City Resource Forum, July 2022

City Resource Forum Bengaluru Meeting 1

SummaryThe first meeting of the City Resource Forum (CRF), Bengaluru was held on 15th July 2022 at the Courtyard, Shanthi Nagar, Bengaluru and was attended by 23 members from 17 city organisations. The CRF is being set up by Gujarat Mahila Housing Sewa Trust (MHT) supported by Integrated Design (INDÉ) and was conceived as a part of the Fair Urban Transitions programme (FUT) funded by Porticus. The CRF is envisaged to be a coalition of diverse stakeholders working at the intersection of climate change, urbanisation and informality. As an initial step towards setting up the CRF, members from 23 organisations were invited to be a part of the first meeting.

The objective of this meeting was to launch the CRF and deliberate further on the focus and organisation of the forum. The meeting commenced with short presentations by MHT and INDÉ on the coalition vision, proposed design and structure, and emerging learnings from the field (selected informal settlements). This was ensued by an open discussion between all attending members.

The initial dialogue saw member organisations talk about their past, present, and plans for the future, with a few invitees foregrounding thematic areas of their interest. What emerged from this initial discussion was the identification of synergies, possibilities of co-learning and collaboration, and the potential of the CRF to emerge as a meaningful force that can work for the city. The discussion reiterated the need for amplifying and building on each other’s strengths to ensure holistic city level impacts. The discussion also put forth pertinent points for further deliberation, key among them being- potential ways in which the CRF can be more representative of the urban poor and how it can evolve into a channel to raise and amplify their voices, what could be potential advocacy efforts that can enhance the role of ward committees, etc.

The meeting ended with a note from MHT encouraging present members to own and drive the CRF and suggest thematic steering groups that they would be interested to anchor or be a part of. While naming the CRF and defining the CRF principles were also agenda items, these were suggested to be taken up in a subsequent online or offline engagement.

Addressing climate change is an urgent agenda for cities, not only in India, but world over. Evidence from across the globe has shown not just how cities are at the forefront of climate change impacts, but also how these impacts are felt disproportionately by the urban poor. The inherent socio-economic deprivation of this populace is intensifying their climate change vulnerability.

Fair Urban Transition (FUT) Programme (part of the Porticus Purposeful Transition Portfolio) focuses on partnerships that promote inclusive and fair climate action in cities around the world, with a particular focus on Madrid and Bengaluru. Key to the programme is working with citizens and grassroots organizations to ensure that policies are developed fairly and inclusively and that they lead to a fairer transition.

The partners of the FUT in Bengaluru are Purpose, Restless Development, and Mahila Housing Trust (supported by Integrated Design).

In Bengaluru, nearly 40% of the population reside in slums, a third of which are in environmentally sensitive areas. The FUT programme, through ground up initiatives aspires to foreground the vulnerabilities of some of these slums and amplify their voices during policy and plan development. To this end, grassroot initiatives by the Mahila Housing Trust are underway to build community led resilience action plans in selected urban poor settlements in the city. The program also aspires to build a City Resource Forum (CRF) which can evolve as a bridge between the community and governments.

About the CRF

The CRF is envisaged to be a coalition of diverse stakeholders working on and impacted by climate change, urbanisation, and informality. The CRF will include community members, political representatives, city administrators, service providers, technical experts, CBOs, and NGOs.

The CRF will act as a bridge between the city and its stakeholders on one hand, and the bureaucracy / state government on the other.

The larger objective of the CRF will be to amplify the voices of urban poor, especially women, in the current context of climate change and urbanisation induced vulnerabilities, and to nudge their inclusion in the city’s larger development goals by co creating advocacy tools and potential solutions.

As a step towards achieving its vision, the CRF will leverage the present interest around ward committees in the city. While the ward committees are currently a platform for raising grievances and issues at the ward level, it’s potential in decentralised planning and management has been well established.

Purpose of the 1st meeting

The purpose of the first in person meeting was to launch the CRF and bring together important city stakeholders to discuss and debate on the broad directions that the Forum would take going forward. The discussions were initiated by INDÉ and MHT teams who presented the vision and broad structure of the CRF as work in progress.

