| Impacting 
            Lifestyles through Improved Shelter 
            the Azadpura rural 
            housing programme-
 
            
            Richa Angirish and Geeta Vaidyanathan The 
            village Azadpura is located 11 kms from Jhansi and 2.5 kms from 
            TARAGram towards Orchha. It is a part of the Newari block of 
            Tikamgarh district in the state of Madhya Pradesh. It has a total 
            population of about 850, dominated by the Yadavs, Rajputs and the 
            Sahariyas (308 in nos, with 63 households). The main occupation of 
            the people in the village is agriculture and wage labour. The 
            village has a government primary school. For further education the 
            nearest higher secondary school is in Orchha. 
            The Sahariya community of Azadpura is partially 
            detached from the rest of the village. This settlement came up as a 
            government colony in the 1960s under Jawaharlal Nehru’s prime 
            ministership. The development plan incorporated the existing houses 
            with the internal street network, trees etc. Since then, no other 
            development had taken place in the settlement. Being close to Orchha, 
            a historic and religious place, it falls under the Special Area 
            Development Authority (SADA) limits. 
            The Thought 
            Tara Gramin Nirman Kendra (TGNK), a rural 
            building centre of Development Alternatives at TARAGram, is 
            committed to the delivery of sustainable building technologies 
            leading to improved shelter and has been working on building 
            technology solutions suitable to this region. It works for the 
            villagers and with them in trying to answer their basic needs of 
            shelter, while generating employment for the people. TGNK assists 
            the villager to find sustainable niches for himself, while providing 
            building material options in the rural as well as the urban areas. 
            Some of the objectives of TGNK include:  
              
                | ● | The use of local 
                resources and sensitivity to the ecosystem which are the basic 
                criteria followed in the selection of building systems. 
                Integrating user concerns with an environment friendly approach 
                and ensuring economic viability are the aims of this centre. |  
                | ● | In the form of Micro 
                Concrete Roofing (MCR) tiles, FerroCement Roofing channels, 
                Compressed Earth Blocks (CEB), Concrete Blocks and precast RCC 
                Chaukhats (Door frames), people have access to economically 
                viable and aesthetic walling and roofing options, helping them 
                to improve the state of their shelter without causing 
                environmental degradation. |  
                | ● | Helping the local 
                people to become self-sufficient, skilled and technology 
                conscious, an aim TGNK is striving to achieve through confidence 
                building, team building and encouraging its members in taking 
                initiative and responsibility. The process is as much 
                important here as the product itself. |  
            With these objectives, Azadpura 
            was TGNK’s first venture into the realm of rural social housing and 
            settlements. 
            The Azadpura programme:
 
            Evolution of the layout - architectural and 
            planning aspects 
            In the existing layout of the settlement, most of 
            the houses were laid out in a line, sharing common walls around one 
            central courtyard. A few families later isolated themselves to 
            peripheral areas away from the cluster. Over the years, other castes 
            settled around the Sahariya settlement and the village started 
            growing organically. 
            The existing settlement plan had a prominent 
            hierarchy of open spaces, a big courtyard at the centre of the 
            settlement leading to smaller ones in front of each house, every 
            house being defined by a low raised platform - a significant 
            delineation of the ‘threshold’. There was no space between the house 
            and the street, the streets integrating with the house and providing 
            space for outdoor activities. 
            The houses are basically used for storage of 
            valuables and sleeping in winter. Most of their other activities are 
            otherwise concentrated outside.  
            The houses have only one entrance and few windows 
            for security reasons.  
            With sloping roofs of country tiles on wooden 
            understructure and thick walls of stone, bricks and mud, these 
            houses are very low, allowing hardly any light and ventilation in 
            the house.  
            Maintaining the modest character of existing 
            Azadpura houses while designing the settlement was a challenge to 
            the design team. The essence of these functions and spaces had to be 
            retained in the resultant layout with only necessary modifications. 
            Their new houses had also to follow their existing life-styles. 
            Introduction to ‘toilets’ was a new concept in 
            the village and it was considered important to make them conscious 
            of health and hygiene issues. The concept of outdoor living was 
            retained by the introduction of the "Otla"- a raised platform in 
            front of the new houses developing the space around the house into a 
            connecting link between the exterior and the interior and helping in 
            reducing the scale. The enthusiasm of designing their own spaces led 
            to a layout which, while being distinct, merges with the existing 
            settlement. 
            The whole concept of ‘participatory planning’ was 
            evolved with the house owners in harmony with their existing 
            settlement, as most of the beneficiaries wanted their old houses to 
            be retained and merged with the new ones. There was no site plan of 
            the existing layout when work began and therefore space planning and 
            design considerations were done on the site, with the users and the 
            mason. This led to the instinctive evolution of spaces by the 
            people, together with the mason’s logical thinking. The whole 
            process thus resulted into an intense interaction between the two. 
            People were able to contribute in terms of 
            materials apart from labour and had the advantage of adding more 
            elements to their houses. A few of them who had their plots away 
            from the present houses had to demolish their old houses since they 
            wanted to stay at their existing sites. These people contributed 
            stone, murum etc. and got a larger otla and a confined courtyard in 
            front of their houses. These were small things which added identity 
            to each house and its owner. 
            Thus, an organic space resulted in the form of 
            clusters. While the old settlement houses were aligned in a straight 
            line next to each other around a big courtyard, the orientation of 
            the new houses was according to the existing elements of the 
            settlement, like streets, trees, water sources, existing courtyards, 
            pathways etc. People were not restricted to a definite geometry, 
            resulting in a settlement plan merging with the existing one. 
 
