Co-operative Housing in India: study of cases in Mumbai and Nagpur CASE STUDIES IN URBAN PLANNING AND DESIGN
Divya Chand MASTER IN URBAN STUDIES
Introduction Unlike top-down management and ownership approaches, cooperatives are peoplecentered enterprises. They are generally owned, controlled and run by and for their members to realize their common economic, social, and cultural interests and aspirations. All members are equal, and decisions are made in a democratic way, usually by the 'one member, one vote' rule. In cooperatives, members share equal voting rights irrespective of the amount of capital they put into the initiative. The Statement on the Cooperative Identity states that a cooperative is an “autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.� (International Cooperative Alliance, 1995) Housing cooperatives exist around the world in many different formats. Generally, in Europe and North America, co-operative housing indicates collective legal ownership of the building and land of a housing estate. While each member owns shares in the cooperative, they have occupancy rights to just their units. This is different from common apartment or condominium ownership in a private apartment, where each household owns their housing unit, and has undivided rights to common property. An archetypical co-operative housing society is a co-housing settlement, where families live together, and decisions are made as a group. All the involved households may share common basic amenities like water, electricity, sanitation, recreational spaces and services and celebrate various events together. They are managed by paid/honorary staff and an elected board of directors. While the above model is the most common one, variations exist depending on statedriven policies, local cultures and market dynamics. The following paper covers in brief the evolution of co-operative housing policy in India. This is followed by the study of two cases of Cooperative housing societies, in the suburbs of Mumbai and one in the city of Nagpur, both initiated around the late 1960s and early 1970s and persistent to this day. The cases study how these initiatives came about, and how the spatial formation and institutional models have affected the lives of the residents in these housing complexes, through the decades. It is important to note, as mentioned above, that Housing cooperatives in India are not solely for collective ownership. They can be designed to perform several functions. It is therefore impossible to draw conclusions about the larger policy practice from any particular cases. Hence, the aim of this text is to not do that, but just to locate the stories of these housing communities in the larger context.
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Evolution of co-operative housing policy in India In India, the first Co-operative Societies Act was adopted in 1904 by the British primarily to improve access to rural credit for small-scale farmers. The following years saw amendments to include housing and its administration and founding of the country’s first housing cooperative in 1909 in Bangalore. In 1913, the Bombay Co-operative Housing Association was set up as a non-official body, pioneering the propagation of co-operative housing. The association developed model bylaws to be used in the organisation of several housing co-operatives and enabled financial participation of the state in the affairs of housing co-operatives. India gained independence from its British colonisers in 1947. The new government supported the growth of co-operatives envisioning them as “a part of the paradigm of democratic socialism�, although it remained marginal. In 1964, the Report of the Working Group on Housing Co-operatives was released, and it stated that housing co-operatives are the best means to provide decent houses at affordable prices for lower-income groups. This led to the foundation of the National Co-operative Housing Federation of India in 1969. The federation provided financial assistance, guidance on technical matters, and assistance in the general co-ordination and supervision of building activities to the cooperatives. Considerable progress was since made in the co-operative housing sector as the national and regional governments explicitly invested in these means to improve the economic conditions of the people. Co-operative Acts and Rules were extended and adopted in all the regional states facilitating the registration of housing co-operatives. (Moreau, Pittini, Cameron, Thorogood, & Wood, 2012) Over the decades, the state investment in housing has actually gone down as it adopts the enabling model, encouraging private and third-sector initiatives in housing provision. This is another reason why in five decades, the co-operative housing movement in India has grown to 100,000 when compared to a mere 5,564 housing co-operatives at the beginning of 1960. Housing co-operatives in India now flaunt a membership of about 7 million people. Over the years, the co-operative housing sector has gained credibility and is trusted as an able entity to provide adequate solutions to the housing challenges in the country. Beyond the initial state supported housing co-ops built in the late 20th century, the co-operative housing sector today thrives where private developers are not willing to intervene. This includes slum improvement, affordable housing for low income groups and rural settings. Housing co-operatives in all segments of the population have the benefit of preferential allotment of land and house sites, convenient availability of financing and by gradually removing legal and technical limitations, asper the National Housing Policy. The types of housing co-operatives that exist in India are Tenure, Finance and Building cooperatives. Tenure co-operatives are Tenant Ownership Housing Societies (members lease the land from society and own their houses) or Tenant Co-Partnership Housing
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Societies (societies hold both land and building, members pay rent for occupancy rights). Housing finance cooperatives are Housing Mortgage Societies (credit societies which lend money to members for construction of houses). Building co-operatives are House Construction Societies or House Building Societies (societies construct housing for their members, but they may also be involved in land development). The secondary cooperatives, called Apex co-operatives, support primary co-operatives financially. They borrow money from various sources (e.g. Life Insurance Corporation, co-operative banks, etc.) and lend on the pooled money to primary co-operatives (Ganpati, 2008). These loans can be obtained form the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), the National Housing Bank (NHB), the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), commercial and co-operative banks. These are gradually paid off through members’ shares and the society’s savings and sometimes through external assistance from federations or other financial institutions (Moreau et al., 2012).