Participants

Sudhira H.S, Gubbi Labs

Shrimoyee Bhattacharya, WRI India

Smriti Tiwari, Socratus Foundation Bhargavi N., Socratus Foundation

Ajay Raghavan, Initiative for Climate Action Subbaiah, Urban Morph Ankit Bhargava, Sensing Local Harish Hande, Selco Foundation

Nirmita Chandrashekar, Selco Foundation

Geethu Thomas, Selco Foundation

Priya Varadarajan, Durga Kathyayini Chamaraj, CIVIC Bhavani M., CIVIC Ravikumar S., Full Circle

Gayathri Vasudevan, LabourNet

P. Lakshapathi, Association for Promoting Social Action (APSA)

P. Hegde, Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR)

Tara Krishnaswamy, Political Shakti Dhriti S. , Janaagraha N. P. Samy, KKNSS Leelavathi S., KKNSS Nalini Shekhar, Hasiru Dala Akbar. A , Hasiru Dala Bijal Brahmbhatt, MHT Konica Udhani, MHT Revathi A., MHT Nikita Pathak, MHT Shalini B., MHT Sri Lakshmi, MHT Megala, MHT Siraz Hirani, MHT Palas Sharangi, MHT Chirayu Brahmbhatt, MHT Gayathri M., INDÉ Anushri, INDÉ

Outcomes

Build on Existing Strengths

The initial discussions foregrounded the diverse and dynamic work happening in Bengaluru. A definitive reflection from these discussions was the need for the CRF to find synergies between various initiatives, build upon existing work, mine pre-existing knowledge and funnel this knowledge for future use. Towards this, it was suggested to look at various organisations working in each ward and bring their knowledge together. What also emerged was the need to map the diverse work and activities happening in the city, find synergies and co-learn. This alignment amongst CRF members will help it become a meaningful force working for the city; seeking funds and grants can also happen in a much more coherent way if this is done.

The Need to Come Together

Following the need to build on existing strengths as stressed by multiple CRF members, another deliberation point that emerged was the need for organisations to come together as a cohesive force for the city rather than working on piece meal initiatives. An interesting suggestion was to collectively chalk out a comprehensive plan for the city, say for 2030, along with the requisite funding to operationalise this plan and then approach funding organisations, government, philanthropies, etc. as a collective. A seamless integration between various scales/stages like policy formulation, resource mobilisation, designing, implementation, monitoring, feedback and so on (and the organisations working on these) can only ensure the much-needed impact at the city level.

A point reiterated during the dialogue was the need to make the CRF more representative of urban poor. While this is only first of the many CRF meetings, there is a need to expand further and include organisations and agencies working with the urban poor in the city. Other than ward committees, which are representative of the voices of urban poor, there are many other forums that we need to explore and understand. Even within the urban poor, voices of women, children, and disabled need to be foregrounded.

Represent Voices of the Poor

Potential Advocacy Areas

Some of potential areas that were suggested for advocacy during the meeting are listed below.

Governance

• Carry out advocacy measures to make the membership to ward committees more democratic.

• Push to elaborate and detail out the specifics of the ‘ward development scheme’ and ‘ward development plans’ as mentioned in the BBMP Act.

• As part of an initiative by CIVIC and other organisations, a Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) for a Ward Disaster Management Plan was prepared, submitted, and approved by the GoK The CRF could advocate for carrying out the training and capacity development of the disaster management cell as outlined in the SoP

• Push for the need for affordable rental housing in the city. A government order which directs the creation of migrant working colonies in each ward already exists. The CRF could advocate for its operationalisation in the city.

Data and Technology

• Push for a coherent database to visibilise and regularly update ward data.

• Work towards developing innovative technologies for the poor that can enable inclusiveness by sharing information about ward committees. A platform that can disseminate information for the poor and at the same time serve to raising community demands was envisaged.

• Push for technology solutions that can help to improve access to services (like energy and water) and address climate change and urbanisation induced challenges-especially flooding.

