Evidence informed policy recommendation for a social problem in India

APRIL 20, 2018

DO ALL SLUMS IN AHMEDABAD DESERVE FORMAL INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES?

FINAL TERM PAPER PP5228 EVIDENCE INFORMED POLICY DEVELOPMENT Body word count: 2104

MONJIMA SEN A0166467R Master of Urban Planning | Year 1 | AY 2017-18

Contents Table of Figures ........................................................................................................................................... 1 List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................... 1 Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... 2 Slums in India and Ahmedabad ................................................................................................................ 2 Discussion .................................................................................................................................................... 3 Study Process .............................................................................................................................................. 3 Findings from Existing Evidence ............................................................................................................... 4 Limitations of Evidence .............................................................................................................................. 4 Stakeholder Mapping.................................................................................................................................. 5 Policy Recommendation and Implementation......................................................................................... 5 Bibliography.................................................................................................................................................. 7

Table of Figures Figure 1: Ahmedabad, the case at hand, is a city in Gujarat, the western most state of India ...... 2

List of Abbreviations JNNURM – Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission ILCS – Integrated Low-Cost Sanitation Scheme RAH _ Residential Affordable Housing CBD – Central Business District NGO – Non-Governmental Organization WHO – World Health Organization AUDA – Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority AMC – Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation PPP – Public Private Partnership TDR – Transferable Development Rights SRS – Slum Rehabilitation Scheme CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility Page 1|7

Abstract By the year 2030, more than half of the total population of middle and low-income countries, combined, will reside in urban areas. This means, for a limited amount of resources, there will be a higher demand, which will lead to inequitable distribution of wealth and public services.

Whenever there has been a shortage of essentials in a community, the poor have suffered the most and have been ignored first. This paper explores the importance of recognising informal housing or ‘slums’ and the need to provide them with basic amenities, which they deserve as much as a formal community within an urban development. Using various research papers, newspaper articles, blogs and other evidences, arguments are formulated to prove that the poor deserve better urban services and living conditions even though they do not pay property tax.

Slums in India and Ahmedabad The Census of India (India C. o., 2011) defines slum as ‘residential areas where dwellings are unfit for human habitation by reasons of dilapidation, overcrowding, faulty arrangements and design of such buildings, narrowness or faulty arrangement of street, lack of ventilation, light, or sanitation facilities or any combination of these factors which are detrimental to the safety and health’.

India conducts Census survey every 10 years and until 2001, slums were not even recognised as a part of urban settlements. For a very long time, slums were not visible on Google maps and were solely depicted by marshy blank land where people, households and hutments existed in real life.

However, post release of Census 2011, slums have been recognised (largely the ones on state owned public land) and have been categorized into: 1. Notified 2. Classified and 3. Identified.

Figure 1: Ahmedabad, the case at hand, is a city in Gujarat, the western most state of India

Post the 74th constitutional amendment act, every municipal settlement in India was required to have a local government body and based on the 5-year plans in India, notified slums became entitled to various basic amenities provision and upliftment programs like JNNURM, ILCS (Alleviation, 2018) etc. However, only the notified slums are entitled to these and here in lies the problem.

Country’s leading newspaper Times of India (India T. o., 2016) reports that Gujarat ranks 3rd amongst states with the highest number of non-notified slums. Talking in numbers, the state consists of 10% of the total non-notified slums of the country which amounts to 0.28 million households. Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s economic capital city, has the second largest slum population in the state. All these evidences suggest that currently, even though slum betterment policies exist, it is not reaching to all the rightful owners.

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Discussion While researchers across sources favour providing amenities to slum dwellers, since they recognize the importance of basic amenities as a pre-requisite to dignified living (answering ‘is it worth it’), the style of implementation is of major concern and in focus of debate and discussion.

Saudamini Das, a researcher with the Institute of Economic Growth in New Delhi, points out how currently, the scheme of rehabilitating notified slum dwellers to the outskirts of the city (e.g. the RAH zone in the urban master plan of Ahmedabad 2021), with better housing and amenities, will do no good because living in the CBD is of prime importance to them. If they are shifted, it is highly likely that they will sell the property and come back to living in slums sooner or later (Kirk, 2017). Another shortcoming of the implementation currently is that not every slum dweller is entitled to land tenure which leads to insecurity in the form of unnotified eviction and lack of sense of ownership leading to carelessness and “not in my backyard” syndrome of dirtying the surroundings by dumping garbage.

