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A slightly modified version of this piece appeared on Times blog on May 11.

Social distancing, isolation and locking down of cities and oneself is the norm in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. With this, inequality in cities has been laid bare, exposing the startling vulnerability of the urban poor. The current economic slowdown is being...

The COVID-19 health crisis and associated lockdown has thrown into plain view the fragility of existing systems, from healthcare and governance, to the gig economy and global markets. With people confined to their homes and restricted mobility, cities are working to not only manage and contain the spread of the disease but also ensure a consistent, efficient and reliable supply of basic services. While the struggles of providing equal access to efficient and reliable basic services is not new to Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in India, limiting contagion and avoiding secondary health impacts...

India has been under a complete lockdown since March 24 to arrest the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Six weeks into this unprecedented lockdown, there have been 49,501 recorded cases of COVID-19 and 1,697 deaths (as of May 6). This crisis, apart from being a human tragedy, is also expected to hit the economy hard.

A closer look into the current scenario, however, reveals that we are facing three converging crises: the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, its immediate impact on the economy and the ever-present threat from climate change. What remains to be seen is how the pandemic and its...

The novel coronavirus has cut across class and cities, borders and barriers, and thrown many a government and their healthcare systems under the bus. It has also exposed the glaring disparity between the adaptive capacity of different sections of the population. Like most disasters the brunt of this one too, falls more severely on the poor. This is especially visible in India; with a sizeable chunk of its 1.3 billion — the...

As the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, rapidly spreads across the world, health services in many nations are increasingly overwhelmed, while the global economy is falling into an unprecedented recession. The World Bank has cut India’s growth forecast for 2020-21 to 2.8%, down from 5% in 2019-20. Informal sector workers and members of lower income groups have been hit particularly hard as their wages have disappeared. The International Labour Organization estimates that...

Inequality is shaping how people are experiencing COVID-19 in cities to a startling degree. The vulnerability of the urban poor is striking everywhere, but the divide is more visible in some places than others.

This is where I live on Veera Desai Road in Andheri (K- West) ward of Mumbai. Though our ward has the third highest COVID-19...

Streets in the last century were primarily designed as a mode of transport for goods and services. This automobile-centric approach of street design stifled the human accessibility aspect, and eventually, cities forgot that every citizen is a pedestrian at some point in a day. But this scenario is changing, and cities globally are leading the movement to reinvest in their streets with a focus on pedestrian environment.

Mumbai is a city of pedestrians, with 51% of the total daily trips being walk trips, according to the...

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is India’s flagship scheme serving as a social security net for millions of rural households; providing them guaranteed employment and income resilience. While it has contributed significantly to the rural life and economy, can it be used to mainstream climate agendas into development, and contribute to building resilience?

A model of convergence

Climate resilience is understanding how climate change – both slow-onset events (such as increasing sea levels, rising temperature, rapidly changing weather...

This blogpost was originally published in News18 on April 15.

On December 26, last year India’s Power System Operation Corporation Ltd. (POSOCO) faced a unique challenge: to mitigate the impact of a solar eclipse on the electricity grid. It was expected that the solar eclipse would disrupt the generation of solar energy due to blackout of the sun, and cause changes to the electricity demand pattern (due...

In contemporary India the household revolves around fulfilling the needs of children at home. Children are central to the decision-making process at every level. While Indian families make children a priority in designing households, our city-planners do not take into account the needs of future generation while planning Indian cities.