A SPARC-NSDF-Mahila Milan Publication

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This past year was marked by a renewed public focus on providing services and housing to the urban poor. The national elections brought in more urban‐focused MPs, and everyone now believes that the nation voted for improved development and better governance. For the first time in the history of inaugural speeches, the Presi‐dent mentioned slum dwellers and their need for land security, giving a nod to the new central government slum upgrading scheme Rajiv Awas Yojana. Clearly the government’s attitude has come a long way since SPARC began its partnerships with Mahila Milan and NSDF twenty five years ago.

SPARC’s 25th anniversary means that this is a year of reflection, but also a year of intense scaling up in many program areas. Those of us who have been with SPARC since its inception envisioned that our direct activist role would recede over time, to be replaced by the work of the community leaders. We did not anticipate the rapid scaling‐up of our work, nor the resulting legal compliances and technical responsibilities that have overtaken much of our earlier role. Nor did we predict that we would need to form a construction affiliate, Nirman, to deal with many of these complexities. While community leaders have come to play an integral role in all of the Alli‐ance’s activities, SPARC and Nirman continue to advocate at higher levels for the necessary policy shifts that will benefit the urban poor.

At the Trustee level and a programmatic level we have asked ourselves: Are we fulfilling the mission we started with? Are we exploring solutions for the iniquities experienced by the poorest of the poor? Are we exploring solutions that work around needs and aspirations of women? And are we abdicating roles and functions to the federations, Mahila Milan groups, and community groups, while taking on those that they have not yet developed capacity to do? The answer to all these is yes.

This year we have collaborated with Equalinrights to produce a report entitled “Victims or Warriors: a journey of defending poor people’s right to the city.” This project offers the opportunity to reflect on the impacts the Alliance has made and to articulate how communities are empowered to defend their own rights and devise multiple strategies to deepen their foothold in hostile cities. This is a vital issue at a time when the standard approach for defending human rights is the shame and blame, and our dialogue with government is criticized by some as co‐optation. We met with our international partners at the 10th Annual meeting of Cities Alliance to reflect on our progress and what our goals are internationally. The visible growth of Cities Alliance, in terms of partners, scope, and scale, gave us an opportunity to see how much we have grown and how much more priority the world is giving to the issues of cities and slums.

As the second phase of CLIFF begins and many of our first SRA‐driven construction projects close out, we can reflect on the precedents we have set in the urban housing sector and shift focus to other cities and other hous‐ing possibilities. We are now researching and experimenting with housing strategies under JNNURM BSUP. Three major projects are underway in Bhubaneswar, Pune, and Bangalore. The Alliance plans to create new loan portfolios under CLIFF 2 to complement these projects, and to facilitate individual upgrading. Hopefully our plans to work more deeply in incremental housing will also begin to demonstrate new possibilities that are truly people‐led.

The Alliance has taken a very proactive approach to Rajiv Awas Yojana. The policy is not yet finalized, but the Alliance is already collecting information for city‐wide slum upgrading plans to facilitate the process. This in‐cludes conducting biometric and household surveys, making plane table surveys and GIS maps of settlements, and initiating dialogue with municipal governments about the plans. We hope to encourage municipalities to take up city‐wide slum upgrading plans, so that they can take advantage of the RAY subsidies in the most effec‐tive way.

This issue of Citywatch tells the stories of where we have been and where we are going. Even the newsletter itself is an example of our progress till now. The Alliance initiated Citywatch to tell stories simply, so that read‐ers from communities within our network, as well as external readers, could understand and learn from what we do. We print every issue in English and Hindi, and now they are available on our website to provide better ac‐cess to readers. We encourage readers, new and old, to access the latest updates from SPARC and Nirman on our redesigned website www.sparcindia.org. We hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Sheela Patel, June 2010

From the Director’s Desk

A SPARC‐NSDF‐Mahila Milan Publication

April 2010‐march 11

http://www.sparcindia.org/�

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Both Sheela Patel and A. Jockin got the Padma Shree Award

On January 16, 2011 it was announced that Jockin Arputham and Sheela Patel are two of the recipients of the 2011 Padma Shri Award.

The Padma Shri award is the 3rd highest civil‐ian award in India, which are given to recognize exemplary contributions of individuals in vari‐ous fields.

Sheela and Jockin were given the Padma Shri to recognize their exceptional service in the field of social work.

The award will be conferred by the President of India at an awards ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhawan later in the year.

Sheela and Jockin were also honored for this award by the Maharashtra Home Minister and past Police Commissioners in a public ceremony on March 1, 2011, which approximately 1,000 federation.

We are honored by our government

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Jockin gets felicitated by the SUCHIRINDIA Foundation in An‐dhra Pradesh,

To every one in the alliance of SPARC Mahila Milan and National Slum Dwellers Federation ( NSDF) the national recognition for Jockin and Sheela are celebrated as reflect‐ing on their collective endeavors to work on issues of slum dwellers in India. The news about the announcements were first heard by the federation members who informed everyone in January 2011, and the ceremony was held in April 2011. Many community leaders participated in a range of events to deepen their resolve to continue this work.

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Federation news

NSDF National Convention Jan 2011

The annual NSDF National Convention took place in Dharavi on February 17‐ 19, 2011. Leaders from 9 states and 50 cities in India joined together to discuss the work of the past year, exchange news and ideas and discuss strategies for moving forward and what they wanted to achieve, as a collective and individually, in the next year. The meeting began with introductions, as groups from each state came forward and spoke about what they have done this past year and what they are currently working on.

The Pune Mahila Milan impressed many in attendance with their accomplishments in building houses for their members. Leaders from Bhubhneshwar, Cuttack and Puri in Orissa also spoke about how their exchanges led to their municipal corporations also explor-ing the possibilities and houses being constructed in Orissa by fed-erations. Hearing these stories and accomplishments inspired other federations to undertake similar activities and there was much dis-cussion informally between groups, to help share this knowledge and these processes.

There was also discussion about the city‐wide surveys currently in progress and cities that had done these surveys shared their ex‐periences, of doing the slum profiles, the household surveys, doing GPS mapping of slums and/or issuing biometric I.D cards. Leaders pushed for all state federations to plan to do city‐wide surveys this year.

The city surveys will use a simple logic to determine whether a city‐wide survey is needed: that unless the federation demonstrated that they collected better data than the city, the community led approach would not move ahead.

This would ensure that unnecessary or duplicate work is not done. For the various slum upgrading programs as well as for future plan-ning for RAY these were critical preparations to be undertaken, and so far the city wanted professionals to do this work.

There was also a lot of discussion about upcoming government redevelopment schemes, like RAY and more generally about ways in which federations can strengthen their relationships with gov‐ernment. Rajesh Tandon, got the NSDF and MM teams to start re‐flecting on their process of learning, how through exchanges, dem‐onstrations and peer explorations they had created a federation which also provided support to their members.

He also demonstrated how they were undertaking monitoring and planning when they attended such meetings. Both he and Jockin walked the groups through a process of collective planning and each state group shared their plans for the next year. Looking for‐ward, it is going to be increasingly important that slum dwellers and federations understanding state and national policies.

Sheela explained how under JNNURM, many cities rushed to send the national government their schemes and forgot to consult the poor. As a result many of the projects were in trouble as communi‐ties did not go to live in houses built far away dorm where they stay. Forming relationship with the city was vital for city federation leadership as was getting cities to understand who they were what they did.

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Planning Commissions and MBPOs In India the Planning Commission represents a important institution to address demands for development investment from the state. Many years ago, while seeking to address the issues of invisibility of pavement dwellers, SPARC had visited the Planning Commission to explore how to include the plight of pavement dwellers within the broad grouping of slum dwellers. Then as now we found that there was very little understanding of urban poverty issues.

SPARC was invited to present its association with NSDF and MM at a meeting to share how membership based organizations of the in urban and rural areas become vital in en‐suring the identification of un‐served groups of the poor and vulnerable and their explora‐tions into creating solutions can form the basis of major government programs. The Plan‐ning Commission had invited many such groups for discussion of which very few were urban groups present.

Each of the organizations had to present a paper which we have also submitted (put on website) and the gist of our presentation was:

Urbanization in India is here to stay and whether its 30% it will increase, and most of the increase will be very poor unskilled households migrating to cites who have no experience and capacity to deal with them.

Urban schemes to address poverty should be seen as a continuum of what is being explored in rural but it cannot be the same strategy as the urban context demon‐strated different challenges.

Planning commission must use the 12th plan to acquaint itself with urban poverty and vulnerability as unless this phenomenon is understood throwing money is not going to solve the problem.

The social and collective resources that poor communities put in and invest in their settlements and in their relationships should form the foundation for the investments made by the state and collective investments should support what the poor do instead f demoli‐tions and individual support given arbitrarily to the households.

Incremental approaches that address basic needs for all are a better approach that subsidy to build a house or individual subsidy.

Subsequently the 12th Plan preparation now has an urban steering committee of which the alliance is a member and will be working on dealing with urban poverty linked recommendations.

The alliance is committed to first of all begin a dialogue with other or‐ganized networks of informal habi‐tat and livelihood at national and international level to increase their acceptance in debates dialogue and problem solving about cities.

Through SDI it is hoped that a simi‐lar process will be initiated in global discussions about how ur‐ban poor can be included in ad‐dressing urban challenges and ex‐ploring equitable solutions.

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Federation news

In Maharashtra

In 2008, the state government directed the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) to resettle more than 60,000 families living in slums on airport land. According to the current policy, families on airport land who can prove that they have resided there from before 2000 are eligible for resettle-ment. The MIAL was directed to shift these families to new housing within a distance of 3 to 7 km from their existing hutments and complete the process in five years, by 2013. To date, the MIAL have acquired two plots: one at Kurla (West) is capable of housing 17,000 tenements, and the other at Kurla (East) can hold 6,000 tenements. However, land acquisition has not yet been done for the remaining 37,000 families.

For the inhabitants of these settlement, as well as the remaining airport slum dwellers, in September a new survey and enumeration process was announced. Beginning in Octo-ber 2010, the enumeration is to be carried out by several agencies, including SPARC, and would survey the slum dwellers cur-rently living on airport land, helping to de-termine who is eligible for free resettle-ment.and enumeration process was an-nounced. Beginning in October 2010, the enumeration is to be carried out by several agencies, including SPARC, and would sur-vey the slum dwellers currently living on airport land, helping to determine who is eligible for free resettlement.

In February 2011 it was decided that the Alliance should take the lead in not only con-ducting a survey of the airport slums, but also facilitating the resettlement so that it would be conducted in a way that best sup-ports the needs of the current inhabitants. The Alliance signed a contract with the air-port authority to help facilitate the resettle-ment of more than 100,000 households cur-rently living in the airport slums. Specifi-cally, the Alliance has been contracted to prepare for and conduct a household enu-meration for the settlement, including issu-ing biometric I.D cards.

Mumbai: Airport

Although there have been many dis‐cussions and negotiations, march 2011 had everything left unclear, in‐cluding uncertainty about the alliance involvement in RR

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Pune: SLUM MAPPING

In July 2010, the Pune federation began a similar GPS mapping project as in Cuttack. There are 460 officially listed slums in Pune, of which around 271 have been mapped so far by a team of two federation members. The Pune federation believes that the total number of slums is closer to 550. Mapping ‘slums’ also brings into ques‐tion the definition of a slum. Federation members in Pune do not consider slums on private land necessary to map. This also applies to special areas such as Gaothan, pavement dwellers or rent control build‐ings in cantonment areas that contain dilapidated structures, but are not on the slum list. The mapping process brings into question if these areas should be mapped or not by the official definition of a slum versus the federa‐tion or communities’ understanding and perception of a slum.

Nanded SLUMDWELLERS VISIT Pune Mahila Milan:

A chance meeting with the Nanded Commissioner in October 2010 led to 30 Nanded commu‐nity leaders visiting Pune to see the BSUP project.

Since then through exchanges Nanded slums have joined the federation and will be a major area for working in the alliance to explore citywide slum upgrading

HI Pavement Dwellers Evaluation highlights

The project succeeded in assisting pavement dwelling households in Mumbai to take advantage of their right to be resettled in secure housing within the framework of the Slum Rehabilita-tion Act at a time when the city needed to clear pavements for development works.

Effective use of donor funds in providing assistance to pavement dwelling households before, during and after resettlement.

The relocation management team formed as part of this project was found to be very effective

The community managed Transition Support Fund provided immediate post-relocation social protection and livelihood support to households made vulnerable by relocation from the city centre to the periphery, preventing distress sale of new assets and enabling children to continue going to school in spite of economic set back of families.

Some of the risks and uncertainties of working with multiple institutions include periodic non-cooperation of MCGM and other organizations, lack of clarity in institutional roles and uncer-tainties in implementation.

The space provided by the project of negotiating with these institutions was instrumental to poor people getting access to secure land and housing.

The absence of municipal systems and procedures for estate management and the high costs of operation and maintenance to families has meant continuous negotiations with MCGM and diversion of Transition Support Funds for maintaining basic environmental quality.

The risk not identified in the project proposal was that of 30 - 40% pavement dwellers being ex-cluded from access to secure housing in resettlement projects because they are not consid-ered eligible under the SRA and much of the effort of the Alliance under the project has been directed towards addressing this issue at implementation and policy levels.

6646 households from 31 pavement sites relocated to permanent housing with secure tenure; 39 ineligible households from 5 pavement sites relocated to transit accommodation;

20 new savings groups formed. Already existing groups strengthened.

Majority of pavement-dwelling households are in networked Mahila Milan savings groups.

Contribution towards building the capacity of pavement dwellers at a city wide scale to access their right to secure housing by stimulating communities to strengthen their own resources. The results are seen in the official appointment by BMC of SPARC as the nodal agency for survey work for resettlement, and acceptance of assistance from Mahila Milan/NSDF in completing documentation for resettlement and in upkeep of resettlement sites.

significant contribution to MDG Target 3, to promote gender equality and empower women by supporting a key role for Mahila Milan women, who work in partnership with NSDF in the community-centered process of decision making, negotiating for entitlements, exchange of learning. Further the project facilitates the empowerment of women through enhancing their financial capacity and thus their social standing.

Changes in poor peoples lives – official address, no longer fear demolitions, safety of children with no accidents, safety of women and girls, improved access to water and sanitation thus having improved health, new members have joined the MM and NSDF

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In Tamil Nadu

Federations in different areas of Erode and Dindukal in Tamil Nadu have taken various independent initiatives to tackle problems at the community level.

In Kamrajpuram, Mahila Milan and the Federation got government officials to visit their site to see the water problems and choked drains, and through regular follow-ups managed to find a solution. They also got governmental approval to renovate a community toilet block in the area.

Anatheressa, Mahila Milan was formed, which then tackled the problem of garbage in the area, water shortage and choked drains through appealing to the local admini-stration. In the New Railway Colony, the Federation and Mahila Milan organized a successful protest for 25 families who had no access to water.

Apart from issues of infrastructure, the Federation and Mahila Milan has also helped families get ration cards. A ration shop preparing and selling idlis, pickles, spices and herbs has helped to provide livelihoods. Federation members also pre-pared a list of 900 families to submit to the government under a scheme that pro-vides land to poor families for agriculture. The Federation and Mahila Milan have opened a tailoring class in Pampatti which provides income also to the women and young girls.

The Tirupur Mahila Milan and the Federation leaders along with other areas had organized a Malaria Campaign thus creating awareness amongst the residents about how it spreads and ways to control it.

In Ambedkar Nagar slum of Theni, the MM and the Federation have carried out a survey of children working as child laborers and in that process have also tried edu-cating the women on children’s education and its importance.

The Mahila Milan and the Federation have surveyed all the slum women working as domestic workers so that they can get ID cards from the government. The list has been submitted to the government.

A night school has been constructed by PSDF and MM at Arriyappalayam where children from the settlement study at this night school.

The PSDF and MM are running a crèche in Veerampattinam which is a fishermen area. Around 20 children in the age group of 2-5 are being taken care of from while the parents are out at work.

In Pondicherry, having being working for 10 years, the Pondicherry Slum Dwellers Federation is now very well recognized by the Government. The following activities have been carried out with the Government in this year – A joint survey was con-ducted with the Scheduled Caste Welfare Board of Pondicherry and the federation to conduct toilet and housing survey for dalit villages. The Pondicherry government plans to build free houses with toilets for dalit people which cost Rs 2 lakh. This was as a result of the meeting that the Federation had with the Chief Minister of Pondi-cherry, the Social Welfare Minister and with the Scheduled Tribe community to give recognition to tribal community in Pondicherry.

Federation news

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In Theni the Mahila Milan and the Federation are collaborating with the government to make them aware of the communities problems thus finding a solution to those collectively. They invite officials like collec‐tors, officers from the health department, employment cells to talk to and interact with the communities on specific problems.

In Tirupur settlements where the MM and Federation are functional, through surveys they found out that there are many families who do not have ration cards because they did not have any documents to get the same. With lot of meetings, discussions with government officials, the MM has been successful in getting the necessary documents and ration cards for 22 families.

As savings and credit activities continue to be the building blocks of the Mahila Milan and Federation and as they have experienced the benefits of taking loans, different banks have also started issuing loans to slum communities. In a recent function, the Union Finance Minister was in‐vited in Pondicherry to issue loans to the members. This is also an ex‐ample to showcase the strength of the Federation, their contacts and their negotiation skills.

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In Orissa‐ GLTN Mapping Project ‐ Cuttack

As part of the grassroots mechanism, GLTN (Global Land Tools Net‐work) is supporting four grassroots‐led projects, one of which is based in Orissa, India. Since April 2010, the project is being implemented by the Orissa Slum Dwellers Federation, Mahila Milan, Urban Development Resource Centre (UDRC) and SPARC in the city of Cuttack.

From the beginning, the Alliance has supported enumerations as a powerful tool for slum dwellers to negotiate with authorities over housing and infrastructure needs. This project builds on community-led data collection by introducing a digital method of producing slum maps linked to data. Federation members walk around the boundary of a slum and locate several points along it using a Global Positioning System (GPS) device. This is repeated for several slums, and the points uploaded onto Google earth. In Google earth, the points are connected to form a continuous boundary along each slum. Information from the slum profile, corresponding to each slum is entered into Google earth as well. This data is emailed to the SPARC office in Mumbai where we are in the process of entering it into Q-GIS – an open source map-ping software. Up to March 2011, we have marked 150 slum boundaries and 147 locations points within the slums for slums where boundaries could not be marked.

