OCTOBER 2020, ISSUE 18

THE ULTIMATE FASHION GUIDE FOR A SOPHISTICATED

Greetings from the TURN Steering Committee!

The Tacit Urban Knowledge Research Network, our three-year long networked research
project, has just crossed its halfway mark.

Exciting projects are shaping up at each of the four partner institutions: CPR, TISS, IIHS and
HUL. Some of the projects are near completion and others are just beginning. Some network
Upcoming Events/
processes are already underway and need to consolidated while others are yet to be invented.
Recent Academic/op-
ed publications/other
At the steering committee meeting last week in Delhi, we have decided to intensify our efforts
news
to connect the dots. This monthly newsletter is one of the ways in which researchers from
different sites will try to share vignettes, field-notes and insights. It will be internal to the
network. We will also be organizing monthly workshops to see patterns and share methods.
And soon we will be sharing details of the shared archive. These are all meant to serve hereon,
as  reminders to ourselves that process is as important, if not more important than the
outcomes.

This newsletter, the workshops and shared archive are not a substitute for other modes of
communication and sharing, but only a way to augment them. In the coming weeks, we will
unroll the workshop schedules, details of shared archives and publication plans.

Meanwhile, please use this newsletter as an invitation to broadcast your work to the network
and look out for notices on monthly workshops. The first one of these will be themed around
'housing and settlements'  anchored by Gautam Bhan towards the end of October. 
 Kabeer (HUL) on Building Typologies in Nanakramguda
Nanakramguda, in the middle of globally connected “financial district” in western Hyderabad was a village
barely two decades ago – before financial capital engulfed it radically altering social relationships, spaces and
economic activities.  Walking around the settlement , today, one sees multiple timelines/ worlds intersecting.
In a single frame (image above) one sees a mud (tiled roof) house from former times, a few structures altering
over time--making a series of additions and demolitions, and a completely new typology rising from ground in
form of apartments. Each of these dwellings tells the story of a different stakeholder; of a different negotiation;
and of a different relationship. Who made the decisions? Who experienced the consequences? How did they
navigate such tumultuous change? 

Amita Bhide on Tacit Knowledge In Relation to

Informality In M (East) Ward, Mumbai
The M (East) ward is an administrative zone in the north-east periphery of Mumbai that is characterised by a
substantive presence of informal settlements in various ‘states of informality’. Some of these began as
resettlement colonies initiated by the municipal corporation. Some began by occupying government lands and
have since been recognised as slums. There are several which are emerging as settlements and are engaged in an
ongoing tussle of eviction/reconstruction. Tacitness is a way of life in these settlements,  where the claims to exist
on particular lands;  the ‘making of land’ from marshes; marshalling and production of documents during eviction
drives; the struggle to access and secure basic services such as water and toilets; and securing and practicing
livelihoods primarily linked to recycling waste, are all deeply embedded in realms of practice that do not have a
legal or formal life.

One of the key functions of knowledge in society is to organize practice and if so, the ward demonstrates various
forms and scales of tacit knowledge. The approach to the M (East) project is one of action- research, where the
attempt is to explore possibilities of new changes towards betterment of living conditions in the settlements
through an understanding of these knowledge forms as opposed to the formal-legal knowledge which only labels
these settlements as illegal and unauthorised and hence unserviced.
 Researcher Interview: Tripta Chandola on
Working in Govindpuri, New Delhi

The considerations of GP’s evolution on the edges of the formal logic of

planning leave a strong imprint on its built form and spatial layout. The
question this raises is that is every urban formation outside of the formal logic
to be reckoned as tacitly produced? Or alternatively, unmappable?

How do you negotiate movements/practices/knowledge in and within Govindpuri jhuggis (GP) as a space where long-
term relationships are located and the involvement with that ‘site’ as a researcher within TURN?

