News March2001

Welcome to Citywatch. This is our newsletter that keeps you updated on the activities of SPARC, NSDF and Mahila Milan. In this March 2001 report, we have the following stories:

ORISSA 20th to 24th Feb.01
Shenaz ,Zaheeda, Banoo, Mustari, Fatima and Zaitun came unreserved on the train from Bombay. It takes 2 nights on the train from Bombay and so it?s really not fun to have to do this without reservations. They arrived on the morning of the 20th and are living at a hotel near by the Dawn office.

I arrived the same afternoon by flight from Bombay and carried with the brick-making machine. We met with Vishal Dev (Chief executive Officer) Cuttack at the airport who was very keen for us to meet with him .He presently, is also working on the DIFID project in Cuttack

THE BRICK MAKING MACHINE
So as soon as it arrived. It got displayed and both Mahila Milan and the local women leaders had a long conversation about this new Gadget. Some wondered if it would be as strong as the old red brick and wanted to know the advantages were. Others wanted to know what it cost as compared to the old red brick.

This was an interesting exchange between MM Bombay and MM Bhubaneshwar. One only figures all this out by doing and what works in Bombay may not necessarily work on Bhubaneshwar in terms of costs and feasibility. So it was decided that they would experiment with one of the house models, look at the costs and then compare it with the brick.

Any change in mode of construction or material used always takes a while to get accepted till the women themselves accept the idea and are convinced about it. It reminded me of the Ladhi that got a similar reaction when they were first cast in Dindoshi. So only after doing it and constructing the first house will the women leaders from Bhubaneswar will know if they would like to continue with the production of the concrete block.

The next morning MM had a session at Hare Krishnapur basti .Mahila Milan did the first 2 bricks and then the local women quickly learnt how to do this

CUTTACK :
Munda Shahi is a tribal settlement in the heart of the city. They were shifted recently to a transit site by the Cuttack Municipality 4 kms. away from their original place of residence. They have yet to shift into their permanent houses. Meanwhile, CDA has constructed a road and installed 2 bore wells that do not work. There is one normal well in the centre of the settlement and that one works .The land belongs to CDA.

There is no toilet block and a contract has just been signed between the CMC and DAWN to construct 28 seats at a cost of 1,75,0000 rupees.

The project today is under the Cuttack Municipality and CDA and Vishal Dev would like to now cover this project under DFID. Vishal Dev is the project director for the DFID project in Cuttack .It is called the CUTTACK URBAN SERVICES IMPROVEMENT PROJECT. (CUSIP) Out of 66 crores allotted to this project, 21 crores have been spent so far for infrastructure development.

Things to do and to think about (TTD)
This toilet contract given to DAWN is 1.75 lacs for a 28-seat toilet. This works out at the rate of 6,200 per toilet seat.

We need to work out our estimates of what this is will actually cost and from where the rest of the monies will come from.

Payments will be made by the CUSIP to DAWN against the bills provided during construction.

Meanwhile Dawn has to arrange for the monies to begin construction on site. They have been thinking aloud and looking at the different possibilities of finding the initial capital to begin this construction. This is one of the things we need to walk thru? with them and make a finance plan for the entire project.

We need to work out a structure for the implementation of this project .Can a team from Pune and Bombay help with the construction of the first toilet block? We need to decide how the learning and transfer of skills take place between Pune city and Cuttack. What will be the role of the Bombay team?

The period of completion for this construction is 3 months. Vishal Dev visited the site with his engineers and with us.

MM Bombay was also there on site demonstrating to the community the concrete cement brick. The team of engineers from the Cuttack Municipality were very impressed with the introduction of this new technology. More than the brick itself it was interesting to see the energy this exercise created. MundaShahi has a tradition of making their own clay bricks on site with locally available clay. They will be the best ones to say if the concrete brick will work for them or not.

They will access both the costs and the feasibility of the brick in the coming week.

