Seminar on “Urban mobility system in contemporary Kolkata: A sustainable and inclusive transitions perspective”

Global Change Programme of Jadavpur University (GCP - JU) is organizing a lecture session with Ms. Bipashyee Ghosh, Doctoral Researcher at SPRU-Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, UK on 18th January, 2016 from 3.45 P.M to 4.45 P.M at the office of Global Change Programme, First Floor, Biren Roy Research Laboratory, Jadavpur University.

She will be speaking on “Urban mobility system in contemporary Kolkata: A sustainable and inclusive transitions perspective”.

Note on the Speaker:

Bipashyee Ghosh is a 2^nd year doctoral candidate in Science and Technology Policy at SPRU- Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. She has completed her masters on ‘Innovation Sciences’ from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), The Netherlands. She has an undergraduate degree in Economics from Jadavpur University (India) and was selected from Jadavpur University in 2011-12 to spend a year as an exchange student at Momoyama Gakuin University in Osaka, Japan. She also served as a climate activist, working as an International climate champion with British Council, India. As a PhD researcher, her current research interest lies in sustainability transitions in urban context of developing countries, particularly in mobility systems.

Note on the lecture:

Over the past few decades, India has witnessed rapid urbanisation, population growth, rising inequality, urban poverty and climate change. The urban mobility sector is a pre-dominant sector of the economy which draws attention owing to growing ownership of personal motorised vehicles, pollution and congestion issues as well as rise in travel demand. All these issues are currently major threats to the growing number of cities in India to sustain and remain liveable. Kolkata is the third largest urban agglomeration of India in terms of its population as is one of the largest “Mega-cities” of the developing world. For the doctoral research on Science Technology and Policy, Bipashyee Ghosh has taken up Kolkata's urban mobility system as a case study to identify the unique challenges and potential of the city to shift from the current trends of un-sustainability and exclusion prevailing in the system. Embracing a systemic approach, she is studying historic development pattern(s), contemporary issues and innovations in order to characterise the nature of the “socio-technical regime”; thereby reflecting on trajectories and pathways for sustainability transitions.

Between October 2015- January 2016, she has conducted semi- structured interviews with officials from several organisations, in order to gain insights on existing policies, regulatory structures, pressures, innovations, visions and perceptions on the key modes and transport infrastructures in the city. She has also accessed archival records and reports from these organisations, offering key statistics and guidelines on the transportation planning procedures in the Kolkata Metropolitan area (KMA). Her presentation will highlight the key interesting data, findings from observation and information accumulated during this first phase of the PhD fieldwork. 

The main objective of this interactive seminar will be to share experiences from working and living in this city, to validate and complement the data with mutual exchange of knowledge and information, and to receive thoughtful, critical comments, before she presents this research to the world.