Dear Shri Minister Saab

1. I read your thoughtful “Idea Exchange” conversation in the Indian Express of 10^th December 2017 (“The mind-set of the urban planner in India is in the bullock cart age. We need to change that”). Realising that you come from a non-political background, a stint with the UN system, and reading some fresh ideas and perspectives from your piece I thought of engaging with you through a number of letters on (a) India’s urban challenge and response to it (we are evidently off the track, notwithstanding the new initiatives (b) slum strategy for the country (workable strategies we are not prepared to accept; yes, the cities without slums is doable, if we do what is needed to be done) (c) affordable housing ( why it is not clicking despite incentives, supports and open invitation to the private players ) (d) institutional restructuring for an effective response ( you and everyone knows how inadequate and ill equipped it is to do justice to the overall urban challenge, as well as even the manageable sectorial challenges ) (e) partnerships with the non-state actors at all levels and for different tasks (talent, experience and professional skills outside the formal system deserve a place in the solution finding process and a trustful engagement ), and (f) strengthening the Smart Cities and Housing for All programs ( I will share design of the former soon ) . I was keen on catching you while you were fresh, open, inclined to listen and learn, receptive and in a searching mind space.

2. Unfortunately, before I could start ... over three weeks. Both the piled up work and other commitments have come in the way of getting started on the ambitious task.

3. I, however, saw an opportunity to get started, even if inadequately, when someone sent me the enclosed 3.5-minute video clip on a Mumbai slum. Instead of writing you a long piece on the slum strategy I decided to send you the clip with a brief commentary on the issue, the challenge, a possible approach and strategy.

4. Before you see it let me introduce myself. I am an architect from Ahmedabad, in “development” field for the past 50 years with some exposure and experience on all the above issues. Rural too.

 5. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that colouring walls of a slum settlement is a solution to the urban slum problem. I am saying please see what a small, even a marginal—but creative—intervention does to a slum community. Just hear what the residents—especially women—are saying. I will not be surprised if this slum is on the tourist map of Mumbai soon.

 6. The elements of the larger picture, as to how we tackle the slum problem, are there.

6.1 Do not bulldoze, do not evict, do not shun them as ugly eyesores. Do not see the residents as criminals or parasites. They are people like you and me. Hard working people. In fact, they run our laundry, clean our kitchen, supply us vegetables and allow us to bargain (a privilege we do not have with a Reliance Shop) and whether we like to admit it or not, build our cities.

6.2 Even if we do not see it that way, for a change, we should see it from their angle, their point of view. It might be our problem, but it—the slum—is their solution. Even if the slums are a municipal commissioner’s problem, they are the users’, the residents’ solution. They are not dirty. They are dirty because they do not have municipal services. Our bungalows costing crores will be equally dirty if the municipal services were missing. . Dirtiness is not their creation; it is the municipality’s.

6.3 The government cannot build millions of formal houses, even if it wishes to. If the PMAY shows slow progress despite incentives, supports and tax concessions, it is not only inefficiency or choked delivery system. It is inherent in the approach. It is trying to do what is difficult to do. Probably that is not the way to going about.

6.4 What the poor people, low-income people, are creating in our cities –slums—are not perfect solutions, they are not even solutions in our view. But houses they are, liveable they are, affordable they are (and if they were not affordable, the poor would not be living there). And therefore when we sit down to count the housing deficit in a city, we should not count them as non-houses, should not put those people in the “homeless” category and should not swell our housing deficit figures. We should put them in the category of deficient services—water supply and pavements and toilets. Build them. They will no longer be slums. Even charge them for the services. They will pay. In any case, they pay more for the water than you and I pay.

6.5 For the slum residents the” location” is the social and economic asset. In the name of giving them better houses, if you throw them 20 KMS away, that is not service. That is disservice. And how can we give them new houses where they live now, where they earn income and where they have their social networks? Land there is expensive. It has become FSI. It is already earmarked for some more ‘lucrative” use. Ask a slum dweller what is his /her priority? Seldom a new pucca house. It is job, income, location, water, and school for the children, a bus that allows them to carry their head load (potla). Though it is a cliché, it is not very wrong to say it is the politician, builder, and land mafia, the cement concrete lobby who wants formal houses more than the slum dwellers.

6.6 This is mass hosing—housing by the masses. They are building what they can and afford. We should start our intervention not with what they have but what they do not have and badly need. Houses they have. Services not. Give them services. Safe drinking water. Health. Other needed services. Create employment. They have built these houses on their own. They will improve them on their own too.