In June 2010, the Cuttack team presented their mapping method in front of federation members from other cities (Paradip, Rourkela, Bhubaneswar, and Puri) to encourage the scaling up of this process to these places in the coming months. Also, the map-ping progress was presented to Mr. Rabi Narayan Nanda, Cut-tack CMC Commissioner; two Slum Improvement Officers (SIOs), and three statisticians/IT officers .

The goal is to embed this mapping method as part of a larger process of creating a City-Wide Slum Upgrading Strategy under the new policy of Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY). RAY also proposes similar GPS/GIS mapping process but one that will be done by technicians. The Alliance’s goal is to show that communities are capable of doing the mapping themselves to which there is far more value and by sharing information in Google earth or an open-source software; the data is far more accessible.

During mapping OSDF/Mahila Milan found an additional 82 slums to bring the total of the official municipality list to 345 set-tlements from 263. During mapping, some slums were also found to contain several good quality (pucca) housing structures, which would require de-notification

Partnership with Global Land Took network leads to creating a manual for digital Mapping.

David Satterthwaite (IIED) links surveys to vulnerability mapping.

City of Cuttack Accepts it does not have a comprehensive list of slums.

Digital mapping now part of surveys

Federation news

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Climate Vulnerability Study in Cuttack

SPARC is currently working with David Satterthwaite of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in Collaboration with the Orissa federation, City of Cuttack and the GLTN to learn more about vulnerability in informal settlements in Orissa as part of a larger project studying vulnerability and risk in urban informal settlements across India. This report will come in June 2011.

An initial survey was conducted in October 2009, to gather preliminary information on the impact of disasters in Orissa and ways in which people respond to and prepare for them. After analyzing the responses, we decided to concentrate our second round of questions on the relationship between quality of housing and vulnerability. We developed a set of questions focusing on the impact of disasters on housing and the correlation between types of housing and damage from disasters. We also realized that more detailed information about individual settlements and households would be necessary to obtain a clearer portrait of vulnerability and responses, and modi‐fied our questions to use in household‐level interviews rather than with settlement‐and‐city‐level leaders. The results of our interviews suggest a few important links between income, livelihood, housing, and vulnerability that should be ex‐plored more thoroughly in future research: Pucca houses are much less vulnerable to storms and floods than semi‐pucca and kutcha houses. Pucca households spend much

less on repairs and repair their homes much less frequently than semi‐pucca or kutcha households. Incomes are relatively stable across households with pucca, semi‐pucca, and kutcha homes, suggesting that other factors are more

important in people’s decision to upgrade their houses. People living in pucca houses are much more likely to be employed at private companies than those living in semi‐pucca or kutcha

houses, suggesting some link between livelihood and the ability to reduce one’s vulnerability by building a pucca house. Houses with asbestos, tin, or polythene roofs are significantly hotter than houses with thatched roofs. As most pucca houses have

asbestos roofs, this is one major drawback to upgrading a house to pucca. People frequently use loans to help cover the cost of repairs or upgrades to their homes. Though people draw on a number of

sources, including family, friends, employers, and Mahila Milan, many people must take larger bank loans to pay for new pucca houses. It is unclear what factors contribute to people’s ability.

David Satterthwaite talks to communities in Cuttack (left). Pucca and kucca houses (above and below) in the area clearly show the difference in vulnerability when facing bad weather flooding and evictions in Orissa

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Who should do the surveys and why

Mapping Surveys enumerations by communities for RAY

The government programmes of JNNURM and RAY and even the UID process on the one hand and several government surveys seek data from slum dwellers for various reasons. This year there was the census and the BP: survey on top of this and now the sur‐veys of Caste and BPL is scheduled to be done again.

National Slum Dwellers Federation ( NSDF) and Mahila Milan are of the opinion that creating a strategy by which the communities generate their data and share with others should be the strategy, because they know best who lives where does what and needs what and so on.

Creating capacity amongst organiza‐tions of the poor and the membership to understand how to look at the data tables registers of names etc is vital to create a common communication strat‐egy between city and community when projects get taken up.

To the city or external researchers these are huts look like a sea of roofs, however each individual and household has an identity and needs and aspira‐tions and creating capacity of leader‐ship of neighborhood and network to create priorities that ensure all are in‐cluded and possible interventions work for all.

Data managed by the community along with city produces transparency and ensured no one is excluded. It is also a benchmark to judge impact and out‐comes of the intervention.

Some interesting insights:

Difference between how professionals collect data and slum dwellers collect information.

1. The slum profile is a introduction and exploration. Creating a list of 20‐30 questions that groups of people within communities answer together about their own neighborhood, its services amenities, history and leadership a means to create a city wide network of slums.

2. The house numbering process and its value to the neighborhood. Once the neighborhood shares survey details, the house numbering exercise done together helps ensure that every household and structure is included, and community takes charge of challenging duplications. By default these numbers also turn into postal addresses.

3. The household register and its governance impact. Once houses are numbered, the data is collated manually and lists of household names and simple tables are done with com‐munity to show how data is created from questionnaire. Later a register generated from the data base

4. Who owns data and how it gets used. Once data is col‐lected and both city and community accept the details men‐tioned in the register, that data is both official, ie its both official and it belongs to the community. This produces transparency and ensures proper utilization of any investment or project im‐plementation that may come after that.

5. Creating a federating process through data collection. The most powerful aspect of community managed data collec‐tion is that it helps community leaders seek information about each other, meet and network and through that create an iden‐tity that is city wide and which facilitates dialogue. Unlike data collected by professionals, this information can have multiple uses.

6. Building new collective practices such as savings, net‐working and women's participation out of the proc‐ess. Once the surveys are over and communities network, they begin to share their problems and difficulties and also get expo‐sure to processes done by others in slums that work for the ur‐ban poor. E.g. how to deal with municipality for basic amenities, and services. Savings undertaken with women's collectives as‐sist circulation of loans and savings through the community as well as give women a chance to participate in neighborhood ac‐tivities.

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City‐wide Slum Enumerations

From October 2009, SPARC has completed 4101 set‐tlement profiles in 7 states in India. Of these, 591 settlement profiles have been completed in 22 cities of Tamil Nadu, 592 settlement profiles in 8 cities of Maharashtra, 207 profiles in 1 city of Karnataka, 145 profiles in 4 cities of Pondicherry, 706 in 6 cities of Orissa, 881 in 2 cities of Gujarat and 979 profiles in 3 cities of Andhra Pradesh. 809 surveys remain to be done in settlements that have already been identified. Enumerations are also a means of evaluating ways in which Mahila Milan can strengthen regular city‐wide settlement profiling exercises and use the data strate‐gically.

These slum profiles produce the most comprehensive picture of the status of informal settlements; official statistics are usually either non‐existent or highly deficient. This information forms an important basis for addressing deprivations in slum areas, long‐term strategic planning and for negotiating with authori‐ties. The enumeration and profiling is also an impor‐tant mobilizing tool for the Alliance.

Slum profiles, household and data collection not only collects information, it collects people, and through this helps give people a collective sense of identity. It provides communities and their aggregated federa‐tions a sense of who they are what their collective needs are and information and data to produce in‐sights about their situation. They also learn to explore contestation with the state about information the state has about the poor, which is often not compre‐hensive and can generally not be disaggregated to produce projects and investment possibilities or to benchmark what needs to be improved upon. While on one hand the federation and Mahila Milan are in‐volved in collecting information about their settle‐ments, SPARC has come up with a strategy to put the information in different forms / templates – slum profiles, city profiles and state profiles. By doing so, it will be much more easier to present a summary of the slums at the city and state level and would also be helpful while negotiating with the authorities at vari‐ous levels for different projects.

Slum surveys and mapping

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Why this is so important

House model exhibitions and learning and advocacy

Very early in our work the 1985 Supreme Court of India Judgment decreed that the Bombay Municipal Corporation could evict pave‐ment dwellers and demolish their houses. In the period 1985‐ 86 it became evident that there was no ready made solution and that, to prepare a solution, the communities, the city and state would all have to create a viable strategy that addressed the problems of all. This was the watershed which helped SPARC formulate its role, functions and strategy.

The women from pavement settlements stated categorically that secure shelter was their main priority. For most of 1986‐87 the Alliance began to explore along with 600 women from 7 pavement settlements, every area, issue and concern related to secure shelter. In the process we educated ourselves on land, development plan‐ning, housing norms, construction standards and materials. We strengthened the internal organization of these settlements, created structures, leadership collectives and problem solving forums. And most powerful of all, we developed our own house and settlement model plan and began to acquire skills to articulate these dreams and aspirations and initiate ways to make the city and government listen to us.

Savings groups for housing were started, construction skills were acquired and on this foundation we sought to build a movement of

In March 1987, four neighbourhoods, ‐ Apna Street, Water Street, Dimtim‐kar Road and Shanti Nagar ‐ finally designed houses around which there was agreement, and based on these four models, the house model exhibi‐tion was planned . The House model exhibition was held in Byculla where, the women made houses out of bamboo, cloth and wood. These also in‐cluded furniture and cooking equipment set up, and details of costs and measurements also put up. Each house had representatives of that neighbourhood volunteering to explain its elements and to seek “votes” to select the housing design for the houses they would build, once they got land.

This house model exhibition served many purposes. First of all, it was to bring together all the pavement dwellers who had taken part in the survey for “We, the invisible”. They were to come and see it and begin to under‐stand what their leaders were doing on weekends during the whole of the previous year and which they would discuss with them routinely. Sec‐ondly, it was also to get officials of the municipality, the state government and the Housing Board as also professionals to see what the women living on pavements wanted as their future home and to begin to appreciate the logic of their choices.

Now as part of the BSUP being undertaken in Yerwada, Pune where the Pune Mahila Milan is constructing 750 units a similar process was undertaken to help the community visualize the kind of houses they will be living in the future and what are the different housing options available to the communities. Through this they developed the understanding and language necessary to communicate with architects, engineers and government officials. As a community and as an individual, people developed the capacity to participate from the beginning to end. They represent what design requirements Pune

Mahila Milan is restricted to and also what design innovations they are

hoping to push.

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Exhibitions

The alliance often finds that while developing new strategies espe‐cially for housing, for designing various solutions, both communi‐ties and government representatives need to see it. When we say see it we mean in it natural proportions. Often when a house de‐sign is done, architects draw it on paper or make a three dimen‐sional model which is small but in proportion. This is often very hard for both communities and city officials and as a result the real size house or toilet or materials for survey etc are developed in “real size”. This is what the alliance and sdi refer to as the house model exhibition for instance.

More recently we have found that the strategy also works well in advocacy at other different levels, and we recall building a house and a community toilet block at the UN Headquarters in 2000 dur‐ing the discussions about Habitat issues. Later we built a similar set of models at the UNHABITAT headquarters during the first world Urban Forum also in 2000.

This year, we took two live size pavement dwellings to Seattle y the Annual meetings of the BMGF meetings. Women on pavements always have amazed visitors with how they use the 35 to 45 sq feet that is the size of their dwellings. Two such houses were photo‐graphed inside and outside for walls, rood floors, then in real pro‐portion these were printed and with plastic tubing frame they were set up. The staff of the foundation helped set up the houses and many came in to look at the details of how walls and roof are used for storage, to look at the water line of where the water comes and floods the house every year during the monsoon and all in all, it was a powerful statement of condition in which the poor live in Mumbai on the street. Yet these are the same women who have built a whole movement to bring women in the center of the struggle for inclusive growth of cities and equity for all in secure shelter and basic amenities.

In April 11 UNHABITAT has its general council meeting n Nairobi, and SDI set up a exhibition showing slums before any intervention and after settlement upgrading. Several affiliates especially the Kenyan and South African and Indian affiliates worked together to design and execute this exhibition which the new Executive Direc‐tor inaugurated and appreciated how it brought reality into the pristine grounds of their campus. He will explore ways to work with SDI to create a permanent exhibit of this kind to symbolize the challenge the world faces in this millennium.

In November 2011 there will be a exhibition of show casing how the poor live and work in cities and the challenges faced by social move‐ment of the poor in cities. The Rockefeller Foundation which has made a contribution to this project introduced SDI to the curators and since them SDI maps, models, photos and all kinds of materials has been shipped to the museum curator to be exhibited when the exhibition opens in November this year.

16

Slums begin to examine their critical vulnerabilities

Mapping Vulnerability

Slum households often find the lands they have squatted to be land that is often flooded, has mud slides or facing other challenges which they see as part of their lot in survining in cities. Their lack of access to clean drinking water leads to deseases which are further worsened by lack of drainage and sanitation increasing both mortality and morbidility

Cities don't allocate land or resources to anticipate the growth of people who are poor and have little resources and as a result, a very large percentage of the urban population faces a wide range of vulner‐abilities.

In the past, these vulnerabilities were treated both by the city and the communities who faced them as consequences of the “choices” of squatting. Cities continued to ignore this building crisis, and some‐times responded to calamities after the fact.

More recently cities have begun to undertake a dis‐aster mitigation approach and in many cities the very location of slums are seen as a vital starting point of mapping vulnerable groups. The irony is that the city only records slums it says have been permitted to exist. The others remain invisible.

After the work of mapping slums in Cuttack and ad‐dressing the issues of vulnerability of different sorts, the federations began to examine their own past ex‐periences of both preventive and post disaster en‐gagement and the list of possible interventions are many.

Our most important insights have been

The more organized the community is the more their collective capacity to anticipate and manage vulnerabilities.

The greater their interaction with the city and state the better the joint effort t anticipate man‐age and mitigate vulnerabilities.

18

The crucial means and end for the alliance

Although Mahila Milan first came together because housing insecurity was identified as women’s key concerns, they started to discuss other needs and priorities. Lack of access to cheap credit, was another key concern. In 1987 they initiated the community savings and loan scheme with five hundred house‐holds. Currently, Mahila Milan has a membership of over seven hundred and fifty thousand households across the country and “represents both an opportunity to satisfy the credit needs to poor women and a strategy to mobilize them towards taking a more pro‐active role in relation to their own poverty.” Mahila Milan savings scheme in Bombay alone has tapped over Rs. 21,867,694.00

The process of savings collection is simple. In each area, every 15 households are assigned a group leader who collects their savings everyday, and deposits the collected money in the Ma‐hila Milan office. Each member is assigned a book – in which they record savings and withdrawals – and a similar book is kept in the Mahila Milan office. Every time a member wants to withdraw money, they ask their group leader, and she gives them the money. Along with saving on a daily basis they

With regards to loans, there are two kinds of loans— income generation loans and crisis loans. Income generation loans come from a government of India loan (the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh), and is loaned out to borrowers at a 12% interest rate. Mahila Milan decided to add another 1% compulsory savings to a community pool to cover costs for consumption loans that all families need. The crises credit loans are those which are fi‐nanced by community savings and have a 2% service fee. There are no restrictions on the use of loans (used in business or per‐sonal consumption) as long as the need is legitimate.

According to Sagira, a group leader, daily savings rather than loans are what holds the community together. She says “daily savings is very important because it lets us meet each other everyday, so we can know each other. Also, it shows the gov‐ernment that we can be trusted with money, so they will give us loans and grants. We didn’t know how to operate at first, but through daily savings, we have built our savings to a much higher level.” Indeed, this was my own experience when I ac‐companied leader Laxmi Naidu on one of her daily 7 a.m. rounds. She stopped at each hut, chatting with them, and asking for their savings and loan repayments. Almost all dutifully handed her their money. The amounts varied – some handing her Rs.20 and others only 50p. The others promised to pay the next day. In this way, she managed not only to collect money, but also to collect information about people’s lives.

Mahila Milan’s savings and credit is also a means of empower‐ing women individually as well as collectively.

Mahila Milan started this in Byculla. But, as they visited other settlements, many groups in Bombay and other cities in India adopted the scheme as something which addressed their needs. Although the actual amounts may be modest, this scheme has a strategic value in that it not only fulfils basic community needs, but also trains women to handle transactions and negotiations. This is visible to the entire community and has affected the equation between the men and women. In any instances, the records of loan repayments maintained by the community has become the basis on which women apply to banks and financial institutions for further loans.

Mahila Milan and Savings and loans

New savings groups formed

Mahila Milan savings and credit activity is an ongoing process. New savings groups are formed every year with the objective of expanding the work and reaching out to more and more communities. Along with this it also organizes the women and helps them cope with their financial crises through giving them loans on their savings. In 2010, 33 new savings groups were formed in 7 of the states where SPARC is active.

20

In Bhubaneswar, in

DHUMDHUMA lists

for BSUP subsidies

get finalised

PUNRI, Orissa

BSUP housing in Pune in

ORISSA SLUM DWELLERS FEDERATIONS AND UDRC VISIT SSNS OFFICE to review administration support for construction projects

Construction in three locations begins in bhub‐haneshwar

Social Audit for JNNURM

Under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mis‐sion, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, is proposing a social audit for projects undertaken under its Basic Services for the Urban Poor (BSUP) and Integrated Housing and Slum Development Programme (IHSDP) Schemes.

To take forward the social audit process, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation has developed de‐tailed Guidelines and Methodology for conducting Social Au‐dits, a Handbook on Social Audit, a Training of Train‐ers’ (ToT) manual on social audit for BSUP & IHSDP schemes.

In June‐July 2010, SPARC and YASHADA (the administrative training institute of the Government of Maharashtra) jointly submitted a proposal to carry out the social audit of JnNURM projects in Nanded, Dondaicha and Pimpri‐Chinchwad in Maharashtra, chosen on the basis of discussions with Mr. Sitaram Kunte, Housing Secretary.

YASHADA, as the national resource centre, will take on the responsibilities of contacting respective city municipalities and obtaining tender documents, DPR, other official papers related to the projects. The aim of the Alliance, is to mobilize communities to participate in evaluating the projects and provide a public platform to address their grievances, hold‐ing accountable those who are responsible for implementing these projects.

