Madhav Pai

Interim CEO & Program Executive Director - Sustainable Cities & Transport

Bio

Madhav Pai is the Interim CEO at WRI India. He is also Program Executive Director of WRI India Ross Center. He is a respected thinker and practitioner on issues of urbanization, climate change and environment. He currently provides overall leadership to WRI India activities in India and also spearheads WRI India’s Cities program.

Madhav is a systems thinker and combines his academic training in engineering and transport planning, with his acumen to find systemic solutions to complex and wicked urban problems. India’s urbanization challenges are the key research focus of Madhav’s exploration. He joined WRI India in 2008 and has pioneered several new, and innovative methods to overcome barriers to implementation of environmentally and financially sustainable infrastructure.

Madhav has mentored senior researchers at WRI India, in building sustainable, low carbon and resilient prototypes for Indian cities which can be further scaled across the country. He has led several projects around emerging urbanism ideas such as the use of tactical urbanism and public campaigns around pedestrian/social infrastructure, geospatial and other big data analytics to create data driven conversations and innovation challenges/competitions to address service delivery challenges. Notable successes include project design and implementation of Indore BRT, Mumbai Street Lab, the Raahgiri campaign for democratizing public streets, and solution design for last-mile connectivity, clean tech, etc.

Under his leadership, the team has also informed several policy discussions, at the national-, state-, and city-level, on road safety, urban transport, transit-oriented development, electric mobility, urban and regional planning and clean air. Today, WRI India Ross Center engages 100+ professionals in offices across India and supports over 50 Indian cities.

Madhav is a published author and has written several research papers for renowned journals, articles, and books on urban transport, urban planning, resilience, and clean air. He is a civil engineer from Mumbai and holds a master’s in Transport Planning from the University of California, Berkeley.

Madhav lives in Mumbai with his wife Chaya and their daughter Ahilya. He is often seen bicycling with Ahilya on the streets of Mumbai. He is a believer in public transport, loves green open spaces and credits his interest in urban planning to the constant loss of playgrounds, to buildings, that he witnessed growing up, and his regular commutes on Mumbai’s suburban trains.

Blogs

5 Ways India Can Use Innovation to Meet Its Urbanization Challenge
by Madhav Pai and Jaya Dhindaw - January 27, 2023
Shaping efficient and equitable urban service delivery for sustainable growth

India is projected to overtake China as the most populous country in the world this year. The shifting demographics are bound to see heightened demand for education, healthcare, jobs, and civic amenities, putting existing systems under stress. Current urban services delivery models,
Why We Need to Prioritize Traffic Engineering for Street Safety
by Madhav Pai and Dhawal Ashar - November 02, 2022
A version of this blog was originally published on July 13, 2022 on Scroll.in

Streets are the largest contiguous public spaces in cities across the world. However, they should not be
Opportunity for Electric Two-wheeler (e-2W) in Hyperlocal Economy of India
by Dr. Parveen Kumar, Leona Nunes and Madhav Pai - July 08, 2021
With the pandemic a state of all pervasive geographical immobility has prevailed for a while now. There has also been an increased dependence on delivery of essentials goods. The pandemic has adversely impacted the workforce, testing capacities of the existing systems. During this ongoing crisis, home delivery options have become the “new normal” in domains like healthcare, food, grocery, and
Metro Lines: Game Changing Opportunity for Locating Jobs in Mumbai
by Sree Kumar Kumaraswamy, Madhav Pai and Kaustubh Chuke - March 23, 2021
The Union Budget 2021 laid out an elaborate financial package to develop metro rail lines across cities. While more metro lines are being envisioned with a focus on building back the economy, post-pandemic mass transit infrastructure also needs to
Tackling Transport Emissions
by Madhav Pai - January 06, 2021
This blog was originally published on NIUA.org.

Transport sector is a significant contributor and hence tackling emissions from this sector will go a long way in reducing the overall air-quality problems of the city and the region.

Let’s look at Delhi, a range of emission
Physical Distancing on Mumbai’s Trains Is Nearly Impossible, and Station Design Is a Big Reason Why
by Leona Nunes, Lubaina Rangwala and Madhav Pai - September 17, 2020
This blog was originally published on TheCityFix.