Gender

There is a need to advocate for embedding gender and disabilities in city design. A database of not just their needs and issues, but also their vision and aspirations would be very interesting. This could help in understanding what is functionally required.

Alignments

• Forums like Namma Jagali where the community themselves represent their concerns and decide on the development that needs to happen. Capacity building and training has been carried out (by Hasirudala) to empower them along these lines.

• Namma Ward, Namma Dhwani initiative (by Socratus) which tries to understand the lived experiences of urban poor communities on the ground and what is it that they want to see in the future.

• The Initiative for Climate Action has carried out an extensive mapping of organisations and how they are interconnected in the city as a part of understanding what would be required if we must build city level resilience ground up.

“Bringing a gender lens when we design city spaces is very critical because marginalisation is not just economics, but its gender as well, and it really matters….we need to factor in spaces for everyone including women and disabled ”

-Priya Varadarajan Durga

“If we want the CRF to be representative of the urban poor, we have to be very cautious of where and how we are going to do the CRF meetings…..these meetings should reflect their agenda rather than our agenda”

-Nalini Shekar Hasiru Dala

“In addition to gender and disability, it is important to foreground the voices of children in city development …..the CRF should become a platform for voicing the concerns of the many existing women collectives (garment works, domestic workers, informal workers etc.) in the city “

-Lakshapathy APSA

“Ward committees are a genuine and a reasonable source of voices of the urban poor…however they may not be a sufficient source…and the CRF should look at mining that source because it is systemic and backed by bye laws”

-Tara Krishnaswamy Political Shakti

“Ward committees are still in a state of becoming…. what we are doing as a part of the CRF should be extensions of the work that is already happening”

-Ankit Bhargava Sensing Local

“Lots of wonderful work happening in the city, but we’re all working in siloes, we need to make our work in the city a little bit more focused and look at the city as a whole”

-Ajay Raghavan Initiative for Climate Action

“The people, urban poor, are dynamic, and so are their needs- new interventions and innovations hence become necessary”

-Pakkirisamy KKNSS

“We,

“Climate change challenges are exacerbated because of the way habitats are built in urban poor settlements ….we need to appropriate technologies and innovations for these urban poor communities.

–

“This Forum would be very useful in pushing for advocacy measures related to making membership to ward committees more democratic and making a cohesive and continuously updated ward database that can be used by all departments”

-Kathyayini Chamaraj CIVIC

“Gauging the scale of the climate change impacts become difficult without the experiential and intersectional data coming from the ground……What would be interesting to see is an outcome matrix for the CRF, what would success look like in a few years.”

-Shrimoyee Bhattacharya World Resources Institute

“We need technology solutions that can foreground urban poor voices”

– Subbaiah Urban Morph

the development sector, are extremely fragmented .....we need to come together as a collective force and work for the city”

-Harish Hande Selco Foundation

Nirmita Chandrashekar Selco Foundation

Way Forward

The key message that arose from the first CRF meeting was the need to build on existing strengths and work as a collective force for transforming the city. It was agreed that the CRF, as a collective of city organisations and individuals, will have the power to push for systemic change in the city. To achieve this goal, there is a need for the CRF to come out with a city vision which is reflective of the needs and aspirations of the poor.

Though the CRF was conceived as a part of the Porticus project, the organisers asserted that it will not be a funder driven forum but will be one that is owned, run, and managed by the CRF members themselves. It was also asserted that the CRF will remain an open coalition and will bring in more members- especially the youth and the CBOs who work directly with the urban poor. It was decided that the subsequent meeting will discuss and refine the broad structure and functioning of the CRF. The meeting ended with a note from MHT encouraging members to suggest thematic steering groups that they would be interested to anchor or be a part of. While naming the CRF and defining the CRF principles were also agenda items, this was suggested to be taken up in a subsequent online or offline engagement.

Going forward, the CRF will discuss and deliberate on tangible pathways to integrate the voices of the urban poor in ward committees (short term action agenda). The CRF is also envisaged to evolve into a platform for policy debates and deliberations around relevant thematic areas.