Constructing Houses Building capacity and skills

21

Swedish Architects come and work with Orissa federations

In the end although we applied to undertake social audit, we were not given any projects to assess. Yet look‐ing back, the work we have done in Bhubaneswar, Pune and Puri demonstrated a REAL social audit and a resolution of what has been wrong. The local organized communities were observing that the projects as de‐signed by the cities were very flawed. The money given to the consultants to prepare the detailed project re‐port ( DRP) were absolutely incorrect on several fronts.

The basic mapping of the existing lands was not done so even when the project work orders were given later to us, there was lack of confirmation that the land belonged to the city.

The mapping of the houses undertaken through a plane table survey were completely inaccurate and so had to be done again.

The names and documentation of the households who had to be given the subsidy were wrong.

None of the households had adequate documentation, did not know that they had to contribute 10% to their homes

Through the work of the federations of not only facilitating community participation

22

Construction activities Pune

stration with Jockin Pune Mahila Milan take a review of their construction project admini‐

Pune Upgrading

Since November 2008, the Alliance has been working to coordinate the imple‐mentation of an in‐situ slum upgrading scheme, officially titled the “City In‐situ Rehabilitation Scheme for Urban Poor Staying in Slums in City of Pune,” in seven slum settlements in Yerwada, Pune. This project comes under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) sub‐mission of Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP), which earmarks funding for inte‐grated slum development through projects related to housing and infrastruc‐ture. The scheme provides a subsidy of Rs 3 lakhs to upgrade each kutcha structure in these settlements to a G or G+1 pucca house, with an expected contribution of 10% from residents, and provides for infrastructure, transit, and basic amenities. SPARC and Mahila Milan are managing the resettlement process with support from a design team, local professional and academic institutions, and CHF International.

The project was an outcome of continued negotiations with the Pune Munici‐pal Corporation (PMC) in which the criticisms and issues surrounding exist‐ing upgrading schemes in Pune were challenged. According to the Alliance’s philosophy, in order for slum redevelopment to be tenable and sustainable, investment must be incremental, projects must be integrated, and initiatives must be planned and implemented by a collection of stakeholders – including the community itself. The project is being implemented in seven settlements of Pune – Wadar Vasti (151 houses), Mother Theresa (203 houses), Sheela Salve Nagar (33 houses), Bhatt Vasti (103 houses), Netaji Nagar (65 houses), Chandrama Nagar (120 houses) and Yashwant Nagar (75 houses)

At the beginning of 2010, the Pune Mahila Milan began preparations to start construction on the first set of houses. In February, groundbreaking hap‐pened for the first 9 houses in Mother Teresa Nagar followed by Wadar Vasti and Sheela Salve Nagar. The pace of construction steadily increased through the summer. By August 53 houses were under construction in Mother Teresa, 13 in Sheela Salve and 18 in Wadar Wasti, with 3 in Mother Teresa nearing completion. There were some constraints on the scaling up process, however, due to ongoing issues like the beneficiaries not paying their contribution amounts on time to continue construction, NGO‐Contractor agreements not being finalized, possible cost over‐runs relating to the design of the buildings, and individual household files not being approved for various reasons. These issues were addressed in their own manner and the accompanying process helped strengthen the team's ability to handle more work of this type in the future. During the late spring and summer there were some concerns regard‐ing the ownership of the land on the final sites of Netaji Nagar, Bhatt Nagar and Yashwant Nagar, but these issues were addressed collaboratively by the Mahila Milan, Pune Municipal Corporation and Ward Officers, using superim‐posed maps of the city and city surveys. As these concerns were resolved, construction began in August on these sites. There were also some delays in starting work on the transition housing in Chandrama Nagar due to conflicts with the owners of the field where the housing was set to be built; by Sep‐tember though, the work was nearing completion with 48 units built and ready for final flooring to be set down and commencement certificates. By the end of the year significant construction progress had been made at the 7 sites, with a total of 192 houses under construction in total with 24 houses having completed construction.

Housing – Upgrading under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM)

Federations take on construction

24

Construction activities Bhubaneswar



BSUP in Orissa

In January 2010, SPARC Samudaya Nirman Sahayak won a con‐tract to upgrade three informal settlements in Bhubaneswar un‐der the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), Basic Services to the Urban Poor program – otherwise known as BSUP. The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, or BMC, identified 73 beneficiaries in Nayapalli Sabar Sahi, 225 in Bharatpur and 280 in Dumduma who will each receive a pucca rehabilitation unit of 270 sq.ft. The groundbreaking ceremony for one of the settlements, Nayapalli Sabar Sahi, was held in March 2010 and soon after this construction work began on the other two sites.

Upgrading on the sites presented some challenges, as the existing houses were quite old and due to their location they are subjected to high monsoon winds, cyclones and annual flooding. As a result, homeowners spend a considerable amount of their income to maintain their houses, especially the tin and palm leaf roofs which must be replaced every 1 to 3 years.

Construction work is now in progress for 40 units in Nayapalli, 109 in Bharatpur of which 65 are being constructed by the Orissa Mahila Milan and 44 are being constructed by the beneficiaries. 49 units in Dumduma are under construction of which 42 are being constructed by the Mahila Milan and 7 by the beneficiaries.

Impacts of the Project and Process

The direct impact of the project is to provide necessary infrastruc‐ture and security to slum dwellers in the respective areas. The aim of the federation is therefore to demonstrate how the community led process can be integrated in the implementation of the project and how they have a say in the project.

The community members whose houses are under construction have a say and right in choosing the material used for construction to maintain quality. Also the quality control is being done by Mahila Milan and the local community members along with the BMC.

Another impact of these kinds of projects has led to an increase in the community leadership and ownership. The BMC which earlier was hesitant to work with the communities, Mahila Milan or the CBOs is now open to such processes. In other words it has strength‐ened the bottom up process and approach. There is transparency and quality in the processes carried out – survey, construction, su‐

Milestones and Challenges Faced

Lists of eligible members provided by the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) did not match with lists prepared by the Alliance through surveys conducted in 2007.

Plane table surveys conducted by the BMC were outdated and could not be used for the purposes of this project

several homeowners and landowners had sold their property over time.

several eligible community members have surplus open land which can be used for the improvement of amenities, for open spaces or for road widening, but needs to be negoti‐ated for.

Low quality materials were supplied by the supplier which were backstopped by Mahila Milan.

Lack of community contribution towards housing as savings for the same were not initiated prior to construction

Municipality not releasing money though houses were under construction

26

Construction activities Puri. Orissa


Puri – BSUP

Under the Alliance, SPARC and Nirman are the NGOs that procure land for slum communities by bidding on housing projects. In December 2009, Nirman bid for and won its first project in Orissa to upgrade housing in three slum settlements for 854 households in Bhubaneswar city. Thereafter, Nir‐man first bid on the Puri in‐situ upgrading project in February 2010. Because Nirman was the sole bidder, the municipality was required to submit the bid documents to the State‐level housing depart‐ment for review. After about a month of review the bid was rejected and the tender re‐opened. The Orissa federation and Mahila Milan opted not to tell the community about this but instead began con‐ducting mobilization work in two of the settle‐ments, explaining the project to the communities, obtained consent for the project and for opening a joint bank account for housing savings. Nirman bid again for the same project in May 2010 and in Sep‐tember –October 2010 Nirman officially won the bid and obtained approval to the project.

164 families have been identified as eligible in three settlements – Gokha Sahi (111), Mangala Sahi (40) and Mishra Nolia Sahi (10). Regarding surveys and enumerations, plane table has been completed in Gokha Sahi in April 2010, household survey for 111 families have been conducted and biometric for 100 families has been completed. As of today, construc‐tion for 7 houses in Gokha Sahi started in January 2011 and has been completed till roof casting.

As part of community mobilization activities, meet‐ings and exchange programs started taking place in January 2009 with the UDRC, SPARC and the com‐munity members participating to discuss the strat‐egy of starting savings groups as a result of which in March 2009 they started their first savings group. So far 6 savings groups have been formed in Gokha Sahi. A number of meetings have also been held with the Puri Municipality and UDRC, SPARC to plan the implementation of the project.

A group of 3 architects from Architects without Borders (ASF) –Anna Olsson, Ingrid Svenkist and Anna Engvalf have been closely working with the team from September‐ November 2010, and have helped design and develop 3‐4 housing typologies thus providing technical assistance. A local engineer has also been hired to provide technical assistance.


28

BSUP in Bangalore



The JNNURM housing scheme was implemented in Bangalore by the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP, Bangalore’s municipal corporation). In 2006, the Commissioner of the BBMP asked the Karnataka Slum Dwellers Federation (KSDF) to assist him with planning slum upgrading projects under the same. The beneficiaries were entitled to a 300 square‐foot flat, with a toilet, bathing space, kitchen and multi‐purpose room, in four‐storey buildings. Upon the invitation of the BBMP, KSDF selected five slums as pilot projects and 13 others for the first phase of JNNURM, based on the level of need and willingness of residents, which was found out through surveys and discussions.

In all slums that have sustained their interest in the scheme, KSDF started savings groups and issued loans in order to help families meet their community contribution. They have completed detailed socioeconomic household surveys, taken family photos and issued biometric ID cards with a unique serial number in order to create transparency and ensure that eligible beneficiaries re‐ceive flats. The surveys, along with the cadastral mapping KSDF have done, also provide a basis for planning. Mansa Consultants, whom the BBMP hired to produce Detail Project Report (DPRs) for the project, relied on KSDF data. KSDF also participated in community meetings Mansa held in accordance with JNNURM norms to present and get feedback on building designs. KSDF are also facilitat‐ing relocation to transit accommodations. KSDF has played a critical role in mobilizing communities, mediat‐ing conflicts and obstacles and facilitating communication among all parties. They have been involved in intensive and sustained community mobilization: holding commu‐nity meetings, explaining details of the scheme, building local confidence in the process, and helping people organ‐ize themselves and prepare for the move. KSDF have also taken a leading role in dealing with innumerable obsta‐cles, including disruptions from private interests and local politicians, landownership conflicts, internal community disputes and other unforeseen difficulties. Finally, they have served as a communication link between the BBMP and the local communities.

Of the five pilot slums, construction is complete in four areas (Kalyani Slum, Kodihalli, Bakshi Garden and Austin Town), and people have been shifted to permanent build‐ings. Although there have been problems and issues with relocation like people not wanting to shift to far away sites, local disputes, disruptions from builders and local leaders, MLA oppositions etc., but with the help and support of KSDF and MM these problems have been resolved. In the fifth area, Netaji Slum, because of a case filed in court by the neighbors living in the community as well as from the surrounding areas, some land disputes and the working of another NGO in the area, work is currently at a standstill.

Transit Housing provided at Bakshi Garden under JNNURM‐BSUP (Above) and One of the newly constructed buildings on Queen’s Road, Bangalore (below)

Bangalore:

Of the 545 slums in Bangalore, 207 have been mapped using GPS with support from CHF also the settlement profiles for these slums have been completed. The data is being processed by Alchemy. Families from nearly 60 slums have received Biometric ID cards (i.e. nearly 6000 families) that will be linked with the GIS data‐base.

30

Post construction review Bangalore

Sunnuduguddu Bangalore after several years

Sunnuduguddu is an informal settlement which faced possible eviction over a decade ago. The residents came to Bangalore Mahila Milan to seek their help. The Bangalore Mahila Milan which was in discussions about slum upgrading at vari‐ous settlements I Bangalore with the Karnataka Slum Clearance Board, was informed by them that the evictions could be avoided if the land could be acquired by the government. However the construction of houses needed to be taken up by private means as the board did not have funds. that was how this project came to be. Between the additional shops that could be sold and com‐munity contribution, the cost of the houses could be covered.

Challenges:

There was a lot of opposition against the ground plus two design from NGOS and the politicians. The NGOS were against it because they did not want people to move away from the ground. However when the rationale was explained, that if you wanted to give everyone 180 sq feet ( which was the stipulated minimum space per household) when their present space was 35 to 70 sq feet, the only way that was possible was to go ground plus two building.

The law suits linked to both acquiring land as well as the contestations for the boundaries, delayed the project considerably as half of the land was not given permission for construction until the case was cleared. This has three significant impacts on the project. One, the households had to live in rental housing for many more years and could not be save during that period. Two, the costs of the construc‐tion went up and the contractor wanted to get out of the project as he could not wait. And three the Mahila Milan in Bangalore took over the construction and completed the construction.

The change in officials has significantly added to our burdens. The commitments to allow the project to sell the hops is still not final.

Although the slum of SUNNUDUGUDDU extends beyond the location where the project was taken, that was the land that was acquired by the state. The rest of the land should have been the second phase, however never came through because the local politicians would not allow this process to follow through. So while sunnuduguddu buildings stand in the midst of the rest of the older settle‐ments there has been no development.

Today all the new projects taken up by the Karna‐taka government and municipality are all ground plus two houses and most communities come to meet the households.

32

Construction linked news



Example of tenders applied in 2011

By SPARC:

Consultancy assignment: For information, education and communication (IEC) strategy development, implementa-tion through selected field NGOs, monitoring and documentation under integrated housing and slum develop-ment program (IHSDP) of central government sponsored JNNURM schemes (lead NGO) in Karnataka: Banga-lore and Mysore ( Feb.2011)

Orissa : Cuttack as Lead NGO for participating in implementation of RAY (Apr.2011) Orissa : Puri as Lead NGO for participating in implementation of RAY(Apr.2011) Orissa : Bhubaneswar as Lead NGO for participating in implementation of RAY(Apr.2011) Orissa : Rourkella as Lead NGO for participating in implementation of RAY(Apr.2011) Orissa : Sambhalpur as Lead NGO for participating in implementation of RAY(Apr.2011) Orissa : Behrampur as Lead NGO for participating in implementation of RAY(Apr.2011) Orissa : Cuttack for socio economic survey in implementation of RAY(Apr.2011) Orissa : Puri for socio economic survey in implementation of RAY(Apr.2011) Orissa : Bhubaneswar for socio economic survey in implementation of RAY(Apr.2011) Orissa : Rourkella for socio economic survey in implementation of RAY(Apr.2011) Orissa : Sambhalpur for socio economic survey in implementation of RAY(Apr.2011) Orissa : Behrampur for socio economic survey in implementation of RAY(Apr.2011) The results have not come in this financial year.

34

Re Dharavi : David and Goliath in redevelopment of Dharavi

Introduction of the RE DARAVAI ROOK. Building a World Class Model for Slum Redevelopment by Sheela Patel, SPARC The metropolis of Mumbai is often called Slumbai or Slumbay with probably the largest number of slum‐dwellers in the world (over six million). Dharavi – really an informal township within the metropolis – is one of the world’s 30 mega‐slums and Asia’s largest. Spread over 525 acres, it presents a very vibrant mosaic of tens of thousands of enterprises and hundreds of thousands of residents, of different religions, castes, languages, provinces, and eth‐nicities, dependent on each other and the city socially, culturally and economically. Its enterprising residents manufacture garments, leather goods, foods and pottery, besides running a flourishing – and unique – recycling business. Dharavi has literally risen from the marshes. First the houses had stilts, then the land was reclaimed little by little, then built up brick by brick. In other words, it is a testament to the survival instincts of the poor – and the success of incremental development. Bit by bit, the poor developed the land, raised families and neighborhoods', then a full‐fledged township as generation after generation went to work. Official support for these incremental proc‐esses were signaled when the city provided urban infrastructure and services such as clean piped water, sewage systems, roads and social services in the mid‐eighties. Dharavi was recently in the centre of a storm – with clouds of different development plans hovering overhead. Global capital investment companies, local real estate developers and the State Government have all been viewing Dharavi as a privileged gateway to Mumbai's transformation. The question is: Will these clouds disperse? Current redevelopment proposals seem to view Dharavi as a green field on which fresh structures and thorough‐fares are still to come up – ignoring the deeply‐rooted habitat that already exists; and if left unchallenged, could threaten the lives and businesses of many residents. Now, suddenly, outsiders are drawing up plans without the involvement of the residents of Dharavi, plans which seem to devalue everything the local residents do and have done whose long‐term investments and overall interests are not taken into account. The truth is that the drive to redevelop Dharavi is propelled by the very large profits that developers and the State Government have their eyes on. Poor people in urban settlements have mostly been neglected in the global South, and there is an increasing gap between the planned, formal city and its informal shadow. The irony is, offi‐cial cities draw heavily on the labour and vigour of slum or shanty residents – but very rarely do cities support these workers. To the State, Dharavi (like Kibera in Nairobi, one of Africa's largest slums) represents a long‐standing develop‐ment nightmare – for which it has not been able to develop any policies for up gradation and improvement. To the global financial institutions, it is, shortly said, a gold mine. But new policy is not forthcoming from city planners to reduce the risks of lending to the poor, nor is there enough money available to replace these self‐built shelters. Global investors don't have the knowledge or the will to manage decentralized, incremental investments which communities in Dharavi have evolved into a fine art. There are silver linings to the clouds however. The Government of Maharashtra, originally in a state of denial about the discontent of the residents, now accepts the imperative to lend an ear to their voices. Of course, Dharavi residents and dissidents don't want to block development or investment; they simply want to ensure that it will fuel progress for them as much as for the city at large. Dharavi has much to teach us about how informal settlements generate solutions for the demands of businesses and housing. Flexible work schedules, home‐based occupations, businesses of various scales that interconnect with residences – this is the reality of how the poor not only survive, but thrive without handouts or charity. When I speak at workshops and conferences, there are many discussions about ‘world class’ cities. If we work it out right, Mumbai has the potential to develop a ‘world class’ model for slum redevelopment through consensual and incremental upgrading. All the required ingredients are there. Only the political leadership must have the courage to go ahead. We believe it can be done.

The intention to produce this book is to take steps in the direction that can lead to a more humane community centric future development that is not alien to the dwellers of Dharavi but is based on the foundations of existing conditions. Before any change can be proposed, the present reality of what exists has to be documented, acknowl‐edged and features that the residents cherish, demand and need have to be protected. This process can only be compiled by communities’ participation in the process. We demonstrate that such a process is both possible, es‐sential and can be undertaken. It is possible to balance overarching considerations of city level planning with local demands and expectations. Resistance to change within Dharavi stems from past neglect of this critical protocol and the inability of the planning for Dharavi to walk through this process along with the residents.