Daily supervision will be required to be done from the DAWN side and is crucial at this stage. We created committee?s who will manage these works on site. These committee?s will go with DAWN to the respective government departments to follow up on their day to day works. This way they learn to deal directly with these departments and develop internal capacity and skills to negotiate with government and outside institutions. There committees created were for water (i.e. construction of the well ) for management of toilets and for electricity. They also wanted to have a committee for education and health, as these were also issues at this new location.

HUDCO: We also visited HUDCO with regards to the housing loans. HUDCO has asked DAWN to furnish them with information about DAWN and the project. They however, feel it will be simpler for the loan to be routed thru? SPARC as HUDCO already is aware about their credentials.

We need to do our homework on this. Will we be able to wait for HUDCO to disburse this loan or can we go ahead with some bridge finance BUT HOW? And from WHERE?

We need to check out if this community can avail of any subsidy due to their tribal status.

We worked out things to be completed with Vishal Dev and the engineers of DFID and worked out several targets together.

1.DAWN will do the construction of the toilet. The community women suggested that instead of 28 seats together, they would like to divide it into 2 blocks of 14 each with a children?s toilet. This would be convenient for them especially during the nights, as the women from one end would not have to walk to the other end of the settlement.

A community centre will be constructed adjoining the toilet. This will be an open Mandap kind of design with pillars instead of walls with a thatched roof. Meanwhile one of the residents volunteered the use of their house to have community meetings.

2.Electricity connection would be made available by the municipality from a near by outlet.

3.The municipality/ DIFD project will construct an additional well .We suggested that the community contributes to the labour so that they earn some thing.

4. Need have an exposure for the local engineers and lower level staff to Bombay and Pune. This will help them get more confidence and trust in a people driven process and it will also set them thinking about new ways of doing things. They too need to get their kicks out of this and an exposure visit would be a good idea

PURIGHAT –This settlement is situated on prime land and has a lot of scope

This settlement has been working with DFID since many years.

The community this time has decided to play a new game in order to speed up their land entitlement. They have filled up to 50% of the pond adjoining their settlement and have spent up to 1 lakh of rupees from their savings. They withdrew 50,000 of this from their housing savings and 50,000 from the daily savings.

This community has been exposed to the DFID program since very long and some of the members also visited South Africa on the DFID program.

The present Tahisildar told the community to go ahead with a court case against the collector as this will speed up the process of the land title. Today the land is a ULC land and the private owner keeps threatening to come back. This is one of the reasons the community decided to fill the land This is their way of taking charge of the land.

This year Purighat is also ready to begin construction works along with Munda Shahi in Cuttack. Aaron and Siddarth have prepared settlement drawings for both of these settlements. There is a commercial component to the design, which will be sold at the market price

So a lot of homework has been done so far. Basically Jockin needs to give them an idea about the risks involved and to what extent they can do this.

TTD
They had several questions

If the profit of the commercial sales will belong only to Purighat or will it be the asset of the federation at large.

I was not very comfortable dealing with PurigGhat as the leaders needed a Jockin to tell them what to do next with their game plan. They have taken the risk to put their savings in filling up the marshy land .They were also advised by some lawyer that the best way out was to file a case against the collector and this was a sure way out to victory and getting the land on their name.

They were looking for some monetary loan or support to fill up the balance land .

PURI: Here we visited the settlements along the sea.One of them just started to save since 10days and seemed quite motivated .

I connected with the other settlements last year and I did not think much had changed .I just feel that DAWN did go a bit slow here and needed to re energize this process.They dod not seem to have much support from the Puri collector.

Unlike Cuttack, Puri does not have the same bureaucratic and financial support.

TTD
Dawn to dedicate a person for Puri. The focus for this year has to be to create city wise federations.

This has been lagging behind and if Dawn does not make this effort this year –they will continue to focus on themselves and feel overwhelmed with so many projects that are in the offing. They are already feeling the pressure and I hope this pushes them to invest in their local partners i.e. the communities.

Mahila Milan and NSDF will help them with this during this year
We need to support them with opening the doors with the local collectors office and the municipality.

We also need to get back to DIFD and redefine the 5-city project fro Orissa to see how we can use outside resources to redefine the relationship between government and the federation.

