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Performance training in India, and more specifically, my training in dance, has been shaped by multiple, overlapping systems of power that created a very specific notion of what counts as dance. In this position paper I examine these systems of power, and what they mean to performance training, through the prism of personal experience. I then articulate what the core aims of my pedagogy is and provide some concrete possibilities to disrupt power structures within performance pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern schooling systems operate through normative and sedentary framings of childhood, within which migrant childhoods get constructed as outliers. This paper problematizes the discriminatory ways in which such a system operates. The inclusionary mechanisms adopted to 'mainstream' 'hard to reach' migrant children into formal schools do not address the fundamental spatio-temporal modalities of modern schooling. This complicates the relationship between migrant childhoods and presumed policy dichotomies such as inclusion and exclusion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, this paper foregrounds how migrant children's lives, are spatio-temporally liminal and precarious in the city. It further explores how these modalities of migrant children's lives are in discordance with the spatio-temporal framing of modern childhood and schooling. Moreover, migrant children's own experiences of schooling and socio-spatial marginalization in the city bring out the contradictions of modern schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the major limitations of the existing speed–area occupancy curve for multi-class traffic. Any driver will react not to the actual area occupancy, but to a perceived area occupancy based on the spatial arrangement and percentage composition of vehicles. To address multi-class traffic peculiarities, this paper proposes a formulation for perceived area occupancy. Traffic flow is simulated on a road section using a calibrated microsimulation model for Electronics City, Bangalore, India. The speed–concentration curves are plotted for various functional forms using density, area occupancy, and perceived area occupancy. Analysis results showed that the speed–perceived area occupancy curve could capture the speed variation better than by the existing functional forms and could predict traffic flow significantly better than with that by speed–density curves when used with the fundamental equation of traffic flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In developing countries, procedural ambiguity due to bureaucratic overlap and political discretion gives rise to divergence between law and practice. In this context of pervasive informality, it is important to consider how local negotiations produce disparate outcomes. We examine these local negotiations to explain how informal property rights are acquired and how markets operate in the slums of Bengaluru, India. Drawing on original interview and survey data, we describe how at least 18 types of property documents issued to urban slum residents can be ordered along a tenure continuum. Intermediaries are required to negotiate the opportunities that lie hidden within ambiguity. A first set of political intermediaries helps slum residents acquire property rights incrementally along this continuum. A second set of intermediaries helps facilitate informal housing transactions, keeping markets liquid across the tenure continuum. The mechanics of acquiring and transacting informal properties can differ across cities and countries, but, across contexts, intermediation helps negotiate informality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper documents the role of skill training centres in Bengaluru, India, in the production of a peripatetic and precarious workforce for India's new service economy. It describes how semi-educated youth from disadvantaged rural backgrounds are recruited for short-term training courses, which are promoted as a route to economic mobility, but are then placed in undesirable low-end and low-paid urban service jobs. Because the employment offered rarely matches their expectations or aspirations, graduates of training programmes often quit within a few weeks, returning to their home villages or searching for other job opportunities. The findings of the study suggest that skill training centres, rather than fulfilling their expressed goals of lifting rural youth out of poverty, contribute to the creation of a footloose and insecure workforce – thus catering to the requirements of organised service industries rather than the needs of unemployed youth. The paper contributes to current debates on youth unemployment, skill development, and labour precarity in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the experience of revanchist urban transition among street-based sex workers—male, female and transgender individuals—in Bangalore city in India, over the last two decades. While analysing this, this study lays out the everyday struggles of this section of informal workers, against revanchist forces that further perpetuate their marginalised status. To capture these experiences, oral narratives from nearly five dozen sex workers were collected over nearly eighteen months of fieldwork, as well as from half a dozen organisations supporting them. This was further complemented by longitudinal archival information, elicited from reports published in Bangalore editions of newspapers over the period 1998–2018, from the archival collection housed by the organisation Sangama. This paper also provides a discussion on the ongoing human rights and citizenship empowering initiatives among this section of workers, by identifying the role of various individuals, organisations and movements in this regard. The paper then concludes by highlighting the vital need to improve the inclusiveness of these informal workers in urban life and urban transition, not only by law enforcement but also in public consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new method for urban population density prediction at 30 m resolution. Using data for Bangalore, the paper demonstrates that population within each 30 m residential built-up cell can be modeled as a function of cell-level data on street density and building heights and ward-level data on car ownership. Building-height data were generated from Cartosat-1 stereo imagery using an open-source satellite stereo image processing software. Using this building-height data in conjunction with the other datasets, the paper demonstrates that a 30 m resolution population density surface can be generated such that, when summed to the ward level, the median absolute percentage error between predicted population and known census population at the ward level is 8.29%. The paper also shows that the relationship between population density, street density, building height, and ward level car ownership is spatially non-stationary. A fine-grained understanding of urban population densities, as enabled by the proposed method, can be beneficial to research, policy, and practice related to cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residents from the Indian city of Bangalore perceive the degradation of quality of life primarily attributed to unprecedented levels of growth. The city has been guided by routinely updated master plans since 1985, which should have anticipated and mitigated the consequences of urban growth. Today, new forms of collective action are emerging to gain control over urban space, life and ultimately governance. Based on the voices of multi-sector stakeholders in various 'domains' of urban governance during the latest master planning process, this paper provides an exploratory case study about the relationship between the planning process and governance reform. Master planning could facilitate reform through collaborative decision-making, accountability for outcomes, and greater inclusion. Master planning processes need to go beyond current means of citizen participation and ensure sustained social learning among the various actors at the ward-level to strengthen urban governance structures. More research is needed for planners in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic geographers have recently made important contributions to understanding of the relationship between regional transformation, industrial specialisation and innovation networks in the emergence of new industries. However, most contemporary research has focused on the influence of networks on regional trajectories, paying lip service to how regional trajectories also influence network configurations. Furthermore, international comparative research on how specific regional innovation system (RIS) trajectories may shape innovation networks in new industrial sectors is underdeveloped. The paper investigates how the trajectories of Bangalore and Beijing RISs influence the objectives and geographical configuration of innovation networks in the new media industry. The co-evolution of different elements of the RIS trajectory points to the unfolding of a politically and institutionally driven trajectory in Beijing, and a cognitively driven trajectory in Bangalore. These trajectories lead to specific barriers and opportunities for the development of innovation networks in new industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a green energy source, the use of wind has been rapidly growing in recent years. Whereas wind has complex and stochastic nature hence precise wind power predictions are essential for economic operation of the wind energy systems. For utilities, the rapid variations in wind power can generate serious problem of reliability reduction. The forecasting of wind power changes allows a utility to plan the connection and disconnection of wind power generation based on forecasting wind power generation and predicted load. In this paper, an environment friendly wind power prediction technique of variable-speed wind power system is proposed. The technique is employed from the prediction algorithm to create a prediction model to get accurate power. It is authenticated on the producer power curve of the variable-speed wind system. Additionally, the technique is used in average monthly wind power prediction and the outcomes show a huge improvement in prediction accuracy using the proposed method. Further, the likely value of rated wind speed for installed wind power system in Vishakhapatnam, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Bangalore, India, are also discussed. The empirical outcomes are compared with different wind forecast models and based on the root mean square error (RMSE), the proposed model gives the perfection in prediction accuracy compared to Gaussian Processes and Numerical Weather Prediction, Wind power prediction without adjustment, Wind power prediction with adjustment, support vector machine methods. Further, the developed model is used to evaluate the annual reliability indices by convolving the predicted generation with predicted load in the selected station. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates how the princely state of Mysore used gardens and horticulture for shaping the urban development of Bangalore between the late-19th and mid-20th century. Despite being constrained by the British colonial regime's policies of indirect rule; the Mysore State drew on an approach to modernisation and urban development which their pre-British predecessors had initiated during the eighteenth century. Between 1881 and 1947, it pursued this home-grown modern approach in Bangalore City by using gardens and horticulture to expand urban industry and shape the urban landscape, establishing Bangalore as one of the most progressive cities in British India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs an autobiographical approach to reflect on some limitations of conventional academic conferences in creating community and supporting deep learning. By and large conventional large conferences tend to be premised on what Brazilian educator Paulo Freire calls the banking model of education and therefore frequently reproduce prevalent academic hierarchies. Examining some feminist ways of conferencing, I argue that while they offer valuable opportunities for dialogue and reflection, they do not radically alter the canonised conferencing model of keynotes, plenaries and parallel presentations. I then reflect on my experience of attending a national conference of Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) practitioners in Bangalore, India, in 2014, framing it through the lens of feminist and critical pedagogy. I conclude that TO with its commitment to equity offers inspiration for re-imagining academic conferences to make them more inclusive of marginalised groups and to support professional and personal growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the politics of land regularization pushed for by lower and middle-income groups across various sites post the expansion of Bangalore in 2006, which has created numerous non-master planned settlements, especially in peri-urban areas. I argue for a rethinking of the debates on urban informality in Global South urbanisms through a focus on this politics. I describe the production of the urban through an ethnography of land's social and administrative embeddings, which pays close attention to the historical and competing claims on land and the institutional complexity of bureaucracy. I also foreground the interpretative frames of residents, rather than planning codes. This methodological approach reveals how non-plan actors channelize various bureaucratic modalities, including higher state spaces, in order to negotiate and co-produce land policy. In sum, the article reveals how this mode of urbanization arises due to the state's need to navigate complex rival claims on land and residents' push for more equitable redistribution. This contests the sweeping diagnosis of land grab, failures of Master Planning, and the reckless extension of free markets on land, which usually frame analyses of urban informality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the emotions of self-drive rental car users in India on social-media platform using sentiment analysis and estimates the relationship between