35

Creating a protocol of how documentation of existing reality is undertaken to acknowl‐edge associations and organizations; map natural boundaries of habitats and roads and community spaces, and build documen‐tation that produces a bridge between the existing reality of the habitat and how maps created through this form the basis for a dialogue between the city and its aspi‐rations for development and those of the resident households and businesses.

The State has a major role to play by first accepting its neglect has produced survival strategies; these have to be evaluated to ex‐amine which can be built on and which need to be changes in consultation with the residents. Only then can a win win solution that works for the city and community

36

Incrementally upgrading homes

WHY THE FOCUS ON Incremental?

1. The poor construct their homes bit by bit.

With scarce resources and fear of eviction they start with soft materials that are recycled, and use bio materials if they have access to them.

Gradually the materials get interchanged. Floors, walls roofs, begin to be changed as and when there is money or the fear of evictions reduce.

The heights of the house are also a significant testimony of these eviction fears.

2. No one has calculated the real value of this investment

either in terms of real costs or

how it “subsidizes” the state which should be making this investment.

3. Instead of creating a universal complementary investment of provision of Security of Tenure and Basic amenities, the state wants to demolish these houses and subsidies full houses construction.

4. For a long time to come, India or most countries with a large percentage of slums in cities have neither legal financial or technical strategies to provide universal alternatives to what people can do.

5. Our strategy is to document with communities how they make investments, how they make choices, how they wish to upgrade these homes and neighborhoods and what support they seek.

6. We hope to provide insights to NGOS government agencies, financial institutions and communities what would be the best way to build around what communities can do.

Exploring loans for individual house upgrading

37

The study we have begun to undertake in India with the federations:

The Alliance believes that communities of the poor require a policy change that begins with respecting their investments in building their humble dwellings, and gradually helping them to improve and upgrade their dwelling. The gov‐ernment considers all houses that are informally built to be slums in Mumbai. On an average, 56% of the houses in the informal settlements are built by the poor themselves over time. More than three generations live in a home before either getting opportunities to upgrade or find‐ing a formal tenement alternative.

In 2010, Sparc undertook research and docu‐mentation in Mumbai city to investigate how the poor build their homes, how the fear of evictions and/or demolitions restrain their capacity to make investments in their houses, and how demolition makes them spend additional money to reinvest in their structures over and over again.

The research included the following slums:

some of the pavement dwellers living in Byculla and Parel

people living along the railway tracks and slums in Borivali and Mahim

Airport slum dwellers

The purpose of the study was as following:

To find the cost of informal structures built by the poor

To understand the correlation between the state of these structures and the perceived threat to them

To understand the stages of construction To find area details of slum colonies

General Observations through this study were:

Security of tenure led people to upgrade their structures. periodically the structures were upgraded incrementally as per the availability of money and resources G+1 structures were accepted keeping in mind the expanding family size and to avoid the problem of water logging. Pucca (concrete Walls and Roof) structures had negligible yearly maintenance cost; Semi Pucca (concrete walls with tin or aluminum roof) structures on the other hand needed repairs every 2‐3 years plus maintenance during mon‐soons; Kutcha (mud walls, bamboo and thatch roofs) structures had largest cost of mainte‐nance.

As we undertake this first phase of our work, we find there are others who are also exploring this possibility of working on incremental housing. However rather than first understanding what people do the focus is on “is what they do safe”? While there is nothing wrong with that, it reflects a perspective which does not start with where people are but becoming instructive.

We hope to develop a strategy by which we can create this bridge between what the people do themselves and what others can contribute to their efforts.

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Post relocation support


Federations managing relocations

The Alliances work is not just limited to providing housing to the poor but is also involved in the different stages ‐ pre‐relocation, during relocation and post relocation. There are many issues communities come across post relocation like getting acquainted with the new area, school admissions, transfer of ration cards, looking out for new employment opportunities etc. In order to deal with all these, a Relocation Management Team was set up headed by Jockin, the president of NSDF and the team consists of leaders from slums, pavements and resettlement colonies and a SPARC representa‐tive. Team members are available on call 24 hours.

Activities during Pre relocation :

Regular visits to pavement sites; taking people for visits to relocation ar‐eas; building Ward level MM and NSDF leadership and network; oversee‐ing survey and mapping; supporting households to prepare eligibility documentation for housing allotment ; dialoguing with MCGM ward offi‐cers to establish eligibility; establishing contacts with police and admini‐stration; taking account of vulnerable households.

Activities during relocation include:

Working with people, MCGM and police to ensure non‐violent demolitions; supporting households left out of the eligibility list and threatened by evic‐tion; providing food and transport to households.

Post relocation support includes:

Helping with school admissions, working with households and officials for transfer of ration cards, voters IDs, getting new and individual connections for electricity meters.

Apart from providing the above mentioned support, the families post relo‐cation are also interested in maintaining their houses thus making them look good and presentable. Some do minor renovations with the permis‐sion from the society, some paint their houses, do tiling, fix water tanks etc. and to do all these changes, they take loans from Mahila Milan or from their savings.

Providing food grains to vulnerable households (those who have no earn‐ing members, widows, aged couples, handicap etc. ; ensuring functioning services in the buildings ‐water, electricity, basic health, bus stops, street lights, pre‐school.

The Team has focussed its attention on eligibility documentation, post relocation support of various kinds thus working with officials to bring in a more inclusive approach to establishing eligibility in some wards. The relocation management team mem‐bers have also tried to ensure interim measures to prevent eviction and homelessness of those not considered eligible, with varying levels of success.

Their involvement in estate management in relocation areas was a direct result of abdication of responsibility by BMC. Com‐munity groups do consider and recommend all sorts of vulnerable households for special assistance from MM/NSDF. These include those affected by HIV/AIDS and disability among others.

40

Ongoing relocation activities:

Tata Power

In 2008‐09, the Tata Power Company, that pro‐duces and supplies electricity to Mumbai and other cities, wanted to expand its production as well as distribution network, which would have affected slum dwellers living under and around the planned electric towers. They approached SPARC to explore the possibility of working together to plan reloca‐tion for these families. According to the initial plan, 238 families from Antop Hill to Sion Koliwada were to be shifted to Bhakti Park, Wadala. Up till now 183 families have been successfully shifted. SPARC’s role is to organize the communities, facili‐tate their acceptance of the process, conduct base‐line surveys, form societies and mobilize the shift‐ing. This project is still ongoing, with 55 house‐holds still to be relocated.

Mumbai Port Trust

As in January, 2010 the MbPT (Mumbai Port Trust) agreed to resettle 1,728 households to Lalubhai Com‐pound, while retaining the slum dwellers’ current loca‐tion for a continuation of their commercial enterprises and livelihood activities, no relocation has taken place yet as the Bombay Port Trust still has to pay MMRDA for the tenements. When the MbPT decided that it wanted to build a dedicated goods line between Wa‐dala and Kurla, it commissioned SPARC to undertake a Baseline Socio‐Economic Survey (BSES) which has been successfully completed. Correspondence is still on‐going regarding the payments to be made and we hope that in the next two to three months the shifting will take place.

Relocation for secure tenure

42

Unintended consequences of relocation

BANDLY DESIGNED BUILDINGS

Relocation for secure tenure

Light and ventilation is severely impacted by such close proximity of buildings to each other. The SRA regulation that permits only 6 feet distance between buildings ensures that all build‐ing resident sin the bottom 4 floors never get air or light.

The manner in which all open spaces have to be put together also seems to ensure that its use is restricted to only some members of the households using it and not everyone.

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Unintended Consequences Study – Studying impacts of relocation on households

When it comes to relocation of slums, many concerns are raised by the community – of livelihoods being lost, neighborhoods not being the same, changes in environment and losing connectivity with the city and its services. A study was conducted at eight relocation sites in Mumbai – Vashinaka, Mankhurd (Milan Nagar, Lallubhai Compound, Gautam Na‐gar, and Indian Oil), Nahur, Oshiwara, and Kanjur Marg to study some of the unintended consequences that slum dwellers face post relocation. A set of interviews were conducted at each site, asking individuals about their situation pre and post relocation. The questions were framed in such a way so that we get a sense of where they were living pre‐relocations, what facilities and services they had and then the problems they faced and post‐relocation, what were the challenges faced and how did they overcome them. When analyzing the data, concerns were di‐vided into the following sectors:

Technical issues, related to sewage, drainage etc.

Open spaces: most of the sites did not have sufficient open spaces for women and children.

Safety and security: three of the sites are more safe and secure for girls and the Mahila Milan credit themselves for this

On‐site services: most of the relocation sites are connected to the main road and have adequate access to transportation. One of the sites is just opposite the railway station. Markets and schools are not so close to the relocation sites.

Besides these concerns, some of the residents were happy being shifted from their previous locations for various reasons. Quotes from resi‐dents:

“We have got good marriage proposals for our daughters”.

“In the buildings we feel that we are at a higher level”.

“Along the railway tracks we would feel scared as to when who will die”

Shobha, a resident from Indian Oil said, "earlier when we had come here, there were lot of robbery, eve teasing, drunkards and crime taking place but now because of police Panchayat the percentage has come down. People fear us and our police panchayat".

Raziya from Gautam Nagar said, "I am happy and very comfortable having this shop, I have no problem over here".

Shalini Mhapankar, resident from Kanjur Marg said, “being a woman I would never go out even to the market to buy vegetables but now being part of Mahila Milan we visit different countries and cities and give big speeches”

“At our previous site we never changed our clothes daily but now we try to be neat and clean”.

“We are happy to live in buildings as we have water and toilets within our homes”.

Phoolabai Yadav was living in Tata Nagar along the railway tracks near Govandi Railway Station since the 1980s. At that time she bought her hut for Rs.1700 of the size of 12X14. later when the Tata Power wanted a part of the land, they had to demolish their houses

thus reducing the size of the hut to 8X5. they had no facilities of water, electricity or toilets. To get water the women had to cross the railway tracks, at times alone and at times with their children. As a result there were a number of accidents taking place. They used the railway tracks to squat as well or defecated in the open. Leaving two lanes from Phoolabai house was the market across the road and next to the market was the BMC Marathi and English medium schools. Opposite the tracks was a private school. There were no hospitals close by; they had to go to Maa or Rajawadi hospitals which were at a distance of 2‐3 Km from her house.

In 2005, she shifted to her permanent house at Lalubhai Com‐pound and living in a house of her own was like a dream come true for Phoolabai. Though her expenses have gone up but she is happy that she’s leading a better life. Phoolabai has been able to maintain relations with her neighbors and says, “whenever I come from work, they call me and talk to me. If they have a problem they share it with me and even I go and visit them. There are few families which are not from our area and so we don’t have much communication with them”. But she also says that, “people who have been shifted from other areas are most of the time within their houses with their doors closed”.

At the relocated site, the market, school and hospital are not very far away, toilets are within the house which is something that is most liked by the residents.

44

News of Different events

Mumbai Police and Mahila Milan showcase Police Panchayats in Philippines as a City net event.

The Mumbai Police and Mahila Milan’s police delegation pre‐sented their work at a CITYNET

The alliance participates in many events locally and interna‐tionally as much to learn and deepen our understanding of what others do and explore as much to share what we do and our views on a range of issues.

Different types of events require different representations and choices of who attends are often made on who can take part and who can learn or contribute.

Creating networks and linkages of activities and reciprocity through such interaction is vital in the larger advocacy work of the alliance.

Attitudes and values of how communities’ participation in events as well as our general participation in events sometime helps us understand how others perceive us.

Often times, due to our close workings with the city and state officials lead to many of our counterpart NGOS feeling we are being co‐opted. In other in‐stances our help is sought to engage the city or state.

May 10March 11:

Several meetings around Ray and JNNURM: interacting with mayors and city managers on issues of community participa‐tion. SPARC and federations at‐tend these meetings

Reflections about participation in events

11th Jan 11: Meeting with the President of the world Bank in Delhi on informal housing challenges

The President of the World bank visited India and amongst the various sets of meetings he had, one was around the issue of housing for the poor. SPARC was invited to that event and like many of the NGOS present made the follow‐ing points”

For the next three decades or more, the urban in migration will continue and as a result whether the formal world likes it or not slums are the only place they will find their initial space to reside in cities. Therefore informal settlements should be seen as a solution rather than a problem and rhetoric of cities without slums needs to be done away with. Instead the development community needs to address the issue of how to shorten to the extent possible the present three generational stay and vulnerabilities it produces inter‐generationally to reduce this to as much as possible. We all also need to address the paradox by which the re‐cently arriving poor do not get support although they are the most vulnerable and stand behind the queue and this produces contestations about whose entitlement is more urgent. Development investment gets skewed when 30‐50% of those in the city and living in slums are treated as one groups. This creates challenges for strategic targeting and development investment never reaches those it seeks to support therefore more careful segmentation and differen‐tial targeting needs to be done. The over arching assumptions that the market will find so‐lutions is clearly flawed and needs to be examined carefully.

45

Defending such lanes against modern norms

August 10: CHF calls a meeting of organizations undertaking surveys and digitalization of Data in Delhi

The event in Delhi sought to examine the different strategies explored by organizations to develop information about slums

The alliance presented the work it has done in Bangalore, Pune and Cuttack and Bhubaneswar to start with building community capacity to undertake all the primary data collection.

October 10 361 Degrees Event: Mumbai

In Oct 10, Rahul Mehrotra a long time friend invited us to co‐host a work‐shop for professionals local national and international working in the field of design architecture and habitat to share publicly some of the challenges we face when working with profes‐sional when we take on projects or work to change rules and conditions within which we seek to improve conditions for the poor.

Apart from familiarizing the audience of the work of the alliance and how it functions, we also shared the chal‐lenges we face in working with pro‐fessionals who forget to treat slum dwellers as partners or clients and assume whatever they say is right

25th feb 11: UDRI hosts a meeting to discuss planning and the informal city.

The UDRI hosted its annual symposium and invited SPARC to speak on Planning and the poor. The main points of the presentation were:

The city never plans to accommodate the present of informality and so its always illegal and unacceptable.

The poor stay in the most vulnerable and difficult locations which is acerbated with lack of amenities and services and often ac‐cused of destroying fragile eco systems by the environmentalists.

With informal city (in Mumbai) now being the majority, it reflects the inability of planning instruments to address this challenge which will create implosion of systems.

Professionals in the Habitat sphere lack edu‐cational and real life exposure tto the chal‐lenges of creating inclusive planning regard‐less of the rhetoric of seeking to do so within the present planning framework

March 11: Presentations about the alliance and SDI at Rockefeller Foundation and New School in New York

The RF and New School in New York invited sp to make presentations about SDI and the Indian alliance. At both RF and New school, the major discussion was about the lack of foundations seeking to work in Urban poverty issues and further delaying of building strong voices of the poor to seek inclusion in national and international development investments. And the crisis of seeking early outcomes in a context where the political battle for acceptance that urban poverty has to be addressed by nation states in Asia and Africa is still on.

Feb 11 cliff 710 Philippines

The Annual CLIFF meetings were help in Philippines and SSNS was represented by Jockin, Aseena and Sheela.

The events began with field visits to vari‐ous projects which were taken up by the communities assisted by cliff,

In the discussions about city community partnerships, the Philippines federations brought in their city planners mayors and others with whom they developed a rela‐tionship and showcased issues and con‐cerns that impact the partnership.

In the annual meetings :

2010‐11reports were reviewed and busi‐ness plans for 2011‐12 were presented and discussed.

Lumanti from Nepal and Kenyan organiza‐tion Nacho were formally included as Im‐plementing partners of CLIFF

The changes in HI staff were also pre‐sented and new staff members visit s to various locations was planned.

The next CLIFF meeting would be in India in Feb 2012.

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The NIRMAL MMR Abhiyan

In one of the country’s largest officially sanctioned sanitation projects, the MMRDA has resolved to con‐struct nearly 31,000 public toilets in the first phase of its Nirmal Mumbai Metropolitan Region Abhiyan which envisages the construction of one lakh toilets across the entire urban swath under its jurisdiction in a period of two years.

Under the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan toilet scheme, SPARC/SSNS was contracted to construct toilet blocks in 10 ULBs. As of today, 289 toilet blocks with a total of 5780 toilet seats have been constructed, though problems relating to Community discontent over the chosen tenders, land, CBOs, politicians were faced, the alliance has been successful in completing the project.

Mumbai Sewerage Disposal Project Phase II

As part of the Mumbai Sewerage Disposal Project Phase II (MSDP) initiated by the World Bank and the Munici‐pal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), a contract to construct 150 toilets in the city was awarded to the Alliance. Of the 150, 37 toilet blocks have been con‐structed and handed over, of the remaining construc‐tion is in progress on 29 sites, few sites have been can‐celled due to certain problems ‐ land ownership, CBO disputes, politicians creating problems, councilors don’t want the chosen CBOs to work, insufficient space to construct the toilet block or the slum is proposed to go in for redevelopment.

Federations Take on Sanitation in Slums

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Studying Impact of Slum Sanitation

SPARC – Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) SanitationResearch Project

SPARC began exploring a potential sanitation research project with Dr. Ronak Patel from Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) in September 2010, objectives of which would be to:

To assess the impact of the Alliance’s toilet program (community toilet blocks) in terms of health benefits – particularly its correlation to diarrhea incidence and cost‐effectiveness, as well as impact on GDP

To use evidence to negotiate with policy makers and do‐nors and to advocate for expansion of similar sanitation programs and activities

It was clear from the onset that the research methodology would have to be simple and participatory. Based on these criteria, Dr. Patel proposed 3 different types of studies that could be undertaken:

1. Snapshot surveys of community before and after toilet blocks are built: the advantage of this method is that commu‐nity‐level surveys would have to be conducted only twice. On the other hand, this type would methodology would need a large sample size.

2. Longitudinal survey before construction and after for several weeks: this method would need a smaller sample size but would be more expensive – in terms of money and time.

3. Casecontrol study – i.e. keeping count in the toilet block: this is a cheap and easy method but is most likely to produce unreliable data.

Having considered the pros and cons of the proposed method‐ologies, method 1 (snapshot surveys) was selected as the most feasible.

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Individual Toilets

Apart from this, communities are also assisted by individual toilet loans in different cities. In 2010, 87 individual members in areas of Tamil Nadu: Tambaram, Pallikaranay, Kaspapuram, Vinobha Nagar, Pallikarne, Narayan‐puram and Sollayur Kanchipuram, were given a loan amount of Rs.8,70,000 (10,000 each) for construction of individual toilets.

