Letters To A Young Architect

by Christopher Benninger

  In the mean time cities grew and in some states of India about forty percent of the population became ‘urban’ as early as the 1991 census. According to Amitabh Kundu, by 1994, for India as a whole, the proportion of the poor was larger within the urban population than within the rural population itself. By 1997 more jobs, in absolute numbers, were estimated to have been created in cities each year than in villages. Cropping patterns and off-farm activities in rural areas became dependent on urban markets and productive inputs, thus narrowing the conceptual difference between what was once called ‘urban’ and ‘rural’. All settlements now clearly fell into an interlinked economic system where the neglect of some components would adversely affect the entire system. Being ‘pro-rural’ had become an increasingly quaint bias in an integrated economy dominated by a corporate-political constituency.

  In her research during the 1970s Janice Perlman proposed that the dual economy had been a myth thirty-five years earlier. So had been much of the urban-rural divide. The rural élite invests in commercial crops and agro-industries with clear urban linkages and emerging corporate management styles. The employment absorption potential for poor workers in rural areas was approaching a threshold in the 1980s. These arguments aside, by the beginning of the 21st century, India had entered a phase of rapid urbanization. Yet in her cities one could still find the largest proportion of the poor, and indeed the deepest poverty, the country had until then known.

  Let us consider for a moment who the emerging poor people are; what barriers they face in terms of access to employment and the income it generates; and, finally, what basic needs they find difficult to fulfill?

  Who will be Tomorrow’s Urban Poor?

  By the early 1990s policy makers knew what today’s scenario would be like. The urban poor now are primarily in their second and third decades of urban citizenship – the first, second and third generation urban immigrants and their children. The poor make up about half of the urban population. The truly vulnerable amongst the poor, that is those at risk of premature death, would make up about fifteen percent of the urban population using Sukhatme’s nutritional analysis methods.

  It is this last fragile group who concern us the most, as they will be the most vulnerable in every sense of the word. They will lack even potable water. They will have very low skills, or no skills at all, and they will depend on their physical stamina for survival. Their awareness of the economic system will be limited to the modes of engagement of the labor contractors who employ them on a daily basis, usually in ‘work gangs’ or from informal labor markets. Their terms of engagement will offer no employment security, no unemployment benefits, no health benefits, no retirement funds and their incomes in real value terms will be among the world’s lowest. On-the-job safety will be low and no accident insurance will protect them or their families. India will compete in the global economy with an economic advantage underwritten by the social security deficit of the poor.

  These poorly compensated workers will be involved in unskilled construction operations, or as causal labor serving ancillary suppliers to larger, formal sector producers. In addition, a sizeable segment of the urban poor will be engaged in the tiny informal sector of the economy located within low-income settlements. There will be a link between monopsonist-exploited household production, slum-based workshops, ‘illegal’ small-scale industries and ancillary medium-scale operations supplying larger scale formal sector units. Examples of such operations are garment piecework, metal lathe work, small tanneries and related leatherwork. Traditional operations like beedi rolling will also be located in slums. More than fifty percent of slum houses will, in fact, shelter some type of productive activity, feeding the global economy.

  These urban poor will enter the work force at ten years of age, either as helpers to their parents or as direct employees. Many will work in service industries as busboys, cleaners, messengers, helpers, stitchers, etc. As small children they will have accompanied their parents to worksites, worked in home industries, or taken major responsibilities in managing their own households. Most household members above the age of ten will work. But they will be marginally employed (working between ten and ninety days per year) or underemployed (working between ninety-one and one hundred and eighty days per year). During their working days they will earn slightly more than a subsistence income. According to UNICEF and the World Bank the infant and child mortality and morbidity rates in this group will be among the highest in the world, while their nutrition levels and health status will be among the lowest. For the few who find themselves in schools, problems of attendance, clothes, learning materials and competition will tend to push them back onto the streets. For those who manage to stay in school, theirs will be the worst learning environments and their teachers will be amongst the least prepared to impart education. Their education will be neither functional nor adequate. Dropout rates will reflect this.

  In the same cities where the poor struggle for survival, a much smaller upper middle class community will enjoy participation in one of the most efficient educational systems in the world. Their parents will manage modern, formal sector industries supplying the global market. They will be engaged in vocations, professions, services and trading. They will be the operatives of a complex, ‘post-industrial’ type of service sector. Yet the struggle to ‘stay middle class’, and the competition to become middle class will create a major challenge to newcomers.

