The National Advisory Council recently issued recommendations for changes to the Rajiv Awas Yojana, the slum-free cities program that the Congress government has been talking about since they were elected. The program has so far only been enacted as a pilot in certain cities, but it looks like the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation is gearing up for a larger scale project.

To my eyes, the design of the Rajiv Awas Yojana had left something to be desired. The danger in a program designed to create “slum-free cities” is that in practice, it would result in the widespread displacement of slums to the city’s outskirts rather than the accommodation of slum-dwellers in better quality homes with access to services within the city. There did not seem to be enough safeguards in the RAY against this happening. The NAC’s critiques address this issue and many others as well.

What are the NAC’s primary gripes with the current structure of the RAY? Firstly, they argue that the RAY’s definition of slums excludes many in the urban poor living in informal settlements. These include the “ultra-poor”: homeless people, people who live on the pavements, parks, vacant lands, and waste dumps, construction workers, and domestic workers who live in their employers’ houses. The NAC also argues that the definition of a slum used in the RAY, which requires any settlement of at least 20 households to be counted as a slum, leaves out the poor scattered in the city in smaller settlements who are usually the most vulnerable among slum dwellers. The NAC also notes that in some states, the RAY only covers those in notified slums, even though in cities like Chennai, new slums have not been recognized for decades. This has happened despite the RAY’s explicit focus on breaking down barriers between recognized and unrecognized slums.

Secondly, the NAC is concerned with increasing the transparency of the processes under the RAY and increasing citizen participation. The report argues that mapping and survey processes to determine the locations of eligible residents need to be widely publicized, and should be conducted by the Collector along with slum-dwellers and students (in Chennai, the Slum Board is using a consultant for this). The NAC also states that there needs to be an appeals process so that individuals and settlements that have been left out can appeal to be included. The current structure of the RAY leaves it up to cities to decide whether slum locations are tenable or not, or whether slums need to be relocated. The NAC suggests that decisions about tenability need to be taken through a specified process, and suggests that a committee with the Collector, officials, and slum-dwellers be formed to take decisions on tenability.

They also argue that the spaces for community participation currently built into the RAY are “rather passive,” and suggest changes to make community participation central to the scheme. These include making sure that community consultations are mandatory to all stages of RAY, from mapping to design to settlement. To ensure that community participation is not merely tokenistic, they say that the link between community participation and decision making needs to be clearly delineated and that successive disbursements of funds from the government should be premised on adequate participation. They also outline ways in which the capacities and responsibilities of CBOs in cities can be enhanced and institutionalized through the RAY, to further improve participation in the future.

Thirdly, the NAC is concerned with preventing current and future displacement of slums as much as possible. The RAY guidelines emphasize in-situ redevelopment, but the program does not have any incentives or structures in place to minimize slum relocation. Unfortunately, in most cities, eviction of slums and relocation to the outskirts – if they’re lucky! – has been the standard practice. And according to the NAC, the early test runs of the RAY have seen more of the same happening.

So how can RAY be restructured to prevent this from happening? Part of the problem will be addressed if procedures to decide whether slum-land is “tenable” or “viable” for in-situ redevelopment become less arbitrary and more transparent, which I discussed above. The NAC report also says that resettlement sites need to be selected and houses designed in consultation with residents. The NAC also suggests that for slum-dwellers on tenable land, full property rights should be granted to the individual, and the question of whether their title should be for the land or for the house should be left to the slum community as a whole to decide upon.

But the recommendations also look to the future – the report states that the RAY should reserve 25 to 40% of the land in the city for housing the urban poor. This seems like an awful lot of land, and unrealistic, especially given that slums occupy such a miniscule percentage of city lands now. Regardless, the NAC’s recommendations would go a long way towards rectifying some of the dangers of the RAY in its current form.

- Nithya V Raman

In one of the earlier posts titled “Chennai Metro Rail: Is it the best solution to the city’s increasing traffic problem“, we had listed out a few concerns that CMRL would have to address in order to ease traffic congestion. Now, a new problem that has emerged is the acquisition of land. The Hindu reports that 30 hectares of land allocated to the CMRL for building the train depot at Koyembedu might not be sufficient. The design of the depot requires additional 5.5 hectares and sources state that  25 shops might be displaced in the process while 100 other shops will face inconvenience.

Other problems that the metro is likely to face in the future are the high operation/maintenance costs and high electricity bills. There is already a wide gap between the projected demand and current supply of electricity in Chennai and with the advent of metro, the rising deficits will inevitably be borne by the poor and marginalised sections of the society. Read article…

——

Roshan Toshniwal

I recently started working on an urban poverty scoping exercise with a representative from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As part of this project, I have had the opportunity to meet with many urban planners, government officials, academics and civil society workers all over the country. I have learned a great deal about the obstacles in providing basic services to the urban poor. The common woe amongst all stakeholders that I have spoken to remains the lack of capacity required to dispatch services in an effective manner. Thus, when I asked these stakeholders which area under poverty alleviation requires intervention, many pointed out that a focus on capacity-building could help make poverty reduction programs efficient and targeted to achieve more success in shorter periods of time.

The 74th Constitutional Amendment mandates the local government with the responsibility of urban poverty alleviation. However, many municipal governments have shown incompetence in utilizing funds appropriately. Mr. Ajay Suri, Regional Advisor for Cities Alliance, stressed that municipalities are starved for skilled urban planners, economists, statisticians, researchers, designers and architects to take on the role of urban development. While money is abundant, the technical assistance required to implement projects and disseminate funds are not available, due to which poverty alleviation programs, such as Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP, under JnNURM), do not always achieve their goals. A recent article in the Indian Express stated that The Intergrated Housing and Slum Development Program, which is another sub-mission under JnNURM, has utilized less that 50% of its allocated funds on projects. According to housing minister Kumari Selja, one of the reasons for under-utilization of funds was lack of capacity of local bodies to implement projects.

Over the past year, the GoI has established five new urban institutes in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Chattisgargh. These institutes are intended to be the training grounds for new generations of urban planners, research organizations, and consultancies that provide technical assistance to cities. Unfortunately, working for the municipal government is not looked upon as an attractive profession. Furthermore, organizations such as the National Institute of Urban Affairs struggle with retaining young professionals due to the diverse and attractive employment opportunities that they are presented with. There is dire need for experts in municipal governments, without whom no amount of money or schemes can fully achieve success.

Vaishnavi Narasimhan