Ullal Upanagar, a relocation slum of about 280 households, lies about 18km west of downtown Bangalore. In June 2010, the local Mahila Milan (MM), with financial assistance from CHF International, took on the challenge of implementing a sanitation project – the construction of individual toilets – to help improve the quality of life in their community. Until this project was implemented, this community had no toilet facilities in and around their places of residence. Two distantly located public toilets ‘served’ the commu‐nity, if they could manage the trek. The more convenient option for men, women and children alike, was to use a nearby field. Women, as expected, were disproportionately affected by this. For instance, compounding the obvious privacy issues, women were regularly harassed by men who would follow them into the field – causing them additional humiliation and griev‐ance.

Federations Take on Sanitation in Slums

49

Each toilet construction takes about 3 months and currently, most are nearing completion. SPARC conducted an interview with women of the community in September 2010 and learned that all of them anticipate a definite improvement in their quality of life. The initial 29 family mem‐bers have already begun repaying their loans and so far, there have been no defaults. The women revealed that they wanted to repay these loans as quickly as possible in order to take out new loans. Some want money for home improvement projects, such as waterproofing the roof, while others want to expand their homes either to relieve the crowding in their current homes or to earn some additional income by renting out a room.

It must be said that community toilet blocks are an imperfect solution to slum sanitation concerns, particularly in terms of long‐term mainte‐nance. However the Alliance believes that the logic behind this issue of maintenance is both pragmatic and realistic and forces both the city and the community address some critical issues. First, in slums where the density is very high, houses are less than 250 sq feet and there is no ade‐quate water and sewerage, having a toilet in the house is more danger‐ous for health as often the toilet is next to the cooking area. Second, the lack of governance at both city and community levels have produced a deficit for sanitation that in major cities and small towns is astounding. Given the lack of resources and scale, community toilets at least produce an intermediary response to this crisis. They force communities to de‐velop a collaborative attitude, negotiate with the city (probably for the first time) and produce a facility that they manage collectively. It is true that often this fails, but given the scale of the problem, making it work is also something cities need to address. The total absence of sewer con‐nections in slums is another major problem that the cities need to ad‐dress. For the past 50 years, slums have been excluded from this facility on the assumption they will be removed and now the cost to build sewer lines has become so high that even if the slum is regularized, it is no longer financially possible to upgrade quickly. The Alliance encourages community federations to seek loans for building toilets inside homes when possible and seek to get cities to provide the external connectivity.

50

The Police Panchayats

Police Panchayats and Mahila Milan

Securing citizens’ safety and providing for the rule of law are among the basic duties of any state. Yet many countries have struggled to provide adequate police services for rapidly growing cities. Police violence is on the rise in India and distrust between police and poor communities is high. In Mumbai, slums are notoriously under‐manned in terms of police per‐sonnel. Despite the fact that more than half of the population lives in slums, the proportion of the police allotted to these areas accounts for less than a third of the total strength of the force.

The idea behind the police Panchayat is that community disputes should be resolved at the local level whenever possible. The Panchayat deals with issues like quarrels and domestic violence, with the aim of preventing small incidents from being blown out of proportion. They also greatly re‐duce the case load for the police. The police Panchayat committee include 7 women, 3 men and 1 constable. Women form the majority of the group as they are the ones who spend most of their time at home and so they know what is happening in their area and are in a better position to inves‐tigate any problem in depth. Due to this understanding and positioning, they are also able to resolve many of the cases that come to them.

Through the Police Panchayat, the power of slum dwellers is recognized individually, to the point that now we are in a position where the Police Panchayat members are asked to help the police to maintain peace and order at times when there are festivals in the city. They are also invited to meetings by the police department. At present, there are 64 actively work‐ing Police Panchayats in Mumbai. The police have been able to establish a good and working relationship with the slum dwellers concerning crimi‐nal issues, something which otherwise might be difficult or impossible. The women in the Police Panchayat have not only been successful in solv‐ing problems within Mumbai, but have reached out to places out of Mum‐bai like Manmad, Delhi, and Gujarat to help solve issues.

In the 5 zones surveyed, representing 14 police stations, the majority of police panchayat cases had to do with family matters or criminal matters. A small minority involved property issues. This trend holds through all the 5 zones.

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Impact of Police Panchayat on individuals

Have come to know the police more closely and a chance to work with them being a slum /pavement dweller

Able to make an identity of ourselves

Feel more capable of solving issues and problems of our community

Recognition and respect from the police department and officials at higher levels

A chance to step one step ahead of just fighting for our basic rights

Through police panchayats have got a chance to visit other countries as well and understand their system

Cases handled and solved by women of Police Panchayat

A 19 year old girl from the Hiran‐andani building in Lalubhai Com‐pound fell in love with a boy from the same area, and they got mar‐ried in the presence of their friends. At the time when this girl was six months pregnant, the boy left her and went back to his village with his mother as she wanted to get him married off to another girl in the village. On knowing this, she went to the police station in Mank‐hurd to file a complaint but was directed to the police panchayat to get quick result and justice. After making repeated calls to the boy and his brother when there was no re‐sponse, the police panchayat locked his house and handed over the keys to the po‐lice thus warning them not to return the keys until he comes back. And this was taken in written from the police by the panchayat. After six months, the boy came back with his mother and brother. Later the police panchayat members, the girl’s and the boy’s family members had a meeting, things were sorted out and the boy along with his mother accepted the girl and the child.

The Police Panchayat at most of the times doesn't wait for the accused to surrender himself / herself at their own convenience; instead they take immediate steps to solve the problems as fast as possible thus seeing that no harm is done to either of the party and that both get justice.

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Some events at which we spoke. Speaking at events or hosting events continues to be a ongoing activity of the alli‐ance and instead of listing all of them we share some instances of such activities to show the range of partnerships we explore through these engagements.

.

November 10: Cities and migration at the Annual meeting of Metropolis in the Hague.

Metropolis which has annual meet‐ings in Holland each year and works on issues of migration put together a panel on addressing the issues if migrants and organiza‐tions to assist them, and SPARC was invited to the panel. In the presentation made the following points were highlighted:

Today globally the % or population moving from one country to an‐other is still in single digit and this will have to actually increase to address labor needs of countries whose populations cannot repro‐duce themselves. Regardless of the extent of hostility this creates to‐day this is the reality. There are many parallels today between issues related to migrants inter country as well as intra coun‐try Good governance is generally the reason for economic stability and often in India the southern states see in migration for work from northern states. Increasingly internal migrants from one part of the country mov‐ing for work to another part of the country are treated with the same hostility. In cities the challenge faced by the migrants is that while they get sur‐vival wages they don’t get a place to stay that is secure, no basic amenities and also no identity to seek entitlements. SDI and its affiliates create and support membership based organi‐zations that help give voice to these groups and facilitate their dialogue and communication with the city and state.

The other speakers gave similar and interesting presentations of what is happening in Canada, Hol‐land, and other countries.

Events we spoke at

May 10: Sheela Patel speaking to an assembly

of M&E professional network in Holland

Irene Guijt who has done substantial work on M&E invited Sheela Patel on behalf of SDI to speak about SDI’s challenges on this issue. In the presen-tation the major issues discussed were:

a. Organizations working on urban poverty issues are presently working at “political” levels, seeking inclusion, challenging existing perspectives in development investments and planning, and seeking to develop organizations of the poor to be able to sustain dialogue and educate their constitu-encies. This process can track and map what they do, but have little or no control over time needed to produce the change they seek in an environ-ment where national states continue to be in de-nial about urbanization of poverty.

b. Project cycles are increasing shortened and results with numbers are expected for renewal of grants often leading to false claims or a feeling of failure for not having magical figures. This has cre-ated tensions between ME professional sent to make evaluations and organizations who feel con-stantly misunderstood.

c. Objective and seeming scientific ME ap-proaches to address deeply political issues is con-sidered as a oxymoron where the nee of the day is for dialogue reflection and constant learning of what works and what does not and why.

d. Therefore the Slum//Shack Dwellers Interna-tional (SDI) family seeks to explore a deeply self reflective learning monitoring and evaluation framework that deepens insight into what works and what does not by community and their leader-ship, with increasing participation of city and na-tional governments and agencies who are increas-ingly engages in the process.

53

Feb 11 cliff 710 Philippines

The Annual CLIFF meetings were help in Philippines and SSNS was represented by Jockin, Aseena and Sheela.

The events began with field visits to various projects which were taken up by the communities assisted by cliff,

In the discussions about city community partnerships, the Philippines federations brought in their city plan‐ners mayors and others with whom they developed a relationship and showcased issues and concerns that impact the partnership.

In the annual meetings :

2010‐11reports were reviewed and business plans for 2011‐12 were presented and discussed.

Lumanti from Nepal and Kenyan organization Nacho were formally included as Implementing partners of CLIFF

The changes in HI staff were also presented and new staff members visit s to various locations was planned.

The next CLIFF meeting would be in India in Feb 2012.

March 11: Meeting of CSO advisory Committee to UNDP Administrator:

The UNDP Administrator has a advisory council to which members of global civil society are invited to participate and SPARC/SDI is represented by Sheela Patel. In a meeting in March 11 as the only voice of the urban poor in the com‐mittee, UNDP was challenged to explore its commitment and that of its various programs to issues of urban poverty. This is going to be followed up in the next year, initially through exposure of MBPOs to UNDP and then to explore where this can go forward.

Planning commission of India invites representatives of membership based organizations to discuss inclusive growth.

The alliance along with other urban and rural membership based organizations was invited to a meeting by the Planning Commission to present their work and to share issues and challenges they believed the government has to take up.

The alliance suggested

There has to be a new means to measure urban poverty

The 12th plan should be seen as a learning to deal with urban poverty

Collective support to com‐munity vital to reach the poorest.

54

We met them either in our office or their sometimes some‐

where else. Many people who come to know of our work come to meet us and explore possibili‐ties to either work with us or learn from what we do. Here are some brief summary of some of the visitors we met and what we did with them

Discussions over several meetings with La Farge

A representative of La Farge came to meet with the alliance to explore whether we could do anything inno‐vative with them. After several field visits and further meetings with his supervisor somehow the strategy of working together did not emerge.

For the communities working with the alliance there needed to be dem‐onstrations of alternative strategies for construction before we accept anything, and they needed a project which we could not give them.

However we learnt a great deal about their plans in several countries but realized we did not have a partner‐ship fit at the moment.

Alex from HTA: Can we work together in Puri?

It all began with a young man called Ben wanting to come and work with us as an intern, Some‐how that did not happen instead Alex who works with his fathers company and who was staying in India cane to visit us instead and we began to explore if she could develop a familiarity of working with us and have the HTA office in UK assist us in design work. HTA would learn a bit about low end housing and we would benefit from their professional expertise.

She met with Jockin, we took her to Puri where a project was emerging for subsidy housing, and we began to explore how HTA could give us advise on SRA housing.

What we all realized is that in this first phase of subsidy housing, too many things are unclear and have to develop as the project proceeds. Every household needs special care and too insure, the households clung to their pattas and refused a collective design.

Clearly this was not the phase in which we could use such an organi‐zations support.

However HTA designs for housing associations in UK, and Alex and her boss are very keen to keep links with sparc and have agreed to set up presentations to their clients about the work, and get more sup‐port from them to this kind of work.

Ashoka Foundation undertakes documentation of organizations working on housing.

The Ashoka foundation rep‐resentatives came to explore what we do in construction and have plans to produce a document about innovative practices across the world and our work is one of the case studies. Our experience was that they were over focused on market solutions again this concerns us as it demonstrated the picking of the low hanging fruit which the market can do with those who are better off in the slums rather than creat‐ing solution for communities to retain the social and eco‐nomic base of communities.

In a case study they will document the work of SSNS

Ashna and green housing, then better building systems

Ashna who is a consultant with the World bank came initially to explore the possi‐bility of examining sustain‐able construction. However the plans changed and it turned to a project which the federations were unwill‐ing to explore, however we stayed in touch, and later she and her team came to present us with a study they had done to improve design and better use of informal recycled materials for slum housing, which is now pub‐lished as a book.

TERI does a case study of pavement dwellers and access to formal electricity

Teri asked SPARC to write a case study about how pave‐ment dwellers through their study of how electricity s stolen and sold to the poor which led to the provision of electricity to the Byculla pavement dwellers by BEST and now is accusable to all slum dwellers.

People we met

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3‐9th Dec 10: Gunnar Nystron in Mumbai and his students who worked in Orissa

Swedish Planning school students had been placed in Orissa to work in Bhubaneswar with the communities and their professor came to share their presentation with the SPARC staff.

While the students had worked very hard and had diligently undertaken their assign‐ment they were trained to be committed to the “brief” and follow rules,

In the discussions we all realized that we always have to test whether the rules actu‐ally work for the communities, and also to understand what balances affordability with esthetics.

4th Jan 11 National Geographic

The National Geographic has a foundation whose members came to spend a after‐noon with NSDF and MM. This was welcomes after they have produced a film on Dharavi. As is the case with all visitors ( and there is a weekly event in Dharavi) the visitors were taken for a walk to various areas, then brought to the office for a meeting. As it the case with all visitors the energy and power of the town within the city overwhelms everyone whose imageries of slums get shattered when they see how people have created this space over 7 decades.

Jan 11 Anna Rubbo from Sidney Uni discusses participation in Bhopal Studio

Anna Rubbo became acquainted with SDI and the alliance after meeting us in the MDG task force on Slums and has been exploring ways to work with us in the studios she takes up for students. She plans the next one in Bhopal next year. In the discussion with her and her colleagues our con‐cern of always leaving people behind after the project is completed and not serving their interest was shared. We have agreed to share our experiences n that event and will wait and see what actually happens.

Mar 11 Meeting with DFID

DFID India has made investments in HUPA’s work on RAY and in a meeting with the new head of DFID India and members of the urban team, some interesting dis‐cussions came through.

First of all to discuss the possibility of DFID India explor‐ing using the CLIFF model in its work. We volunteered to share our experience with DFID and assist in whatever we can for them to explore this process. Secondly given its focus on deepening private sector participation, there were two issues to examine. One that when banks and financial institutions are encour‐aged and incentivized to work on issues of poverty there needs to be a litmus test of organizations of the poor assessing this value. Two that the urban informal sector is more than half the city’s population and needs to be segmented intelli‐gently to direct different development products and services. Many today claim to provide such services but do not acknowledge they skin the top 5% of this group and not service the whoel group. Organizations like SPARC NSDF and MM work to find solutions for the bottom 40% based on the belief that when you produce solutions for the top 5% that solution does not work for the others. Finally given that we work on community driven proc‐esses, we invited DFID to spend time with various pro‐jects undertaken by federations. Since a team was to go to Bhubaneswar they were invited to see the work. Ab‐hijeet emailed this to us after his visit.

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Visiting others and exploring new possibilities

GTZ and TISS SUMMER SCHOOL VISIT DHARAVI

the alliance International delega‐tions and many from India come to see the work of slum data collection, mapping and creating of id by

In January 11 Cities Alliance has its annual meeting sin Mumbai and 70 international delegates spend a day with the federations

The Minister for land and hosing from Uganda accompanies SDI delegation to look at Police Pancha‐yats and other programs of the alliance

More interactions

57

SDI delegations to see how community sanitation blocks get designed built and man‐aged in slums


58

Each week we have visitors :

GTZ and TISS SUMMER SCHOOL VISIT DHARAVI

In January 11 Cities Alliance has its annual meeting sin Mumbai and 70 international delegates spend a day with the federations

The Minister for land and hosing from Uganda accompanies SDI delegation to look at Police Panchayats and other programs of the alliance

Visitors Volunteers and Interns

Rituals most often seen by visitors who want to understand processes:

Each year we have many visitors who visit Mankurd. They meet households from the rail‐way slum dwellers federation (RSDF). These 3000 households faced illegal demolitions when they were promised relocation by the MUTPII. They had done a survey of households, their homes were numbered and their huts were on a plane table survey. They negotiated to be housed immediately instead of rebuilding their huts. However there were only 1900 houses ready for occupation, and there were 3000+ households..

This survey map which they show along with other documents shows how they worked out who will like in the homes and who will go to the transit houses across the road, they worked out who will live in which building and which floor, based on a criteria NSDF and RSDF helped them develop.

Today that map is part of an exhibition at the Smithsonian for an exhibition which will start at th UN New York in October 2011.

The special feature of the police panchayat that people come to see and processes we share with those who come is how to balance relationships between the communities and the police so that access to the police who the poor fear is now assisted by this process, at the same time, negligence and indifference to issues and concerns o fthe poor within police force are addressed.

At another level, there is a quid quo pro. The communities manage many issues especially addressing family domestic violence more sensitively which communities should manage any way, and more serious crimes are taken to the police station.

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SDI delegations to see how commu‐nity sanitation blocks get de‐signed built and managed in slums


This year there have been many visitors like these senior officials from Oxfam and Action Aid, grant makers who have begun to explore working in cities. In part many come to understand what we do and how we work, most find the proc‐ess not fitting in their paradigm. Some because the process does not run on project mode, others because although we state we are rights based, how we interpret it does not fulfill their own interpretation of how rights can be attained. Most are uncomfortable with the negotiation model through which communities negotiate with the state. The compromises seem unacceptable even if there is evidence that they are internally explored with clear non negotiable set in place. Oth‐ers perceive the alliance as social entrepreneurs and are disappointed that we are committed to the not for profit status of our organization. Still others find that SPARC and SSNS as two organizations interlocked and one facilitating the capac‐ity building and negotiations and the other\assisting communities to take on projects difficult to accept. And still others would have liked to move the direction in which the alliance works.

This year like last year the alliance has been in discussions with a very large number of grant makers exploring working in urban areas No immediate success though

Many young professionals come to visit the alliance. They come sometimes for a week, others come for several months. For most part we seek to help them explore how to work with communities as clients; share with them some of the interesting innovations that have emerged from these past experiences which have set precedents; and help them explore a role for themselves to challenge norms and standards they have studied to facilitate im‐proved possibilities for communities to participate in de‐signing and managing their habitat and neighborhoods.