  Additionally, an entrenched working class, employed in formal sector large scale industries, will enjoy incomes about three times those of the bottom two deciles of earners. They will account for about a third of the breadwinners in the bottom six deciles of urban workers and they will reside in slums alongside the poorest of poor households. They will be covered by pensions, health and accident insurance. They will enjoy annual paid leaves and bonuses. It will be their dish antennae, peeking out of tin covered shanties, which comfort the well-off who pass by. They will have attained skills, education and an urbane ‘savvy’ about life in the city. They will belong to unions and political parties. It is this upper layer of the poor who will most abhor the squalor and poverty of their own slum neighbors. Desperation to survive will make the vulnerable eager to work for any wage. This weakness alone will pose an economic threat to those poor who have achieved a modicum of job security. The very poor will not be looked upon with compassion, but as a potential threat.

  Barriers to the Job Markets and Income

  Thus, when we speak of the ‘poor’ in cities, we are not speaking of slum dwellers. We are speaking of an underclass composed of the bottom fifteen percent. Given their skill profiles, their opaque image of the system, and their limited job opportunities, these truly impoverished people will be caught in a cycle of poverty.

  They will not have the language skills even to carry out low-level clerical tasks or to provide basic services. They will be low on numeral sense, and even manual skills.

  They will have no basic skills and moreover, according to the United Nations, International Labour Organization, they will lack the empirical logic necessary to make line decisions needed in rudimentary assembly tasks. Further, according to World Health Organization, they will be under-weight, disease-prone and have high absentee rates, due to high morbidity.

  Worst of all, their abilities to IMAGE will be very low. Visioning alternative roles, conditions, situations, contexts and scenarios will simply be beyond their capability. The GOOD LIFE will be out of their reach.

  They will mainly walk to work. Some will cycle. Many will travel ticketless – illegally – on mass transit. They will live in families of five or six in single-room tenements of eight square meters each, lacking windows, water or sanitation. Some will have access to overcrowded water taps, shared (and unhygienic) sanitation blocks, and limited bathing areas. The land market will densify their environment, overstressing the inadequate basic services.

  Libe
ralization and globalization will hasten this process, making it even more difficult to cope with the transition. Mass communications and consumerism will only make the divisions among the poor more obvious and painful. And with the new economy, new technology and new markets, ever higher entry requirements will confront prospective new workers. While all of those who live in slums will face inadequacies due to systemic dysfunction of income distribution and housing markets, the poorest families will bear the true burden of real poverty and hunger. The priority, then, appears to be livelihood sustainability.

  How do we achieve this?

  Basic Needs: Where will the gaps lie? The vulnerable within the urban poor, described above, will not have the purchasing power to acquire minimal levels of transport, primary education, basic health care, or recreation. The inadequacy of food intake, hygiene and preventive health cover will reduce their capacity to exert themselves. Lack of ‘ability to pay’ will exclude them from ownership of any form of private asset, including mechanized or electronic devices or a vehicle and land tenure. Clothing will be adequate, but will bear witness to their underclass status.

  Their unfulfilled basic needs will lie in three areas:

  Survival: nutrition, health and hygiene;

  Transformation abilities: skills, awareness, and knowledge;

  Support mechanisms: shelter, transport, clothing and recreational.

  Their basic demand will be for jobs, the income they fetch and the status they bestow.

  Two strategies clearly emerge from the above.

  Firstly, a kind of social net must be created to ensure survival. This is NOT development. It is essential crisis management. About fifteen percent of the population would need survival protection. The NGOs can only provide models and lessons; they cannot fulfill this immense gap. But by ‘doing it’ they gain the moral voice of advocates. They can speak with authority. A clear role for NGOs in urban areas is to ‘design’ a social net, experiment with its application, assess reasonable cost parameters and analyze the ramifications of ‘going to scale’. It must be seamlessly meshed with government apparatus to bring it to scale. Clearly, the government apparatus needs analysis and restructuring. In its present state it neither facilitates nor empowers low income households.

  Secondly, a development strategy must emerge for livelihood security, inclusive of awareness building, group action and functional education. Awareness can be spread inexpensively through group meetings, learning materials and mass communications. Functional education and skill development cost more and have a less extensive reach. But the NGO sector has a wide network of training institutions, technical schools and job training centers, which could go double-shift, using the night shift for the vulnerable. Again, this is an advocacy function.

  Most of all we must guarantee livelihood sustainability within cities. The right to employment within walking distance from the place of residence is a must. Work must be provided, whether in creating a public or a private asset. Land development is a clear area of mass employment. Unskilled casual labor on construction sites is another. Urban reforestation, refuse collection and basic maintenance are yet others.

  What we must all work toward is a national human development program. First, such a program must guarantee access to SURVIVAL. A basket of essential needs must be provided. Sri Lanka’s social guarantees of the 1960s and 1970s are worth studying. A per-capita ration of rice, oil and dal was guaranteed to every citizen, distributed free through ration shops. India’s existing civil supply system can be built upon. Ration shops can be the outlets. Infant mortality rates in Sri Lanka were 36/1000 when in many Indian states they were as high as 160/1000 (in 1980). What policy measures made these two comparably poor countries so different when seen through Physical Quality of Life measures? Second, such a program must guarantee the RIGHT TO WORK.

