Peri-Urbanism in Globalizing India: A Study of Pollution, Health and Community Awareness

Abstract

This paper examines the intersection between environmental pollution and people’s acknowledgements of, and responses to, health issues in Karhera, a former agricultural village situated between the rapidly expanding cities of New Delhi (India’s capital) and Ghaziabad (an industrial district in Uttar Pradesh). A relational place-based view is integrated with an interpretive approach, highlighting the significance of place, people’s emic experiences, and the creation of meaning through social interactions. Research included surveying 1788 households, in-depth interviews, participatory mapping exercises, and a review of media articles on environment, pollution, and health. Karhera experiences both domestic pollution, through the use of domestic waste water, or gandapani, for vegetable irrigation, and industrial pollution through factories’ emissions into both the air and water. The paper shows that there is no uniform articulation of any environment/health threats associated with gandapani. Some people take preventative actions to avoid exposure while others do not acknowledge health implications. By contrast, industrial pollution is widely noted and frequently commented upon, but little collective action addresses this. The paper explores how the characteristics of Karhera, its heterogeneous population, diverse forms of environmental pollution, and broader governance processes, limit the potential for citizen action against pollution.

Ambient Particulate Air Pollution and Blood Pressure in Peri-urban India

“…Participants resided in 28 villages in a peri-urban area 28 (of 770 km 2 ) southeast of Hyderabad (Figure 1). Villages differed regarding their degree of urbanization, population size (from 546 to 21 262 people in 2013), proximity to Hyderabad (29 to 66 km), socioeconomic status, and primary cooking fuel.…”

Health Implications of Diverse Visions of Urban Spaces: Bridging the Formal-Informal Divide

“…Studies on people's innovations that link peri-urban agriculture, waste water disposal, and food security indicate how changing social composition with rural-urban migrants constituting a large part of the residents, livelihood patterns that still depend on eco-system services, and traditional folk practices co-exist. They also demonstrate how the governance structures are completely out of sync with such realities and the many challenges they pose that the formal systems must engage with (14, 17, 20). A holistic view of urban health would do well to examine such systemic issues as central to health systems thinking for improving the health of urban populations.…”

“…The formal waste disposal system is vastly supplemented by the informal system of rag pickers and other informal agents. Use of waste water for agriculture in peri-urban areas is well-documented in Indian and other Asian cities as an informal means of waste water disposal and irrigation (10, 14). Hence, informality, contrary to the idea of an unregulated domain, has been argued to represent constant negotiations between various forms of “extra-legal, social, and discursive regulation (10).…”

“…The displacement of polluting industries from Delhi to its peri-urban areas in the 1990s has increased pollution of water, soil, and air that is returning to the city through the food produced in the peri-urban area (14, 18). Now, as the urban dwellers face the consequences of such planning in escalating pollution and public health hazards, ad hoc regulations, and drawing natural resources such as water from further afield are implemented as solutions.…”

Can Pay-As-You-Go, Digitally Enabled Business Models Support Sustainability Transformations in Developing Countries? Outstanding Questions and a Theoretical Basis for Future Research

“…Importantly, in light of our core argument in this paper, the Pathways Approach also emphasises, and has been demonstrated to enable, the use of interdisciplinary research to facilitate such analysis. Drawing on theory and ideas from across a diverse range of disciplines in both the natural and social sciences, the Pathways Approach has been applied across a wide range of different research domains, including: health and disease [67][68][69]; food and agriculture [70][71][72][73]; pastoralism [74]; energy and climate change [13]; technology and innovation [75,76]; urbanisation [77,78]; water and sanitation [79,80]; gender equality [81]; and many more besides. This body of work provides support for the potential utility of the Pathways Approach as an overarching framework with which to use different theoretical approaches to examine the kinds of interconnected issues that arose from the stakeholder consultation reported above.…”