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And more visitors

Harvard Business

School

A team from the Harvard Busi‐

ness School visited Dharavi

March 14, 2011. The team was

in Mumbai to work on a the

business angle of a project

which is currently underway

between the Harvard Graduate

School of Design and the Mum‐

bai Port Trust. The Port Trust is

looking to redevelop some of

the land it owns on the eastern

side of Mumbai, a process

which would impact several

slum communities. The busi‐

ness school students came to

Dharavi in order to speak with

Sheela and Jockin and gain their

perspective on how such rede‐

velopment might be done in a

way that positively impacts

these slum communities.

BRAC, Bangladesh

Babar Kabir, Director –Disaster Environ‐ment & Climate Change & Water Sanita‐tion & Hygiene and S.N.Kairy, Director –Finance & Accounts of Brac visited SPARC. As BRAC is a development organization dedicated to alleviating poverty by em‐powering the poor and has been working with the rural poor now wish to work with the urban poor, had discussions with Sheela & Jockin to help them out start similar processes.

GTZ Summer School Visits Dharavi

The 2010 GTZ Summer School took place in Mumbai, and SPARC was asked to host the initial field visit for participants in April 2010. Participants came from a wide range of backgrounds ‐ urban planning, architecture, public policy, social work, environmental health, etc. and also from many dif‐ferent countries in Asia and Europe. They met up with Jockin who spoke to them about the history of community mobilization in Dharavi, and the political context of redevelopment. Next, Anirudh Paul, a professor and architect at Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture (KRVIA) presented research on alternatives to the Dharavi Redevelopment Plan.

Lake Forest Academy

A group of students from the Lake Forest Academy

near Chicago Illinois visited Dharavi on March 14,

2011. It was a unique visit, in that the students

ranged in age from 15‐18 and for many, it was

their first visit to Mumbai as well as Dharavi. The

students toured Dharavi with Carrie Baptist and

Monali Waghmare from SPARC and asked ques‐

tions about the life in the slum and in Mumbai

itself.

Visitors Volunteers and Interns

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Nepal visits SPARC’s Relocation Projects in Mumbai and Bangalore

Arjun Koirala from German Technology Cooperation (GTZ), Mr. Pramod K. Karmacharya and Mr. Uddhav Guragain from Ministry of Physical Planning & Works ‐ Department of Ur‐ban Development & Building Construction, Government of Nepal had visited SPARC on 12th October 2010 to look at options of relocation and in‐situ and to get insight of urban devel‐opment interventions. As the government of Nepal is planning to implement slum upgrad‐ing program and in the process have identified 53 settlements in Katmandu with 1, 60,000 families to be relocated (some being along the river banks). The survey for these settle‐ments has been conducted by the government and the government is still in the process of making a policy that suits best to the community as well as the city. Hence they wanted to look at both options of relocation and in‐situ. The team visited three sites in Mankhurd – Milan Nagar, Railway Resettlement and Lallubhai Compound which are all relocation sites. They interacted with the women about the kind of housing they were living earlier in and the kind of houses they are now in, what problems they faced on the pavements, what facili‐ties they have right now. They also discussed with them the process of getting these houses, the design, construction and financing parts as well. They were very much impressed with the fact that the Mahila Milan had designed their houses and had held a house model exhibi‐tion wherein government, pavement dwellers, slum dwellers and other NGOs were part of it. One of their concerns were whether or not the government actually takes into considera‐tion other infrastructure or services that has to be taken into account during planning for a relocation – providing with hospitals, schools, employment etc. or if they are relocated in places which at least have these facilities and this is something that they would want to look into.

Through the visits they were very much impressed by the work that SPARC has done along with Mahila Milan and NSDF, the confidence that women have gained through the whole process, and their achievements. Although availability of sufficient land to relocate such a large number of people is a problem in Nepal they have still reserved a small piece of land on an already reserved land to be used for the city development and for the rest of the population they will have to go in for in‐situ housing. So it seems quite clear that they are open to both options. The team was also very interested in the way the Mahila Milan does savings, the way they use the money to give out loans and the repayments done. In the near future they would like to have an exchange visit with members of Mahila Milan and NSDF. Mr. Arjun from GTZ also said that one of his jobs was to convince the government to take on such initiatives and projects with the community for their development which works out very well, to which Mr. Pramod (Government representative) agreed and said that if I am convinced then the government is also convinced.

The pavement dwellers from Byculla shared their experience of how they formed them‐

selves as Mahila Milan, started savings, got land, how the negotiations were done and there‐

after the relocation process. The mapping process at the railway resettlement was very

interesting to the group along with the formation of police Panchayat and how it functions.

Mahila Housing Sewa Trust, Ahmadabad visit Projects at Mumbai and Pune

Mahil Housing Sewa Trust (MHT), Ahmadabad, works on housing & infrastructure in along with forming Community

Based Organizations (CBOs) in different slum areas thus contributing towards the development of slums.

In February 2011, 4 MHT representatives and 28 CBO leaders visited SPARC to know about the work that we do, how we

work with pavement dwellers and other slum communities, how the mobilization work is initiated with the poorest of the

poor. The main aim of the visit was to learn about different housing projects done by SPARC, what strategies are adopted

to obtain land ownership and how the community is involved in the whole process. The team visited Byculla, Railway Re‐

settlement Colony and Milan Nagar where discussions were held with the Mahila Milan and the MHT team. They also

learnt about the savings and credit activity of the Mahila Milan, its benefits, how was the process initiated, challenges

faced and overcome.

Alexi de Ducla and the La Farge representative from France met with Sheela Patel and Aseena Vicajee at the SPARC offices to discuss opportuni‐ties to collaborate on projects. La Farge is a ce‐ment supplier, and already has a presence in Chennai & Bangalore. As a company it wants to initiate a process that will eventually be able to scale‐up. After the meeting, we took the visitors to see our ongoing construction at Oshiwara where they spoke with Mahila Milan contractors and visited some of the recently completed hous‐ing units.

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Exploring institutional arrangements for rental housing with

UK Housing associations, MMRDA and MTSU with support

from Homeless International.

Many more

In the last two years there has been a great deal of discussion about the need in Mumbai for 500,000 houses for rental to economically weaker sections and lower in come groups. Having studied the rental practices in slums, it was clear that in many ways this process mimicked the formal rental process. All “contracts” were for 11 months, everyone took three months advance or some‐times 11 months advance rent, and for many households it wa sa critical aspect of their incomes.

In discussions with MMRDA the alliance had participated in developing this concept and suggesting that small apartments 150 sq feet to 500 sq feet be de‐veloped and the incentives of fsi be given to the land owners to make this work. Since the tenements were in many cases to be handed over to MMRDA after construction with FSI being given in return.

The real challenge now lay in planning the management of these rental proper‐ties. The initial response was that Mhada should manage them. However MHADA was clear that it was having serious problems in managing their pre‐sent rental properties whose maintenance was in a mess and households were not even ready to pay rent let alone maintenance.

This year Homeless International a UK based Charity which has been working with SPARC brought the professionals working in Housing associations in the UK which manages rental properties in the UK to share their experience in managing rental properties.

Some two years ago, Mr Giakwad then Commis‐sioner MMRDa had visited Uk and met with the representatives of housing associations in Lon‐don and visited some of their properties. He was keen to understand how this process could be adopted in Mumbai. The main difference in the Uk based model for rental housing is that the poorest clients of the housing association have their rent paid to the housing association directly by the welfare department of the state. Also uk has in place regulators fo rthe hosuing associa‐tion industry for the last three decades, all of which would have to be created in Mumbai, and this would be the role the uk based organizations expressed their willingness to play.

Mr Deshpande even visited London and visited housing associations and began the strategy to undertake this process within MMRDA. However since the change of commissioner, there is a gen‐eral change of how this process should be taken forward and the present commissioner would like to seel these rental properties rather than manage them.

This has therefore put all these discussions on hold.

63

Melbourne University students BLOG on their visit

To reach SPARC we took our first bus ride in India, which weaved and lurched through nar‐row streets filled with scooters, taxis, bicycles, foot traffic and occasional private cars. Though we were told it wasn’t peak hour for public transport, it was hard to believe any more peo‐ple could have squeezed onto the bus! When we finally reached SPARC – located in the “red light” district of Mumbai – we found an old concrete building that had been transformed from a school into offices.

SPARC was formed in 1984 and began working with the most vulnerable and invisible of Mum‐bai's urban poor ‐ the pavement dwellers. SPARC now also works with slum dwellers and is part of the National Slum Dwellers Federa‐tion. SPARC's philosophy is that if they can develop solutions that work for the poorest and most marginalized in the city, then these solutions can be scaled up to work for other groups of the urban poor across the country and internationally.

Of all the things discussed in the meeting with Sheela Patel (one of the founders and Director of SPARC) and Maria (a senior social worker), what struck us the most was the way in which SPARC’s programs had been embraced by the ‘poor’ and ‘marginalized’ and the creativity and initiative of these groups. Together with SPARC, the pavement dwellers set up a com‐munity bank and appointed representatives to deal with loan requests. As the Government would deny the availability of housing for relo‐cation of pavement dweller families, the com‐munity would organize for private buses to do a regular tour of the city to spot vacant land themselves for housing applications.

Some slum dwellers designed new, easy‐to‐assemble houses and held an exhibition for public officials and the rest of the community. The most popular design by vote became the house model for new constructions. Finally, those individuals and families that had been allocated housing and moved from the pave‐ment would return to the pavement commu‐nity to discuss the problems of relocation and benefits, so that the next group to migrate would be clued up in advance. These were just some of the fantastic initiatives we were told about

In 2010, SPARC hosted many visitors and interns. Anupama Nallari approached SPARC to collaborate on her dissertation research for a PhD in Environmental Psychology at the City University in New York. Patrick Shepherd is a master’s student at Oxford Brooks who came to India to research the informal sector and its relevance to the wel‐fare state. Paul Heller is writing his dissertation for a Master’s degree in Urban Plan‐ning at the University of Michigan. David Hallau is a student at the University of Co‐logne in Germany who is researching the ways in which flooding impacts different so‐cioeconomic groups, particularly slum dwellers, for his master’s degree in Geography. Heng Lu contacted SPARC for interviews and commentary about the Dharavi Redevel‐opment Plan, which he is researching for his degree in Broadcasting.

Andria P.Ellis is a student from the University of the Pacific School of Engineering and Computer Science who worked as a documentation intern in June 2010. The Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship Ambassador Corps Program provides financial support to students wishing to obtain international internships in the field of social entrepreneurship. She helped to document projects taking place in Bangalore and the surrounding region and locally managing project and grant related communications. This also included visiting sites of ongoing projects and documenting progress; facilitating communication between community leaders, government officials, and SPARC/BSDF, writing and editing project reports, grant re‐ports, and case studies and assisting with the biometric survey process.

Ankita Suthar is student of Faculty of Planning and Public Policy, CEPT University, Ahmadabad who accomplished 8 weeks of Professional Summer Training, during the period May to July, 2010 at SPARC. During the training, she worked at the Mahila Milan office in Pune to assist with the ongoing In‐situ Slum Upgrading Project in Yerwada. She has been actively involved with the filling in of biometric forms for Bhatt Nagar and Wadar Wasti which are still on going and was also engaged in the working of the overlay map (DP, Google, Plain Table Surveys, and GPS Mapped Boundaries).

Liz Kalina wrote a paper on citywide slum upgrading strategies for SPARC. She has also been writing on financial mechanisms in slum upgrading projects, comparative study between SPARC projects and other best practice case studies for the city‐wide slum upgrading plan document, organizing settlement profile documents in excel. She is a student at Yale University pursuing her B.A in Architecture.

Nataya Friedman, currently studying for her B.A at Columbia University, worked on writing on past upgrading/housing typologies used in SPARC projects and case studies of best practices for city‐wide slum upgrading plan document.

Prageeja K. is a student from CEPT University who worked with SPARC from May to July 2010 and was based in Bangalore. During her internship she worked on Initiating Community participation activities, helping with the biometric surveys and doing com‐munity mobilization.

Sarbeshwar Paharaj was also from CEPT University and worked as an intern with SPARC during May to July 2010. During his internship he helped to map slums under GLTN grant in Cuttack using GPS and GIS technology. He surveyed 81 settlements with GPS and has mapped 65 in Google Earth. Sarbeshwar also researched the existing housing stock in Cuttack’s 8 informal settlements and slum upgrading strategies in Bhubaneswar, Orissa. Along with this he has also developed house typologies and set‐tlement layout under the JNNURM project on slum upgrading in Bhubaneswar. Both Sarbeshwar and Mansi have delivered a presentation to the Municipal Commissioner of Cuttack on this work.

Mansi Mohanty is a student of the Faculty of Planning and Public Policy at CEPT Uni‐versity, Ahmadabad who completed 8 weeks of Professional Summer Training from May to July, 2010 at SPARC. Mansi worked on the Nayapalli Sabar Sahi In‐Situ Slum Upgrading Project site plan and house details. Mansi led the design effort drafting and editing house and site plans in AutoCAD, visiting the sites to monitor construction, and navigating the difficult path between the municipality and the community.

64

Down memory lane for Mahila Milan

The alliance never seems to have time to take care of archival material, or for that matter preserve old pic‐tures video clips and written documents. The oral history tradition is the manner in which we share what happened, how we all began to work together and how we initiated doing things.

Poor households often loose their documents in evic‐tion s, floods and moving homes, somehow that has also been the fate of some of SPARC’s archives. When we operated from Byculla office a lot of our material rotted after the annual floods that devastated the ar‐eas which were low lying in Mumbai.

Later as we moved office material was cleaned out often thrown away as material we don't need. Floppy discs on which material was stored got fungus and so on.

But this year when we have begun to seriously create a photo archive we found these pictures taken by Martene Hollick which had been digitalized and they brought back memories. Especially o Samina ( on the left) who is no more with us)

65

These pictures were taken in 1989 when Julian and Martene came to spend time in India to re‐cord APNA STREET a series f 36 audio documen‐taries which can be downloaded off the net today as well, and which have been aired on Nationa Public Radio in the US and other broadcasters around the world..

We all told our stires to Julian and we learnt to record audio material, and we still have those archives which we will hopefully use as we im‐prove our storage and archiving facilities.

These arethe founders along with many others of Mahila Milan and while some of them have got a alternative home, others still live on pavements and support several other federations to develop Mahila Milan collectives, teach them to save, par‐ticipate in exchanges.

Within SDI they are known as the Mahila Milan University as they have travelled and many have travelled to india to see them and learn their processes and strategies.

66

Sharing lives sharing stories

Listening and exchanging stories

Since 1982 I (Meharbanu Sayeed) have been living in a small house in kashewadi, Pune on rent with a family of six. Our household income is approximately 10,000/‐ per month, with my husband working in a press and myself work‐ing with Pune Mahila Milan. When I first rented this house, I had to pay Rs 800 as deposit and Rs 50/month as rent. Later in 2005, with great effort I bought a house for Rs 1Lakh 70 thousand. The money for this I arranged by taking loan from different sources (money lenders, friends, from the owner where my husband works) with 10‐20% inter‐est rate; as it was my dream to have a house of my own. My present house is G+1 but for the first two months we lived in the house as it was later in the third month we did some renovations like—extending the bathroom, putting tiles on the kitchen platform along with extending the platform in order to make space to keep things. All the changes regarding designs and placing of things was decided by me.

I didn't make any changes on the first floor for two reasons—first that it was already well maintained and secondly there are rumors that a builder want to undertake SRA in this area.

My self Suresh Gaikwad have been living on the footpaths of Sai Leela, Parel for since 1985. at that time in 1985, I had a semi pukka ground floor structure on which I spent around seven thousand rupees. From the very beginning because we did not have any threat of demolition hence we all had semi pukka structures. Suddenly in 2000, demolitions started again and I had to rebuild my house as a kutcha structure. We have neither legal electricity nor water connections. I have to borrow electricity from nearby poles and my wife has to fetch water from a kilometer away from our house. The size of my structure is 15X8 with a 7 ft. height and I live here with 9 members. Every time there is a demolition I have to spend 1500‐2000 rupees to reconstruct so on an average my yearly mainte‐nance on the house is 12,000 which also includes repair work done during the monsoons.

Parveen: Parveen is originally from Madras, her father migrated to Mumbai along with his aunt when he was only 10 years old. Parveen has five sisters and four brothers. Before they shifted to Sewri in 1975 where they were living on the pavements, her family was living at Kalyan and had to vacate that house due to Hindu–Muslim riots. On the pavements, their houses were demolished frequently by the municipality but, her father says, when Parveen was born in 1978, there were no demolitions and they were also issued photo passes. In return the families would pay 10Rs as rent. Altogether there were 14 houses on the pavement. It was like a jungle with no services. 30 years down the line it is now on the main highway. Gradually these families have managed to get electricity and water connec‐tions from the municipality.

Life on the pavements is not easy, she had to go through lot of pain and suffering due to poverty, lack of employment, illness and increasing size of the family. Given her circumstances, she couldn’t continue with her studies and had to leave school after 10th standard, though she was a brilliant student.

In spite of her limited education, she started teaching in a balwadi in her slum. She was paid 500/month. In 2001, they got orders that all huts that have mezzanines shall be demolished, Parveen had none – and yet her hut was de‐molished. In the same year she joined Mahila Milan with the idea of working towards providing shelter for her peo‐ple. During the process she had to endure many struggles and even risk her life for her community to gain their trust.

Story of Banoo Banoo was born and brought up in Mumbai. Her parents migrated from Aurangabad, Taluka Signore as there were riots in their village. Her father first settled in Andheri and would travel for work to town. Eventually, due to her father’s illness which made him incapable of travel‐ling long distances, Banoo’s family had to rent their house and take up a hut in Water Street, one of the pavements in Byculla. They lived outside a paper factory at Paiduni and the work they did was to fill papers in a sack and sell it for Rs 5/sack. At a price of Rs 50 they bought a small hut on the pavement. They were scared to live there as they had never lived on a pavement before. Life was very different from liv‐ing in proper house to that of living in a hut. Banoo was married at the age of 12. They were living in a joint family at the time when Banoo decided to separate and buy a hut of her own on the same pavement. In order to survive, she took up multiple jobs to make ends meet. She would do household work, fix buttons, any kind of cutting work, stitch export garments – thus managed a living. Banoo joined Mahila Milan with the intention of getting her children educated, but didn’t know that she would learn a lot and gain knowledge about issues she was earlier unaware of. In her own words,”one of the benefits of getting all the women and coming to the office was that I realized I was getting information at this place which I never got before. I was put in touch with officers and with the right officials and the right government de‐partments to discuss our problems and to get our issues solved.”During her time with SPARC and Mahila Milan , Banoo had opportunities to visit Bangkok, Bogotá, London, Bangladesh, South Korea and several other places. Before she visited all these places, she thought that they were the only ones who were poor and who were facing so many problems. But when she travelled, she realized that they were not the only ones, there are poor people all over the world and we need to reach out to them as well.