In the 15 years of my sustained engagements with the residents of GP, across the three camps, the nature of
our relationships has evolved in a manner such that it is unfolds and is located within its very tacitness.
Retrospectively thinking of my engagements in GP, via the lenses of inquiries this project has opened up, I
recognise that what what lends the tenacity to my engagements is my embeddedness in its tacitness. That is
one of the first challenges and excitements [not without its nervousness and anxieties] that I am unfolding
with this project. How to mute my sense of “knowing” of the space, its residents, its lives, not only as a shared
knowledge base with other team members but even for the sake of my own perusal of newer inquiries. 

What are some of the methodological questions your preliminary research has raised?

In its first iteration, the project proposed to collate the figure grounds of GP which would then be rendered
into multi-scalar workbooks and maps of the area.
Here, we encountered our first challenge of both the methods/methodologies to employ in exploring with the
tacit forms of knowledge production, being and negotiating with the space, but also in raising question about
the very nature of the tacit itself.

The questions that this encounter which have been raised, discussed and are ongoing are:
-       Are GP’s built and spatial layout formations immediately to be recognised tacit because they cannot be
mapped employing the conventional/available tools?

-       The considerations of GP’s evolution on the edges of the formal logic of planning leave a strong imprint on
its built form and spatial layout. The question this raises is that is every urban formation outside of the formal
logic to be reckoned as tacitly produced? Or alternatively, unmappable?

-       One of the questions which keeps announcing itself in the discussions is of very significant import: is the
only way to map the tacit to in fact become a part of it, and then how does one contain the danger of the
acquired knowledge becoming so tacit that it itself becomes ‘inaccessible’?

-       The most pressing question for all of us, in terms of methods, methodologies and frameworks to engage
with the histories of lived realities in GP, is the issue of against what is the tacitness of GP mapped against or,
alternatively, with? 
 Negotiating Spaces for Friday Namaz in Gurgaon:
A High Stakes Game of Tacit Knowledge
Mukta Naik (CPR) wrote an op-ed about the Sanyukt Hindu Sangharsh Samiti’s attempts to violently
disrupt congregational Friday namaz in Gurgaon in The Wire in May, 2018. Here, she reflects on the
elements of tacit knowledge that are at play in the situation.

This op-ed outlines the reactions of various groups in the city to a situation of growing communal tension in
Gurgaon, following the disruption of Jumma (Friday) namaz by Hindu right-wing groups, in April 2018.
However, the play of tacit knowledge in this unfolding situation has been a high-stakes game, and the
intellectual exercise of teasing out those elements has remained in the background.

Muslim groups in Gurgaon have always negotiated spaces for Jumma (Friday) namaz with a variety of actors
including private land and property owners, resident welfare associations, market associations, street vendors,
and the local police. These negotiations have been bilateral and verbal, undocumented in any written form.
Therefore, even though Muslims who attend Jumma prayers have found out the nearest place of prayer
through their social networks, there has been no official or unofficial record of these spaces.

This changed when the police, under pressure from Hindu right-wing groups to disallow namaz in open spaces,
responded by (1) mapping all existing namaz locations; (2) eliminating locations of ‘inconvenience’ like where
traffic was being disrupted, green belts and essential infrastructure like pavements; and (3) releasing a list of
locations where namaz would be permitted, and where they would offer protection until the threat of
communal violence remained.

Knowledge that was previously tacit, suddenly appeared on a list, thereby becoming explicit and known to all.
However, in releasing the list to the media but not in the form of a formal order, the police stopped short of
codifying it, so that it could not be challenged in a court of law as an infringement of the Constitutional right to
pray.

New situations involving efforts to marginalise and strike fear into minority groups continue in Gurgaon and in
each situation, the discretionary use of legal and administrative tools by the State, to appease the politically
powerful are being observed. 

Read the original op-ed here.

If you would like to contribute images or text (however preliminary) about your ongoing work or have suggestions for what
kind of information you would like to see in this monthly bulletin please write to me at niyati@cprindia.org