What Can We Do With Our Slums

8/6/2019 What Can We Do With Our Slums

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What can we do with a slum?A g rea t de a l . W e can " r ecy c le" i t ; t ha t i s to s ay, w e can bu i ld a t t he sa ma c c o m m o d a t e a n e q u a l n u m b e r o f p e rs o n s , a n d p r o v id e p l e n t y o f o p e n

L A U R I E B A K ER

I AM 80 years old, and in my childhoodIndia was a fairytale land of rajas, silksand spices, tigers, monkeys and peacocks.As a schoolboy my fairytale picture of India was mildly spoiled by my history

work with its stones of the Black HoleCalcutta and the Mutiny!During the Second World War, I

was doing paramedical work in Chinaand on the way back to England I hadto wait for three months in Bombay fora boat. I saw no rajas, but saw quite a

bit of silk on beautiful ladies. But againmy picture was spoiled because I wastaken to see slums and chawls. But I did want to come back to India after I metGandhiji.

After a month or two I came back to rebuild old shelters and build newtreatment centres in leprosy colonies scat-

tered all over vast India - then still notindependent. I saw the wonderful beau-ty and resources of India, but as my work took me mainly into remote backwardrural India I very quickly becameacquainted with rural poverty. Shockingthough it was, the rural poor did have

access to fresh air and trees and plants,birds and animals.

Only later did I get an insight intothe far more squalid conditions that pre-vail in urban slums, where people knewnothing of fresh air, clean water or of anything green.

There is now a slight stirring of con-

science among governments and the peo-ple to do something about slums. Butmost efforts are thwarted by those whouse slums for their money-making tradesof drink, drugs and sex.

One current idea of approach -because money is not readily forthcom-

Inside a pavement dwelling in Mumbai, a family sorts paper that will be recycled. Slum-dwellers should not be evicted and beforced to put up slums elsewhere. In their own way, they provide a valuable service by cleaning away waste and recycling someof the material.

FRONTLINE, AUGUST 22, 1997


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ing for slum-eradication and recycling -is to hand the job over to builders andcontractors. They will build verticalcement block tenements for slum-dwellers to move into - and all the landcleared of sprawling shacks and hovelscan then accommodate any number of

high-rise luxury flats, offices and busi-ness houses. So although the slum-dwellers will have a water-proof concreteroof, they will still not know what freshair, green plants and open space are.

Now, in the 50th year of India'sIndependence, we simply must not allowour slums to get denser, dirtier and moredegraded.

So is there any way out of this pop-ulation and housing impasse? I person-ally am convinced that there are waysand it will be to our shame and disgrace

if we accept the status quo.

WHA T CAN WE DO WITH A SLUM?'

ASLUM is a shame and a disgrace,not to those who live in it, but firstto those in authority, then to plannersand builders and then to all of us who

pass by on the other side of the road andpretend that no slum exists. A slum mustnot just be patched up and it must notbe pushed to another waste place tobecome another slum. A slum must notbe converted into a cement block repli-ca, identical in planning and 'services' tothe old original slum. A slum should notbe converted into identical uniform unitsplaced in straight rows.

So what should be done? A slum isprobably where it is because there was awaste, "unusable" patch of land tucked

away between and behind prime cityproperty, and homeless people moved into be close to work. With almost nomoney they constructed shelters with bitsof waste material. They built these shel-ters close to one another for companyand protection and, as their friends and

families joined them, the whole place gotcompletely filled up with these shacks.There was, of course, no drinking water,and no roads, no lights and no sanita-tion.

They should not be thrown out andbe forced to start all over again some-where else. They are, in their own way,valuable, desirable and necessary fellow-citizens who are experts, skilled at jobsthat most people dislike and will not do.

They are 'experts' at scavenging.They not only clean away our waste and


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Our rubbish, but expertly sort it out intodifferent categories of materials that canbe recycled - metals, (toothpaste, tubes!),glass, rags and paper, plastics, organicmatter, and so on. They earn money byselling these items at ridiculously lowprices. When they do all this to our

advantage, why should they not be pro-vided with the facilities so that they them-selves can also recycle and market it?

We live in pucca houses or flats whichhave a backyard or a garden or a balconyfor outdoor activities for children toplay, to dry clothes, to keep pets, to growvegetables and flowering plants. So whyshould not they also have open air space?Every house we build should have a yardor a terrace of its own.

There must also be open spaces forcommunity recreation, children's play,

for rearing cows, goats and poultry, a fishtrees for fodder, fuel, fruit and

flowers, and small patches of land for

growing vegetables. (I can hear you say:"Fine! Why not give them T.V. sets andcars?")

The recycled slum should also haveits own shops and market, a health cen-tre, a creche and a school, a library or areading room, and a hall for communi-

ty use and for letting out for weddingsand other functions. It must have water,light and sanitation.

