Lalit Khandare will discuss the fate of 
Lalit Khandare |
May 15, 2008 - The idea that Lalit Khandare, a PhD student in the IU School of Social Work, received an invitation to present a paper at the Berlin Roundtables on the future of megacities isn't surprising.
By all rights, Khandare, a native of small town from central India, should never have gotten an education, let alone be on the verge of getting his PhD. According to his country's caste system, he was born as "an untouchable" or one of the Dalits or "broken people."
But with an affirmative action program that helped him get into college, coupled with his own abilities, Khandare not only got an education, but flourished in the academic world. Mr. Khandare dedicates his motivation to succeed to Dr.Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, who was the founding father of modern India and the chief architect of Indian Constitution.
Khandare received his undergraduate degree in Amravati University in 1999, a Master's degree in Social Work in Bombay in 2003 and a Master's in Planning and Development in Bombay in 2006. He currently is working on his PhD, majoring in social work and a hybrid minor in Public & Environmental Affairs and Philanthropic Studies at IU.
Now, Khandare has a chance to present a paper looking at the difficulties the people of his caste, the untouchables face in Bombay as more and more poor people turn to cities as a place to live.
Khandare's appearance in Berlin hardly came about by chance. The conference organizers, the Irmgard Coninx Foundation, the Social Science Research Center, Berlin, and the Humboldt-University Berlin, noticed a paper he presented in May of 2007 at a World Bank urban symposium on social networks in slums and rehabilitation sites in Bombay, or Mumbai as the city is now called.
He was invited to present his essay- "Peoples voices in Democratizing cities: A case of Mumbai"- for the upcoming eighth Berlin Roundtable conference, "Urban Planet: Collective Identities, Governance and Empowerment in Megacities," to be held in Berlin June 11-16, 2008.
He is one of 50 researchers selected by an international jury to present a paper.
What's more it won't be Khandare's first presentation overseas. As a student at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, he was invited to present his paper at World Congress of Criminology held at University of Pennsylvania during August, 2005. In 2006, he was invited as guest speaker at the Millennium Criminology Conference on Race and Gender in London, where he presented a paper entitled: "Women and children in domestic violence: The issue of caste & Class."
In Berlin, Khandare will discuss people's empowerment, civil society groups, and the urbanization process in a city like Bombay.
In his paper, Khandare notes that it has been said one of the greatest challenges in the 21st century will be slums.
The idea behind the Berlin Roundtables is to bring young academics and journalists to discuss the political and social challenges facing a global civil society. This year's topic will look at the world's unprecedented level of urbanization. By 2015, about 60 cities will have more than 5 million people and megacities like Bombay, Mexico City, Shanghai, Beijing, Lagos, and Karachi are expected to have populations of more than 20 million residents.
"In India though the level of urbanization is positively correlated to the levels of development, India's urbanization story is marked by inequalities." Khandare notes in his paper. Well more than two third of Bombay's population lives in slums and like most of the cities, Mumbai's urban policy is silent on the serious challenges posed by the caste and religious segregated ghettos, he noted.
Those living in slums come from the country's lower castes and untouchable communities, such as the Dalits or "broken people," who live in one-room structures without any appropriate access to basic infrastructure.
Many of the Dalits live and work in a slum called Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia, an area that produces 17 percent of Indian leather export revenue. It is an area where the “untouchable” residents reclaimed land from the sea to live on and put up with landfills situated nearby.
Now, even this land is seen as valuable and there is a move to evacuate this slum and leather industry to the outskirts of Bombay.
The question of whether or not cities like Bombay will adequately address the needs of its poorest residents remains uncertain. Perhaps, as Khandare points out, they would do well to remember a warning issued by Alexis de Tocqueville: That racial inequality is the most formidable evil threatening the future of democracies.
Lalit Khandare can be reached by emai. lkhandar@iupui.edu
For more information contact, Rob Schneider, Indiana University School of Social Work at 317-278-0303 or at robschn@iupui.edu | 
