Matt Birkinshaw

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Research Fellow at SOAS University of London

This paper analyses local water governance in Delhi, India, to develop a political ecological reading of urban tubewell use. I draw on long-term qualitative fieldwork in informal neighbourhoods and focus on groundwater, a major source of urban water globally, to reveal relationships between technology, ecology, politics and informal land developmen...

This paper examines the role of participation, co-production and community management in a random sample of 50 rural and urban water systems under the Water and Sanitation Extension Programme (WASEP) in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. It looks at the role of an NGO (the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat) in co-production, and how this model of community-base...

This chapter analyses human–water relationships in a large unplanned area of peri-urban Delhi. Unconnected to the city’s main water network, public water supply is characterised by ad hoc inadequate provision, compounded by rent-seeking and political calculation. Aquifers are exploited to the point of exhaustion, reflecting North India’s larger gro...

Information technology is taking on an increasingly important role in Indian urban governance, both in high-level policy announcements and localised innovations. However, the material and political landscape generated by widespread informal arrangements in urban governance is a challenging environment for these kind of reforms. Without adequately c...

Andrea Ballestero. 2019. A Future History of Water. Durham and London: Duke University Press. ISBN: 9781478004516 (ebook); ISBN: 9781478003595 (hardcover: alk. paper). Hardback £79.99; Paperback £19.99.

This thesis contributes a rich empirical analysis of urban water governance in Delhi, with particular attention to informality, groundwater and reforms. My research aims to develop understanding of the relationships between reforms, under both private sector management and a new progressive government, and existing informal water arrangements, part...

Matt Birkinshaw writes on the discretionary nature of essential services and blurring of public and private power on Delhi’s unauthorised periphery. He also reflects on how things are beginning to change under AAP rule.

This report was prepared at the request of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the South African shack dwellers' movement, over July and August 2008. It looks at the problem of fire for people living in shacks. It uses information from discussions with shack dwellers, and others, to explore the causes and effects of fires as well as municipal responses to fires...

Underground water: techno-political ecology in ‘unauthorised’ Delhi Like many of India’s fastest growing cities, groundwater use in peri-urban, unplanned areas of Delhi is extensive and weakly regulated. ‘Unauthorised’ neighbourhoods rely on groundwater and North Indian acquifers are being depleted at some of the fastest rates in the world (Shah 20...

The ‘Mumbai model’ of public-private partnerships in urban land and housing development is being adopted and piloted across India, and the world. So why has the ‘Mumbai model’ in Golibar provoked such outrage?

In this article, we discuss the “world class city” concept which is being used to support and justify major processes of socioeconomic restructuring that are taking place in Mumbai. Our argument is that these transformation are leading, both directly and indirectly, to dire consequences for the city's poorer inhabitants: the transformation of Mumba...