Yet another side to the story (Marx, Stoker, & Suri, 2013) is when there no intervention by the government. Overcrowded slums with high population density (e.g. Abidjan slum in Zimbabwe has a population density of 34,000 people per square kilometre as opposed to Manhattan’s population density of 26,924 people per square kilometre) have proved to be breeding grounds for diseases. Another case is of poor water and sanitary access due to high demand low supply (e.g. Mumbai’s Shiva Shakti Nagar slum residents share one tap of water between 100 people) which points towards the urgent requirement of formal infrastructural services in every slum – notified or not.

Study Process Simple method of looking up previous studies on similar subjects was the route taken to gather evidence on how slums are being dealt with currently in India, what is going on in the slums with respect to provision of formal infrastructure service lines and how are the non-beneficiaries suffering. For the policy recommendations, conventional yet powerful steps are suggested based on evidence via secondary sources and primary personal experience of interning at a grassroots NGO in Ahmedabad, dealing with the same issues as the term paper.

Journal articles

Newspaper articles

World organization bulletins

Government websites

News websites

Evidence Policy recommendations

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Findings from Existing Evidence The case at hand is sensitive and political. While slums are, in a way, important to the politics of India since they are one of the major vote banks, slums are also a subject of dispute. This is because based on where they are located – private land, state owned public land, or public land owned by central government, their “rights” change under the upliftment programs mentioned previously. This leads to several issues.

In a bulletin published by WHO (Subbaraman & L Murthy), authors clearly state that “people living in non-notified settlements suffer from poorer access to piped water, latrines, electricity and public transportation when compared to notified slums; they also receive considerably less assistance from the government’s slum improvement schemes”. According to the piece, the problem is not limited to Indian slums but also in other countries such as Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria etc. It is disturbing to find that even when sound public health and economic reasons exist to support the advantage of providing municipal services to the slums, just the absence of being legally recognised acts as a barrier to basic rights for a dignified living.

The study illustrates a case of an unnotified slum in Mumbai called Kaula Bandar which was excluded from formal water supply services. This forced the dwellers to buy water from middle men at 40 times higher price than the price at which government provides water. Many residents of Kaula Bandar access less than 20 litres of water per person per day, which is below the minimum consumption level recommended by the World Health Organization for ensuring basic hygiene, particularly for women and children. However, after years of public interest litigation, in December 2014, the Bombay (Mumbai) High Court ordered the city government to extend access of Mumbai’s water supply to residents living in non-notified slums.

Another case of deprivation is presented in another study (Ritimo.org, 2014) which states that Indian Railways are the largest public-sector land owners in India and slum rehabilitation is the responsibility of state government. This makes the slum dwellers encroaching railway land ‘unnotified’ and hence ignored and not entitled to services. Numerous cases in states like Gujarat, Bihar, Jharkhand etc. are mentioned to talk about sudden evictions, pointing towards no chance of service provision. Not every case has a positive ending like the Mumbai example, as is clear.

Limitations of Evidence Amongst all the evidence and discussions mentioned so far, the following problems may persist: 1. Personal biases of the various authors, as they come from different walks of life. Everyone is trained in different fields and expertise and have commented on the issue since it is largely a social one.

2. Most of the evidence is specific to India, and while this might make it easier to answer the questions ‘can it work’ and ‘will it work here’, it might limit the opportunities of thinking outside the box. For example, a case from a favela in Brazil regarding a similar issue could have given an unconventional idea to resolve the issue.

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Stakeholder Mapping Central Government (CENSUS)

State government of Gujarat CEO of AUDA (metropolitan authority)

Urban planners and academics

Real estate developers

NGOs and activists

Chief Town Planner at AMC (urban local body) Civilians and beneficiaries

The chart above shows a power hierarchy and not so much the flow or chain of how the solution of providing formal infrastructure service lines, to the unidentified and needy, take place. A lot of stakeholders must play their part, hand-in-hand, to make the endeavour a successful one.

A major problem of organizations is India – in this case a combination of public, private and NGO domain, is that they do not cooperate, communicate and are not transparent with one another.

In an ideal scenario, the government would implement an upliftment policy post identification of the deserving party. It can define the formalities that have to be adhered to in order to receive the services. The contract could then be implemented in a PPP model where the local body works in partnership with private developers and the developers get benefit in return – either monetary or in terms of kind (e.g. private builders receive TDRs when they help redevelop slum housing under the SRS scheme).