socio-demographic factors and factors influencing the decision of renting a car. An ordered logit model is used to determine the factors which are affecting individuals' demographic characteristics to rent from a self-drive rental car service. A total of six models are computed for each of the influencing factors. The results suggest that there is a positive image of self-drive rental car service as perceived from social media platform and in the 18-25 years age group. Private employees are significantly affected by quality of car and ease to hire facility offered by this service. It is also estimated that time flexibility is the most influencing factor considered while renting a car. The outcomes of this study may aid these service providers in strategic planning and policy framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberal urban transition in Bangalore city over the last two decades has unleashed forces of gentrification and revanchism. Consequently, street-based sex workers, as an informal workforce, have been systematically losing their tracts of life and livelihood and being denied their narrative of urban transition experience. An entire ecology around street-based sex work has disintegrated, pushing many workers into further invisibility, gradually melting away their grasp on their city. Relying on their oral histories and textured narratives, this paper draws the sexual counter-geographies and socio-spatial contours of Bangalore's 'sex-scape,' bringing out the ordeals of its overwhelming transition. In this process, we bring out the dismal intersections that undergrid their life and work, and threats to their very existence in the process of envisioning and unravelling the realization of a city. We reinforce sex work as a theme in Indian urban studies, and the urban in Indian sex work scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the Engine factories in India is manufacturing three types of engines that power various types of battle tanks. While operating the tanks, the crank shaft main journals and pins need lubrication for smooth running with minimum friction and to dissipate the heat produced. In order to prevent the leakage in the lubricating system, special purpose silk thread is wound around the threaded portion of the bolt before tightening the nut with gasket and washer that has to withstand the oil pressure of 14 kg/cm2 at a temperature of 140 °C. The expected life of the engine is 10 years approx. (500 h of actual running), so the special purpose silk thread should have self-life of more than the engine life. Earlier, the special purpose silk thread of 77.2 Tex (maximum) that would have a breaking load of 2 kgf (minimum) with 18% elongation at rupture (minimum) was sourced from Japan indirectly. Due to decline in the silk production in Japan, the supply chain broke and ceased to exist. The technical know-how on yarn manufacturing was unknown but details of eight thread characteristics were available. CSTRI, Bangalore, with the data, manufactured the special purpose silk thread through reverse engineering by designing the yarn geometry using indigenously produced multivoltine raw silk reeled on multiend reeling machine. Subsequently, the special purpose thread was produced in commercial scale and supplied to the Engine factory, Avadi that is being used as oil seal in the engines of battle tanks after getting the performance test report from the Defence quality control agency. This research paper deals with process of reverse engineering and design of yarn geometry in achieving the desired characteristics of the special purpose silk thread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ever-growing environmental concerns caused due to fossil fuel depletion and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has paved way for consumers to consider Electric Vehicles (EV) as a rapidly emerging operational alternative to vehicles that run on fossil fuels like petrol, diesel and CNG. The paper aims to identify the possible factors in consumers’ intention of Electric Vehicle adoption. A quantitative approach is adopted and the data is collected from 172 respondents from Bengaluru through an online survey method using snowball sampling method. A robust statistical method, such as exploratory factor analysis is conducted using IBM SPSS 23 to identify the factors. The study identified factors such as Financial Barriers, Vehicle Performance Barriers, Lack of charging infrastructure, Environmental Conservation, Societal Influence, Social Awareness of Electric Vehicles as influencers towards electric vehicle adoption. The outcome of the study helps the policymakers to modify the current policy with respect to electric vehicle in the emerging nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to investigate deliberate instances of the unclogging of congested urban infrastructures through such measures as widening roads and constructing underpasses. Such decongestive actions have increasingly become routine in the burgeoning cities of the Global South. The city of Bengaluru, India’s hub for business process outsourcing and for new information technology innovation and entrepreneurship, provides an apt location to examine and excavate the political connotations of decongestive work. In doing so, this paper proposes infrastructure scape as an explanatory concept to describe three facets of decongestive efforts in Bengaluru – first, the organizing principle that assembles them, second, the technological sensibility that constitute these efforts, and finally the value commitments that each scape proposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a fresh perspective on the complicated relationship between digital communication technologies and historically disadvantaged castes such as Dalits in peri-urban Bangalore (Bengaluru), India, a city popularly perceived as India’s “Silicon Valley.” Based on interviews with Dalit household members, entrepreneurs, and political activists, the study examines whether mobile phones have been insufficiently harnessed by Dalits in the region to overcome historic deprivation, or whether they may have even assisted in the reinforcement of caste-based exclusion. The paper uses oral histories and draws from feminist perspectives on technology to demonstrate how the contemporary socio-technological outcomes among Dalits in peri-urban south Bangalore is a result of a convergence between three elements - the durability of caste in peri-urban metropolitan India, the social construction of the usage of information communication technologies (ICTs), and myopia in the conventional understanding of the digital divide in India. In the process of disentangling this convergence, the paper offers a new perspective on the relationship between caste, ICTs, and development policy. The paper ultimately argues for a re-examination of the idea of a digital divide and the development assumption that access to new technologies will further positive development outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the 'patchwork adaptability' of low-income residents living in south-eastern Bangalore in India to demonstrate the socially embedded ways