Do Din – simply meaning ‘two days’ is a multiplex event that was first organised in Hyderabad in December 2013. It was initially conceived  as an urban techno arts festival where several different things would be happening simultaneously as they do in cities.  It was specifically about celebrating Hyderabad but also about reflecting on cities in India and elsewhere. There were film screenings, workshops, talks and exhibitions parallelly all at the same venue. Hyderabad Urban Lab was nominally coordinating it all. 

At the end of the first Do Din, arose the question, “who owns the event?” The Do Din organizing committee was not an organization and we sensed that it would not be possible to bring it back together in the same way for another iteration of the event. Also to take decisions and organise effectively we needed a group working on it through the year. This led to Hyderabad Urban Lab taking responsibility for organising and hosting the event in successive years. It is always in the third or fourth week of December, year after year. 

Our venue, Vidyaranya School was an examined decision too. It was central and therefore easily accessible both in terms of public transport and in terms of internal design. It is known to be a place of non-competitive learning, a symbol of non-aggressive non hostile urban spaces, that we hoped Do Din would performatively create.

Do Din at Vidyaranya, brings together friends, it brings together ideas, sparks new ideas and new commitments for people who are thinking about cities, living working and dreaming cities. 

It was born with a splash

We wanted to include creatures big and small

Wellbeing of a city depends on wellbeing of all its people

We need to take precarity by its horns, and turn it into an opportunity…

The central theme of Do Din this year is PRECARITY or precariousness, a condition of existence that is unpredictable, insecure and generally fraught with threats to wellbeing.

Precarity is defined as ‘a precarious or uncertain existence, lacking in predictability, job security, material or psychological welfare.’
In the present moment precarity seems to have grown into a large beast. It is no longer subtle, invisible, experienced only by the last and the least.

When the woman who runs a breakfast bandi (cart) on the side of road sets out to work in the morning, it is uncertain whether her place on the street is secure; if she will even find her bandi or the pavement in one piece. It is uncertain whether the pedestrian will survive a walk through a flooded city in the monsoon. Details of our identity such as fingerprints, bank details and addresses are floating through unprotected databases. An elderly person trying to walk down an uneven, pothole filled, traffic packed street experiences precarity.

Precarity is experienced in all forms and magnitudes, by everyone who inhabits the urban space. It is something that cuts across age, class, caste and gender. Our deliberations at Do Din this year are around precarity.

Telugu Invitation

Urdu Invitation

EDUCATION
Learning at your own peril

How can students be targeted and singled out on campus for forming and expressing opinions?

How does any educational institution sidestep its responsibility of creating a strong aware sensible citizen?

Why does a place of learning exceed its brief of teaching and indulge in pushing youth to the brink and yet enjoy complete impunity?

What relevance does a caste certificate have inside a classroom?

At Do Din we will be looking at these and similar elements of precarity that students are experiencing in places where they should be safest.

SHELTER
Permanently temporary

What is it like to be permanently temporary?

How do you protect yourself, the precious little you possess and your documents
when you are always under threat of being flooded or evicted or dislocated?

If you can no longer work from home how do you get to a work place safely?

Do walls and roofs ensure safety?

How many women are safe in their own home?

WORK

Life threatening livelihoods

How do you survive when your occupation is a hazard?

On who should the onus of a worker’s well being be?

Who Is to take care of those that take care of the city?

If the constitution guarantees THE RIGHT TO WORK why does
the cattle dealer get killed for his work?

Work, wages, welfare and wellbeing.

IDENTITIES

Who is safe?

Why should my attire, language, food preference, age, faith, gender, caste, class, sexual orientation,   ideological leaning, make me a target?

Democratising of violence is only a bold step in the direction of normalising it.

In a situation where the threat to life and liberty is forever present, what alliances can be forged to create networks of safety not for one individual or community but for each potential target.

A threat to one life or one group at one location is not just that. It is the rusting and disintegration of society, one assault at a time. What kind of collective action is possible under such unusual  circumstances?

