Peri-Urbanism in Globalizing India: A Study of Pollution, Health and Community Awareness
Date
2017-08-30Author
Waldman, Linda
Bisht, Ramila
Arora, Meghana
Mehrotra, Ritu Priya
Marshall, Fiona
Saharia, Rajashree
Kapoor, Abhinav
Rizvi, Bushra
Hamid, Yasir
Chopra, Ima
Sawansi, Kumud T.
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Abstract
This paper examines the intersection between environmental pollution and people’s
acknowledgements of, and responses to, health issues in Karhera, a former agricultural village
situated between the rapidly expanding cities of New Delhi (India’s capital) and Ghaziabad
(an industrial district in Uttar Pradesh). A relational place-based view is integrated with an
interpretive approach, highlighting the significance of place, people’s emic experiences, and the
creation of meaning through social interactions. Research included surveying 1788 households,
in-depth interviews, participatory mapping exercises, and a review of media articles on environment,
pollution, and health. Karhera experiences both domestic pollution, through the use of domestic
waste water, or gandapani, for vegetable irrigation, and industrial pollution through factories’
emissions into both the air and water. The paper shows that there is no uniform articulation of
any environment/health threats associated with gandapani. Some people take preventative actions
to avoid exposure while others do not acknowledge health implications. By contrast, industrial
pollution is widely noted and frequently commented upon, but little collective action addresses this.
The paper explores how the characteristics of Karhera, its heterogeneous population, diverse forms
of environmental pollution, and broader governance processes, limit the potential for citizen action
against pollution.
Citation
Waldman, L. et al. (2017) 'Peri-Urbanism in Globalizing India: A Study of Pollution, Health and Community Awareness', Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2017, 14, 980DOI
10.3390/ijerph14090980More details
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- ESRC STEPS Centre [225]
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).