Co-operative housing societies in Suburban Mumbai After Independence in 1947, Tenure co-operatives grew to gain much significance in Mumbai (Ganapati, 2008). In the 1960s and 70s, building apartment housing by consolidating resources based on shared caste or occupational identities in Suburban Mumbai neighbourhoods like Borivali became one of the formal frameworks to create affordable housing. Members of particular communities resorted to collaborating with each other to assemble land, resources, skill sets, technology and the gumption to build these buildings. The urban form that cooperative housing societies enabled was pivoted around the collective ownership of land and decision making by the members of the cooperative. The urban life that this cooperative housing society created, had a degree of homogeneity for its resident members given the separation from its immediate environment or surroundings in the city and yet, it wasn’t watertight. The case that follows is a set of housing created in Borivali. Dr. Balwant Patil set up a large private layout of cooperative societies with 32 buildings split into five societies called Govind Nagar on Sodawala lane, with funds allocated by the Maharashtra Federation of Cooperative Housing Societies. Dr. Balwant Patil was a doctor who had a successful medical practice in Mumbai. When built, the cooperative societies were meant for teachers and professors coming to the city to take up jobs from the hometown of Dr. Patil. The land previously was under cultivation, had several ponds and muddy marshy areas and was owned by villagers. An estate agent was involved in buying the land from the villagers, PAGE 3
consolidating and assembling it. Dr. Balwant Patil’s role was that of preparing the groundwork for a CHS to be built, he didn’t actually build or change anything physically on the assembled plot of land. He assembled land, converted it to non-agricultural, got a drawing of the layout prepared by architect SH Godbole and found the initial members of the cooperative. Once the land was transferred in the name of the society, contractors were hired, and the buildings were built. After a society is registered, members organise a general body meeting and elect a Secretary and committee members. The initial members that form the general body are also called founding members. These people then manage the smooth functioning of the cooperative housing society.
Figure 1: Govind Nagar Layout Plan made by architect SH Godbole (Source: Shree Mohan Society office, xerox plan)
Initially, Dr. Balwant Patil wanted to build all the thirty-two buildings as one large cooperative housing society. In 1964, he went to register the society with the Registrar of Cooperative Housing Societies, the registrar guided him that such a society would be too big and would become difficult to manage. Also, the way that the Federation disbursed the loan amount, the construction of the entire project could not begin simultaneously. He had to split the layout into five societies which were called, Govind, Mohan, Balwant, Jawahar and Rajendra. The residents did not participate in the design process or request changes in the design of their flats or buildings, the architect SH Godbole issued the drawings and the contractors built them. The architect decided the planning of the buildings, and the society just approved it. Those plans were then used to register each society with the Registrar of Cooperative Societies with at-least seven members. The initial members or founder members were the ones who formed the first committee of the cooperative housing society. There was no access road within the layout for
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connecting the inner societies and there wasn’t even Govind Nagar road. Being a private layout, it was expected of the societies to manage their own internal roads, sewerage and electricity infrastructure themselves. The managing committee of the CHS had to ensure that the construction was complete as well as manage the utility connections. Access roads were not built until 1981, more than a decade after people first came to live here.