Sundar did talk to DIFD after my conversation with him. They are re looking at the 5-city project. Alison said that she would find some funds for this. Simon Kenny also suggested that we use some of the resources from the present Cuttack project.

Jockin to visit Orissa from the 6th –8th March.

House Model Exhibition dates have to be finalised .

Mr. Hota a senior government officer from the Orissa cadre now sits in Delhi. They would like to use his presence in Delhi to push things in Orissa. They suggested launching the secure land tenure Campaign during while he is Delhi.

The present team in Cuttack Both Vishal Dev and Jinna are both a very good team and it is the ideal time for us to make a difference in Orissa.

RMK: Just needed to keep repeating the need to get the book keeping and list in order. There has also been some small problems related to the fact that the names sent as loan applications are not necessarily the names who get the final loan. One of the ways of solving this is for Dawn to pre finance this. How ever, we need to check out if this is possible for them to do. They have been diverting some of the RMK loan money for project finance and I had to tell them that this was not allowed .We need to re look at the way we allocate money for Orissa and see what they can manage on their own. They are happy to do this on their own if we help them with which funders to pursue and help make a contact.

UNDP : UNDP orissa requested them to send their proposal again with a covering letter .This too needs to be followed up in Delhi by Sunar.

CONCLUSION: There has not been much progress on the federation front. We need to push for that this year.

We there a lot scope of starting with housing construction and toilet works in all the 4 cities but once again this is possible with a federation in place for every city .This is most important. Then managing the funds and resources and opening up spaces in Government is then much simpler to manage.

From our side we need to commit ourselves to have a concentrated and consistent input this year. With federation building, talking with Government, talking with outside agencies coming with aid like DIFD and UNDP and others.

Opening up spaces with HUDCO for housing loans.
Check out if GOI subsidies are available for housing for certain categories .

Assist Dawn with Fund raising

Obtaining Bank Guarantees.

All this in the persuit of SPARC MM and NSDF constructing 320 toilet blocks in 20 wards in Mumbai in 22 months starting October 2000.

The project is for 44 crores. The project requires SPARC to obtain a bank guarantee of 5% towards the performance guarantee, and another guarantee of any amount upto 25% for advance mobilization.

Who will give an NGO such a guarantee? Luckily this is not the first guarantee that SPARC has got, and we began by asking two banks for exploring the possibility for a guarantee. One was UTI bank and the other was bank of Baroda.

UTI BANK gave us the guarantee. On the 15th Feb. this decision was taken by the Bank with a very strong commitment from its Chief Executive/President Dr Jayandra Nayak, who sought to balance the need to make this a commercially viable transaction while weighing the strong competencies that SPARC Mahila Milan and NSDF brought to this project.

He arranged for several meeting with his senior officials and arranged for Mr Anil Kumar, a civil engineer and now a credit manager for the UTI Bank, to visit Bombay and Pune where the various projects SPARC had done could be seen. Supported by Mr Fonseca who is vice president in charge of credit, they walked us through the documentation needed to allow them to make a informed choice about giving us the guarantee.

The concerns about the ability of an NGO to transact with the Municipality were raised, and the equally high commitment of the Municipality was evident when Mr Subodh Kumar Additional Commissioner of MCGM and Mr Shymal Sarkar met with Dr Nayak to discuss the high value of this project being undertaken through this combination of NGO CBO. The letter stating we would get the guarantee stated the conditions. Between 15th February and March 9, 2001 all the process to get the Guarantee were completed.

Many ask us why a guarantee? When awarding this very large project, the Municipal Corporation seeks to cover its risks to non performance through this guarantee. Similarly they also take a Bank Guarantee to provide the advance finances to start the work. This reduced the cost of money considerably, but the process requires many details to be managed and giving the Bank right to scrutinize the project and ensure that their involvement is also protected.