Mumbai’s suburban rail system is the world’s busiest, serving
From My Window: A View of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mumbai
by Madhav Pai - April 23, 2020
Inequality is shaping how people are experiencing COVID-19 in cities to a startling degree. The vulnerability of the urban poor is striking
Planning for People: Agenda 2022 for an Inclusive and Sustainable Bengaluru
by Jaya Dhindaw and Madhav Pai - July 20, 2018
Recognised as a city offering an abundance of opportunity in India, Bengaluru has witnessed significant increases in business investments and urban migration over the last few decades. Today, it is home to over 10.45 million people, contributes nearly
The Mumbai rail stampede was waiting to happen. Here’s how we can prevent a similar tragedy
by Madhav Pai - October 16, 2017
This piece was originally published on scroll.in.

Friday’s stampede at the Elphinstone Road railway station in Mumbai was a tragedy waiting to happen. I speak from my own horrifying experiences of being stuck in dense queues at Lower Parel
Unlock Bengaluru: Driving the Next Wave of Urbanisation
by Madhav Pai and Jaya Dhindaw - July 07, 2017
From Bangalore to Bengaluru

In 1970, Bangalore had 1.6m people. Within the decade, the emergence and expansion of public sector institutions such as the Indian Space Research Organisation, Bharat Electrical Limited, and Hindustan Machine Tools caused a sudden growth spurt, followed quickly by more growth owing to the

Publications

Rolling out Electric Buses
The Guidebook is a ready reckoner for transit agencies to help them adopt a calibrated approach to induct electric buses in their services. This is to ensure that the technology shift neither disrupts the quality of the bus service nor becomes burdensome for the transit agencies. Such a phased...
by Pawan Mulukutla, Madhav Pai, Shyamasis Das and Anirudh Ray - March 2022

Publication
Topics: Sustainable Cities
Geography: India
Towards Smarter Service Provision for Smart Cities
India is one of the fastest growing countries in the world and urbanisation is both a challenge and an opportunity for India with huge implications for the rest of the world. One critical concern for India’s urbanising future is the provision of basic urban services for all its citizens. Using a...
by Sahana Goswami, Madhav Pai, Srikanth Shastry, Anil Markandya, Aarsi Sagar, Indro Ray, Zeba Aziz, Sandeep Paul, Anirudh Tagat and Apurba Chatterjee - December 2018

Publication
Ahmedabad: Town Planning Schemes for Equitable Development — Glass Half Full or Half Empty?
This case study in the World Resources Report, “Towards a More Equal City,” examines transformative urban change in Ahmedabad, India, by analyzing the land pooling and readjustment mechanism called Town Planning Scheme (TPS). This paper reviews the evidence on whether the TPS mechanism has...
by Darshini Mahadevia, Madhav Pai and Anjali Mahendra - August 2018

Publication
State-led Alternative Mechanisms to Acquire, Plan, and Service Land For Urbanisation in India
Rapidly urbanizing Indian cities need mechanisms to ensure that land is acquired, planned, and serviced with adequate infrastructure and social amenities, to prevent the occurrence of haphazard urban expansion and under-provisioned inner-city areas.

Such mechanisms should help
...
by Rejeet Mathews, Madhav Pai, Tintu Sebastian and Souhardhya Chakraborty - July 2018
Publication
Encouraging Design Practices for Sustainable Mobility in India: A Guidebook
Encouraging Design Practices for Sustainable Mobility in Indian Townships: A Guidebook, is WRI India’s publication that highlights the role of urban design interventions that can be applied in townships or gated communities in cities, that promote the use of sustainable modes such as walking,...
by Anjali Mahendra, Jaya Dhindaw, Madhav Pai, Saritha Sudhakaran and Lakshmi Rajagopalan - April 2017

Publication
Topics: Sustainable Cities
Geography: India
Sustainable Urban Transport in India
This paper examines the role the auto-rickshaw sector can play in promoting sustainable urban transport in India. It develops a policy vision for this sector and presents recommendations on reforms to address sustainability challenges.

...
by Madhav Pai, Akshay Mani and Rishi Aggarwal - February 2012

Publication
Topics: Sustainable Cities
Geography: India