City

New approach to mapping slum promises progress

Study by city organisation Shelter Associates shows the way to slum’s future, now PMC needs to take note

Shweta Kapur

Posted On Friday, April 09, 2010 at 01:07:41 AM

A concept plan of the relocated housing proposed by the study

With the economy is looking up this year, and a semblance of the boom that looked so promising two years ago looking like its making a reappearance, the village-to-city exodus continues unabated.

However, lack of infrastructure and planning to deal with this influx is also increasing slum pockets, densities within slums, degradation of standards of living, and other associated urban problems.

Despite several government schemes to solve this problem, including the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), the lot of the slum dweller remains a hard one.

However, there appears to be hope for at least the Sangli slum-dwellers. Shelter Associates, a Pune-based organisation in association with ‘Baandhani’ (an association of slum dwellers) has stepped in with a project that aims to provide data that would contribute to systematic housing for the poor.

This project is being carried out with the co-operation of the Sangli-Miraj and Kupwad City Municipal Corporation (SMKMC).

The project, received Central Government sanction in early 2009 and an overall funding of Rs 95 crores is targeting rehabilitation for 31 slums which comprise half the slum population of Sangli. , and is all set to award the contract to the developers who have won the bids.

"What is noteworthy about this project is that it takes a city-wide approach, which is a more comprehensive way of dealing with the issue than individual rehabilitations," says Pratima Joshi, director, Shelter Associates

The approach looks to efficiently integrate existing slums on government land around the city which needed to be relocated as they had other reservations or were hugging roads that needed to be widened, into fixed pockets.

This was, made possible by better management of resources and well-planned layouts. This challenges traditional "rehabilitations" which often tend to be a haphazard conversion of kuchcha to towering pukka houses, with limited regard for density and other infrastructure issues, or relocations to remote parts of the city.

Sangeeta More, a resident of the Sangalwadi slum, agrees. "Relocations often mean we are thrown into the outskirts of the city, like scrap. We were surprised that under this project, we would not be moving very far from our current locations."

22 slums are to be relocated within a 2-2.5 km radius of their present location, under the Integrated Housing and Slum Development Programme (IHSDP) - a part of the JNNURM, with Shelter Associates as consultants. Politically, too, the project has met with approval.

Says Joshi, "The political administration as well as the SMKMC have been very cooperative and visionary when it comes to this issue."

"It’s only when you are ready to pioneer some changes that you can expect long-term gains out of it," says Jayant Patil, state Rural Development Minister and NCP leader.

This initiative started a decade ago, aided by the Geographic Information Systems or GIS mapping after the launch of Google Earth, which provided a good base on which all the mapping information could be superimposed.

In fact, Shelter Associates was nominated in December 2009 as one of the global "Google Earth Heroes" individuals or organizations that have used Google’s mapping and data integration facilities to make a positive difference.

Since 1994, Shelter Associates has been collecting data, visiting slums and compiling resources, which, after integration with Google Maps, forms an intensive slum directory for the Pune and Sangli areas.

The study was completed in 2001. Attempts to get the Pune Municipal Corporation to channel this information into substantive projects has met with little success.

For Pune, a much bigger metro, the issue is more complicated. "A city-wide approach would involve integrating slum rehabilitation on private and government land.

However, I see ample scope for this with a judicious combination of the SRA and JNNURM schemes", says Joshi.

According to estimates, a whopping 50 per cent of the Pune population resides in slums. Deputy Municipal Commissioner (Slums) Laxman Damse says,"We had worked with Shelter Associates in 1999-2000, but certain problems caused this association to be broken.

Nevertheless, if they approach us with an up-to-date proposal, we are willing to take it into consideration."

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