These last two days made us realize how much we did not know about how this process works. Each word has to be weighed and each issue and its wording agreed to by both the BMC and the UTI BANK. It required very close and committed involvement of UTI Worli branch staff, the Credit department in Head quarters and the BMC deputy commissioner Mr Achrekar and chief engineer Mr. Krishanrao and their team, to finalize the wordings on the 7th and final provision of the guarantees on the 8th March and on submission of this documentation to obtain the 4.2 crores as advance mobilization to SPARC.

Since Jan 26th, 69 sites have been located and in ten places already the plinth level work has been reached, this money is coming at the most important time. This will swing the work that is being put into place in full gear.

Sheela Patel
SPARC
Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres

22nd March 01

1. Background History.
In November 1998 a citizens' group from Bombay took a public interest litigation to the Bombay High Court against the Railways and Government of India for the lack of safety and delays in local transport services. Their solution to all the ills was that slum dwellers in who squat close to the tract should be removed. This eviction was to be done as a court order and no compensation should be given to these households.

SPARC and NSDF came in as interventionists and in the affidavit we submitted we said that in this entire discussion about railway services and slum dwellers, there was no recognition of the larger issues and ongoing events and strategies that were being explored.

That there was a active federation of slum dwellers living on railway lands called the Railway slum dwellers federation ( RSDF) which was seeking a resolution to their crisis of living near the tracks from 1989, when along with the alliance they had done a survey of slums and produced a report called "Beyond the Beaten Tract". In that report apart from presenting facts about themselves, they had also suggested some alternatives
That between that time and the time of the case, there have been many precedent setting collaboration that the community has done with the state government of Maharashtra and the Indian Railways which have assisted in major projects.
At the time of the case, the government of Maharashtra and the Indian Railways were negotiating a billion dollar project to improve the state of public transport especially the railways,. The World Bank from which source this loan was being negotiated required policy backed rehabilitation acceptable to the households to be relocated as part of the project.
SPARC Mahila Milan and NSDF were facilitating that process, and all the participants in the PIL on both sides were not stating these facts to the High Court.

II. The summary of what happened so far since then:
The PIL now began to include information about MUTPII in the discussion. However the issues were how to balance the prolonged negotiations that such large projects are characterised by, with the urgency to doing something about the state of the railways train schedule.

The Railway Commissioner of Safety was on the verge of stopping the services of the habour line, which is the route for the largest traffic if the slums within 10 meters were not removed. Due to this proximity, the trains are slowed down to 5km per hour which in turn delays the whole turn around of trains and no or trips they make. This is also due to the crisis of accidents which also were very high.

The World Bank Indian Railways and government of Maharashtra made some strategic changes in their schedule to address this crisis. By "Optimization" of track use, and by relocating the households within 10 meters, this would serve the needs of the city and not dislocate the project, and give the court a solution that works. They could make this statement to the court because communities within RSDF and the alliance of SPARC Mahila Milan and NSDF were confident to create the community process to ensure that.

Between June 00 and November 00 the first of the 10,000+ households that needed to be relocated were moved. Some into permanent houses and others in transit houses constructed by NSDF and Mahila Milan . So when the court asked for a date for the solutions to be completed, the government of Maharashtra in its affidavit stated that 6004 households /structures were left on the track and that they would be relocated by Feb 2001.

In the case that came up yesterday, the court wanted to hear what had actually happened. 3500 had been relocated, and by March 30th, 2001 another 500 would be relocated. The remaining 2004 would be relocated in April. ( For anyone who knows anything about these processes, this progress is also a unbelievable speed!) The reason why the total number was not completed was because over a month delay occurred due to construction delays, not readiness of people to go to the location.

Now the court has agreed to hear the final progress an close the case in April.

( The whole story of the relocation process completely managed by the communities will be compiled and put on the website in a few days with pictures.

