IOWC Speaker Series - Vatsala Shoukla
"Visualizing Feminist Urbanism in Mumbai: Participatory Video-Voice and the Nagar Swaraj Leadership Approach"
Vatsala Shoukla (SNDT Women's University)
At the peak of Mumbai’s lockdown, panic swept Agarwal Wadi, Wadala—historically one of the seven islands that formed the city. One neighbor struggled to breathe, another ran a high fever. “I didn’t wait for help—I became the help,” recalls 42-year-old Area Sabha Representative Sultana Shaikh. She rushed patients to hospitals, organized rations, and petitioned municipal authorities to restore hundreds of blocked ration cards. For months, she became the invisible government of her lane—embodying the spirit of leadership from below. Sultana’s story is not an exception but part of a wider pattern of women holding their communities together while negotiating state systems and everyday urban inequities. These stories exemplify the Nagar Swaraj experiment on the ground. Drawing from Gandhian philosophies of Swaraj (self-governance), Sarvodaya (welfare of all), and Antyodaya (uplift of the most marginalized), this model reimagines urban local governance as participatory, decentralized, and inclusive.My presentation builds on the experiences of women Area Sabha Representatives in Mumbai, explored through a participatory video-voice study, to examine feminist urbanism in practice. It asks: How meaningfully are citizens—especially women—able to participate in shaping the cities they inhabit? What barriers and opportunities define women’s local leadership? And what might urban governance look like if Area Sabhas were fully realized as the “fourth tier” of democracy? By combining video-voice, ethnography, and visual cartography, the study amplifies women’s lived experiences as evidence and advocacy, offering a grounded vision of feminist urbanism through the transformative ethos of Nagar Swaraj.
Light refreshments served.