Community Based Housing in Disaster

Mark Conway

MB: Initial distribution of tents was useful. Though it must be noted that for the first time, tents have replaced tarpaulin as a relief shelter in Gujarat. The debate on the provision of temporary shelter was useful but may be it took too long. In India, as a result, its provision was delayed beyond May 2001. Disaster Mitigation Institute’s (DMI’s) recent field studies suggest that the level of satisfaction with temporary shelter is much higher with the recipients who received it before June. The current ongoing rebuilding activity is skewed in favour of rural housing. Urban housing is almost entirely neglected. Even in rural housing, from 1,90,000 new houses to be built, the NGOs are building only 8000 to 12000. The Gujarat government is not building any houses, unlike Latur where the Maharashtra government built a large number of houses. A focus on retrofitting—at action and policy level—is very low though Dr. Rajendra Desai, Kirtee Shah, and others have initiated new retrofitting activities now. CARE (India)’s housing programme is worth watching as they are among the very few NGOs who have continued to engage the local and state governments across the village building activities. Maintaining NGO–GO link is not easy. In brief, what is coming out is a fairly wide range of shelter responses from the national and a few international relief agencies.

MC: What are your views about their work in Kutch district of Gujarat and what are the reasons for the still poor communication between all those involved in disaster management? MB: Excellent efforts are being made to now provide semi-permanent and permanent shelter to those who have lost it. Local designs, indigenous changes and suitable adaptations are being made and new housing processes are being worked out. For example, EFICOR which has rebuilt an interesting village, named Malkondji in Latur, has made plans to use salvaged doors and windows for new structures. Action Aid has focused their energies on making sure that social isolation and exclusion does not get perpetuated through the shelter rebuilding process. A fair amount of exchange of ideas and approaches has taken shape due to the regular coordination meetings held by UNDP at Bhuj. Unfortunately, all decisions related to shelter are not being taken at the Bhuj level. Obviously, these decisions are being taken in other districts, cities, agencies and at state level. Thousands of individuals who are rebuilding their homes are making individual decisions. They do not always relate with NGO initiatives. Thus, there is a communication gap among NGOs.

Safer building practices posters designed & disseminated by DMI

MC: Shelter relief has been managed and implemented badly? Can you expand on the term ‘value added relief work’ in relation to community based housing?

MB: Before mentioning shelter relief that does need improvement, let me point out that the cash compensation paid by the Government of Gujarat is worth noting.. Hardly ever, in such a short time, so many—almost 70,000—households are paid compensation for shelter loss and damage. Discounting leakages and misallocation, the efforts of Government of Gujarat in paying cash compensation are laudable, and has received little recognition. This does not mean that there is no scope for improvement, especially for the payment of the now due second instalment.

Rebuilding will remain a "people’s building process". It is the poor and shelterless people who will remove debris, level the ground, salvage building elements, so on, and so forth. This is the biggest process in terms of numbers of people and buildings. What is needed is ways of making this rebuilding process more informed, innovative, viable, sustainable and safe. A very large number of NGOs and others can add value to this process by making it safer, timely, accessible and suitable. Currently not many NGOs are doing this beyond Abhiyan, Samarthan and others.

MB: Shelter does play a crucial role in building livelihood security, because for so many of the rural poor their house is their place of work. They produce goods, store their products, sell their products, and so on. As a result, DMI is involved in shelter processes through livelihood rebuilding activities. This is a somewhat unusual door to enter rebuilding processes. DMI designed, developed and disseminated a very large number of posters on safer building practices. The posters designed were based on what was developed by the People’s Science Institute, Dehradoon. That design was modified to make it suitable for local structures, materials and methods. Further, the Government of Gujarat reviewed that it was pilot tested with the affected communities in Patan and Surendranagar districts, modified, and with the help of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) it was disseminated in a very large number of villages, especially where NGOs and the Government was not very active. A recent review shows that such ‘marginal’ value addition added up and did improve and enhance the local building processes. Encouraged from this, now DMI is designing and developing a training module on safer building practices for DMI’s national course series. The International Labour Organisation is supporting this effort.

MB: Far from satisfactory and appropriate rebuilding is taking place, but to what extent disaster mitigation is included in the NGO or local building processes is very uncertain. New shelters may be unsafe for cyclone, may have fire hazard material or may heat up to high temperatures. School buildings are without suitable openings and layouts. Focus of safety measure is on buildings that have collapsed. But what about the safety of buildings that have not collapsed? This is a big issue as we go away from Bhuj and Kutch to Saurashtra and Ahmedabad. Mainstream mitigation still remains outside most rehabilitation and development processes.

MB: As said, for the poor their home is their place for work. Investment in shelter is investment in livelihood. Investment in shelter is investment in health. Investment in shelter is investment in social safety of women. Similarly, due to popularity of roof rain water harvesting structures in Gujarat, shelter security rebuilds water security. When all the important securities are simultaneously built, vulnerability is reduced.

MB: Community based housing projects cost a lot of money and entail tremendous efforts on the part of the NGO and also the community.

Increasing disaster mitigation and preparedness measures, provide much more value for this cost. But such value addition may not be possible for many communities and all NGOs due to lack of resources, capacities and conceptual ground work. This area attracts attention and also concern.

Further, mainstream mitigation is not a one time event, it is an ongoing activity. Without repeated investments of efforts and resources, mitigation measures may not perform when needed the most: in case of a disaster.

MB: Urban areas are engines of economic development in Gujarat and currently they are also engines of economic rebuilding and rehabilitation. DMI’s state-wide benchmark survey on the impact of earthquake on livelihoods suggests that recovery is being led by linkages of rural areas with urban areas. This is not so surprising. What is surprising is the role small urban areas are playing in this recovery. See what Halwad is doing to villages in the surrounding areas. Such strong economic links are re-emerging, reviving and rebuilding local economies. In many ways, this is the symbol of Gujarat: making money work for you. Thus, by introducing safer building codes in small towns, we can almost introduce safer construction in surrounding and linked villages. The National Foundation of India has also found this to be an important area of involvement. They are funding initiatives to expand the influence of this concept.

MB: Limits of NGO reach in rebuilding will be clearer to them and others: what they can do and what they can not do. Also, role of market—shelter, materials, labour—in accelerating or slowing down the rebuilding process will be clearer.

Importance of retrofitting will be recognised again. Similarly, housing finance and building material depots will be recognised in future rebuilding. Valuable role of smaller towns in promoting safety will also be recognised. q