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KANTA: I used to live near KEM hospital, Patel until 1992 – when the Dean of the hospital got our houses demolished. We tried to write a letter, with the help of local leader, Chandrasekhar Handore, on behalf of 90 families – stating that we would not move unless we get alternate accommodation. But, that did not work out. 14 families decided to move, and the rest – not wanting to live on pavements – took houses on rent in other parts of the city.

In 2009 we got legal electricity meter connections and prior to that we were taking electricity from a private owner who charged us Rs.300/month and we would disconnect it whenever there was a BMC inspection. In1997 we got water connections also from the BMC.

Ever since my childhood I have been living on the pavements as my parents couldn’t afford to buy a house, there was no other alternative and we didn’t have any property either. Services like schools, hospitals are close by. Toilets are provided by BMC which are free of cost but are a little far from our settlement. It is diffi‐cult to live on the pavements as we always have the fear of accidents, the construction work being carried out right in front of our house produces lot of dust and several times we have to clean our houses.

My desire is to have a house of my own in or around this place, but I also know that it is not possible as we will have to shift to another place. I am also a member of Mahila Milan and have been doing savings along with working on creating alternate eligibility criteria for households who do not have the required docu‐

Shehnaz

Shehnaz is from Hyderabad and while she was in her village she used to help her father with farming work. Shehnaz got married at the age of 25, which for her is quite surprising as usually in the villages girls are married off at an early age. Anyways, she also says that it depends from individual to individual and for a poor family it takes time to collect enough money for the weeding. Even though her father owned 40 acres of land back in the village, she came to Mumbai with her husband and was living on the pavements because she knew her brother would not allow her to be in her fathers house after marriage. Her husband was also from a well‐to‐do family but because of the large family size he decided to shift to Mumbai and do some business. She was staying in Kamathipura 14th gully outside St. Anthony School in a house on rent for which she paid 1.50rs/day. As the build‐ing she was living in collapsed, she shifted on to the pavements and like the other pavement dwellers, she was also facing demolitions every second day.

Initially Shehnaz was not working, it was only after her husbands illness that she started selling chapattis. She did this for a year and earned 450rs/day of which she could save 100rs/day. She was as first reluctant to be part of the Mahila Milan, steadily she realized that this women’s organization want the women to come up and fight for their rights. The first thing, these women did as a group was to get ration cards for all the families on the pave‐ments. It was not easy for them to get one due to various reasons. They were not aware of their rights even after living for 40 years in the city, later through negotiations, meetings and discussions they were issued ration cards. At the start, they were issued ration cards for 3 months, then 6 months, a year and finally were given permanent ration cards. The Mahila Milan as a group was involved in this process for three reasons – to make sure the whole area is covered, to see that people don’t go individually to get their ration cards thus preventing some from having more than one ration card, and third, to smoothen and fasten the process both for themselves as well as for the rationing officer. Shehnaz is now a Mahila Milan leader who, collects daily savings even after being shifted to a permanent house. Along with this, her role is also to develop a relationship with the communities and families,

Laxmi

Laxmi Naidu, came to Mumbai in 1980 and was staying on the street of Sophia zuber, Nagpada. At that time there was no one on the foot path, it was empty. She did not have a proper hut and was thus living in the open. The people staying in the building called Garden hall used to shout at these people saying that our building doesn’t look good with your huts. It was difficult for Laxmi to survive during the rains as she was living under the staircase of Tayyab building and her belongings would be there on the pavements only. Every day the municipality would come and take away their belongings – water pot, cooking utensils, bed‐ding everything and her daughter was at that time three years old. Every time there was a demolition she had to buy new stuff as the Municipality would take their belongings but would never return back. By 1984‐85 the pavement was full of huts. The people living on the pavements were often asked questions like, when the state gives orders to vacate the pavements then what are you people going to do and where will you go. None of them had any answers until they formed Mahila Milan. Laxmi says that poor people have to migrate from their villages as they don’t have any means of earning and no jobs. She also says that first of all the govern‐ment shouldn’t allow migration and if it does then it should also provide housing for them. In her view, they don’t enjoy living on pavements as there is no life on the pavements, they are not respected by the other people and are called dirty and poor people. after the 1985 supreme court judgement of evicting all pavement dwellers, the women came together as a group to form Mahila Milan and fight for their rights. Their ultimate goal was to get a house, a better house and a better place to live. They did not want to live on the pavements forever as they were concerned about the future of their children. Being part of Mahila Milan, Laxmi has experienced a drastic change in herself; that is of being independent, confident of helping and teaching others, solving their problems and getting communities together.

68

Some Media interviews :

Once a Slum Dweller, he now tells the urban poor to organize themselves for their good.

The Weekend Leader

A beacon of hope for millions of poor people in Mumbai, where more than 50 percent of the seven mil‐

lion populations live in slums, Jockin Arputham is now striving to bring succour to the urban poor world‐

wide. For the 63‐year‐old man, who was awarded the Raman Magsaysay award for Peace and Interna‐

tional Understanding in 2000, it had been a relentless struggle trying to bring some dignity into the lives

of slum dwellers.

Having lived and worked for more than four decades in Mumbai slums, his experience in working from

within the system has taught him that the urban poor have to participate in the Government’s pro‐

grammes to improve their living conditions. Through his organizations ‐ the National Slum Dwellers

Federation (NSDF) that has around two million members across 72 cities and the Slum Dwellers Interna‐

tional (SDI) that networks in 33 countries to work towards slum rehabilitation ‐ Jockin has been able to

successfully partner with governments and international agencies.

The NSDF office that once used to be in a shanty is now housed in clean rooms in one of the buildings

constructed in Dharavi to rehabilitate slum dwellers. Recently slum dwellers at Bombay Port Trust,

Thane to Diva and Central railway were rehabilitated. More than 30000 families have been rehabilitated

so far in Mumbai. Internationally they have recently built 500000 houses in Namibia. Melinda Gates

Foundation and Cities Alliance have facilitated rehabilitation in Uganda and Ghana. Jockin has facilitated

rehabilitation work in Africa and Latin America.

When he resettled Bangladeshi refugees in the early seventies, he first organized the community and

trained volunteers to build their own houses, drainage and other facilities. There were about one lakh

twenty thousand refugees in Kolkata alone. “I trained more than 10000 volunteers among the refugees,”

says Jockin.

Stressing the need for organizing the community, he says that though the masons, carpenters and

plumbers who actually construct houses live in slums, they work individually. If they are organized, they

can collectively demand facilities from the authorities or take charge and become agents of change, he

says.

He did it first in Janata colony slums, where he landed in the sixties from Bangalore. Born to Tamil par‐

ents he got good education for a while in Kolar where his father had a good job. But a twist in fate forced

him to work. At Janata slums he organized informal schools for children, installed water connections and

organized collection and disposal of the garbage with cooperation of the locals and the municipality.

As the municipality had turned a blind eye to a garbage dump at Janata colony, Jockin organized a pro‐cession of children procession. Each child hid some garbage in a newspaper and threw it near the mu‐nicipality office one Sunday morning. The municipality were forced to take notice. This was the first les‐son in mobilizing the community.

Jockin also learnt another lesson when he had mobilized support against the eviction of Janata colony’s 70000 inhabitants ‐ he even met Prime Minister Indira Gandhi‐ but could not prevent the demolition in 1976. That prompted him to start NSDF.

Outlook Magazine –

Pune BSUP

The Alliance’s work in Pune

upgrading housing under

JNNURM was featured in an

article in the June 12, 2010 is‐

sue of Outlook Magazine. The

article very positively described

the in‐situ housing upgrading

currently underway in Pune

and the benefits of having

NGO’s undertake such

work. Not only do N.G.O led

rehabilitation projects involve

the slum dwellers directly in

the rehabilitation process, but

they illustrate what kinds of

success can be achieved when

slum dwellers are brought to

the table as partners in such

projects. The article also dis‐

cussed the ways in which the

Alliance helps slum dwellers get

better access to jobs and finan‐

cial services, through the Ma‐

hila Milan credit and savings

programs and the practice of

employing federation and Ma‐

hila Milan members in the con‐

struction of these houses.

Media news about the work we do

70

Ours & others for whom we

Women and Health

In 2010, Sheela authored a chapter for “Cities and Women’s Health: Global Perspectives”. Most discussions of women’s health are confined to issues of family planning and repro‐ductive health. In the article, Sheela outlined the ways in which it is becoming clear that a number of health issues affect women differently, and often more severely, than men. To truly tackle the challenge of creating healthy cities, we must address the urban poor’s lack of sanitation, adequate housing, and basic services in a way that specifically ad‐dresses the needs of women.

Women, who spend more time in the home than other family members, are most affected by cramped living conditions. They also bear the brunt of household‐specific environ‐mental hazards, from inhaling smoke and chemicals from the stoves and fires kept in cramped houses to breathing harmful fumes from burning trash. Water issues are particularly sig‐nificant for women, who spend most of their time in the home carrying out domestic tasks, many of which—particularly cooking and cleaning—require the use of water. Furthermore, the tasks of water collection and waste man‐agement are traditionally women’s responsibility, so when water and sanitation services are not available or functional, the impact is heaviest upon women.

Many health professionals, however committed they may be to women, see them primarily as beneficiaries and consum‐ers of professionals’ information and health solutions. Under the guise of helping women, health professionals all too often simply tell them what they must do. And yet the information that professionals offer is often grossly ill‐suited to the real‐ity of women’s situations. Health workers talk to poor women who have no access to clean water about hygiene and washing hands, or train women in providing nutritious meals to their children when the family hardly has enough money to buy enough food each day.

Although they have no professional health training, the women of Mahila Milan collectively took on that role in their weekly meetings, which focused on sharing knowledge and experiences. In a community atmosphere, women were able to explore stories and experiences related to health that they might not have felt comfortable sharing in an atmosphere dominated by professionals. This trusting, comfortable envi‐ronment allowed women to admit their health problems and seek help from health professionals. Women from the collec‐tives therefore became partners to the health and social work professionals in closing the communication gap be‐tween their groups.

Even short‐term interventions are usually more effective when undertaken by communities rather than imposed by outsiders. Furthermore, the process of working together to solve health problems within a community can help build trust among women that can serve as the foundation for col‐lective work to address their underlying problems. Many of the outcomes health professionals hope to achieve are not possible within the existing health system. Rather, it is neces‐

t h th liti d l i th f k f h

Victims and Warriors: Choices by Slum Dwellers to Defend their Habitat

For those who come from the rural areas with no assets and few skills, the only way of surviving is to find some work and squat somewhere nearby, so that they can walk to work and save on public transport. In contrast to the penury they faced in the past, many of these early migrants were ‘grateful’ that they earned enough to feed their families two meals a day and, if possible, to send some money back to relatives in the village. Over course of time, in the absence of any acknowledgement or legitimatization by the municipality or the state of their housing, they came together as neighborhoods, carved out the boundaries of their settlements and created local sub‐cultures in which subsequent genera‐tions have been nurtured and raised.

In November 2009, Emma Syndenham, a representative of Equalin Rights, a Dutch NGO, asked SPARC to share how its alliance approached the issue of housing rights, water and sanitation. The idea was to explore the possibility of producing a document that would share this perspective with other groups and organizations. Equalin Rights had similarly asked other agencies in Kenya, Bra‐zil and India to reflect upon and document their approaches. It was an offer that came at the time when discussions around this theme were taking place within the Alliance.

Sheela articulated the Alliance’s strategy and explained the singular importance of empowering communities to demand their own rights. In the domain of hu‐man rights, there is a tradition of using the courts, legal theory, and evidence‐based arguments to defend the rights of the vulnerable and the marginalized. The Alliance takes a different approach, by creating sustainable organizations of the urban poor which use critical mass and persistent demands for inclusion to produce change. The Alliance’s approach also produces empowered leaders who can design new strategies and solutions, going beyond defensive activity to proactive planning. Equalinrights was very interested in this bottom‐up model, and had invited SPARC to participate in a forum with other NGOs advocating for human rights. Through individual interviews and group discussions, reflections by SPARC’s founders and long‐term allies, and discussions with the leadership of NSDF and Mahila Milan, SPARC has written a document that reflects on not only individual and collective transformation but also the impacts of the com‐munity on the nature of decision‐making and institutionalized participation. “Victims or Warriors” in collaboration with the Equalin Rights, is the story of how we sought to make communities of the poor federated and organized, to wage a long and difficult battle against demolitions and evictions. It is a story of how people who were victims were transformed into warriors, exercising their right of self‐defense to protect themselves and each other. The enemies were, of course, the state, the municipality and other official agencies. But as the story unfolds, we observe how the warriors go beyond the battle‐field and develop solutions and strategies to end this costly war. They begin to negotiate with their erstwhile tormentors and seek access to all the benefits that cities offer; in this process, the orientation of state agencies undergoes a change as they be‐come more inclusive and more accepting of the demands of the poor. We be‐lieve that the image of the poor is often frozen within a frame of victimhood and their role as warriors, who survive against all odds, is neither accepted nor rec‐

d h l h f d l b f b ld h d

Apna Street Julian writes about pavement dwellers

In collaboration with Julian Crandel Hollick, the alliance has participated in the book about their experiences building a federation, from 19882000 with pavement dwellers in Byculla. Julian has produced 36 programs for NPR about slum dwellers in Mumbai, which have been broadcasted internationally. The book will be published in early 2011.

Publications

71

Films on YouTube

The Alliance in order to spread its work has uploaded a couple of films on YouTube that are easily accessible and help to understand the wide variety of work done by the Alliance. Around 25 films that talk about – Enumerations, meetings, exchanges, workshops, awards etc., have been posted on You Tube and can be found at http://www.youtube.com/user/sparcnsdfmm

2011 HEATHER BRADY VISITS DHARAVIhttp://youtu.be/tv‐mPDs41L4

Prof Jitendra Shah GIS Websitehttp://youtu.be/lfzPirzCQLA

Participatory Mapping Group Discussionshttp:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH8k1XPkW‐o

Participatory Mapping Summation http://youtu.be/00hhOjwLDXc

Dhan Foundation Processhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNSItuQFvyw

Dr Rama Rao GIS presentationhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffMSkod5Pl8

Vasimalai Concluding Remarkshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywrMkDEEOtk

SatishGavai VP MHADAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mSrPOFG5p4

Pratima Joshi shelter Associateshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puGG7kVXH0g

Mike Slingsbyhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3sVRuDUef

GLTN Mapping Cuttackhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_Uaol‐RbUA

DilipRautroyBhubhaneshwarhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSFTpTJB5xg

Cuttack Commissionerhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9lggMBWMEg

Tirupati presentation T Sarojamma Tamil http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snV8d_‐8A1o

Tirupati presentation T Sarijamma English http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIK59SzfgDg

Pune Presentation ShobhaAdhav Hindi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZGi99SLm6w

Orissa Presentation Urmila Sahu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHSK‐WIgMYE

Dr Samir Sharma Municipal Commissioner Hyderabad Chal‐lenges for the city in RAY and participationhttp://www youtube com/watch?v=utWmVFsZ1i8

2011 NGOZI OKONJO IWEALEA MEETS THE FEDRATION AT DHARAVIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMn3wpOFQ18

2011 RELOCATION AT HADAPSAR PUNEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDJ80SHxmdk

2011 JOCKIN RECIEVES THE PADMASHREE AWARDhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMObEfpGvRo

2011 ROSE ON PARTNERShttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9Cu3LJQcJo

2010 RAJESH ON TECHNICAL ASSISTANCEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj_DMpcC3ec

2010 HON’BLE MINISTER M WERIKE OF UGANDAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezt4‐Y9TPZ4

2010 JOEL PT III SA FED ON MONEYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzYotnUkNUg

2010 JOEL PT II INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTRS AND SA FEDShttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIimIUGIpGQ

2010 JOEL ON SA AND SUBSIDIEShttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg1VQh9iKqc

2010 SUMAN ON M&E PROCESShttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAsZycl1NFs

2010 GREGORY ON SA FEDERATIONhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex‐6MJv2fU4

2010 DR GARIBA ON M&Ehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEZeMM_HSlY

2010 RAJESH TANDON: THEORY OF CHANGEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQxVWOyauDA

2010 BOB BUCKLEY – A DONORS PERSPECTIVEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca‐xqqoDzvM

2010 WUF RIO 2010 FORMAL SESSIONhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbsrGpnb4DY

2010 WORLD URBAN FORUM 2010: THE SDI STANDhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAO1D‐g5ffI

COMMUNITY LED RELOCATION:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3h‐jhXrl9E

FACING THE URBAN CHALLENGE :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T‐oEEpMGSJk

A HOME OF THEIR OWNhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkFVtF23ZvA

DREAM COME TRUE (PART 2);http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu‐xF3t5apA

DREAM COME TRUE::http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av4R‐Wcg3Yc

2010 KIBERRA, RAILWAY SLUM DWELLERS FEDERATION, NAIROBI – STATEMENT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KERcSRWN7io

SANDAAS MELA (TOILET FAIR)(PART 1 OF 2)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvhkgjfIqDE

2010 DHARAVIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUMMq7B_DDs

2010 PUNE SLUM UPGRADINGhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jg86d1EKxw

ZERO OPEN DEFECATIONhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPAPPp9tGGs

DEMOLITION TO DEVELOPMENThttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ED1YktDd3g

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72

SDI Workshop January 2011

Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI) is an alliance of country‐level organizations (called ‘federations’) of the urban poor from 33 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Several well‐developed national federations of community‐based organiza‐tions of slum and shack dwellers – particu‐larly in India and South Africa – joined hands to found SDI.