that city dwellers patch their water supply gaps. Drawing upon site visits and semi-structured interviews in three neighbourhood enclaves, the discussion highlights how residents cope with difficult and water-insecure contexts despite the municipality's resource governance failures. While we encourage appreciation of the remarkable resilience that low-income populations in Bangalore exhibit, the evidence lays bare the need for more government support to help low-income residents navigate water insecurity in ways that require less time-intensive labour and social networking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is an increasingly important issue on urban policy and research agendas. As this agenda gathers pace, this paper argues for an approach that recognises the critical role of climate change experiments in meditating the response to climate change in the city. Drawing on a case study of a green housing development in the outskirts of Bangalore in India—Towards Zero Carbon Development (T-Zed)—the paper follows the emergence of an experiment in the simultaneous processes of making, maintaining and living low carbon alongside and in between existing infrastructure regimes. It is argued that this experiment has created space for social and technical innovation, reworking notions of urban development in Bangalore. At the same time, it has reconfigured existing urban infrastructure networks through new discourses and practices of urban ecological security, enabling the emergence of a new rhetoric of low carbon living within the city that effectively marries green forms of consumption with urban development. While the experiment serves as a means for modifying urbanism in Bangalore, its results are ambivalent in the context of ongoing inequalities within the city and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the ways in which two Internet-based civil society groups, Hasiru Usiru and Praja, negotiate online and offline spaces of collective action in Bangalore, India's "IT City." Based on ethnographic research, the study extends collective action theory through an examination of communicative interactions and experiences of urban civil society actors in a developing country. The paper highlight factors that impede and support collective actions, including attitudes toward the Internet as a tool for democratic engagement, ideological motivations, and perceptions of identity and membership, among others. Such a line of inquiry is significant in highlighting the possibilities of ICTs for collective action, while simultaneously avoiding the tendency to inflate and overestimate their capacity to produce social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The arrival of the third plague pandemic in the Indian Subcontinent in the late nineteenth century is well known to have prompted the state to rethink colonial governance. In this article, I examine how a locality in Bangalore, Fraser Town, was turned into a 'model town' at the All-India Sanitary Conferences hosted between 1911-1914, in the aftermath of the plague. I juxtapose archival manuals that recount the planning of Fraser Town with the discussions on town planning in the AISC proceedings to show how a universal 'plague urbanism' emerged as the most effective prophylactic against disease across Imperial India. The colonial government's intent to project Fraser Town as an exemplar of sanitary planning at the AISC, I argue, had a twofold agenda. In Bangalore, they could claim credit for creating a model town although it was the Princely Mysore State's capital. Across Imperial India, Fraser Town supported the Conferences' agenda of deconstructing the difference between British, Princely, and variously ruled territories, reconstituting them in a performatively united 'All-India' against disease. Putting the making of Fraser Town alongside the imperial AISC, in dialogue with a global pandemic and conferencing; I show how planning processes were integral to territorial aspirations of empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's successful software outsourcing industry has come to represent the achievements of the liberalisation programme, and accordingly its entrepreneurs have positioned themselves as economic and political leaders of the 'new India'. This paper explores the cultural politics of liberalisation and globalisation in India by focusing on representations of the software industry that form part of the dominant discourse on liberalisation, and on the 'imagination' of India's future articulated by its leaders. The hegemony of India's new capitalist class is far from complete, however, given the social divisions and tensions that have been engendered by India's neoliberal development regime, exemplified by conflicts surrounding the role of the software industry in the aspiring 'global city' of Bangalore. The paper explores how, in the context of conflicting social imaginaries, the exclusion of large sections of the urban population from neoliberal development, and a range of resistance movements that have arisen in consequence, the software industry attempts to control representations of itself in order to shore up its ideological power. This analysis points to the elevation of private corporate capital to a new ideological role and (sharply contested) hegemonic position in the Indian polity and cultural economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ideas of nationalism are (re)produced, materially and discursively, in the lives of children through schools' actual and hidden curriculums that often exclude minorities and construct them as 'the other'. However, the exclusion of religious minorities has been minimally explored in understanding nationalism and childhoods. Through fieldwork conducted at a government high school in Bangalore, India, I examine how 'everyday nationalism' is experienced and negotiated within schools by religious minorities. I foreground Muslim childhoods as they negotiate the double burden of exclusion; one through the practices of the school where secularism is enacted within 'Hindu contextualism' where Hindu symbols and rituals are cast as universal, and two through the stereotypes and 'othering' discourses about Indian Muslims. I show that though the school officially claims to adhere to a 'secular' ethos, many of its actual practices are contradictory to this claim. Pedagogically, there are specific aims reserved for the Muslim child to develop into a tolerant and inclusive citizen that belongs to the nation. I also show how children across religions become political actors in this space. While some absorb the 'secular' narratives, others absorb the dominant discourses of the Muslim being the 'violent other'. Muslim children exercise their agentic capacities as they negotiate the school space with an awareness of the socio-political ramifications of being Muslim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slums, characterized by sub-standard housing conditions, are a common in fast growing Asian cities. However, reliable and up-to-date information on their locations and development dynamics is scarce. Despite numerous studies, the task of delineating slum areas