            Technological Aspects 
            The use of CEB in government construction was a 
            major breakthrough of this programme. There was a strong reluctance 
            amongst the people in the beginning as CEB was a new technology 
            never used by them earlier. Each house owner initially produced his 
            own blocks but the process of self-production of the blocks could 
            not be systematised. Eventually work had to be temporarily 
            discontinued after the construction of five houses and a common team 
            was formed, including people from the village and trainers from TGNK. 
            Changes were made in the percentage of current stabilisation in the 
            CEBs as per people’s recommendations and a production of about 
            55,000 blocks took place over a period of six months, creating local 
            employment for over two months. Not only was there a renewed 
            confidence in the villagers but people were willing to contribute 
            more towards construction of their houses as they were getting local 
            employment opportunities through activities like the CEB production. 
            When the project started, five houses were 
            constructed using Random Rubble Masonry till the Cill level and CEB 
            as the main walling with MCR tiles on wooden understructure as the 
            roofing material. Random Rubble Masonry demanded skill and intense 
            supervision, which in turn affected the time of construction and 
            hence the cost. Concrete Block masonry was eventually adopted in its 
            place for the superstructure upto the Cill level, which was faster 
            and required comparatively less masonry skill and was efficient with 
            respect to available internal space. An effort was made in the 
            Azadpura project to combine the locally available skills with TGNK 
            technologies. Eventually, a consolidated team, comprising of masons 
            and semi-masons from the village, were identified, who are now 
            working in other external projects taken up by TARAGram with the 
            same materials. These masons are in the process of being initiated 
            into artisan guilds to enable increased earnings through improved 
            building practices.  
            The construction process provided an excellent 
            opportunity for intense training of masons and semi-masons as 
            construction was time bound and both quality and cost were crucial 
            parameters. Most of the people of the construction team were from 
            the village itself, which also helped in increasing people’s 
            confidence in the technologies. Building systems evolved out of the 
            local house owner’s need and desired aesthetics of scale and 
            proportions.
 
            Project Management Aspects 
            The process of construction in Azadpura was 
            possible due to management structures, which enabled the project to 
            be completed within the estimated six months. After the completion 
            of the dwelling units, when the construction of toilets started, the 
            masons were grouped into a team with a semi-mason/helper and they 
            were given the responsibility of handling a definite number of sites 
            on their own and controlling the cost of the toilets. This initiated 
            them to keep a check on the speed of construction, without 
            compromising on the quality and to involve the beneficiaries while 
            maintaining material flow to their sites and filling up the daily 
            progress reports, calculating the rates and thereby controlling the 
            resultant cost. This exercise with the masons added another 
            dimension to the efforts of TGNK towards skill development and 
            capacity building. 
            Time was an important factor for cost-control and 
            innovations through use of prefabricated systems like the Concrete 
            Blocks, instead of the resource inefficient local stone and the use 
            of RCC Chaukhats and CEB, ensured the speed of construction. Unit 
            Rates, Bill of Quantities for the repetitive units were prepared and 
            benchmarking done to arrive at optimum productivity levels. 
            People’s Aspect
 
            This has probably been the crucial factor which 
            made the Azadpura housing process into an experience in impacting 
            life-styles. From the beginning, women were identified as being the 
            house owners and so were the focus of the entire participative 
            exercise. As an entry point activity, TARAGram had co-ordinated with 
            the Madhya Pradesh Hasta Shilp Vikas Nigam for a training programme 
            in fibre-based handicrafts for 14 Sahariya women who were included 
            in the beneficiary list. Skill upgradation, balwadi for their 
            children and literacy classes for both the women and the children 
            were conducted regularly, which helped in increasing awareness while 
            being earning members in their families. They became important 
            allies in the house construction process. 
            Although TGNK was a major prime mover in the 
            dissemination of the process of participatory house building with 
            sustainable building technologies, the role of local catalytic 
            agencies cannot be ignored. In retrospect, it seems evident that the 
            strong feeling among this homogeneous Sahariya community for change 
            materialised in the form of these 49 houses. There were leaders 
            amongst them, like the 55 year-old local ‘Dai’ (mid-wife) - Bua, who 
            was amongst the first few willing to take the plunge. Over 15 years 
            of promises by the government with no result had moreover frustrated 
            the people. The existence of TARAGram, the Appropriate Technology 
            Centre which was creating local employment and local goodwill, was a 
            point in TGNK’s favour. 
            Results
 
            A summary of the management and development 
            aspects of the Azadpura process is given in Table 1. 
            The entire exercise was completed within six 
            months and was for TGNK an intense learning exercise on the ‘Power 
            of the People’ and their capacity to determine their own destinies. 
            For Azadpura this has resulted in :  
              
                | ● | An organic, cohesive 
                and better living environment. |  
                | ● | Evolution of 
                building systems and an efficient team trained in its 
                implementation. |  
                | ● | Evolution of the 
                concept of guilds amongst the masons. |  
                | ● | Project management 
                methods, leading to a self-replicating delivery mechanism. |  
                | ● | Skill acquired in 
                other income generating fibre-based handicrafts by the local 
                women. |  
                | ● | High input into the 
                local economy (63 per cent). |  
            The ripple effect of this process cannot be 
            undermined. MCR has been accepted into the Government Rural 
            Engineering Services specifications. This has led to the roofing of 
            65 more houses for the bidi workers in Tikamgarh. The concept of 
            rural sanitation has also taken a boost, with people from the 
            village wanting toilets built. It would be unfair to judge this 
            project by only the direct benefits. It is a true example of an 
            asset leading to asset multiplication in the local economy in the 
            form of ‘material-assets’ as well as ‘people-assets’ through skills. 
            It is also an example of impacting life-styles of 
            people below the poverty line through improved shelter and habitat.
            
            q Richa 
            Angirish and Geeta Vaidyanathan are Architects with Development Alternatives, Regional Office, Jhansi.
 
            
            
            
            
            
            
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