This paper is an attempt to (re)analyze the Indian cities through the lens of the goal 11 of United
Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. It reveals that in India, the process of city development at aggregate level is characterized by sectoral approach to development, exclusionary urban governance, exclusionary urban planning and huge gap between policy and practice. As a consequence, Indian cities have remained far behind from being inclusive, safe, resilient and environmentally sustainable, even though a number of urban development projects have being implemented in the last 10 years. It also argues that it is less likely that the recently launched flagship programme- the Smart Cities Mission will promote the agenda of sustainable city development; rather it might cater to the information-technology industry and business elites. Lastly, the article emphasises the need for integrated and inclusive approach to development so as to make our cities sustainable.

Sustainable urbanisation is inevitable for achieving sustainable development goals. Habitat III attempts to discuss the importance of sustainable urbanisation and explore the urban development processes which are supported by sustainable urbanisation. In this context of inseparability of sustainable urbanisation and sustainable development goals, the peculiar pattern of South Asia's urbanization needs to be analysed. Low level of urbanisation, lopsided urbanisation and high level of urban poverty define the urbanisation pattern of South Asia. These countries have serious challenges of expediting urban growth rate, increasing level of urbanisation, urban poverty reduction and evenly spread urbanisation. Moreover, some South Asian countries observed a striking pattern of urbanisation. Sri Lanka observed decline in level of urbanisation by 0.38% over the period of 1981 to 2013. Percentage of urban population living in the largest city has increased in Bangladesh and Pakistan. The increase is sharpest in Bangladesh (11.74% point over the period of 1961 to 2013). Innovative urban policies and governance addressing the issues of disorderly pattern of urbanisation are essential for sustainable
urbanisation in South Asia.

This article is an exploration of recent policy initiatives and practices with the institutionalization of the Heritage Arc in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in 2014. The idea of the Heritage Arc is new in many senses. It attempts to take a fresh look into cultural tourism in the state of UP with the involvement of new partners especially citizens, seeks greater visibility through the use of social media and aggressively promotes cultural tourism through a series of events and festivals that will help brand and showcase the state on the global map. This article is contextualized to the city of Lucknow (part of the Heritage Arc) and is based on personal interviews with officials and citizens, onsite observation and secondary sources of literature like newspaper reports, government policy documents and website materials. It seeks to-explore the rationale behind the idea of the Heritage Arc with special reference to the city of Lucknow, the cultural practices particularly visible in the form of festivals, events, walks and meets that have proliferated since the inception of the idea of the Heritage Arc that have actually translated the idea of the Heritage Arc into reality Implications of these policies and practices namely on the branding and packaging of Lucknow city, restoration of a sense of pride among its citizens, putting Lucknow on the global map of cultural tourism and creating an environment for other citizen driven cultural practices is also being examined in this paper.

This study refers to the patterns of international migration with respect to immigration and emigration flows in Asian countries. The study throws light on the outflows of migrants from India to other Asian countries and the corresponding inflows from the Asian countries to India. It also includes the major remittance flows for countries of the region and explores the relationship between the remittance inflows and economic growth in Asian countries taking remittances share in Gross Domestic Product as an important indicator for growth. The results of the study revealed that in Asia, the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) countries of Western Asia and Macao, Special Administrative Region (SAR), China, of Eastern Asia account for above 50% of the migrant's stock to the total population. Indian migrants' favourite destinations are the Western Asian countries figuring about 74% of the total Asian migrants. Contrary to this, most of the migrants (-98%) in India arrive from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka of Southern Asia. India received the highest remittances ($70.39 billion) in the world followed by China and the Philippines.

Landslide is a common phenomenon in the mountains. It occurs due to cumulative effects of a series of natural and anthropogenic factors. Severity of landslides is further accelerated due to triggering forces like rainfall or earthquake resulting in damages to the prevailing eco-system, human life, livestock, personal and community properties, social life and termed as 'disaster'. Darjeeling, a major tourist town in the state of West Bengal in Eastern India, has been experiencing frequent landslides. But the vulnerability has been increasing exponentially due to unprecedented growth of tourist and local population followed by unplanned development of human habitation and infrastructure causing high level of damages. Even after major landslides in 2005, 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2015 of the last decade, the explosion of growth in population and infrastructure on unbuildable slopes in the town could not be prevented. Absence of policies for landslide responsive urban planning and development, has led to unintended urban sprawl and thus creating favourable conditions for disasters. This study develops a landslide responsive risk-zonation mapping for Darjeeling Town as an instrument, to formulate policies, strategies and guidelines for sustainable development of human settlements.

Annual rental value method of municipal property tax assessment is largely practiced in India; while a few cities of India also have a capital value based system. There are issues related to taxation parameters, administrative efficiency, municipal liabilities and use of technology in both the methods. Property tax reform as an important municipal level agenda under JNNURM (Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission) 2005 has also labelled these methods as subjective and deficient in many aspects. There is a need to include clearly enunciated, objective parameters in the existing property tax assessment methods. This paper tries to assess the issues related to the two methods based on the study of a locality from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh a state of India. The paper concludes that property tax assessment method needs modifications in the assessment parameters.

This paper attempts to highlight the multidimensional urban poverty status of distressed rural-urban migrants. Field survey was conducted using structured questionnaire among 500 sample respondents living in slums and shanties in Chandigarh. The incidence of urbanization of poverty is an outcome of in-migration of poor from rural areas and natural growth of poor population. During recent times, the inability of cities to absorb the in-migrants productively and generate enough jobs of decent quality for them has led to increasing levels of urban informality, poverty and insecurity In most of the Indian cities, poor people live in slums, slum dwellers are informal labour characterized by low pay and poor working conditions and Chandigarh is no exception. However, the greater majority of the respondents working as casual, self-employed and regular workers are not free from unemployment and underemployment. Daily per capita income of the members of the household is just Rs.34.63, all of whom are living below poverty line income of one dollar a day (within the index of destitution). The prevalence of 'shelter poverty' is a major problem; a considerable proportion of the respondents live in insecure temporary huts, built on government land. Along with implementing safety nets, enhanced investments in human capital favour the poor and implement urban employment guarantee program. Providing employment in rural areas to reduce distressed labour migration or making economic growth more inclusive and sustainable, introducing low skill-based labour intensive techniques and enhancing productive capacity of labour will reduce the severity of income poverty.