remains a challenge and no general agreement exists about the most suitable method for detecting or assessing detection performance. In this paper, standard computer vision methods - Bag of Visual Words framework and Speeded-Up Robust Features have been applied for image-based classification of slum and non-slum areas in Kalyan and Bangalore, India, using very high resolution RGB images. To delineate slum areas, image segmentation is performed as pixel-level classification for three classes: Slums, Built-up and Non-Built-up. For each of the three classes, image tiles were randomly selected using ground truth observations. A multi-class support vector machine classifier has been trained on 80% of the tiles and the remaining 20% were used for testing. The final image segmentation has been obtained by classification of every 10th pixel followed by a majority filtering assigning classes to all remaining pixels. The results demonstrate the ability of the method to map slums with very different visual characteristics in two very different Indian cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper approaches globalisation as a contradictory and dialectical phenomenon, one in which the tools of exploitation are being subverted into instruments of labour resistance. Through a study of the Garment and Textile Workers' Union (GATWU) the paper observes how feminised workplaces are bringing to the fore issues of gender oppression, flexible conditions are expanding union organisational capacity and the universality of capital has led to transnational links between workers. While the global neo-liberal regime weakens traditional paths to unionisation, it has concurrently facilitated alternative strategies of worker organisation and resistance. GATWU members both battle immediate economic issues while transforming worker organisation from an atomised factory workstation, to assembly line, to outside the factory gates, and finally into social movement and transnational spaces. The research takes note of how GATWU's organising strategy both compliments and conflicts with struggles of gender and class, the local and global. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Intercropping enhances diversity, productivity, resilience, and soil health. To achieve these benefits of the intercropping system, drilling patterns and species mixture play a key role. Therefore, to optimize the productivity, profitability, energetics, and carbon footprint of the castor-based millet intercropping system, a field experiment was conducted for two consecutive kharif seasons (2020 − 2021 and 2021 − 2022) at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, Karnataka (India). The results revealed that all the crops under monoculture outperformed their intercropping system for seed and stalk/stover yield. Among the different cropping systems, castor + finger millet (2:4) showed highest castor equivalent yield (CEY; 1911 kg ha−1) due to excellent land utilization efficiency (LUE; 106%), land equivalent ratio (LER; 1.13), land equivalent co-efficient (LEC; 0.32) compared to other cropping systems. Castor + finger millet (2:4) was even found superior in terms of monetary returns. Finger millet monoculture showed the highest energy consumption (10,770 MJ ha−1), energy output (96,507 MJ ha−1), and also net energy gain (85,737 MJ ha−1) compared to other cropping systems. However, it was comparable with castor + finger millet (2:4) despite its modest energy consumption (10,530 MJ ha−1). Castor monoculture showed the highest carbon (C) emission (2045 kg CO2-eq. ha−1) and also C output (1760 kg CE ha−1). While, net C gain (1210 kg CE ha−1), C efficiency (3.39 kg kg−1 CE), and C stability index (2.39) were highest in the castor + finger millet intercropping system. Consequently, the adoption of a castor + finger millet (2:4) intercropping system will be a viable alternative for achieving enhanced system productivity, and energy efficiency with lower C-footprints under semi-arid regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important infrastructure policy issue for rapidly growing cities in developing countries is how to raise fiscal revenues to finance basic services in a fair and efficient manner. This requires estimates of the potential benefits or positive welfare effects that may follow from improved infrastructure. In this paper, we take advantage of a unique geo-referenced household survey to carry out a hedonic analysis of housing values that explicitly accounts for spatial spillovers. We use this to derive an estimate of the value of improved access to water in the Indian city of Bangalore. The findings suggest that by limiting the focus to individual or private benefits only, we may underestimate the overall social welfare from investing in service supply. We further demonstrate how spatially explicit policy simulations based on these estimates provide insight into the total effects of targeted interventions. Appreciation de l'acces a l'eau—Une methode hedonique spatiale appliquee a la ville de Bangalore, en Inde Resume Un important probleme de politique en matiere d'infrastructure qui se pose pour les villes a expansion rapide de pays en voie de developpement est comment lever des recettes fiscales, de facon a la fois equitable et efficace, pour financer des services essentiels. Ces villes doivent, pour ceci, proceder a des evaluations des benefices potentiels ou des effets sociaux positifs que pourrait engendrer une meilleure infrastructure. Dans la presente communication, nous faisons usage des resultats d'une etude georeferencee unique sur les menages pour effectuer une analyse hedonique des valeurs des habitations, qui tienne compte de facon explicite des debordements spatiaux. Nous utilisons ensuite ces resultats pour deriver une estimation de la valeur d'un meilleur acces a l'eau dans la ville de Bangalore, en Inde. Les conclusions indiquent qu'en limitant notre recherche aux benefices individuels ou prives seulement, nous risquons de sous-estimer les avantages sociaux generaux des investissements dans la fourniture de services. Nous demontrons egalement comment des simulations de la politique, aux implications spatiales implicites sur la base de ces evaluations, permettent d'obtenir des connaissances sur les effets totaux des interventions ciblees. Valorando el acceso a agua—Un planteamiento hedonico espacial con una aplicacion a Bangalore, India Extracto Una cuestion importante en cuanto a politica de infraestructura para las ciudades de rapido crecimiento en paises en vias de desarrollo es como incrementar los ingresos fiscales para financiar servicios basicos de forma justa y eficiente. Esto requiere estimaciones de los beneficios potenciales o de los efectos positivos para el bienestar social que podrian derivar de una mejor infraestructura. En este trabajo aprovechamos un exclusivo estudio georreferenciado sobre la vivienda para aplicar un analisis hedonico que tiene en cuenta explicitamente excedentes espaciales. Lo utilizamos para derivar una estimacion del valor de un mejor acceso a agua en la ciudad india de Bangalore. Los descubrimientos sugieren que limitando el enfoque a los beneficios individuales