Women as Urbanists

Hyderabad Urban Lab (HUL) began in mid 2012 as a programme of the Right to the City Foundation (TRTCF), a public charitable trust based in Hyderabad. The aim of the programme was to conduct research on urban issues in a way that would bridge the gap between academic urban research and life at ground zero.

The governing body of TRTCF had as its members, Dr. Biju Mathew, Mr Ashar Farhan, Mr. Bharat Bhushan, Dr. Vamsi Vakulabharanam, Dr. Vinay Gidwani and Dr. Anant Maringanti who served as the Executive Director of HUL.

In January 2016, when the programme was sufficiently grounded and had acquired its own life, the governing board of HUL, decided to reincorporate it as a non-profit company (section 8) under the name Hyderabad Urban Lab Foundation.

While the reincorporation (in June 2016) gives HUL, a legal existence, in spirit it has enabled us to continue to work towards the objectives that HUL set up for itself in 2012.

The HUL logo represents the urban grid, an interconnected network of resources and opportunities that should ideally be available and accessible to everyone who stakes a claim to them. In other words the logo represents the city as a space of resource sharing and opportunity generation for everyone that is part of it.

In the peak summer month of April, HUL did a brief variety learning programme with the girls of
GGHS, Ahmed Nagar.​
Amidst the general disorder of the place the chirpiness and curiosity and warmth of the girls felt like a gush of fresh wind. We did a neighbourhood mapping exercise with the 8th and 9th grade and with classes ​6​th and 7th, we did some word ​games, voice exercises and q-a sessions. We did not shoot photos in the school
BELLY OF THE BEAST
Dr. Amirullah Khan economist and professor spoke on GST demystifying through questions and statements, the complicated phenomenon of the Goods and Services Tax.
Historian teacher Dr. Eric Beverly in an engaging talk, walked us through a time in the history of Hyderabad city when planning and development activities were relatively autonomous activities in coordination with the municipal corporation of Hyderabad, as against regions that were under direct British rule.
CHAI HO JAAI
This year for one CHJ we had Bombay born Hyderabad resident, author, curator and cultural activist Ms. Aparajita Sinha, talking about her home city with HUL team members who also hail from Bombay.
The other CHJ this year was with Navadeep who has recently been ordained as a Buddhist monk. They spoke of the emotional aspects of an activist life and of their quest for the self.

WORKSHOPS
HUL has had a number of in house and external workshops this year.
– Ethics of Enquiry on the Ground EEG for the HUL team with Dunu Roy Sir
– Visualisation as a Research Tool V I with Neha Vaddadi
– Research Methodology workshop for PG students in collaboration with CESS
– Data Workshop in collaboration with CESS and Asthma files
INTERNS
Summer interns in 2017 came from AUD Delhi, SPA Bhopal, Soka University, California, and TISS, Hyderabad. Among other things they worked on the geo spatial transformations of neighbourhoods in the city.
YK ANTIQUES
HUL as part of its outreach efforts has tied up with consultant and curator Shri Y Krishnamurthy of Secunderabad. We have been organising small trips of visitors from the city and outside to his home museum where he has placed on display household and kitchen items collected over several decades during his travels.
MUSICAL BREAK
In the backyard of an old house we held an exhibition Urban Break, ink sketches by Neha Vaddadi depicting ordinary people taking a break and an assortment of musical performances by Sharan, Rahul, Saurabh, Akhil, Neha and many impromptu performances from the audience.
DAVIDSON GROUP
Every year since 2015 Undergraduate students of Davidson College, North Carolina, USA come to HUL for a fortnight as part of their INDIA ABROAD programme. The students this year mapped and studied public health services, environmental conditions and socio cultural parameters of 4 contiguous neighbourhoods.

Among HUL’s prominent visitors this year were urbanist and teacher Dr. Abdoumaliq Simone and his partner Rika Febriani. They spent a couple of weeks in Hyderabad visiting field sites and interacting with the HUL team.

HUL is the coordinating agency for JANE JACOBS WALKS 2017, in the city of Hyderabad. Deccan Amalgam, a young architecture firm is collaborating with HUL in organising and executing the walks.We have had 4 walks in 2017 at Dabeerpura, Hasnabad, Alwal and First Lancer and hope to do many more in 2018.