6.7 Also give them a secure tenure. Property rights to the lands they have built their houses on. Even if you do not want to do that, do whatever but somehow remove the fear of evictions from their minds and hearts. Evictions solve no problems. They destroy the poor’s meagre assets. Forced evictions, in their trail, live misery and suffering for the already suffering people. They create new orphans of the city society. They do not need new houses, which in any case we cannot build in the required numbers. Also not in the required size, as every second slum dwellers’ house is also a workshop or a workplace of some kind. Build a few formal houses for strategic decongestion of the slums, to create space for laying services and some open spaces.

6.8 The problem is us, not them .We want our Mumbai to be a Shanghai, our Chennai to be a Singapore. We need either to give up—or shelve for a while—that dream, aspiration and ambition. We need to think of better Mumbai, liveable Mumbai, inclusive Mumbai, Just Mumbai, and everybody’s Mumbai. Also Chennai.

6.9 This is mass housing and this is a way to reaching houses to the masses. Fast. Workable. Affordable to the people and the state.

6.10 Approaching that way, it will help. It will make the problem look solvable. Doing it any other way, it may not work—in our context, with our numbers, with our resource crunch and with other legitimate claimants to the resources.

6.11 This is not an argument against formal housing. This is an argument to make the houses “formal” in the way they have been created, in the way the low income can afford, and to spare the resources of the government to invest in improving their physical infrastructure, social services and income augmentation and generation.

6.12 Trust people. Trust their wanting to improve their lot. Trust their desire to give their children a better deal in life than they got. Believe in their aspiration for the social upward mobility. And trust in their judgement—and their compulsions—which has made them choose what they have, and taken a huge risk to become or seen as ‘illegal,” “unauthorised,” and “ encroacher”. They are seeking dignity, citizenship and future. I am not saying it is in a slum. It is in removing those conditionality that makes a place a slum.

6.13 Believe in their future, their ability for hard work. Believe in the growth story of this country. Growth if it is inclusive will percolate down; will reach these poor, low-income people. Their incomes will improve. They will be able to afford tomorrow what they do not today.

6.14 And trust the cities’ propensity and tendency for recycling, their transformative instinct. They will not remain “slummy” always. We have seen them improve and change dramatically before our own eyes. It is in their metabolism to change and become better, more beautiful. This is a transitional phase. Maybe 15 more years. In a hurry for more glamorous cities we cannot sacrifice a whole lot of people, cannot throw them out of sight (“site”), on the distant peripheries and retard their growth prospects. In our quest for more beautiful cities we cannot leave the poor, the less income people, behind. We have got to carry them along and make space and opportunity for them to catch up. And in any case, for the rich and the powerful there is no dearth of beauty even in the cities with slums or improved slums or slums that will improve over a time. Mumbai with more than half of its population in slums also has its beauty spots and glamour industry. They live side by side. If not in great harmony, in acceptable, workable accommodation.

6.15 This is not romanticism. This is realism. This is not keeping the poor in poverty or dirty hovels. This is improving their life, in an incremental and doable way. This is helping them improve their living conditions and acquire a new “social citizenship” in a manner that does not threaten their self- created assets, income, livelihood, social networks and locational advantage.

6.16 This is undoubtedly a part solution, not a full solution, not the best solution, not the final solution. It is an interim but a workable, affordable, do-able solution. People’s solution. A development where people matter. Development where community plays a role in finding a solution. Development with partnership where a part of the act is performed by the people proactively and the other part—the land title and the services part –is required form the state. This is inclusive development, development with a human face. This is a bottom up perspective on affordable housing, on city development, on urban development, on inclusive development and on development that is caring, compassionate, sensitive and sustainable—where people are in the centre of the process. It is development without destruction.

6.17 If this sounds rhetorical—not a word is wrong, Sir—I have a 15 point formula that will restate this case with the figures and arguments. But that becomes long and the ministers and the secretaries cannot find that kind of time. In the past I have written a lot on many subjects. It is ready to be shared any day you like.

6.18 Also there is very little that is new in this. The world knows it. UN Habitat and others have spent decades canvassing this strategy. Networks like ACHR and SDI have spent 20/30 years demonstrating it. As we all know it is a mind-set issue too. We need to change the vantage point. Bottom up has to be more than a slogan. The problem is to be seen as a solution. People as a resource. And the city must become everyone’s.

This is for you, Sir, the Ministry and the government to consider.

Hope it is possible to see you some time to discuss this further in greater detail. I am in Delhi on 1^st February for a meeting in the Ministry itself. It is too short a notice to get an appointment.

But it will be a favour if it is possible.

I promise to keep you posted on the above themes in the coming weeks and months.

Warm regards
Kirtee Shah
President, Habitat Forum (INHAF)
Hon. Director, Ahmedabad Study Action Group (ASAG)
Chairman, KSA Design Planning Services Pvt. Ltd.
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