The government and private developers, however, are lost unless grassroots organizations do not intervene, as they bridge the gap between the end users (slum dwellers) and the authorities. The deprived sections are often not trusting of the government’s intentions and revolt when suggested something, even if it is beneficial. They oppose change unless a reliable party is involved. NGOs help build capacity, mobilise communities and educate them about existing policies that can be reaped for their own benefit and betterment.

Policy Recommendation and Implementation 2021 Census of India is not far away (scheduled 2021). Now, is a good time for professionals engaged in urban governance and planning to intervene in the form of policy and recommendations/amendments to ensure the deprived and deserving are tended to. The next Master Plan of Ahmedabad city is ideal to see the policy recommendations come alive in the form of on ground infrastructure implementation.

Having worked with Mahila Housing SEWA Trust (MHT, 2018), an NGO consisting of only women, who help communities to reap the benefits of government policies in cities across India, there is a plan of action in mind that can be implemented to convince the government that all slums in Ahmedabad deserve basic infrastructural services and the implementation of the same is feasible. The phase/steps are as follows:

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1. Identifying all slums in 2021 Census count – be it on public, semi-public or private land and tagging them ‘notified’ i.e. eligible for water lines, electrical lines, sewerage pipelines and garbage collection. Identification criteria will be documents that act as proof of them residing in slums for at least a period of 2 years or more on a cut-off date. The document must be either any bill of existing connection of service (like water or electricity) or papers of property rights to the land (even though they do not own it), or a letter from their current employer stating their duration of stay in the city. If the screening is not strict enough, there can be mass immigration of rural population building ad hoc housing in urban slums to obtain basic services and settling in cities for good.

2. Accurate population and hutment count to determine the scale and magnitude of requirement and budget for implementation. Rigorous surveying on ground is key to this.

Outsourcing local survey to NGOs is the most effective in this case. Students from universities are another set of stakeholders who can be involved to bridge the gap.

3. Identifying and appointing slum representatives who are pro benefit of the slum (usually women are ideal for this post (Chandran, 2017)) to coordinate with NGOs and authorities to ensure smooth mobilisation and documentation process. This makes filing the case and screening procedures with AMC smoother and implementation can begin and end early.

4. An option of financing is partial community level fund generation as there are studies which say that ‘slum communities themselves are pivotal to improving their own living conditions’(Lucci, 2015). This might be because it gives them a larger sense of responsibility and ownership. Microfinancing and acquiring soft loans with the help of NGOs can play a crucial role in encouraging slum dwellers to raise money for the infrastructural services in their slums.

5. Partnering with private service providers (e.g. Torrent Power provides electricity inside AMC boundaries, Adani provides gas via pipelines to some areas of Ahmedabad etc.) for implementation is another option of financing the project in exchange of ease in private project implementation (in the form of subsidies) and recognition as CSR. 6. Lastly, due implementation with the help of engineers and other experts (levelling slums is a very important step to fitting pipelines and wires since Ahmedabad is a city where all service lines are underground, and most slums lie on originally marshy and low-lying areas including dried up lakes) in a swift and efficient manner. The implementation can be sewn into the ‘Town Planning Scheme’ style of master plan implementation in Ahmedabad.

Diligent follow up process with a strong grievance redressal mechanism in place is also key. Every citizen has equal rights to customer care related to public services - be it a businessman or a slum dweller. In the eyes of the government, all deserve to be treated the same.

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Bibliography Alleviation, M. o. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.india.gov.in/official-website-ministryhousing-and-urban-poverty-alleviation-0 India, C. o. (2011). Retrieved from censusindia.gov.in/2011-Documents/On_Slums2011Final.ppt India, T. o. (2016). Retrieved from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Gujaratranks-3rd-in-largest-non-notified-slums-list/articleshow/52309243.cms Kirk, M. (2017). Quartz India. Retrieved from https://qz.com/1003519/attached-bathsrunning-water-street-lights-what-indias-slumdwellers-seek-in-a-home/ Lucci, P. (2015). CityMetric. Retrieved from https://www.citymetric.com/politics/how-can-weimprove-living-conditions-slums-lessons-bangkok-lima-and-ahmedabad-1413 Marx, B., Stoker, T., & Suri, T. (2013). The Economics of Slums in the Developing World.

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 27(4), 187-210. Retrieved from http://economics.mit.edu/ MHT. (2018). Retrieved from http://mahilahousingtrust.org/

Ritimo.org. (2014). Retrieved from https://www.ritimo.org/Slum-Settlements-on-Railway-LandA-State-of-Denial-and-Deprivation Subbaraman, R., & L Murthy, S. (n.d.). WHO. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/93/11/15-155473/en/

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