Meena Menon and Neera Adarkar, "One Hundred Years, One Hundred Voices: The Mill Workers of Girangaon, Mumbai"
Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 6pm in International House Home Room [1414 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637]

As part of "Displacement Week", Meera Menon and Neera Adarkar will discuss the history of central Bombay's textile area - one of the most important, least known, stories of modern India. Covering a dense network of textile mills, public housing estates, markets and cultural centers, this area covers approximately one thousand acres in the heart of India's commercial and financial capital. Their book presents one hundred testimonies from residents of the former mill districts: a window into the history, culture and political economy of a former colonial port city now recasting itself as a global metropolis.

Meena Menon has been a political and trade union activist for the past 30 years. She has been active in the textile workers' movement for 11 years. She is Vice President of the Girni Kamgar Sangharsh Samiti (Mill Workers' Action Committee) and one of its founders. She is also a Senior Associate with a global policy research organization called Focus on the Global South. She is based in Mumbai.

Neeera Adarkar has been active in the women's movement for twenty years. She is a practicing architect and urban researcher and visiting faculty in the Academy of Architecture in Bombay. She is also a founding member of Majlis, a legal and cultural centre. She is one of the Convenors of Girangaon Bachao Andolan (Save Girangaon Movement). She is based in Mumbai.




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