Abstract
The provision of security of tenure to the urban poor in contemporary Ahmedabad manifested through the formalization of informal settlements either by the implementation of Basic Services for Urban Poor (BSUP) in the past decade or with the recent introduction of the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme (SRS). This in turn questions the rhetoric of the housing policies driven by the state-led ideology. Against this background, this paper presents the alternative tenure options that exist for the urban poor in different low-income settlements in Ahmedabad. It explores the degree of security of tenure and the rights enjoyed by the households in each of the tenure systems based on the primary insights obtained from the field. The study reveals that although multiple housing solutions have been experimented in Ahmedabad, the need and priorities of the poor situated in different tenure systems have largely been undermined. As the poor in the informal settlements acquire perceived tenure security over the years, it would thus be feasible to start with infrastructure upgradation programmes along with basic rights or the incremental approach to tenure provision (which the Slum Networking Programme has partially succeeded in provisioning) in order to reduce urban poverty and ameliorate their living conditions.
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Notes
- 1.
During this time the state and the local government had implemented numerous low-cost public housing programmes like the Site and Service project and the Integrated Urban Development Project (IUDP) in which the slum dwellers from various parts of the city had been resettled in a 10 × 10 semi-pucca dwelling units with basic services and individual ownership mostly in the periphery of the city (Kundu, 2002; Basu, 1988; Mahadevia, 2002).
- 2.
The SNP primarily aimed to provide a package of affordable basic services including household connection to water supply, individual toilet, storm water drainage, paving of internal roads, street light and sanitation in slum areas. The project was also guided by the objective to facilitate the process of community mobilization by setting up of community and the saving groups with the direct involvement of NGOs (Lal & Chauhan, 1999; Acharya & Parikh, 2002). In addition, 10 years of no eviction guarantee had been provided to the community to fuel their participation in improving the overall living conditions (Acharya & Parikh, 2002: 319).
- 3.
The importance of security of tenure, an essential prerequisite for the affordable shelter to the urban poor has been widely recommended in Habitat 2 conference in 1996 (UNCHS, 1996; cited in Duran-Lasserve and Royston, 2002: 2); appraised by the ‘Millennium Development Goal’, propounded by UN-Habitat earlier at the beginning of this century for ‘improving the life of the 100 million slum dwellers by 2015’; adopted by UN-habitat as a components for ‘right to adequate housing’ (UN-Habitat, 2010). The upcoming Habitat 3 conference in 2016, however, persuades for more attention towards innovative and effective approach towards the provision of security of tenure to the urban poor as a key driver of sustainable urban development (UN-Habitat, 2015: 8).
- 4.
This idea has largely been popularized by de Soto’s assertion on the importance of property rights where he claims that in developing countries while the poor already possess assets, they hold them in a ‘defective form’, thus rendering them as ‘dead capital’ i.e. they lack property rights which they could use in collateral form as loan for their houses or open business to lift themselves out of poverty (de Soto, 2000).
- 5.
Literature suggested that ideally, the objective of the provision of security of tenure should be the reflection of the local circumstances involving the complexities regarding land tenure and socio-economic, political and legal background and should keep in mind the need and aspiration of the urban poor (Payne, 2002; Durand-Lasserve & Royston, 2002; USAID, 2014).
- 6.
- 7.
In the present study, Jadiba Nagar, the case study slum located on private land in the west zone of Ahmadabad, is one of the examples of such transaction that shows the emergence and proliferation of informality in Ahmedabad. It was primarily an agricultural land which had been sold plot by plot to the slum dwellers by the original owner Jadiba Ben almost 40 years back.
- 8.
An interview with Rajendra Joshi (2013).
- 9.
AMC conducted the first household survey of slums in 1976 when the photo id passes were given to the slum dwellers which is used as a cut-off date for any rehabilitation programme.
- 10.
An interview with Bijal Bhatt, MHT, 2013.
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Acknowledgements
This paper is part of the author’s dissertation work which he had submitted at CEPT University in April, 2014. The author is indebted to Prof. Shrawan Kr. Acharya for his humble guidance and to Mr. Geoffrey Payne for his initial comments on the topological framework of land tenure.
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Chatterjee, A. (2018). Alternative Provision of Tenure Security and Rights to the Urban Poor: A Case Study from Ahmedabad. In: Mukherjee, J. (eds) Sustainable Urbanization in India. Exploring Urban Change in South Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4932-3_4
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