Pri's blog

The article in today’s Sunday Times on a recent workshop organized by the Law and Society Trust highlights once again the troubling issue of urban evictions. The most telling sentence in this article  reads  This trend of development tactics that marginalise the urban poor, as noted in the discussion is not challenged, due to the lack of interest by many politicians, the lack of awareness of rights by low-income dwellers but more importantly the apathy of the middle class of Colombo as these changes have minimal adverse effects on their livelihoods  At a subsequent forum on the same issues last week, participants called for stronger involvement of political parties, highlighted the collusion of the World Bank’s Metro Colombo Urban Development Project in the evictions and discussed some good practice examples implemented by the Government of Sri Lanka.  All these ideas are important to take forward, but this blog will focus on the last of these, as it is ...

Here as promised a gist of what I said at the 6th South Asian Economic Summit's Managing Urbanisation Inclusively   session... The background to the session seemed to suggest that being ‘inclusive’  is about the rural-urban gap, looking at ways in which the rural labourers, left out of the growth that is being generated by the cities, are able to benefit from that growth.   The result of this is a labour force which remains predominantly agricultural and rural, while a small proportion of the population – that which is urban and more highly-skilled  enjoys the benefits of growth and integration with the global economy. What I wanted to point out in this session was that growth within cities is not equal either.  If one begins to talk economics as if people mattered, then one would see that urban development is beginning to transform city space, and relationships between people living in the city, in ways  that privilege some city dwellers an...

see this video from Vikalpa also just to confirm that it's all flattened - kovil and laundry - here's a photo from last week