Public hearing in Bombay

THE URBAN NIGHTMARE Is it Upon Us?

A discussion with Manjit Singh, Rina Ray and Onkar Mittal initiated by NANCY GALLOWAY on behalf of Development Alternatives (DA).

DA: What are the advantages of urbanisation in a country like India, most of which is rural. What purpose do urban areas serve?

MS: The urban area exists to give people opportunities for employment and for various other socio-educational sector inputs of which they are presently being deprived in their villages or small towns. They are rushing to Delhi because Delhi provides them lots of opportunities. There is no denying that at our stage of urbanisation in the Indian context the divide between poverty and affluence and the regional economic imbalances, between the rural setting and urban setting in India is so enormous that people are suffering in rural areas and they rush to the mega cities for employment. There is no denying the fact that in Delhi, the moment you land up at the railway station or interstate bus terminals, immediately thereafter you can find something to do and even send a little money to your home whereas at home jobs don’t exist. Because of this kind of in-migration, the informal sector has increased enormously during the last 15 years, i.e. again creating problems of pavement dwellers, hawkers and others. And at the same time, within the context of the overall economic development of the city they are planning a very important role. About 60 per cent of the manpower in the city of Delhi today is in the informal sector.

RR: I agree with Mr. Manjit Singh. Being a poor country, our resources tend to be centralised in the larger area instead of being spread out which they could have been otherwise. I have seen when I worked especially in Tamil Nadu and Mizoram, the kind of restlessness in the people specially in the youth of the villagers and I ascribe this to the spread of T.B\V. and cinema, where we see different kinds of lifestyles. They migrate to the urban areas more out of curiosity and if you ask them, most of them feel that perhaps it was a wrong decision. When they are back in the villages even if they do not have pucca shelter, they do have open surroundings. Children are growing up in cleaner surroundings which they do not have in Delhi living in squalid slums. But they have crossed the point of no return. They can’t go back.

So, I hope and I wish that it is possible for us to create more opportunities in the rural areas so that they can stay where they are without feeling that restlessness more than anything else. They do not want to become farmers like their fathers. But there is nothing else that they can become.

OM: the distribution of the city population in this country is skewed. There are far too many people in cities like Delhi, Bombay, Madras. I don’t think these cities should be allowed to grow in this manner, but there is no force to stop them.

DA: At what point does the city become unsustainably big in terms of destroying its environment, or socio-economic equity?

OM : Given the resources, you can have about 5-6 million people in a city if you can manage their infrastructure facilities, physical and social. But going beyond 10 million population like Mexico City or certain mega cities of the world, their infrastructure problems begin causing serious concern to all the authorities. If you attend the mayor’s conferences at the global level this is exactly what every mayor is talking about, but he the mayor in the richest country in the world or the mayor of a city in a developing country. Both are talking about the same thing: that they are not in a position to sustain their quality of life and the infrastructure facilities in that area. So in Delhi also.

DA: So we are talking water, sewage, roads…..

MS: Yes, all these, plus electricity, communications, schools, public offices.

RR: I do not think we can go by a fixed number. I feel that people migrate to the urban areas because they perceive the quality of life to be superior to their own. Up to a certain limit it is possible for these people to live in squatter settlements without affecting the rest of the inhabitants of that city. But after a certain time the difference between the groups grows less and less, as the conditions of all deteriorate to the level of the new migrants, in terms of commonly shared services. We should try instead to improve the conditions of the poor, rather than letting others decline.

RR: In Delhi, we have crossed the line of sustainability.

MS: Yes, in the mega cities of Delhi, Bombay, Madras, perhaps we have reached the point where further in-migration will begin creating very tough situations.

RR: We can’t blame the jhuggi dwellers for illegally tapping electricity. When they do so it is termed transmission loss by the local body concerned. This transmission loss is conveyed as a loss suffered in real terms by the local body which it in turn passes on to somebody else. It’s a kind of a cycle which is now beginning to affect everybody.

