Much effort has gone into making these SBTs "available" through large-scale training, setting up building centers and government entre-preneurship programmes.

Initiatives are now required to vitalize rural markets and enhance the accessibility of the rural poor to these SBT products and services.

Thus, a significant shift from supply side interventions or "push creation" to demand side interventions , that facilitate a "Pull" in the market, are required.

For many, in rural areas, inputs of micro-credit (not necessarily at cheaper rates) can affect the transition from a need to demand based market. Examples of the Grameen Bank model in various forms are now widely sited and replicated by agencies in the developing world. However, for a large number of rural poor, interventions are required to bring them into the fold of the cash economy in the first place, even before they are able to access housing credit or avail of building technologies and skill options, how-so-ever affordable these may be.

Experience has led us to believe that economic up-gradation of the very poor in society runs parallel and often needs to precede habitat up-gradation. While improved economies will most certainly lead to improved habitat in the long run, the converse has also been found to be true: that the "process of improving habitat" can also contribute to improved economies.

The construction sector in India (as in most of the developing world) forms a bulk of the nation’s economy. From the large industrial production of building materials and mega- infrastructure projects to the virtually infinite unorganized small construction activity of the residential scale; this sector provides employment, both direct and indirect, to millions. Most (approximately 99%) of this activity is based on conventional energy intensive building technologies and systems. If the predicament of the habitat of rural poor is dependent on "sustainable" affordable building technologies, as has been argued in this very forum often enough, then the producers and suppliers of the SBT products and services need fair market advantages to succeed.

SBT producers and suppliers are primarily decentralized and of micro or tiny scale and market creation for SBTs is the biggest challenge facing them.

To summarize, it would be fair to say that in the present day, there is an overwhelming need for shelter for the rural poor; that in a large measure this need can be satisfied through large scale accessibility of the poor to SBTs, and that interventions are required that can convert this need of the poor into demand for SBTs. This transition necessarily integrates the issue of enhancing the economic accessibility of the poor to SBTs.

Housing and sanitation programs often criticized for their large components of subsidies and grants can be designed to catalyse demand for Sustainable Building Technologies. Social housing schemes of the government and grant based projects that provide initial financial assistance to families can provide the initial market for the products and services of SBT entrepreneurs in a region. The demonstration value of these projects, if executed with care, can enable demand from the non-project sectors. For example, a project for the construction of schools can lead to catalysing a demand for similar materials and technologies in the residential sector and a project for housing for the BPL families can catalyse demand amongst the families not directly benefiting from the funded project. Of-course, the project not only needs to demonstrate the technical and financial viability of technologies, but also quality, cost effectiveness and speed, reflect local aesthetics, and social mobility or status concerns.

Development Alternatives’ work in this sector has provided valuable insights and lessons on how the process of facilitating habitat contributes to economic improvement and how facilitating livelihoods in the habitat arena has an immediate impact on the quality of habitat (and overall life) of the rural poor.

The BMSB at Chowdwar (see article on page 12) has made significant strides in this direction. It is registered as a Section 25 company with an equity capital of Rs.25 lakhs. It will offer an enlarged menu of products and services based on local demand. A significant fact is that at the core of this venture are a group of women who till the last year were unskilled wage labourers; they are now stakeholders in the enterprise.

Countless small initiatives exist wherein grassroots agencies initiating habitat programs and looking for cost effective SBT options often find the supply of SBT a bottleneck. And, while their program objectives would easily accommodate training of artisans and setting up SBT enterprises, the project budgets do not allow for these. This is especially so in Government sponsored habitat schemes for the poor, which segregate livelihood and habitat development interventions in separate boxes – and departments.

In the post disaster habitat projects, some reconstruction agencies have utilized the opportunity of the large inflow of funds in a short period of time to build in rehabilitation and therefore livelihood creation components in their projects. We have found this in Latur, in Orissa and now in Gujarat. However, habitat programs in non-disaster conditions face a shortage of livelihood creation funds. Surely, building up livelihood opportunities in non-disaster situations will lead to economic resilience in communities enabling them to mitigate the disaster of poverty.

Local building material and skill supply systems — whether enterprise based or building centers — contribute significantly to improvement in quality of habitat and, at the same time, habitat projects can catalyse demand creation for the products and contribute to the economic sustainability of these enterprises.