Healthy Cities Wealthy Cities

This aerial photo, zoomed into Kaula Bandar, shows the narrow strip of land that is home to some 15 - 25,000 people. The community was formerly part of Mumbai’s ship-building and repair industry, and as the industry grew, thousands of migrant laborers from the Indian state of Tamil-Nadu came and settled nearby. Despite the decline of the shipping industry over time, many of these workers remained in Kaula Bandar, bringing with them their families or starting new ones in the community.
Due to an ongoing land dispute between local and federal authorities, these inhabitants are unrecognized at any level of government and therefore no utilities – electricity, water, etc – are offered to them. Land is federal, but utilities are state and local, and this governance problem has provided obstacles to providing any utilities to this community.
Despite these hardships, the people of Kaula Bandar have survived, and many even operate small businesses within the community. A full understanding of their adaptive behaviors and entrepreneurial minds requires good data, but in insular communities such as an urban slum, these are hard to come by. Thus this research will require a new approach to data collection, and for this we will rely on the barefoot researchers provided by an upstart research initiative in Mumbai, PUKAR.