MS: I think this particular issue is more related to the entire country’s culture and discipline. The stealing of electricity is not only amongst the poor sections. This is done by the richer sections also. If you check about 15-20 percent of the stolen electricity by the rich industrial class, it is equivalent to the entire electricity consumption of two million poor. This lack of culture and discipline is found in all classes, not just the poor people alone.

DA: Are we outstripping our resource base in Delhi?

MS: If you are talking about Delhi’s water, we are getting it from two sources- groundwater and the Yamuna (See “the Yamuna-Ganga Yatra, page 16). In the newspapers we keep reading that Delhi is running out, because of the dispute with the neighbouring states over the quantum of water, water which is treated and distributed to the city’s population. There are now about 10.5 million people in the city. So far as I am concerned, as chief of the Slum Wing, my aim is to distribute water to the poor people. But even this is not distributed fairly, because the amount you give to these 20lakh people is far less than what you are giving to the rest of the population. To go into greater detail, one has to understand the total picture of water supply, treatment and distribution. Delhi is producing about 550 MGD of water; you are getting water from Haryana government through the river, treating and distributing it. A gross injustice is done by the government when they give poor people less water. The inadequacy of water is attributable to bureaucratic neglect of these people. On paper, you are giving 40 gallons per person per day to the population of Delhi; but to the slum dwellers, it is only 2 gallon per capita per day. Where is all the water? If we all really got this amount of 40 gallons per person per day, we would never suffer from gastrointestinal problems in the slums. I have asked friends in the Delhi government about this, but I get no real reply. And these are the facts: I want someone to either contradict what I am saying if it is not correct. Mrs. Ray is here, and I would request her to shed some light on this.

RR: I agree. I also find it a strange situation; I can’t believe we have a shortage of water in north India today. Half of India is reeling under floods and the other half is suffering droughts. And it's been a dream to somehow connect all these river systems. This is something I can’t understand; we sit in the capital city and suffer water shortages because of mismanagement. There is no reason why we should not all get our due share. There is enough to go around. Once there is enough for the whole city, the squatter settlements will also get their share.

The Participants

Manjit Singh has been commissioner of the Slum Wing for 10 years, first with DDA and now with MCD. He feels a great affinity with Delhi slum residents, as he himself was raised in a Harijan bustee in Sahranpur, U.P. He joined the army on leaving which he took up government service. He has served in a variety of capacities before heading the Slum Wing

Rina Ray joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1984 and has served in Pondicherry and Mizoram prior to being posted as joint secretary to the Department of Urban Development in Delhi.

Onkar Mittal, a community activist with a particular interest in gender and development, has worked with the underprivileged for the last 15 years (rural, urban & tribal). He is training women slum dwellers to be community health workers, and consults with UNICEF, IDA and World Bank.

In the MCD areas, it’s 40 gals/day; in the NDMC areas, it is much more.

MS: Yes, the rich man needs more drinking water than a poor man or woman. It depends on whether he lives near the Prime Minister’s house or in slums of Delhi.

DA: When we talk to the authorities, we are told quite flatly that they have no intention of supplying civil services to the slums, because that would encourage other people to come.

MS: This is a free country. We have a Constitution. Anyone can come from any part of the country and settle here. By giving less water, can you stop people from leaving the pockets where they are starving? Has it happened? Can you look at the statistics over the past 10 yeas and see where this policy has had any impact?

OM: We have to look at another facet; it took a cholera epidemic for the city to start supplying water to the resettlement colonies. Though these colonies had been authorised by the city, they didn’t have water. And in the last 5-6 years, through the Slum Wing’s efforts, they have been getting a lot more water; the picture is visibly better. But one will have water, while next door, there is none. When people settle in one of the 600-700 squatter settlements in Delhi, they make some arrangements for water; ground water, for instance. So this restriction on water will not really limit the continued growth of the city. No one can stop it. We need alternative solutions, solutions not currently beings considered by the city planners as to their validity and applicability.

DA: Jane Jacobs, a very famous writer on urban affairs in America, called the city a “crucible of innovation” with opportunities for higher education, better health care and more cultural life, than rural or suburban areas. The role of the city as a development catalyst is well known; how do the plans for city of Delhi and NCR promote this? Does the city provide new opportunities to poor people?

