Exploring Good Practice in Good Practice in overcoming urban deprivation in East London and Mumbai

There are increasing concerns regarding social inequalities, deprivation and integration in the inner cities of UK and the persistence of poverty and exclusionary practices amidst rapid growth in urban India. Within this context the need for understanding the key drivers for overcoming deprivations and learning from the scarce good practice is ever more in both India and the UK. The proposed project attempts to address this need by collectively exploring the good practice in marginalised and poor communities in the UK and India and, through collaboration and exchange, to develop a framework for dissemination and evaluation of practices to overcome deprivation.
Despite different socioeconomic contexts, several common dimensions of deprivation experienced by marginalised communities in both countries offer fertile grounds for comparative analysis of the innovative practices and the policy-community interface. East London is home to one of the most diverse communities amongst the European cities and faces complex challenges regarding inclusiveness and poverty. These offer several common key dimensions between the UK and Indian case studies within the Capability and the Commons Approach framework adopted for this research.
This project was awarded the UKIERI Grant in November 2011 and started in May 2012. The Indian partner institution is the Tata Institute for Social Sciences in Mumbai. Two field research visits have taken place jointly, one in London in Sep 2012 and the second one in Mumbai in January 2013. Our case studies in London are: Osmani Trust working with young Muslims who are not in education, employment or training (NEET), workers and community organisers who were part of the Living Wage Campaign supported by London Citizens and participants in the Voices for a Change Project, run by ATD Fourth World, which examined sustainable livelihood strategies in the context of inter-generational poverty. Our case studies in Mumbai include poor communities displaced from the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP) and communally polarised cohorts at Jogeshwari East Community (JEC).
The team would like to present the access to evidence and research dimensions of the project that have emerged during the field research in the contexts of the case studies in East London and Mumbai. This is an area that was not included as a key thematic inquiry in the original proposal but has posed some very challenging questions in the domains of evidence-based research and its likely impact. Therefore we consider investigating this to be of paramount importance in informing grassroots research in different contexts.