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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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’.

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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.

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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.

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 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.