  Our existing work guarantee programs can be vitalized and enhanced. It would be relevant to study the Work Progress Administration introduced by the Roosevelt Administration in the depth of the US depression. Food for work, famine relief projects and the Employment Guarantee Schemes are other cases which require re-examination.

  Herein lies our mission and our purpose. We must advocate the need for a national poverty alleviation program. Jobs for All is a goal within our reach. A social security net covering effectively the poorest of the poor is a must. Giving them the mental eyes to see the system they live in is our duty. Most of all, in this age of ‘free enterprise’, we must reassert the sacred duty of the community and its use of public instruments. We must never privatize what is civil about cities.

  HABITAT II is posed to be a ritualistic meet – over one hundred governments are the reluctant invitees. All that is needed for a grand success is a host of NGOs with their hat tricks and magic shows. The word ‘poverty’ has yet to find its way into the meet’s lexicon. Rather, their reports meekly refer to ‘those of limited incomes’. In its fumbling for ideas, HABITAT II will once more highlight old wine in a new bottle. Agenda 21 from the Rio Conference will be dusted off and an urban polish applied. The Global Shelter Strategy will be rechristened. Admitting that very little is known about what is going on, a rather academic plan for monitoring cities will be proposed. Be assured that all of this will be wrapped up in environment-friendly, gender-sensitive language. We cannot allow such an important event to slip past us as an empty spectacle, celebrating nothing but our duty to remember HABITAT I. Instead of worrying over what has in fact already been decided for 1996, we in India must have our own agenda, lest we waste our energies pandering to a system that lacks commitment and direction. In fact it is we who must provide the direction. Just as we cannot privatize what is civil about the cities, we cannot globalize what is humane and compassionate in our own communities. Yet we can work together to strengthen each other through a common cause and values. We don’t need another Earth Charter. We need a workable poverty alleviation strategy of our own. Let us hope HABITAT II would then follow us.

  Letter

  Channels of Access to Shelter

  (Interview by Gargi Gupta, Business Standard)

  There are so many buildings of so many kinds being built in India today. What do you think of them, architecturally?

  Architecture mirrors the society for which it is created. It is no better or no worse. The new economy in India is based on its becoming a world destination for out-sourcing, where cost cutting is the client’s objective. But they want to do this with a global touch. Ninety percent of the projects are ‘cold shells’ where low budget and fast-track schedules are the design brief. Quality and beauty and creating better places to live in are not what people are doing, because it is not the agenda in the first place. There is a kind of covenant between multinational firms, developers who house them and the mercantile architects to produce faceless urban fabric that belongs to no culture and respects no history.

  You were probably one of the first architects and town planners to work with urban development authorities and state housing boards to develop new towns and large housing projects for low-income groups. What became of them? Do they continue to be used by low income households? Are you still working on such projects?

  In 1972 I had the opportunity to design the first affordable housing scheme for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) for the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO) in Jamnagar. It was a system of incremental courtyard houses, where every household had a WC and a tap, a room and a courtyard with a stair to the roof. The plots were about 28 square meters and the core house was just 18.5 square meters, with a small courtyard making up the balance. This project came to me through a series of accidents. While on a Fulbright scholarship to India in 1968, I focused on urban slums. This took me to a young labor leader, Sanat Mehta, in Vadodara. We envisioned a scheme to house the poor. Years later I returned to Ahmedabad to initiate the School of Planning and Mehta
became Minister of Housing in Gujarat. About the same month the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO) was founded. Mehta asked me immediately to take up a massive project in Jamnagar. In 1973 I introduced the concept of Site and Services (which I had developed as my thesis while a student at Harvard). The idea was that poor families could actually build their own shelters, but they lacked the land tenure to allow up-gradation. They also lacked rudimentary services like storm water drains, street lights, potable water supply, a sewerage connection and access lanes. My idea was that we provide what they cannot provide and they provide what they can. I was doing this with World Bank funding for the Urban Development Authority at Chennai. It proved very successful as we could provide about 15,000 serviced plots in what it would have cost to build 1800 unaffordable small houses. The idea was replicated by the World Bank globally.

  This was a case of India exporting intellectual property to the world at no cost. The Bank just picked it up and ran. I worked with Mr. Dattatreya and Mr. Laxmanan (urban planners at the Madras Metropolitan Urban Development Authority) and we did it only for the thrill of solving problems. Later we found a number of Washington based ‘experts’ claiming our invention as their own. We did not mind as long as the instruments we invented served a broad community of users. People today make a lot of noise about ‘open software’. In our value system one created inventions to solve problems and for the thrill of seeing them implemented. In Washington our ideas became commodities on which people tried to build their careers.