Nihal Ranjit

• Master of Arts
• Senior Associate at Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS)

Despite its massive market share, urban India’s private informal residential rented sector has received scant policy or academic attention. Literature tells us about the discriminatory practices and differential experiences of tenants in these markets through a lens of social relations between tenants and their landlords. Little is said about landl...

‘Representations’ of recovery refer to the creation, circulation, reinforcement and subversion of ideas about what should be done in the months and years after a hazard has struck. The research reported in this paper outlines how contrasting and, in some cases, openly contested narratives can emerge in society around the nature and causes of the ev...

In the context of urbanisation in the Global South and increasing climate-induced disaster events, fostering resilience in infrastructure systems is critical to delivering on goals of economic development, poverty reduction, and climate action. Adaptive pathways, given its inherent consideration of uncertainty and an embedded feedback mechanism, be...

In post-disaster recovery planning, participation of disaster affected persons (DAPs) is critical for effective identification of their recovery needs. However, DAPs rarely have the opportunity to represent their needs and shape their recovery, and even rarer are avenues that are not arbitrated by other actors. One amongst the limited avenues for p...

Odisha’s coastline has faced the brunt of several cyclonic events over the past 20 years – the most recent being Cyclone Fani, which made landfall on 3 May 2019. Being a relatively poor state in India, with deep-rooted socio-economic and physical vulnerabilities, Odisha is still recovering from earlier losses and systemic impacts caused by previous...