o privados podriamos subestimar el bienestar social general procedente de invertir en el suministro de servicios. Tambien demostramos como las simulaciones de politicas espacialmente explicitas basadas en estas estimaciones proporcionan una vision interna de los efectos totales de intervenciones dirigidas. [image omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changing nature of Hindu ritual performed in neighbourhood temples in the Malleswaram ‘locality’ of Bangalore city against a background of sweeping socio-economic change driven by globalisation. The investigation points to several ‘accretions of change’ in the embedded and experiential world of popular urban Hinduism. I argue that in the changing, competitive and multi-sectarian field of urban sacred landscapes in India, Hindu Brahmin priests act as ‘religious entrepreneurs’ and agents of change to create ‘dynamic’ adapted rituals that enable innovative approaches in order to expand their devotee base. The restructured and revitalised rituals lead to the invention of a ‘new cultural grammar’ that allows a reinterpretation and contextualisation of the language of traditional Hindu ritual to suit the needs of ‘modern’ devotees. The paper focuses on the nature, performance and experience of ‘dynamic’ ritual in an era of ‘mass customisation’, including three exemplar ‘strategies of engagement’ brought about by the Hindu priests in Bangalore: the incorporation of technology; the language of international imagery; and modern conceptions of hygiene.This paper is dedicated to my father Prof. M.N. Srinivas who was unstinting in his support of my study of the sacred landscapes and Hindu priests of Bangalore, and whose enjoyment of my fieldwork stories kept me going back for more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the conference of International Federation for Information Processing Working Group 9.4 on information and communication technologies of developing countries to be held between May 29-31, 2002 in Bangalore, India. Aim of the conference; Themes of the conference; Dates for receipt of full paper and notification of acceptance of papers to be submitted for the conference.

Copyright of Area Development & Policy is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the changing relationship between the elite English-language press and its interface with urban politics in India's best known high-tech centre, Bangalore. Print journalism remains a core feature of India's growing multi-media news field, and this article critically analyses the profound changes in the political role of news in the last two decades. The changing relationship between the dominant news media and the state in the context of the rapid expansion of private news channels reveals the ascendance of what we elaborate in this article as neoliberal newspeak, following transnational trends. We conclude by considering the ways in which contestations over the growing and visible inequalities of a city like Bangalore in the last decade – including the fissures inside the dominant English news media – signal the potential to disrupt the coherence of the definitional power of neoliberal newspeak. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on the discursive notion of participation central to two discourses, democracy and development. The contemporary rhetoric of development not only opens up the market for the economic progress of developing nations, but also demands a change in the political structure to facilitate the process. Thus, democracy is recruited as collateral for development, which theoretically improves the participation of the target population. However, my ethnography in Bangalore—the Silicon Valley of India—shows that the new middle class is partaking of development projects to reclaim participation solely for democracy. As a ‘reassemblage’, participation is employed to reconfigure democracy and development along different political axes. I present a public water supply project to describe the boundaries between the two discourses, arguing that they are drawn internally rather than externally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Understanding the causality of vulnerability is difficult to do and consequently has received insufficient attention. Root causes of vulnerability need to be understood and addressed to support adaptation that addresses climate risk and inequality. This paper contributes to this by examining vulnerability from a structural perspective for the case of interstate migrants from West Bengal working as waste pickers in Bangalore's informal squatter settlements. It also throws light on how understanding structural vulnerability can help to emphasize social justice concerns while adapting to climatic risks. The research, using qualitative methods, examines complex intersections between a multitude of factors such as climate change, agrarian distress, exclusionary patterns of urbanization and the resultant lack of recognition that shapes and reshapes the vulnerability of a certain group of people. Our findings emphasize the compelling need for vulnerability and adaptation research to focus more on understanding inequality if improving justice is a concern. This focus on justice is insufficiently prioritized in climate change adaptation work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exponents of transformation in the context of climate change strongly articulate the challenges associated with switching from current, potentially maladaptive development trajectories, onto future pathways that are climate responsive. Although scholarship on maladaptation highlights the dangers of path dependency, the concept is under-applied for understanding the potential outcomes of development trajectories that result in what we call an adaptation-constrained space. By conducting case-study analysis based on secondary review, we trace implications of particular development trajectories, in urban and rural India. The first case examines how urbanization in Bangalore city has decreased the capacity to respond to concurrent risks of flooding and water scarcity while the second charts how agricultural policies in India have narrowed local capacity to deal with climatic and non-climatic uncertainties. Using a historical perspective, we identify triggers of change in local and regional development, which have led to an adaptation-constrained space. We find that both pathways display irreversible lock-ins and inherent trade-offs which entrench inequities (through differential capacity and agency to access resources and influence future development). We argue that such development pathways are potentially maladaptive. Whether they are expected to deal with climate impacts or to meet development goals, the fact that they constrain current and future adaptive capacity at multiple levels, is why we consider them maladaptive. As India undertakes large investments in development and climate change adaptation, this paper adds to the relatively low policy debate on how development trajectories, physically and socially, limit the possibilities for future adaptation. We propose that policy-makers and planners first acknowledge how