapore”, and pro-bono projects such as redevelopment of government schools & village housing with the NGO ‘Bhoomika Trust’. She has also volunteered with the NGO ‘Make A Difference’ to create equitable outcomes for shelter home children. Her research interests lie in architecture, urban design & planning as key instruments to deal with environment, economic, and social challenges, leading to urban resiliency. She believes the approach to such complex problems is by harnessing the uniqueness of a community and moving towards “working with communities”, rather than “working for communities”.
Sonal Sharma
Sonal is from in Delhi, and her higher education has been multidisciplinary in nature. During her Master’s in Development Studies, her internship and dissertation were based in Jharkhand, where she studied the mining induced displacement of Adivasis. In addition to urban displacement and resettlement, she has also found herself intrigued by surrogacy from a feminist advocacy standpoint. Her interests lie in environmental issues and international relations.
Sushil Kumar Bhagvanta Prasad
Sushil is from a small village in the Bhadohi (Sant Ravidas Nagar) district of Uttar Pradesh but has spent most of his childhood in a slum in Santa Cruz, Mumbai. He has completed a Bachelor’s degree in Media Studies from Allahabad University, a post-graduate diploma in advertising and public relations from IIMC, New Delhi and a certificate course in Health Journalism from UNICEF. He has interned as a reporter with Fast News in Allahabad, and with Scoopwhoop Media as a content writer.
The experience of growing up in a Mumbai slum shaped the questions he would like to deal with as part of the UFP: issues of urban sanitation and equitable access to housing. He is also interested in exploring the larger issues surrounding rural depopulation and the integration of rural migrants into the urban economy.
Swapnil Gedam
Swapnil is from Nagpur, Maharashtra and he has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and History from Nagpur University. He has also developed a profound interest in politics, philosophy and religion. His social background and experiences helped him understand how the social structure of Indian society is deeply embedded in the power relations between caste, class and gender. His Master’s degree from TISS provided an opportunity to understand society holistically and supplemented his empirical knowledge with theoretical understanding. For his Master’s thesis, he worked on the issue of “Equity in 24/7 Urban water system at Nagpur” in the light of caste, class and gender. After graduation, he worked as a Programme Officer at National University Student Skill development programme (NUSSD), a TISS project. Both his study and work experiences have cultivated a deep interest in understanding urban issues especially policies and programmes regarding water sector and education.
Swati Pathak
A life-long nomad, Swati has lived and studied in half a dozen states of India and has been fortunate enough to travel through over a dozen others. As an undergraduate student, she studied Political Science at University of Delhi and was enthralled by the concept of city-states and Janapadas in Western and Indian Political Thought, respectively. This fascination was given a meaningful direction through her Master’s programme in Urban Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics. Her degree equipped her with a deep and critical understanding of different images of the city, but equally focused on everyday urban processes in the form of urban street cultures, aesthetics and architecture, violence and contested spaces, networks and neighbourhoods. This subsequently led her to undertake two short-term research projects where she carried out field-based interviews and surveys in a group. While one paper showed how poetry slam as an emerging urban phenomenon in Delhi captures an important social and political aspect of urban life, the other studied the complex landscape of Chandni Chowk as complex texts with meanings and tropes embedded in the process of naming of streets. Through the fellowship, she hopes to be able to put to use sociological thinking in creating livable and equitable cities.
Syeda Arshiya Sultana
Syeda Arshiya is from Hyderabad, where she finished her undergraduate degree in Architecture. She worked for almost 3 years before pursuing a postgraduate degree in Urban Design from SPA, Delhi. After returning to Hyderabad she worked in collaboration with architect-designers and independently on projects. She was also a visiting faculty for the Urban Design Studio at an architecture school for two semesters. She has a keen interest in learning about the city as it is understood through different fields. Her research interest includes the evolution of urban forms, and spatial inequalities.
TejInder Singh
TejInder is from Bathinda in Punjab. His research interests lie in the areas of culture, heritage and politics. He has had a range of work experiences from that of a trainee architect to managing electoral campaigns, participating in Model UN conferences, and documenting and archiving contemporary issues. In 2013, he worked for formulating the cultural heritage policy for the state of Punjab as part of a UNESCO initiative as well as for the Cultural Heritage Management & Tourism Development Plan for the Mughal Imperial Highway and The Grand Trunk Road in Punjab. TejInder recently covered Gaurav Gogoi’s electoral Campaign for the Assam elections and was also associated with covering the Occupy UGC movement. He played a pivotal role in the photo documentation of Swaraj Abhiyaan’s Jai Kisaan Andolan. Believing in the power of photographs, he has always been keen on using his skills as a photographer to reflect on society and has held several exhibitions as well. He is currently working to establish an artist’s residency in his village to bridge the gap between urbanisation and the culture of the people.
Vineet Kashyap
Vineet is from Dhanbad, Jharkhand. Despite his family’s hostility to the social sciences and humanities, he went on to complete his BA from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Tuljapur. While studying at TISS he had the opportunity to engage with varied disciplines like economics, political science, and research methods, through which he developed a keen interest on urbanization. His research and internship experiences were crucial in shaping his understanding of subject areas. His dissertation on “Urbanization of Jharia” under the supervision of Prof. Abdul Shaban helped him to understand the relationship between urbanization and the presence of natural resources like coal. This research also gave him an understanding of how a parallel economy functions in a region, and how illegal activities fuel local employment, giving him the much-needed skill to connect theoretical ideas to practical, real-life issues.