Research
The Urban Informal Economy and Progressive Planners
Professor Bish Sanyal
This project has two components, one of which focuses on a range of urban poverty-alleviation policies and analyzes their effectiveness, or lack thereof; the other evaluates a successful case of collaboration between government planners and non-governmental organizations in India to assist women in the urban informal sector. The theoretical objectives of these three interconnected elements are to understand:
- why some state actors are willing and able to pursue distributive policies in the face of major institutional and political constraints;
- why the outcomes of well-intentioned public policies often differ from their objectives; and,
- how grassroots-based groups influence public policies.