development trajectories acquire dominance, and then begin empowering normative alternatives that open future adaptation options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late nineteenth-century Anglo-Indian settlement in Whitefield is about sixteen kilometres east of Bangalore, India. It was originally an independent village, but has since been co-opted as a city suburb. This paper presents an overview of the research project carried out in Whitefield over a six month period from May to November 2009, involving documentation and analysis of the settlement, plots, and bungalows. At Whitefield we found a unique experiment, possibly of national significance: 'a self sufficient Anglo-Indian Utopia where no man would own property and all would work towards the common good', perhaps based on both European ideals and the Indian village model. Today this place is under threat of indiscriminate development. The CDP (Comprehensive Development Plan) for Bangalore makes no mention of its historical nature. It is truly a forgotten chapter of India's colonial heritage. Moreover, as there is no heritage legislation in Bangalore, there is no legal protection for any historical area or structure in the city, and thus the onus is on local people to protect the town's remaining heritage. Furthermore, in the course of interactions with the local community in this settlement over the research period it seemed that the residents were truly aware of their past and the need to carry it forward for the benefit of future generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The concentration of radon daughters in outdoor air was measured continuously from January 2006 to December 2006 near the Department of Physics, Bangalore University campus, Bangalore. The concentration was measured by collecting air samples at a height of 1 m above the ground level on a glass micro fibre filter paper with a known air flow rate. The results show that the radon progeny concentration exhibits distinct seasonal and diurnal variations that are predominantly caused by changes in the temperature gradient at the soil-atmosphere interface. The concentration was found to be high from 20.00 to 8.00 hrs, when the turbulence mixing was minimum and low during the rest of the time. In terms of the monthly concentration, January was found to be the highest with September/August being the lowest. The diurnal variations in the concentrations of radon progeny were found to exhibit positive correlation with the relative humidity and anti-correlation with the atmospheric temperature. From the measured concentration, an attempt was made to establish the annual effective dose to the general public of the region and was found to be 0.085 mSv/a. In addition, an attempt was also made for the first time to study the variation of inhalation dose with respect to the physical activity levels. Results show that in the light of both the effect of chemical pollutants and radiation dose due to inhalation of radon daughters, evening jogging is advisable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to describe the activities and observations of the team from National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) Bangalore, India in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands during the early phase of the Tsunami disaster in January and February 2005. The activities comprised mental health consultation at camps, community sensitization, mental health services to the students and children, teachers orientation sessions and training of non-governmental organization [NGO] functionaries. Initial assessment reveals 5–8% of the population were suffering from significant mental health problems following the early phase of the disaster. This may increase in the aftermath of the early relief phase. Psychiatric morbidity is expected be around 25–30% in the disillusionment phase. High resilience was seen in the joint family system of tribal Nicobarese during early phase of disaster. In developing countries like India, limited availability of mental health professionals and poor knowledge about disaster mental health among the medical and para-medical staff, may lead to poor psychosocial rehabilitation of the survivors. To respond to a high magnitude natural disaster like a tsunami, the disaster mental health team must be able to understand the local culture, traditions, language, belief systems and local livelihood patterns. They also need to integrate with the network of various governmental and non-governmental organizations to cater to the needs of the survivors. Hence the presence of a disaster mental health team is definitely required during the early phase of the disaster in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The alleged beneficial effects of regional industrial clusters for competitiveness and growth in developing countries have been subject to intensive study. A prominent place in the debate has been occupied by the collective efficiency approach. In this paper we extend that approach by incorporating insights from the literature on firm-level technological learning in development. The resulting framework is applied to the software cluster of Bangalore (India), to illustrate the ways in which spatial proximity of firms and other parties interacts with cluster knowledge creation in a dynamic environment. A number of new insights emerge, including the importance of "old economy" factors such as high demand for innovation, international technology transfer, low wages and strong technology and education institutions. To the extent that "new economy" regional factors also matter, spontaneous agglomeration advantages appear to be important alongside active collective efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though rates of depression are comparable across cultures, similar rates may obscure the diversity of the experience and meaning of depression and related behaviour. Appreciation of the social and cultural contexts is crucial in developing culturally sensitive intervention strategies to reduce the burden and disability of depression. Data are required not just to elucidate biological or cognitive understandings of the disorder, but also its social and cultural contexts, especially in non-Western settings. This paper reports cultural epidemiological research studying depression-related experience, meaning, and behaviour with the EMIC in the psychiatric outpatient clinic at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, India. Patients spontaneously emphasized somatic symptoms when asked about the problems that brought them to seek help, but on further probing, they acknowledged feelings of depression and sadness, which they related to various social problems and interpersonal issues. The personal significance and meaning of the symptoms were shaped by cultural notions concerning the human body in health and in sickness. Culturally salient symbols (like heat and cold) and ethnophysiological concepts like nara (nerves) figured prominently as causative factors in their accounts. Patients were dissatisfied and disappointed with allopathic physicians whom they had previously consulted for their problems, who seemed