Figure 2: Govind Nagar Layout Plan with highlighted agricultural plots and building plan of Shree Mohan Society (Source: Sharma, A., 2019)
The plot boundaries of the five societies were the same as the demarcations of the agricultural fields that were here before the buildings. No boundary walls were actually built on the site boundaries of the societies, and so it was not clear as to where the land of one society ends and another one starts. The architect SH Godbole had designed the site plan for the buildings to fit well inside their respective plot boundaries with respect to the development control regulations set up by the town planning department at the time. The angles at which these buildings stand, their orientations are all dependent on fitting them on the site with the correct setbacks and spaces between the buildings. This was one of the first few societies that took a loan from the Maharashtra Cooperative Housing Societies Federation. The residents were to pay 40% of the construction costs and the Federation gave the rest 60%. Co-op boards were formed for each of the 5 societies separately. In such plot owners’ societies, they were expected to buy land, hire the architect, get the plans approved, hire a contractor, get the building built, allocate the flats, everything themselves. This was the cooperative culture. Dr. Balwant Patil bought them the land, registered their cooperative housing society, got the plans made and PAGE 5
approved but after that it was up to the society itself. Dr. Balwant Patil initiated the project, did the groundwork for the buildings to be constructed and then handed it over to the cooperative housing societies. Roads leading to the societies only got built ten years after the residents first moved in 1981, with 50 per cent money put in by residents and 50 per cent by the Municipality. There is a constant negotiation with informal development around the societies, public infrastructure built by the state, and “private” property of the society till this day. The committee of a cooperative housing society needs to be vigilant and careful; handling demands and pressure by politicians and real estate developers. Whether by restricting the use of their open spaces for outsiders, through formal frameworks or through relationships with key officials and politicians, the built environment of the cooperative housing society got consolidated over the years. It is being shaped through the years as circumstances change, value of land increases, people’s stake, and aspirations change.
Figure 3: Shree Mohan Society, it’s neighbours and changes over the years, everything in red came or changed later (Source: Sharma, A., 2019)
All 5 housing societies, though built together, look different today. For example, in Shree Mohan Society in Govind Nagar, people have extended balconies and rooms for their own flats as the FSI increased. But, in the Yoganand Society, all the buildings look exactly the same because all the work is organized through the committee, and extension of the house to include the balcony inside was done for all the flats together 21 years ago. Whoever wanted it, had to pay extra for it, so only a couple of families who could not afford to pay let it be as it is.
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Figure 4: Different societies in Govind Nagar, Borivali (Source: Sharma, A., 2019)
When built and promoted in the 1960’s, these housing societies promised stability and security. This was facilitated by a deal to live among “your own kind of people”, having ownership through a society, good quality construction and affordable flats, some distance away from the rest of the city. This came with an automatic segregation based on class, religion and caste in the city, which persists to this day. The built environment reflects and reinforces the imbalances in the communities’ culture. Most women did not go out beyond their community even for work, became teachers within the society or took up organizing the cultural events or designing the society magazine or teaching in a school of their own community. All of this got reinforced through the built environment. Within the same community, ideas of shame, what is good and bad behaviors, expectations from each person and their roles seem more defined. The hierarchy and organisation of the already existing caste community gets transferred onto the formal framework of the institution of a cooperative housing society. The children of existing committee members organise events and therefore also get the experience to organise, manage money, and lead or run societies. The society committee or board is in charge of things like a system of wet waste management, bulk grocery buying, managing the accounts, depositing checks and making sure everybody is paying their dues, but also that of maintaining and collecting funds of a temple within the society. Since, their CHS has more than 200 members, they are supposed to have a committee of 17 members. Out of this, three seats are reserved for SC, ST and OBC members and two are reserved for women. The society effectively has twelve other members left. Since the composition of the society is homogeneous, upper caste Hindus, there are no members in the society for SC, ST or OBC and so those seats remain empty. This society had never had a woman member in its managing committee until the bylaws changed and made it mandatory. Previously, women participate in the activities of the cooperative housing society through an informal committee for the organisation of events. Now, as part of the official committee women members manage the parking problems and the leave and license(rent) issues.