SDI partners from 8 countries, including India, met in Mumbai on January 10‐13, 2011 to discuss and support their work using enumerations in slums. The NGO’s and federations at the meeting were of various ages and levels of development, in terms of their experience and capacity of facilitating enumerations. For some of the newer organizations, the focus was on best practices for conducting the enumerations: how to enter a community and engage with individuals in the best way, so that a strong federation can take root and develop the capacity to conduct a thorough enumera‐tion. For some of the older federations, the focus was on perfecting the enumerations process; how to better design the survey questions, better analyze and make use of the data and better engage with outside partners and stakeholders.

Slum Dwellers International

73

Philippines exchange program to Mumbai

Sonia Cadornigara, a community leader from the Homeless People's Fed‐eration, Philippines, a member of SDI, led a group of architecture student interns on an exposure visit to India. They visited Oshiwara, Goregaon, Milan Nagar, Mankhurd 98 and Pune to look at the incremental housing under JNNURM‐BSUP. They had several meetings and discussions with NSDF and Mahila Milan leaders about how to involve communities of ur‐ban poor in housing projects, especially illiterate and uneducated people who do not already have an understanding about design and construction.

Sri Lanka Exchange visit

In February 2011 Mahila Milan and Federation members from Phil‐ippines, India (Mumbai, Bangalore, and Pune), Nepal and Pakistan had a meeting with the Sri Lanka Housing Minister who was also invited to inaugurate the Women Development Banks Federation in the presence of SDI President, Mr. Jockin which was started by Ma‐hila Milan of Sri Lanka. The Housing Minister appreciated the work‐ing systems of India and the manner in which they were helping slum dwellers in Sri Lanka to save money that would further help in many ways. Mr. Jockin also briefed about how the government can adopt housing policies just as we do in India. The main focus was on housing schemes and thus they discussed various housing schemes in their respective countries – getting land from the government with the help of NGOs etc.

27th ‐ 29th November Gates meeting in Ahmada‐

bad of M&E

Slum//Shack Dwellers International (SDI) was amongst the several

organizations invited to attend this reflection amounts all the ur‐

ban grantees of the Bill and Melinda gates Foundation. It was a

useful workshop because each of us shared what we do and how

we measure it; the Foundation explained their challenges to meas‐

ure the value and contribution of what they provide to grantees to

produce learning and insight within the foundation.

The Alliance often finds that while developing new strategies es‐pecially for housing, for designing various solutions, both commu‐nities and government representatives need to see it. When we say “see it” we mean in its natural proportions. Often when a house design is done, architects draw it on paper or make a three dimensional model which is proportionate but very small. This is often very hard for both communities and city officials to under‐stand. Therefore full‐size house or toilet models are developed and displayed to communities and officials. This is what the Alli‐ance and SDI refer to as the house model exhibition.

More recently we have found that the strategy also works well in advocacy at other different levels, and we recall building a house and a community toilet block at the UN Headquarters in 2000 during the discussions about Habitat issues. Later we built a simi‐lar set of models at the UNHABITAT headquarters during the first world Urban Forum also in 2000.

In 2010, we took two live size pavement dwellings to Seattle for the Annual BMGF meetings. Women on pavements always have amazed visitors with how they use the 35 to 45 sq feet that is the size of their dwellings. Two such houses were photographed in‐side and outside for walls, roof and floors, then in real proportion these were printed and with plastic tubing frame they were set up. The staff of the foundation helped set up the houses and many came in to look at the details of how walls and roof are used for storage, to look at the water line of where the water comes and floods the house every year during the monsoon. All in all, it was a powerful statement of condition in which the poor live in Mumbai on the street. Yet these are the same women who have built a whole movement to bring women in the center of the struggle for inclusive growth of cities and equity for all in secure shelter and basic amenities.

In April ‘11 UNHABITAT had its General Council meeting in Nai‐robi, and SDI set up a exhibition showing slums before any inter‐vention and after settlement upgrading. Several affiliates espe‐cially the Kenyan and South African and Indian affiliates worked t o g e t h e r t o d e s i g n a n d execute this exhibition which the new Executive Director inaugu‐rated and appreciated how it brought reality into the pristine grounds of their campus. He will explore ways to work with SDI to create a permanent exhibit of this kind to symbolize the challenge the world faces in this millennium.

In November 2011 there will be an exhibition showcasing how the poor live and work in cities and the challenges faced by social movement of the poor in cities at the Cooper‐Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. The Rockefeller Foundation which has made a contribution to this project introduced SDI to the cu‐rators and since then SDI maps, models, photos and all kinds of materials have been shipped to the museum curator to be exhib‐ited when the exhibition opens in November this year.

74

Slum//Shack Dwellers Interna‐

tional (SDI) linked events SPARC Mahila Milan and NSDF have been deeply involved in the Slum//Shack Dwellers International (SDI) process at several levels, participating in exchanges, in council and Board meetings, hosting national and regional groups coming to see our work. Here are some highlights for the year

Uganda meeting October 10;

Through the whole year there have been many exchanges to prepare fo rteh city‐wide enumeration for the fice cities that will be undertaken, and the Indian alli‐ance has had many exchange sto participate in a Slum//Shack Dwellers Interna‐tional (SDI) wide support group to assist the Ugandans.

Slum//Shack Dwellers International (SDI) and Cities Alliance have jointly devel‐oped a project financed by the gates foundation, in developing a 5 city community partnership in Uganda cities which has complete support of the National govern‐ment through the department of housing. In October 10 there was an exchange from Uganda to design and plan for an event in which the local authorities mayors and administrators of arica were to attend a workshop in Uganda and would travel to Jinja to showcase the work of the Slum//Shack Dwellers International (SDI) affiliate the city federation and the city. The process celebrated the city giving land for a project and initiating a city level uban poor fund that would be managed by the city and community.

SDI Conference in Namibia: Nov 2010

Grant makers exploring urban challenges in grant making

“If we think we can build houses for the poor without the poor, we will never make it,” said Jerry Ekandjo, Namibian Minister of Regional and Local Government, Housing, and Rural Development. They were words that were echoed by government officials from East and South‐ern Africa throughout the “Building Cities Through Partnership” con‐ference in Windhoek, Namibia. It was held on 9‐10 November.

After two days of sustained dialogue with 12 SDI slum dweller federa‐tions, politicians and officials from Malawi, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, were all singing from same hymn book as Ekandjo.

The conference was a unique opportunity for slum dwellers, govern‐ment officials, and donors to sit at the table and discuss the priorities of the poor. The meeting was chaired and orchestrated entirely by slum dweller leaders from SDI federations.

“Partnership” and “participation” are words that often get stripped of substance when referring to the role and work of the poor. But after presentations by federations from countries in East Africa, Asia, South America, and Southern Africa, the extent of results achieved on the ground by SDI people’s federations was staggering: tens of thousands of houses and tenure secured, hundreds of thousands of lives changed.

The scale of such achievements has been built through organization around a developmental agenda and people’s empowerment, said SDI president Jockin Arputham. And partnership with the government is a key part of building a voice for the poor. “We are not begging from donors and government,” he said. “We are saying ‘come join hands with us.’”

Such proclamations were followed by action. John Bande, Malawian Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, signed a land‐mark memorandum of understanding with SDI for funding slum up‐grading projects in his country. This commits the national government and Malawian homeless people’s federation to work together to de‐velop over 2,000 housing units nationwide by the end of 2012. Funds will also be committed from both sides.

The message from slum dwellers, donors, and government officials was clear, said Melanie Walker, senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”


75

URBAN PLANNERS and URBAN POVERTY

EVENTS ON URBAN PLANNING IN THE US:

Celine D’Cruz: October 2010 22nd October, at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Boston, with a group of urban planning students and some mid career professionals. This was an invitation from their professor Michael Hopper who also had the opportunity of spending time in Tanzania with Tim and the federation before joining Harvard and was familiar with SDI’s work in Tanzania.

26th October, at the Ford Foundation, New York, “ Building assets for the urban Poor by design, strengthening urban planning and design in the Global South” a project of the joint center for housing studies at Harvard University to study the role of urban planners in urban poverty. The joint center, established in 1959 is a collaborative unit affiliated with the Graduate school of design and the Harvard Kennedy School. The joint center investigates and evaluates emerging housing issues and links it with com‐munity development and housing policy and generates data on housing markets by analyzing large‐scale data.

The discussion at Ford foundation (funder and partner in creating the vision) was the first of three discussions being held as struc‐tured within this project.

Both groups invited SDI within the same week came from the same institution, however, one was not aware of what the other was doing. May be this is inevitable of large institutions like the Government of India, World Bank and Harvard.

Some questions and learning as I see it through the lenses as SDI. Issues that we also need to think about inside SDI

The urban planners have become more conscious of their role in urban poverty especially with housing and design issues related to slum dwellers.

There is a real motivation to want to be useful and make a difference to the poorer parts of the city.

The students were completely open and ready to learn and listen about what activists and the urban poor have tried to do themselves in the absence of urban planners.

The young students were concerned about the issue of timing. If their job were to produce plans how long would they have to wait for communities to get empowered and participate?

How radical do we want our future urban planners to be? Finding the balance between not becoming activist and bringing they’re real urban planning skills to the table is what is needed.

How can urban planners bridge the gap between urban poverty activist, the urban poor and the city government?

How can they bridge the gap between conventional planning and planning that includes the informal parts/ dwellers of the city?

Is it possible to begin to include the urban planners association in these discussions? It is becoming clear that there is a need to institutionalize this learning within mainstream teaching institutions.

How many degrees do urban planners need to change to play this role effectively? Ultimately it makes sense that they speak a language that is understood by conservative planners and brings the change from within. We need planners not activist.

When there is no planning there is more mixed development. With planning and development communities have become more fragmented. How do we retain the good parts of informal planning in informal communities so that they become part of the formal planning in cities?

Tackling the issue of verticality v/s horizontal settlements. How are these choices made and who makes them?

Understanding the nature of land in all its facets; the numeric value, cultural value and the politics of land. Understanding community value of land and market value of land.

How much “ decentralization” is good? How much state participation is required? how much market participation is good for planning?

How to improve the interaction between communities and planners?

What is the role of “protest” in the absence of a government that is ready to listen?

The meeting at Ford concluded with one of the senior planners who were very concerned about giving too much attention to the role of planners. The belief being that planners only execute government decisions and sometimes also indirectly the market. The impli‐cation being that we need to lessen to role of formal planners and have other professionals lead this process. This clearly reflected the need to review how planners perceive their present role and how they can play a more strategic role in supporting planning that is inclusive by first of all feeling more empowered in their role as planners. How are planners begin to see the scope of how strategic planning can make a difference to the lives of the poor.

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World Urban Forum in Rio

In what was the fifth world urban forum held in Rio a very large dele‐gation from SDI of which sparc NSDF and mm were also present, spent a week in Rio attending formal sessions, two sessions which were hosted by SDI, meeting with many government officials and country delegations and meeting Brazilian leaders from Informal settlements. The location for the WUF was in refurbished ware houses on the port in Rio and seemed more realistically suited to the subject of address‐ing habitat although clearly the heat was overwhelming the air‐conditioning.

The SDI delegation with its green T shirts and yellow bags was a hit and many people sought the T shirts to make it look as though the delegation was thrice the size. Clearly the SDI delegation and its exhi‐bition stall were locations where many came to learn what communi‐ties were doing, governments and their delegations came to check if SDI worked in their countries and if it did, then invited a team to meet them. It was also a space in which the team from SDI which was al‐most 60 people met each morning and evening to synthesize what various people had heard in various sessions, and to prepare country delegations to meet their ministers and mayors using this venue and proximity within which discussions could be held easily.

Both sessions that SDI conducted was well attended and discussions explored the need to expand roles and contribution of communities of slum dwellers in development of cities and addressing the issues of growth of cities and dealing with poor planning that was pushing more and more people in slums.


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Reflections on the Power of Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation

Since the late 1980's I have been deeply committed to the process of participation and this has been embedded in the way I believe development processes should be conducted. I believe that much of what we do at SPARC with federations is to facilitate communities of the very poor in cities to reflect on their survival strategies and collec‐tively examine what retarded their aspirations and diminished their attempts to improve the quality of life. This reflection formulates the basis of their ability to strengthen their organizational process, sustain high levels of mobilization and enter into discussion and negotiation with the very same state that was supposed to be taking care of their needs but which was evicting them and depleted them of their resources and safety net.

The very same process that helped articulate what communities do, what choices they make when facing adver‐sity and analyzed implications of choices, produced a capacity for inquiry and reflection that gave us, as an alli‐ance the ability to explore the whole gamut of questions about who has the right to the city, and to determine that land housing and basic amenities were the foundational safety net essential for survival to a city that small groups of slum dwellers could not obtain for themselves and needed a larger “critical mass” to change the politics behind choices of who gets what resources within a city.

With everything we do being a process of exploration and each breakthrough a process of experimentation, and constant exploration of scaling and refinement, reflection and review are crucial and vital in the evolution and production of robust processes. As the process of circulation of strategies and practices expand the scale and range and robustness of the processes and their ability to stand amidst vertical top down processes is gradually becoming evident. Yet in every aspect of the process we as SDI and the Indian Alliance face constant challenges about the process as a whole as well as all aspects of how the process develops and engages communities as well as external actors.

Monitoring and Evaluation serves both as a means to demonstrate accountability to our constituency as well as to the external world that supports us. It also helps us to share what we do, as well strengthen our capacity, to learn, refine and expand our work. It can have drawbacks as well, stemming from the structure of the interaction, of being “objects” of the evaluation rather than participants in reflective processes about our organization. These engagements did not produce rituals and practices that strengthened our internal capacity to reflect and under‐take ongoing evaluation. More reflections also brought out the reality that we as participants who otherwise have been so involved in changing roles and relationships with those groups who communities have to interact with in order to get goods and services and rights, have ourselves generally been passive acceptors of evaluations which are imposed out of a need for donors to evaluate us at the end of a particular financing strategy and fulfilling their organizational commitment to do an evaluation.

However, all is not lost. Slum/Shack Dwellers International has been deeply impacted by a set of reflections com‐ing out of our Nov 2010 meeting in Nairobi and there will be a major shift in how SDI undertakes monitoring and evaluation from now on. Through SDI the affiliates will also begin to undertake these processes more proactively. To further undertake a full commitment to this process of Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation SDI plans to identify a team of external and internal Monitoring and Evaluation team from the start of the next round of plans 2011‐14. We plan to design a process which affiliates can also take on as SDI does, and create a learning process for affiliates SDI and Donors that plans and executes this process together.

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Maharashtra

Mumbai

Thane

Panvel

Ahmadnagar

Pune

Nashik

Sholapur

Pimpri-Chinchwad

Malegaon

Tamil Nadu

Chennai-Thiruvaluvar

Kanchipuram

Madurai

Andipatti (District Theni)

Periyakulam (District Theni)

Bodi (District Theni)

Thiruchirapalli

Valliyur (District Thirunelvelli)

Thirupattur

Thiruvannamalai

Chengam

Arani

Pollur

Tirupur

Coimbatore

Ambur

Vellore

Veniyambadi

Erode

Tarapuram

Salem

Palani (District Dindukal)

Dharapuram

Karnataka

Bengaluru (Bangalore)

Mandaya

K.G.F

Mysore

Raichur

Maddur

Pondicherry

Pondicherry

Karaikal

Villupuram

Cuddalore

Uttar Pradesh

Kanpur

Delhi

New Delhi

Orissa

Bhubhaneshwar

Paradeep

Cuttack

Puri

Konark

Gujarat

Surat

Ahmadabad

Andhra Pradesh

Hyderabad

Secunderabad

Guntoor

Prakasham

Warangal

Karim Nagar

Vijaywada

Vishakhapatnam

Chiralal

West Bengal

Kolkata

Kharagpur

SPARC-NSDF-MM WORK IN THE FOLLOWING CITIES IN INDIA

The Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers (SPARC) is one of the largest Indian NGOs working on housing and infrastructure issues for the urban poor. In 1984, when SPARC was formed, it began working with the most vulner‐able and invisible of Mumbai's urban poor ‐ the pavement dwellers. SPARC's phi‐losophy is that if we can develop solutions that work for the poorest and most marginalised in the city, then these solutions can be scaled up to work for other groups of the urban poor across the country and internationally.

Since 1986, SPARC has been working in partnership with two community‐based organisations the National Slum Dwellers Federation and Mahila Milan. Together, they are known as the Alliance. Today, the Alliance works in about 70 cities in the country and has networks in about 20 countries internationally.

The National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) was founded in the mid 1970s and is a national organisation of community groups and leaders who live in slums/informal settlements across India. Its main aim is to mobilise the urban poor to come together, articulate their concerns and find solutions to the problems they face. Today the NSDF works with about half a million households in the country. In 2000, the President and Founder of NSDF, A.Jockin, was awarded the Ramon Mag‐saysay Award.

Mahila Milan means "Women Together" in Hindi and is a decentralised network of poor women's collectives that manage credit and savings activities in their com‐munities. Mahila Milan aims to provide a space for women to take on important decision making roles and be recognised for their critical contributions towards improving the lives of their communities. Mahila Milan was initiated in 1986 when 500 women who lived on Mumbai's pavements organised themselves to success‐fully prevent the demolitions of their homes. Today, Mahila Milan has given out tens of thousands of loans to poor women all across the country and has collected savings worth several crores of rupees.

The Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers (SPARC)2nd Floor, Khetwadi Municipal School Building, Khetwadi Lane No. 1, Girgaum, Mumbai 400004 Phone: +91 22 23865053/23858785 Fax: +91 22 23887566 E‐mail: [email protected] Website: www.sparcindia.org Also find us at www.youtube.com/user/sparcnsdfmm

Contact us

Citywatch: India is the annual newsletter of the SPARC‐NSDF‐MM Alliance. This year’s Citywatch was put to‐gether by the SPARC team: Sheela Patel, Maria Lobo, Car‐rie Baptist, Sharmila Gimonkar, Preeti Banarse, Indu Agar‐wal and Malvika Agarwal. Articles were contributed by SPARC staff and Federation members. Photographs are by SPARC staff, Federation and MM members, Homeless International staff, the SDI network, visitors and volunteers.

A SPARC-NSDF-Mahila Milan Publication

Documents

Transcript of A SPARC-NSDF-Mahila Milan Publication