MS: You need balanced development, to decongest Delhi and shift some problem areas from Delhi and shift some problem areas from Delhi to outlying areas. This is why the NCR concept was developed 20 years ago. Until and unless infrastructure upgradations are undertaken in the NCR region, people are not going to shift there. Even more important are the employment opportunities. Strangely, the other day the Delhi government asked me to Meerut. There are about 2000 flats there. They made a proposal to me to consider shifting some of the slum dwellers from Delhi to Meerut, to occupy the 2000 flats built by the Meerut Development Authority. The Secretary of Delhi government and I went there to see these flats, and they told us that, in due course of time, some economic employment opportunities will be developed there. I was shocked when I got there to see these 2000 flats built on the edge of the city, about 5 to 7 km out. They themselves have not been able to convince the Meerutites to shift there. They are lying vacant, the money bogged down in this dead investment, and they are trying to pass it off on the slum dwellers in Delhi!

If you attend a NCR planning board meeting, you find none of the states see eye to eye. They are not prepared to cooperate for their own people within the country, at a distance of about 30 km. The adjoining states want the funding and the infrastructure facilities, but they are not prepared to take the population. The NCR needs decongestation of certain areas. When we have this kind of situation, and the planning is not pragmatic, when we have no solid action plan, things will further decay in Delhi. From my perspective, with the increasing immigration, and without real development on the periphery of the city, within 5-10 years we are going to have hell. I have already begun warning all my friends, especially the rich ones, to begin an alternate house outside Delhi because you will be pushed out from here. The quality of life in Delhi is going to degenerate very fast in the next five years. Do you know that today in Delhi, more than one million people are defecating in the open? Imagine the environmental degradation! This is one of the major causes of diseases in Delhi. So we really need to start examining some alternate planning process, which is not happening right now. Mrs. Ray might like to comment, as she is always looking at alternatives.

DA: Yes, how does your Nehru Rozgar Yojana Scheme promote innovation?

RR: The NRY at present is suffering from basic defects in the guidelines, to be absolutely honest. So we have decided to approach the Ministry of Urban Development about it. You see, the scheme was apparently formulated in something of a rush. It was intended to give loans of up to Rs. 20,000 with a 25 percent subsidy, to unemployed or underemployed youth. This is either to help them start a venture of their own to gain full employment, or give them the means to increase the remuneration from their existing employment. The problems we encounter is that the household income should be under the poverty line; that is, around Rs. 11,000 p.a. Now even in the jhuggi clusters, when you have the husband, wife and four children all working and earning, this is a very unrealistic assessment. We are trying to have this increased, but right now we are stuck with it . Where we really run into problems is where the banks are involved. The loan has to be released though the banks, and they have their own regulations. The person must not be a minor, must be at least 18. Fine. A person must have a family income below the poverty lie, yet he must have a ration card. Then he has to fill out a 10-page form, go through rigorous interviews, facing a board in the bank itself, answering all their questions, as part of the selection process to get a loan. We said, ‘Now, hold on. You are asking us to get someone below the poverty line, yet at the same time this person should have almost a pucca residential address with a ration card, etc.’ We said ‘we can’t get anyone like this. Such a paragon of virtue does not exist.’ At the last we want the income level raised so we can reach the people who really need it; lowering the age to 16-17 would help as well. They are the people who are just ripe to pick up a loan and start venture of their own. By 18, they have already got into a rut and can’t do as well. So although we have got lots of funds under the NRY, its just not picking up. And here we have done our best to involve the NGOs, because people seem to feel this some kind of handout form the government. No matter how much we explain to them, they say ‘Why worry? It is our experience that every single loan given by the government has been written off after some time.’ So they expect the same here.

