Dr. Rumi Aijaz
Fellow

Joined ORF
September 2007

Expertise
Urban Policy Research

Background
Dr. Aijaz’s academic and professional background lies within the broad disciplines of geography, regional and urban planning. He acquired his doctoral degree from SPA, New Delhi. This research dealt with practices adopted by local governments in the provision of water and sanitation services in three urban centers situated in Meerut district of Uttar Pradesh. An important contribution made was the description of the quality of local-level governance based on select good governance indicators. The Ph.D. thesis was acquired by NASSDOC of the ICSSR. He visited LSE for post-doctoral research, which focused on key ’challenges for urban local governments in India’. This working paper was presented at the BASAS annual conference held at University of London, and published online at the LSE website, a reference to which has been made by id21 (a DFID-funded research reporting service), and GTZ-URBANET online-library. This paper is also recommended as a reading material to students studying ’anthropology of Asia’ at University of Ottawa, Canada. The ideas and exposure paved the way for contributing a paper on the ’form of urban local government in India’ in the peer reviewed Journal of Asian and African Studies, published by Sage, US.

At ORF, Dr. Aijaz has completed a study on ’innovative municipal practices in India’. Based on personal interactions with the municipal functionaries and other key respondents from training institutions, and the information obtained from select case studies from India on four practices, namely regulations, capacity building, e-Governance and finance, prevailing problems in the governance process are highlighted and suitable policy recommendations have been put forward. The research findings were presented at a seminar organised by CII, Kolkata; and IFMR, Chennai.

Prior to his current position, Dr. Aijaz has earlier worked on a number of urban research projects for the National Institute of Urban Affairs, New Delhi, as well as for a Delhi-based non-government organisation, called Sanket. He has also handled a consultancy assignment on ’gender’ for the Royal Netherlands Embassy, New Delhi. Previously, his research articles have been published in reputed Indian journals of SPA, NIUA and ITPI.

Presently
Dr. Aijaz is engaged in research which focuses on producing new knowledge for managing change in urban areas, and engendering sustainable urban development.

E-mail ID: rumiaijaz@orfonline.org