to them not to appreciate their needs and expectations in treatment. Findings show that it is important that clinicians attend not only to questions of diagnosis and clinical formulation according to professional concepts, but also to the experience and meaning of their patients' problems. A cultural epidemiological framework facilitates this process by integrating emic and etic perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of rapid urbanization is posing challenges to planners in developing countries. As it becomes harder and harder for planners to disentangle the global from the local, it is increasingly recognized that without a solid local base, city governments will not have the strength that is needed to navigate global circuits. This social integration requires democratized political mechanisms based on administrative decentralization and the participation of citizens in municipal management. Our paper focuses on the role of information in the democratic process looking at a case study of new local governance structures in Bangalore. The city has become a focal point for software development regionally and globally.Such regional and global interconnections are taking place simultaneously with a number of local level initiatives aimed at encouraging democratic decisionmaking via legislation and by introducing new local governance structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystem services provided by green infrastructure are often discussed for their potential to address the societal challenges of urbanization. However, green infrastructure, particularly small-scale types (e.g. trees), is vulnerable to loss through urbanization and is often passed over during scientific investigations. Studies on the perceptions of ecosystem services and disservices (hereafter called ecosystem (dis)services) dynamics along the rural-urban gradient are particularly rare in the literature. Therefore, this study assessed the perceived importance of ecosystem (dis)services associated with small-scale green infrastructure along a rural-urban gradient in Bengaluru, India. Based on photos of the five most common types of small-scale green infrastructure and the three most common tree species associated with them, we conducted a photo-elicitation survey of 649 residents from 61 towns in Bengaluru. We found significant differences in the perceptions of all ecosystem (dis)services among the types of green infrastructure. The most appreciated services were air/climate regulation from platform trees and aesthetic values from farm trees. Regulating services were most appreciated in urban areas while provisioning and cultural services were most appreciated in transitional areas, and disservices were most strongly perceived in rural areas. Gender, age, education, caste, and income from agriculture significantly affected the use and valuation of the ecosystem (dis)services within the local communities. Our study reveals the crucial role of small-scale green infrastructure as a multifunctional element, which is highly relevant for the supply of provisioning, regulating, and cultural ecosystem services in Bengaluru. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural-urban migration has been very evident in global population changes in recent decades, especially in India, where migration growth rates are among the highest in the world. Many research articles focused only on the migration of young farmers in India. This article highlights the migration of young farmers from rural to urban areas in Bengaluru, their sustainability, and a survey made on the young farmer's migration. In this context, the study was conducted in the Bangalore region on the migration of Anantapur young farmers, Andhra Pradesh. This study examines the sustainability of young farmers after migration to urban areas and, based on this objective, to find out young migrant farmers are financially well-being or not. For the purpose of analysis, 500 primary data are collected from the young migrant farmers. The Probit model is employed to assess whether young migrant farmers were economically stable or not. The study's findings show that young migrated farmers to urban areas are more likely to be unsustainable due to the cost of living and additional costs. Young migrant farmers do not have enough income so they take loans from private lenders to meet their needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the development and application of a service template as a diagnostic tool for identifying opportunities for improvements in the service package. The operations in the branch of a bank in Bangalore, India, provide the context. For 21 service attributes, the gap between the expectations of a target customer group and the actual service experience is assessed through a customer survey. A service template graphically displaying the mean values of the responses for the expectations and the perceived service was constructed. Also, for each service attribute, tests of statistical significance for the mean values of the gap were performed. The results were used to develop priorities for improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban metabolism as a framework has enabled understanding the interactions between humans, natural, and built environment. The concept is multidisciplinary and urban metabolism models have been used in identifying certain issues of urban planning. Apart from sociopolitical and economic aspects, metabolism also has spatial dimension. The spatial dimension is reflected in the metabolic processes which is inherent in the problems of uneven socioecological metabolisms that persist in the production of urban spaces. Urban planning developed as a discipline for balanced spatial development of urban metabolic processes. For sustainable development of the city, it is necessary for urban planning to follow metabolic processes but in reality this need not always be the case. It is possible for planning and urban metabolism to be spatially inconsistent. The results presented in this paper show the costs of such a divergence in the water supply system of Bengaluru city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study was part of a larger longitudinal study in which we focused on measuring reading acquisition and observing the impact of SES, curriculum and gender on reading subtest scores. In Part 1 of our study (in review), we reported on findings for students in Grade 1. For Part 2 of our study, we report on our findings for students in Grades 3 and 5 and offer a comparison across the three elementary grades. Participants for the current study included 657 students from Grade 3 (n = 328) and 5 (n = 329) representing low-cost, middle-cost and high-cost schools in Bangalore, India. The students' reading skills were measured using progress-monitoring tools and we utilized a mixed-effects hierarchical growth model to observe reading growth. The results suggested that both SES and curriculum had the most significant and positive effect on skills acquisition. These results will shed light on reading assessment and intervention practices in the Indian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]