OM: Delhi can be a development catalyst, but of what kind of development? That has to be seen. Your question of whether Delhi performs this role has many questions in it. As far as the NCR is concerned, the National Commissioner, Urbanisation said we had to build small and medium towns. You need a different kind of political economy for that, which we don’t have. The report is almost 10 years old now, and there has been no move to do this. The whole political economy of this city is almost like in our mythology which talks of the goddess with a very big mouth who will eat up everything. Now you are talking of metro railway and other things. So, of course, Delhi is a development catalyst and people are coming to it. And because of caste separation in the villages, people will keep on coming, because here they find some kind of freedom, some kind of human dignity which they did not have. But this kind of development is not in our larger interest. Sure, it can give some employment, some freedom, some hope, but its not the kind of development that will sustain us.

DA: Yes, one of the things that came out of a recent NCR planning board meeting was that they persist in maintaining that land acquisition and development should be done by government, rather than private developers. To what extent do you think there should be privatisation of city services?

MS: We have to look at this from two angles. One is privatisation of infrastructure development, the other is privatising housing development. With regard to housing for the urban poor, squatters, and other vulnerables, I have my doubts about the genuineness of offers from the private sector. Once the Lieutenant Governor invited all the big developers in the city and called me also, to say what they could do for the poor of the city. I asked each of them to adopt one slum in any part of Delhi for an experimental project, to see how it could be fixed. All of them promised in front of the LG, but we never saw anything happen. I did not get a single solid proposal from any of them. The private sector is only interested in those propositions where there is a lot of money, and in the shelter programme for slum dwellers there is no money.

DA: I have always found it interesting what a negative view of men most development schemes have.

MS: It has been my experience that whenever I have burnt my hands very seriously in any developmental programme involving crores of rupees, it was when I depended more on the men of the slums. The moment we began using women in the community-based management structures I found the pace of development was much faster. The sensitivity of their responses is greater, they are sharper and far more visionary than the men. It was from that time that I decided, and got it approved, that I would give ownership of property-be it a flat or a plot a shop-to the woman and not to a man. And when it came to co-operatives, I said, ‘It must be a cooperative of women that controls the management of the bustee itself. I find a woman is the best hub for developmental activities, rather than a man.’

DA : But doesn’t that further marginalise the men?

MS: When we got into this process, we suffered at their hands. These people levelled charges at us, saying ‘You are making us fight with each other.’ The men would not let me transfer the property in the manes of their wives. I wanted to bring about this new culture because I knew if I gave these benefits to the men, they would sell it and I would be back to square one.

OM: Yes, gender in development has been missing up to now. It has only be through hard experience in the slums that we have learned this lesson. We thought initially it was only an upper class issues, but once in the slums we saw it was a reality there, too.

MS: I swear that it is because of these hard earned experience that my approach has altered. In my house, it is my daughter that receives my attention, compared to my son. She has begun handling a lot household affairs, even runs it. An in the slums, I am very enthused at what I see from my ‘hubs of development.’ Right now they are at a micro level, but I hope to bring them to a macro level, involving in policy.

RR: To hear men talking like this! It’s wonderfully really.

OM: Let me give you certain facts. There are very large numbers of widows and abandoned women in slums, and may men are into lotteries, addiction, alcoholism and beating their women. It is a hell like picture. There is no reason why the woman should sustain that family, but she does so. This is amazing. Why does she do it? There have been experiences where women have organised and pushed their men out, because they don'’ deserve care. It is because of the woman’s absolute sacrifice that the family is surviving.

MS: Sometime back a group of women came and demonstrated outside my office, waving empty pitchers and saying “There is no water in our slum’. They held me responsible for that. There were 50, so I could not invite them all in, but I asked for a delegation of 10 to come in, have tea and discuss the situation. They made certain demands of me that day which were outside the policy norms and really beyond my discretion. But I deliberately agreed to all of them, setting aside all rules and regulations. I said ‘Done, Done, Done’. If even 500 men had come and demonstrated and broken my car also, and my office, I would not have done this for them. And today, my cultural revolution in the slums of Delhi is mobilisation of women as community groups.

Perhaps women should be given a greater say in the running of Delhi. But till such time as this becomes a reality, can Delhi survive the problems it confronts? Will residents continue to put up with the daily nightmare of survival?