BackHow to get things done on the ground
Without political will our development sector achieves far less than it should
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On a hazy summer’s day in 2009, Pratima Joshi, a founding trustee of Shelter Associates, a Pune-based non-governmental organization (NGO) working in slum rehabilitation, set off to make a presentation at the Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (Yashada). A smiling woman usually clad in a sari or salwar-kameez, Joshi, 48, is a UK-trained architect who has been working in the field of urban planning, poor housing and slum rehabilitation since 1993. Working with urban local bodies is part of what she and her colleagues do. “The government is our third partner, willing or unwilling," she says.
That day proved to be a turning point in their effort to engage the government—the slums across Sangli-Miraj-Kupwad, a township around 400km south of Mumbai, are proof of that. But back to the beginning.
The focus of Shelter Associates is to use Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology to map out urban slum settlements. “When we first started out, there was a huge mental block and resistance to using this technology to harvest, manage and monitor data," Joshi says. Instead, the data was all over the place, scattered over various departments, all of which impeded policy and planning.
“How do you determine the gaps in your slums?" she asks. What gaps, I think. Only overcrowding. But Joshi is speaking metaphorically about water taps, community toilets, electrical lines, and other signatures of Indian slums. One gap that Shelter found, for example, had to do with water. “Pune is fortunate to have a good water supply," says Joshi. “We found that a lot of the community water taps that were mandated by the government were not being used. Worse, they were leaking and the water was wasted." GIS technology allows urban planners to monitor and minimize such wastage. “Spatial data (such as GIS) allows for a lot of transparency and accountability," says Joshi. “Nobody can mess with the information."
Most urban local bodies are aware of the problems that their slum settlements face. But they don’t have the systems to tackle them. The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) may pump in money and hardware to state bodies, but as Joshi says: “Small municipalities don’t know how to deal with the money that the Central government gives them. The types of officers who work on these issues have limitations, both in terms of knowledge and vision. Sometimes they have language problems. The junior engineers are not the most competent people doing the job. I don’t blame them—it is just how it is."
This then, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem on the ground. Gaps, incompetence, lack of political will, and improper use of technology and systems. Management consultants like to say that every problem requires a top-down and bottom-up approach. Most NGOs are usually content to do the latter. They don’t rely on the government to provide solutions. Instead, they identify gaps and solve the problems themselves, often with external funding. Recently, a small but growing number of non-profits—and individuals—have been choosing to take a top-down approach as well. They work with the government, try to influence policy and run for elected office. Many of them work in the urban space, for this is where policy can be amended and implemented—or so it seems.
Shelter is not an advocacy group, but increasingly it finds itself lobbying with the government to implement its schemes. “We take the carrot and stick approach," laughs Joshi. “The hardware funding comes from the government with JNNURM. But there is no provision for community mobilization, technical inputs. Being architects we give input about design and implementation. We push for a lot of changes."
Specialist NGOs such as Shelter use their depth and breadth of knowledge in a particular field to access government officials, often with a combination of diplomacy and handholding. A long time ago, at a conference, I heard the founder of an NGO describe their job this way. I have forgotten who the person was but I recall the words. “The government needs our help. But they think they don’t," said the man off the record. “Worse, they think we will impede their methods, cripple their ways of doing things."
As the Indian economy grows, slum rehabilitation is both touchy and necessary. So far, says Joshi, the government’s usual approach is to bulldoze slums and send the occupants outside the city where land is available. “We show how land can be used optimally to rehabilitate the poor without throwing them out. The city needs them as much as they need the city," says Joshi.
To that end, her team came up with a plan for rehabilitating slums across Sangli-Miraj-Kupwad. Some of these slums were hugging roads that needed to be widened; other slums were on land that had prior reservation. Shelter used GIS technology to map these slums. Then, their architects and planners designed relocation sites within 2-2.5km of the existing site. This allowed the slum dwellers to use the same schools, hospitals, and other communal facilities. Shelter designed walk-up homes so that the same area could accommodate a denser population.
When Joshi presented the plan at the symposium in Yashada in 2009, she didn’t have high hopes. “We get invited to conferences and symposiums all the time," she says. But that day was different; that day, the stars were aligned. Right after the presentation, an excited P.K. Mohanty, then the joint secretary in the ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation (Hupa), came up to her and suggested that she send the proposal to Delhi. A few months later, Joshi went and presented the plan to Mohanty’s boss, Kiran Dhingra, the secretary of Hupa. Dhingra liked their approach and asked Shelter to mobilize local support. As it turned out, the chief secretary at the time, Ratnakar Gaikwad, was interested in the project. The housing secretary, Gautam Chatterjee, knew the terrain and could appreciate the soundness of Shelter’s approach. At the local level, the current finance minister, Jayant Patil, was the political leader of the coalition government in Sangli.
This confluence of benefactors could summon up the political will to take the project forward. Within a few months, the Union government appointed Shelter as a consultant and, as we speak, the Integrated Housing and Slum Development Programmes (IHSDP) of Sangli-Miraj are getting done. “About 700 homes are currently under construction," says Joshi. “People (slum dwellers) love our homes because we consulted them about their needs and the design.
Best of all, says Joshi, their project has been mentioned in the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) as a model of how to implement slum rehabilitation projects.
Influencing policy requires many things. Joshi says that it requires a sound approach towards getting things done. I think it requires—more than anything else—sheer tenacity.
Shoba Narayan lives next door to a slum and believes herself rehabilitated because of it. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com
Also Read | Shoba’s previous Lounge columns
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