The process is maturing, communities are developing greater anticipatin of issues, the coordination with the raiway demolition teams is much better.
Just last week we have had a very interesting issue come up. when the households had to be relocated to the tenements in wadala. The PMU was puzzled why the allocations were not in numerical order. Instead it was no seeming order. Then we had a discussion and Jockin and the team explained that the larger families were moving into tenements because the 120 sq house was too small, and since we had options the communities decided this was a better option.
Even the allocation process is much improved, as all the papers are given to each household in their home on the track, and they have to come to the site office where in different buildings there are groups of leaders from their own settlements, some from the RSDF and some from NSDF and Mahila Milan and each groups papers are rechecked and signed and the keys are handed over by MMRDA and NSDF people.
Everyday about 150 to 175 households are given the keys, and some move in right away others wash the house, clean it, have innitiating prayers and then move in. In some instances, people have not moved in for almost a week. That much time is given before the houses are to be removed.
Then when the people have moved into the houses, then the NSDF and RSDF team goes to the home, checks ID papers and signs the final papers on the basis of which the tenement ownership will be handed over to the household. These papers will then be given to MHADA to initiate the transfer. This is one more safe guard to ensure that the same people move in who have been given the house.
Here too they get a choice, they can either remove their own house, that is dismantle it, or the railways have bulldozers ( on days when they close the line ) or they do it manually. Communities who stay behind, ( those who are presently beyond the 10 meters, have seen that when the bulldozer comes in it often tends to dislodge parts of their house however careful the operators ( and they are often not careful) . So now they work with their neighbors and remove the houses, and the linkages between the houses are done by the residents and the bulldozer can remove the walls and flatten out the structure.
Because the houses were not given in line, the initial demolition was slow, but gradually as the others get allocated into the transit and sections get cleared this will become possible to hand over areas to Indian Railways.
In many places the high number of locked structures has begun to create some problem, in that those who make fictitious claims now write letters to MMRDA for houses. Through the grievance redressal, this is solved by asking the person to find five people who lives around them to locate their home and the others on the map.
Now in the rest of march another 500 households from sion King circle, GTB-Chunabatti ( these are names of stations) will be moved. Now all will be moved into the transit houses in Wadala. The schedule for shifting in April has been finalized for central railway. Then in April, the Ghatkpoar East to Vikroli station households on 8th April. Bhandup Mulund on 15th and Thanakalyan 22nd.
The time between Vashi to VT has already come down to 45 minutes, and in many ways the strategy to bring the optimization aspect in the start of the project is beginning to indicate that it was very good.

First field visit for the Additional Commissioner in the Bombay Sanitation Project

Mr Subodh Kumar goes for site inspection on Sunday 25th March 2001.

Mr. Subodh Kumar is the Additional Commissioner in charge of the Slum Sanitation project. It has been with him and Mr Sarkar of World Bank that we have worked in partnership to develop this slum sanitation project where SPARC will build 320 toilets in the first phase of the project.On Sunday the 25th march 2001, Mr S Kumar, along with his Deputy Commissioner Mr Achrekar and Chief Engineer Mr Krisha Rao along with SPARC NSDF and Mahila Milan decided to go for the first "Inspection" of the toilets contracted to be constructed in this project. The number of sites they visisted were many, in this report we just touch on some brief highlights to give a flavor of the process.

The First stop Cheetah Camp D Sector toilet :

There are two Toilets in Cheetah Camp where the demolished and reconstructed.

The stages we are focusing on this next two months:

Jockin explained that for the non technical groups, the stages for the project are:

Identification of site
Study of community preparedness to work with SPARC
Site measurements and developing possible designs and beginning to study the community done in parallel.
Narial Phodo: Coconut breaking ceremony, in which the ground breaking is done ( either a local politician or someone the community selects does this)
Identification of a sub contractor to undertake construction, estimations of works, installments for payments and meeting with BMC engineers.
Demolition, Desludging ( if it?s a old toilet) or land clearing if its new, in parallel with building temporary toilets.
Construction begins.
It is the projections for the project that all 320 toilets identification and completion of these 7 milestones should be done by 30th April.

At the D Sector toilet at Cheetah Camp:

So much steel: The Local Contractor and community were all gathered to see this event. The foundation was being prepared for the pouring of cement and everyone got to see how the foundation required steel. Explaining this as a important issue for community to understand, Jockin explained how vital this is for communities to understand.

