Hidden Successes

In 2007-08, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) organized Hidden Successes, an international competition for the best research paper on innovative institutional responses to India's new urban challenges. Professor Sanyal formulated the theme of the competition by asking the question, “Why is it so difficult to find case studies of any planning success in India?” The competition draws attention to the fact that existing case studies are usually intensely critical of all planning efforts, and thereby do not acknowledge elements of successes, however limited, which must be built upon to educate a new group of planners who are aware of both the possibilities and limits of planning. Hence, the purpose of the Hidden Successes competition was to highlight cases of innovation and success in response to rapid urbanization by inviting entries from multidisciplinary teams consisting of both academics and practitioners.  Additional support for this competition was provided by the MIT-India Program and the Special Program in Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS) at MIT.

Prof. Sanyal is presently working on an edited volume that will contain the winning papers, along with several invited papers from well known scholars and practitioners in India. The volume will highlight cases of relative successes in local public sector planning in India, probing both why there is so little written about success and suggesting research questions which emerged from the competition.

The competition brief and the winning abstracts can be found at: http://web.mit.edu/hidden-successes/