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The Jeevan Jyoti Co-Operative Housing Society, Nagpur Much like in suburban Mumbai, a host of housing co-operative societies came up in the city of Nagpur in the 1960s and 70s. The Jeevan Jyoti Co-Operative Housing Society was one such society built in 1970. The promoter Dr. Gopichand T. Chand was a practicing physician and an agent of the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC). The LIC had policies at that time to aid loans to groups of individuals to set up housing cooperatives for low-middle income households. Dr. Chand motivated his friends, associates as well as his patients to come together and form the co-operative societies and got these registered for obtaining loan from this state government agency. The investment money of 6,11,000-00 was obtained as a loan from M/s. Maharashtra State Co-operative Housing Finance Corporation Bombay. The land was located on the edges of the city of Nagpur, close to the British cantonment and market area. Plots of land where the owners were willing to sell were bought by the societies The Jeevan Jyoti Co-Operative Housing Society was the first one and the ones that followed, within the next 5 years were also around the same area. The initial Society Committee consisted 11 members, all associates of Dr. Chand and of Sindhi origin, like himself. Located in the regional state of Maharashtra, Nagpur was a predominant Marathi city. The Sindhis though, are an Indo-Aryan ethno-linguistic group who speak the Sindhi language and are native to the Sindh province of Pakistan. After the partition of India in 1947, most Sindhi Hindus and Sindhi Sikhs migrated to the newly formed country of India and other parts of the world. The Sindhi population in Nagpur then lived in low-quality refugee settlements or inadequate rental housing. The formation of a cooperative society and moving into homeownership was a step into upward mobility and settling into their new homeland for the community. Even though the committee initially all belonged to the same community, the members of the society have always been a mixed demographic group. All the 32 apartments created for the Society were allotted together in 1970 and were occupied gradually over a period of 3-6 months. Jain & Associates Architects were hired to design and aid in construction.
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Figure 5: The layout plan prepared by Jain and Associates Architects in 1970 (Source: Jeevan Jyoti Society office, xerox plan)
The design adopted was modern, and the availability of land allowed for the provision of a large common garden and park space, surrounded by 8 buildings, with 4 apartments each, looking over the garden. These living arrangements were much cleaner, airier and well organized compared to the rented places where the members used to live earlier. Appreciated by all, similar schemes and designs were adopted for the following societies Dr. Chand initiated. Once built and apartments allotted, much like in Mumbai, the societies have been self-governing and managing the spaces for the past 50 years.
Figure 5: A view of the common garden from the House no. A1, belonging to Dr.Chand in 1970 (left) and 2020 (right) (Source: author’s family albums)
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The cooperative society committee, since its formation, has adopted model by-laws laid by the state as mentioned above. The committee is obligated to have 11 members. The loan taken from the state was fully paid off by 1993 by paying monthly instalments collected from all the members of society. Since then, all members own equal number of shares in the cooperative and have occupancy rights to the apartments. The Committee mostly is concerned with maintenance decisions and handling the transfers, nominations etc. Some land owned by the society has been informally occupied by low-income workers, some of who are domestic workers in the households of the members. This is ignored and tolerated. Any construction and modification in the garden, parking, common streets, garage space etc. is decided by the committee. If members decide to sell or move out, receiving any application for transfer of flat and receiving the transfer fee the managing committee must approve it and the transfer is affected and necessary changes made in the share certificate. The selling-price of the shares is individually negotiated, depending on the state of the house. Except for two apartments, all household over the year have constructed extra private spaces in extension to their homes, to the extent of 50-60% of original allocation. For any construction in the society’s premises, permission of the committee is required but it is no more being followed now. The households on the ground floors extend into the area around the house, and the ones of the first story usually build upstairs on the terrace or cover and incorporate balcony spaces into the home. This sometimes leads to tensions and negotiations amongst the members and are raised to the committee. The committee is elected 5 years, and now has an obligation to have a female member in it.
Figure 6: Members celebrating the festival of Holi together in 1971 (Source: author’s family albums)
The culture and working of the society have remained remarkably constant in the fastchanging urban context it is located in. Families of most of the initial members of the society continue to live there, even as some of the younger generations move out. This has partially been made possible through the option of incremental construction that allows for an upgrade in lifestyle without having to change location and retain the
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community lifestyle of a cooperative and spatial benefits of living within a gated colony, shared security-services, a safe park for children that one can look over from their home windows, community events and festivals and low cost of living. Most of the apartments are occupied by owners with only 10-15% rented out. The shared service charge for the common funds and services is only 1000Rs. /month.
