For Lata Ratan Misal, a resident of Indira Vasahat in Pune, the stroll from her residence to the neighborhood bathrooms was an extended one. It felt longer at evening. Misal would usually ask her granddaughter to accompany her. However then, she’d fear concerning the lady’s security whereas she visited the bathroom.
The duo discovered some respite to those woes in 2021. That yr, hope arrived within the slum space by way of a venture began by NGO Shelter Associates — based by Pune-based architect Pratima Joshi in 1993. As Joshi shares with The Higher India, the founding thought of the NGO was (and is) to facilitate entry to sanitation, housing and water within the slum areas of India.
Misal was one of many many residents in Pune’s Indira Vasahat who was supplied with a bathroom inside her home; a rarity that she nonetheless remembers to be a “blessing”. Whereas Misal was having fun with this newfound luxurious in her Pune residence, 150 km away in Parshiwadi, Thane, one other gentleman Janardhan Gopal Jadhav was on the point of assemble his residence bathroom with the fabric offered by Shelter Associates.
It was excessive time. Jadhav and the opposite residents of the realm had been interesting for brand spanking new drainage networks for years. However their cries fell on deaf ears. That yr, Joshi’s staff visited the realm outfitted with sanctions and supplies.
“Due to this, we might get bathrooms inbuilt our home at a really low price. This has been a boon to a number of households residing right here, particularly for disabled individuals,” Jadhav notes.
“These tales are the rationale I began,” Joshi emphasises.
Regardless of an architectural background, she selected to not go the normal route of economic tasks and opted as a substitute for the event sector. She credit her grasp’s course at London’s Bachelor’s Faculty of Structure and Planning for her unconventional selections.
“Subjects like city poverty are not often lined in architectural programs. However these me. Throughout my grasp’s, we had been taught by a number of main planners and designers. By the point I used to be by way of with the course, I had made up my thoughts to dedicate my expertise to the have-nots of town.”
A yr later, Joshi moved to Pune the place she began her social enterprise. As she provides, the imaginative and prescient on the time was to revolutionise slum settlements in India by way of a community-centric strategy.
Thirty years later, this imaginative and prescient hasn’t modified.
Respiratory hope into the slums of India
Remind her of the affect Shelter Associates has managed to create right now — 27,000 slum properties outfitted with a bathroom inside the house — and Joshi says these numbers had been as soon as solely a dream. “I had no social work background,” she reminds us.
However at the same time as she stood precariously on the sting of this new venture in 1993, with nothing to information her however pure intuition, her amateurism turned out to be a boon. The novelty of issues was scary but additionally liberating, she provides.
Three a long time sturdy, Shelter Associates has survived the check of time. Pointing to the key sauce that has paved the best way to success, Joshi says it’s “information”.“This was the lacking piece after we began.” Early on, she noticed the shortage of well-formulated information to be the rationale behind haphazard insurance policies and tasks that had been being achieved. The affect was invisible.
Knowledge was new territory to the architect too. With out information, they couldn’t proceed. Thoughts you, this was within the late 90s when expertise similar to Google Maps didn’t exist.
Resorting to the one useful resource she might discover, Joshi opted for GIS (Geographic Data Programs) — software program that shops, manages, analyses, edits, outputs, and visualises geographic information. She used the software program to analyse information — similar to total census info, infrastructure, and details about entry to services similar to bathrooms, and water.
“We had been properly forward of our occasions,” Joshi boasts, smiling at how their “obsession for information”, which was usually laughed at, grew to become their strongest anchor.
In 2005, when Google Earth was launched, the mapping achieved by Shelter Associates bought a shot within the arm. The satellite-backed maps went on to kind the idea for a key venture of the NGO — offering properties in slum areas with plus codes and digital addresses.
These plus codes are decided from the latitudinal and longitudinal location of the slum cluster and are distinctive to every residence. Immediately, over 87,500 properties are reaping the advantages of getting a ‘plus-code’ because it helps them get deliveries, groceries and extra, notably when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
However that being stated, Joshi was intent that the one goal of mapping shouldn’t be to deliver order to the chaos but additionally to reply necessary questions. “Certain, mapping lets us know the place of each manhole, each water stand submit, rubbish bin, electrical pole, and so forth. However I assumed ‘What if one was to have a look at a map and instantly have the ability to level out the properties that had their very own water connection, or their very own neighborhood bathroom?’ Now that might be an ideal map.”
With the thought of bringing the maps that they had created alive, Shelter Associates started conducting surveys on the bottom to know the finer dynamics of the slum clusters.
Entry to sanitation is a primary proper
What are the stereotypes you’ve harboured about slums? “That they breed in massive numbers, that they don’t thoughts dwelling in unclean situations, that they need providers free of charge?” Joshi asks and solutions.
“Effectively, the info we gathered steered in any other case,” she notes.
A survey carried out by Shelter Associates deduced that 70 p.c of households wished a bathroom within the residence in distinction to a neighborhood bathroom. The truth is, they had been even keen to shoulder part of the fee. That’s precisely what the enterprise’s ‘One Dwelling One Rest room’ venture was aimed toward. It was launched to assist deal with the issue of open defecation and the ensuing stress on sanitation programs in slum areas. That aim has been achieved throughout key slum areas of town.
One other survey taking a look at household sizes concluded that the typical household dimension is 4–5 in areas throughout Pune, Pimpri Chinchwad, Kolhapur and Navi Mumbai the place their work is concentrated.
“You see how information helps bust myths?” Joshi is fast to level out.
Whereas Joshi hatched a dream of enhancing housing providers for slum dwellers, she was eager that it shouldn’t uproot their lives. Working example, she elaborates on the ‘Slum Rehabilitation’ venture that was undertaken in Sangli-Miraj between 2011 and 2015.
“An entire citywide strategy was adopted to work out a really delicate answer for individuals dwelling in 29 settlements throughout Sangli and Miraj. The venture was accomplished with greater than 1,500 households getting a safe roof over their heads. These households bought a really well-planned home which has mild air flow and what’s extra, is that these individuals had been fully concerned within the design course of.”
Her subsequent focus is one other rehabilitation venture in Kanpur, which she says is likely one of the first of its sort in Maharashtra. “A whole neighborhood is getting rehabilitated!” Joshi says.
“This might be a template for different tier-two cities to observe,” she provides. “It actually appears to be like at each settlement with a vulnerability matrix — you begin working backwards from essentially the most susceptible to guarantee that all of them get introduced into mainstream housing.”
Except for this, by way of the menstrual hygiene workshops carried out by Shelter Associates, they urge ladies and ladies within the slum areas of India to go for menstrual cups which are sustainable. “This program helps underprivileged slum ladies and ladies to vary the conservative attitudes round menstruation,” notes Joshi including that over 2,500 ladies have made the change.
The enterprise’s strong waste administration venture focuses on segregating several types of strong waste and their protected disposal. “Our educated volunteers use spatial information to trace and monitor the waste assortment serving to waste collectors attain each final family. We additionally assist neighborhood members to coordinate with the respective ULB members to put drainage traces, prepare for rubbish bins, and clear dumping websites,” Joshi provides.
As she watches the city clusters silhouetted towards the Mumbai skyline, Joshi’s dream is for individuals in slum areas too, to get entry to higher requirements of dwelling. As for the street forward, she is definite it’s going to be an extended one. However she says her preliminary years formed her learnings.
“We actually kind of jumped into it after which realized to swim. We realized the laborious manner.”
Edited by Pranita Bhat