Amita Bhide Professor and Dean, School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India

Dr. Amita Bhide, currently Dean and Professor in the School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She has been deeply involved in issues related to urban poor communities, community organization and housing rights movements and advocacy groups. Professor Bhide’s recent work at the School of Habitat Studies has been on issues of urban development , in particular those concerning urban transformations and their link to inclusive and sustainable development. She has extensively researched urban local governance and planning, water and sanitation, housing and land issues. She attempts to develop a theoretical and action model of urbanisation that is relevant for the global south through an engagement with several transformative groups at the city, provincial and national scales.

The geographic focus of her work is Mumbai while more recent engagement is with small and medium towns. She also heads the M East Ward Social and Economic Transformation Program, an action research project that seeks to create a model of inclusive urban development in M East Ward, the poorest municipal ward in Mumbai. Her recent publications include – ‘Colonising the Slum’, ‘ The regularising state’, ‘ Comparing Informalities’, ‘Directed Decentralisation- the experience of JNNURM in Maharashtra’. A book co-edited with Himanshu Burte on ‘Parallax: Contemporary Urban Policy in India has recently been published.

Email: amita@tiss.edu