Bikramaditya Kumar Choudhary

This article aimed to contextualise social cohesion among different caste groups in the Indian situations and the implications thereof. There have been multiple direct and indirect policies and their execution as well to promote social cohesion. Political representatives also had arranged a promising democratic model of making a cohesive society by writing and executing the Indian Constitution, but, as of now, such a model seems to be on the verge of collapsing. The question of identity, the assertion of multiple identities, the practices of exclusivist behaviour and so on are some of the barriers in the way of developing a cohesive society. Supremist tendencies and continuous discrimination make the situation more complex and persistent of inequality, which poses a credible challenge to cohesion.

International organizations firmly ratifying the human right to water though neoliberal reforms have pushed for increasing commodification and marketization of water. Accelerated urbanization in cities of the Global South have intensified problems associated with access to water and innovative solutions such as water kiosks are seen as the future of water access in underserved areas. This paper studies access to potable water in four resettlement colonies of Delhi with a focus on the water kiosks which operate in these colonies. Tracing the broader reforms which have been initiated in the public utility (Delhi Jal Board), the paper investigates the model of water kiosk of these colonies and the extent to which access to water has been impacted by the introduction of the water kiosks. Based on the processes of changes and continuities in the waterscapes of formal yet marginal spaces in the city and concomitant reconfigurations in urban governance, the paper argues that water kiosks serve to reproduce the uneven power relations embedded in the process of neoliberal urbanization.

Realising the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will require transformative changes at micro, meso and macro levels and across diverse geographies. Collaborative, transdisciplinary research has a role to play in documenting, understanding and contributing to such transformations. Previous work has investigated the role of this research in Europe and North America, however the dynamics of transdisciplinary research on ‘transformations to sustainability’ in other parts of the world are less well-understood. This paper reports on an international project that involved transdisciplinary research in six different hubs across the globe and was strategically designed to enable mutual learning and exchange. It draws on surveys, reports and research outputs to analyse the processes of transdisciplinary collaboration for sustainability that took place between 2015–2019. The paper illustrates how the project was structured in order to enable learning across disciplines, cultures and contexts and describes how it also provided for the negotiation of epistemological frameworks and different normative commitments between members across the network. To this end, it discusses lessons regarding the use of theoretical and methodological anchors, multi-loop learning and evaluating emergent change (including the difficulties encountered). It offers insights for the design and implementation of future international transdisciplinary collaborations that address locally-specific sustainability challenges within the universal framework of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.