New Publication: Women, Children and Urban Mobility

Transportation is the primary connection between women and opportunities for economic independence, and bears a huge impact on women’s empowerment. Cities, while providing children with better opportunities, also have certain negative impacts such as air pollution, lack of independent mobility, inadequate play spaces and lack of safety on the roads.The Women and Child Development (WCD) department at the state level remains the single most powerful and effective body to address the issue and substantially improve women and children’s lives in our cities.

Sustainable Urban Mobility Network (SUM Net)

Parisar also strongly believes in the power of networking and sharing of knowledge and good practices with other individuals and organisations. In this interest, Parisar has been instrumental in founding the Sustainable Urban Mobility Network (SUM Net), which is a network of organisations and persons working on sustainable mobility in different cities of India. 

The National Urban Transport Policy was brought out by the Government of India in 2006, but little seemed to have changed a year post this policy. Meanwhile some civil society organisations working in sustainable mobility in their respective cities realised that leading lone, city restricted initiatives may not yield much. How cities developed and what they decided to do was found to be controlled by actors and events at the central level and strong policy advocacy was the only way to deal with this situation. With the understanding that binds SUM Net members, we strongly believe that policy advocacy without local participation is incomplete, and unsustainable. The people make policies, if that isn’t happening today, it should. And this is what SUM Net works for. Top down approaches need to go and people need to be more empowered to opine on what happens and does not happen in their cities.

The network is made up of such diverse individuals and organisations who understand sustainability, with the ability to see urban mobility as a part of the larger sustainable agenda.

Parisar is the Secretariat of the Network with Institute for Democratic Studies, Delhi.

Lakh ko Pachaas: Parisar to steer SUM Net's Maharashtra Bus Campaign

Bus-based Public Transport (BBPT) systems have an important role in making city life comfortable and providing the urban dweller access to education, jobs, social life etc. An efficient, flexible and responsive city bus based public transport system can help citizens save time, money by providing safe, accessible, affordable, comfortable services. There are co-benefits of climate change mitigation and better air quality in the city.
However, not a single city in Maharashtra has an adequate public transport system.