Neera 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), and is based in Mumbai.

Adarkar is the co-author of One Hundred Years, One Hundred Voices: The Mill Workers of Girangoan. The history of central Bombay’s textile area is 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. The 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.

Co-sponsored with the South Asia Language and Area Center. (c) 2008 - Unversity of Chicago.  The World Beyond the Headlines series is a collaborative project of the Center for International Studies, the International House Global Voices Program, the Seminary Co-op Bookstores and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Its aim is to bring scholars and journalists together to consider major international issues and how they are covered in the media.

Recorded Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at International House.