T HESE are not impractical, unwork-able ideas. The tentative plans andillustrations detailed here show that allthis is not just an airy-fairy idealist Utopia;there is no good reason why it cannot bedone. The objective is to show that onthe same plot of land where the slumexists at present, one can provide notonly for the same number of occupantsbut for all these facilities too (though notthe T.Vs or the cars!).

Government (and other) depart-

Recycling our slumsshould be given far

greater priority thanbuilding more and

more high-riseapartment buildings.

The recycled slumshould have open

spaces for communityrecreation and forchildren to play; it

should have its ownshops and markets, ahealth centre , and a

hall forcommunity use.

ments already have plans, personnel andthe money to put up buildings and pro-vide controlled water supply, electricity,solar and biogas energy, access paths androads, education and health services andprovide facilities for animal- and poul-try-breeding, social forestry, agriculture

and horticulture.There will be problems and incon-veniences - and resistance from thosewith vested interests - but as a nationwe must overcome them. And the timeto start is now.

The sketch F on Page 117 must notbe allowed to become like the sketch onthis page.

If it does we are merely convertinga mud-and-tin slum into a concrete one.We have made the mistake of keepingnature out of cities. Should we persist inthe folly?

Vertical tenements are neither prac-tical (on considerations of water supply,sanitation and so on) nor acceptable. Weshould have learned that lesson from ourchawls!

When put together in stepped tiers,the house units tend to give the impres-sion of high-rise flats and there are fearsthat costs will be similar. However, thesesimple housing units, up to four storeys,can all be done with ordinary load-bear-ing walls; no RCC framework is required.Floor and roof slabs can make use of theR.C. Filler slab, which is as strong anddurable as the orthodox R.C. slab and

costs 30 to 35 per cent less. Similarlythere are material- and cost-saving meth-ods for brick walls, and so on.

There are very many simple andeffective ways of cutting down costs,without taking away from the structuralstability. Obviously, in a country the sizeof India, the types of materials availableand the methods and styles of using themvaries considerably, even from district todistrict. In any case, it is better and saferto employ local and traditional methodsof building; this also makes for variationsin style, which is very welcome.

The deprived people - whose onlyidea of an open space was of the nearbyhighway with its traffic and pollution andnoise and dangers, or else the two or threefeet of mud that separates their shacks -can at last get a home and know whatan open space with trees and grass fortheir children to play, and maybe evengrow flowering-plants and raise animals,is like. Our hopes, and their dreams, canbecome a reality.

There are, however, a great manydangers that may descend on their new


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haven. Even if one has not been to New

York, one is familiar with images of itsconcrete-and-glass precipices andcanyons. One has to face the fact that

very act of recreating an open spacecrime land' in the heart of a city is

an invitation to greed and to false devel-opment. Th e result will be as in the sketchabove.

Not so easy to find are the new typesof houses shown on Pages 117 and 118.

All these sketches show the same planfor each living area or quarter. It mustbe understood that there is no good rea-son for endless repetition of one plan!Obviously, in the type of building shown,where units are placed one above anoth-er and where there are a certain numberof units in each block, there has to be acertain basic structural pattern for eachtype of block. But within this basic pat-tern there is an endless variety of waysof dividing up a specified overall houseunit area. The room units can be divid-ed up in different ways to suit the require-ments of each family.

Even the size of a living unit may

vary, depending on the funds availableor the needs of the community involved.There must be regulations to ensure thata family of a specific size gets a livingunit of a certain area. For instance, afour-member family (a couple with twochildren) will require more living spacethan, say, a two-member family (a cou-ple). But this is not an architect's job.

As was said earlier, there are manysimple ways of reducing constructioncosts without weakening structural sta-bility. The main point is that the processof manufacturing "modern" materialsuses up energy in large quantities. Forexample, steel and cement, whose man-ufacturing processes are highly energy-intensive, are thought to be almostindispensable. For ordinary buildings,their quantities can be greatly reduced.Ther e are alternatives tha t use much lessenergy.

All over India there are thousands of slums - from small ones in little pock-ets of "wasteland" to very big ones cov-

ering acres of prime land in big cities. It

is not enough to attempt one or two pilotor model projects. These, our slums, areall equally shameful and we have to carryout a major war against them.

It will cost a lot of money, so wemust use tried and reliable cost-reducingmaterials and methods. If we carry outschemes similar to the one described inthese sketches, people get homes andopen space and recreation areas; in addi-tion, the extra built-up space beneath thetiers can be used to provide health andeducational services or markets and gen-erate income, which over a period willhelp pay back the building costs and pro-vide the residents of the 'recycled' sluman income. Recycling our slums shouldbe given far greater priority than raisingmore and more high-rise flats.

Dare we tell the 'haves' to take a back seat for a while and let the NIGs (no-income groups) and the EWSs (eco-nomically weaker sections) have a chanceto become at least LIGs (low-incomegroups)?

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What Can We Do With Our Slums