Figure 7: Members celebrating the festival of Holi together in 2019 (Source: author’s family albums)
The area surrounding the colony has seen a major Real estate boom with the fresh construction of the city’s first metro line, a new flyover and a high-income, high rise apartment block towering up right next to the society. As the FSI and value of land has shot up manifolds in the neighborhood, a couple of members have aired their opinion that society should reconstruct the entire plot by approaching some developer who will construct additional flats, but the majority is not in favour of this disruption in their life. The committee meetings avoid the discussion of a future and as of now don’t have much contingency funds in case something comes up. Life goes on as usual in the society.
Figure 8: Highlighted Jeevan Jyoti society, with the new towering apartment complex to its east, and ongoing construction of the new overhead metro-line (Source: google earth)
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Discussion We see in the case how the institutional form of a cooperative housing society became the vehicle through which urban form and urban life shaped each other in Indian cities. The institutional form of a cooperative was possible to manoeuvre in ways that suited the people who were able to access housing through it. They were able to interpret it in ways that worked for them. The cooperative also became a tool through which urban land could be assembled and planned. The land parcel’s physical location, its ownership history, its economic promise, and yet undeveloped status, set up the opportunity for a cooperative to purchase it and build housing in suburban Mumbai. In Nagpur, it created enclaves of planned housing and community living amongst the informally developing context. The state led subsidies and loans became the catalysing force by which existing communities could legitimise their claim to the city by establishing a spatial presence in a collective and formal way. Through its standardized and formatted expected behaviour it brought with it a legitimacy to influence and convince people but also brought with it a whole range of processes and negotiations which had a strong role to play in its existence and stickiness as an institutional form for housing in Indian cities. Rao writes about how the communally specific co-operative housing society had its antecedents in the colonial state’s predilection for perceiving Indians as members of communities rather than as individuals. However, communally organised cooperatives were not a simple reflection of pre-existing communities. The cooperatives projected themselves as specifically modern institutions that offered individuals a path to affordable living in large, heterogeneous cities by using the ties of community to shelter from the ravages of the urban housing market. In this view, the opportunity to live in proximity to others of one’s own community (whether migrants, religious, castes, or teachers) was only a side benefit to the principal goal of securing affordable housing, ownership and belonging through the mechanism of the limited-equity co-operative society and its fixed monthly rents. (Rao, 2013) This reflection of India’s persistent past is interesting to compare to the recent (re)emergence of collaborative housing, such as co-housing, housing co-operatives and other forms of collective self-organised housing that many European countries are now experiencing (Czischke, 2017). In the current post-recession and austerity context, affordability and social inclusion feature as new driving forces besides quality of life aspects common to previous waves of these projects (e.g. environmental sustainability, design aspects and social contact, amongst others. Collective forms of housing flourish through high degrees of user participation, the establishment of reciprocal relationships, mutual help and solidarity, and different forms of crowd financing and management, amongst others. It is important to deliberate on socio-demographic groups that are vulnerable and could benefit from aid in such initiatives in our cities.
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Bibliography Czischke, D. (2017): Collaborative housing and housing providers: towards an analytical framework of multi-stakeholder collaboration in housing co-production, International Journal of Housing Policy, DOI: 10.1080/19491247.2017.1331593 Moreau, S., Pittini, A., Cameron, J., Thorogood, J., & Wood, D. (2012). Profiles of a movement: Co-operative housing around the world. London: ICA Housing. Ganapati, S. (2008). A Century of Differential Evolution of Housing Co-operatives in Mumbai and Chennai. Housing Studies, 23(3), 403-422. doi:10.1080/02673030802029982 Cooperative identity, values &; principles. (n.d.). Retrieved March, 2020, from https://www.ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity Rao , N.(2013) Community, Urban Citizenship and Housing in Bombay, ca. 1919–1980, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 36:3, 415-433, DOI: 10.1080/00856401.2013.829818 Sharma, A. (2019) Stories of Cooperative Housing Societies in Suburban Mumbai in 1960s to 70s, School of Environment and Architecture, Mumbai
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