Setting up temporary toilets: Next to the toilet there are temporary toilets constructed for the use of the people. This is a critical issues to ensure that breaking down old toilets does not lead to people having no place to go! However this was not part of the costing that was done, and increases the costs of construction by Rs 8000 per seat constructed. SPARC has decided to look at what the overall costs will be and by the end of April bring this to the notice of the BMC and World Bank if the costs cannot be absorbed.

Visits Jockin's home: Since Cheetah Camp is where Jockin stays everyone went to see his home.

The inspection looks at many other toilets and explores many issues:

Maharashtra Nagar: Jockin calls it the donkey toilet . Why? Because all present pathways to the location where the toilet construction is taking place are so narrow that only donkeys can carry the material to the site!

No 19 at Mankurd: What is this.... a school or a toilet! It may be recalled that after Chikhalwadi toilet given to SPARC in Nov 1998, a year later No 19 ( very close to Chikhalwadi as well in Mankhurd) was also given to SPARC . Like Chikhalwadi, its one and a half times the height of the house structures in the area and gleams over all the structures. Even Jockin who visisted it many months ago said his reaction is " That looks like a school building, where is the toilet?" This was exactly the reaction of everyone who went yesterday. Walking up to the terrace and looking at the whole area from that vantage point?.. it made everyone feel there was hope?. Maybe in a few years the houses will come to this level and look like this toilet is one with the community?.now it?s the basis on which the make plans and aspire to make changes.

Strategy to manage older toilets, which are in the same area where new slums are coming up: In many instances where there are new toilets constructed there are older working toilets. Some may need some retrofitting or repairs, but if the whole slum?s sanitation needs are treated together, it was vital that the older toilets be repaired and the whole slum participate in the project so that the committee has the same rules for all toilets. By April 2001 maybe a few will be initiated to work out this scheme.

Relationship with politicians and community leadership :
In many locations local politicians ( Municipal corporators, legislators and parliamentarians also joined the inspections and where they could not come, they appointed their part people to take part in the process. In most instances they have been very supportive and have worked in very close collaboration with the BMC and SPARC . In some instances there has been some conflict, most of which is due to inter party politics and the need for even slum sanitation to be a " government verses opposition" issue, complicated by the fact that there remain still some confusing communication about this project.

Mr S Kumar was clear that the BMC was fully behind this process, and all the Municipal Commissioners were solidly behind this process and ready to help political representatives adopt this project in their area. He was also clear in his discussions with community that while SPARC was vital for initiating this process in a manner that communities could participate the BMC was the one whose project this was! What everyone aspired was that the communities, the politicians and the Ngos will work together and develop new partnerships so that issues about slums can be addressed through that relationship.

A Slum Sanitation workshop in June: There was tentatively to be a slum sanitation workshop on 30 March 2001 which now stands cancelled. Instead it is now rescheduled to be on 30th June 2001. SPARC feels that that actually is better as by then at least 30-50 constructions will reach 80% to 100% completion and site visits for all participants will make that workshop a real working session to explore issues and strategies, instead of making it a talk shop.

Some other contractors say they cannot make the toilets will SPARC take over: During the visits to other wards it was brought to the attention of the group that some other contractors who had also won awards for contracts with communities were having problems starting the works in slums. Clearly this was to do with the non construction issues which they had difficulty with, and the challenge was how they were going to overcome this.

News letter this time will have:

There is so much to learn from this process for those who are not involved directly, but also need form information of those who are working and in some way or the other connected to this activity. SPARC plans to have a bilingual newsletter at best every fortnight, but definitely one each month which will have the following news initially. Ofcourse it can only be called Mumbai Toilet Talk!

The first one will contain:

1. Names of all engineers per ward on both sides
2. Community organizational team from SPARC NSDF Mahila Milan
3. Names of PMU and BMC to contact for coordination
4. A list of all toilets locations with ticks to show stage at which they are.
a. Names of sites inaugurates
b. Names of contractors appointed
c. Names of sites where Deslugging and demolishing is done
d. Where construction has begun

This will be put up on the website with pictures and a short video clip of 5 minutes is alos in the making. Write your comments and ideas to us.