Research
Doctoral Research
Socio-economic Embeddedness of Urban Green Spaces in Delhi: A Spatial Justice Framework
PhD in Geography, Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD), Jawaharlal Nehru University Supervisor: Professor Milap Punia | 2021 – Present
Delhi is officially one of India's greenest cities. It is also a city where millions of residents in informal and unauthorised settlements live without meaningful access to green space, cooling shade, or clean urban environments. This paradox is the starting point of my doctoral research.
Spatial justice is the organising framework, asking not just whether environmental resources are distributed fairly (distributive justice), but who participates in decisions about urban environments (procedural justice), and whose communities and claims are recognised as legitimate within planning systems (recognition justice). My central argument is that misrecognition is foundational: when planning frameworks refuse to acknowledge informal settlements as legitimate urban communities, procedural exclusion and distributive deprivation follow structurally.
My work goes beyond green cover counts and heat metrics. Through geospatial modelling, critical master plan analysis (1962 to 2041), and governance fieldwork in urban villages and unauthorised colonies, I examine how Delhi's greening agenda concentrates ecological benefits in planned areas while displacing environmental costs onto the urban poor.
Research Threads
Who Gets to Stay Cool?
Cooling deficit and compound vulnerability in Delhi's informal settlements. Uses the InVEST Urban Cooling Model combined with food insecurity data to identify zones where thermal deprivation and socioeconomic vulnerability overlap. The Northwest Delhi corridor emerges as the primary compound vulnerability zone.
Caste, Space, and Green
Examining the relationship between caste geography and green space distribution across Delhi's enumeration blocks using Census 2011 data. Methods include Spearman correlation, spatial error regression, bivariate LISA, and Lorenz/Gini analysis.
Dilli Dehat Project
Recognition justice case study at Deoli village (Sangam Vihar–Sainik Farm cluster), examining forest department enclosure, johad blockade, and the erasure of historically documented urban villages from official planning. In collaboration with independent researcher Puneet Singh Singhal.
Theoretical Framework
My research draws on Fraser's three-dimensional theory of justice (redistribution, recognition, representation), Baviskar's work on bourgeois environmentalism, Ghertner's rule by aesthetics, Bhan's postcolonial urbanism, and Swyngedouw's post-political urbanism. The empirical sites and the theoretical framework together argue that Delhi's environmental governance is not a failure of implementation but a structural outcome of whose urban future planning is designed to produce.