dear ramaswamy
saw your post at:
http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2005-October/006348.html
SINISTER DESIGN TO APPROPRIATE SLUM LAND IN CALCUTTA?
I have been wondering about Cal. What is called
Mumbai-Model (thanks to ShivSena free flat scheme for
builder flats in place of slums by impossible magic)
is actually the Cal-model, no? That is where the
wretched slum-upgrading paradigm was born, as was the
crafty business of reducing housing rights to the
right to not be evicted from wretched slums. That was
where DfID landed its first city-wide slum upgrading
project (and like in AP, no one asked why it was given
second chance to fail again later) as well as the city
planning model without plan and just a fuzzy vision
plus a fuzzy articulation of the 74th with lateral
support from a multi-country study, including
NaviMumbai and Hyd in India, to advocate urgent need
to modify development controls to make them more
pro-poor, humane, etc (the two have now come together,
by private consultancies including by a Cal based
firm, in the USAID-sponsored legislative amendments to
MCD Act in name of byelaw reform assuming powers that
MCD does not have under its statute but are claimed to
flow straight from the Constitution to the
Commissioner by decentralization magic by USAID!).
It was the DfID-model (mark-1 in Cal and Hyd, mark-2
in Vizag, Vijaywada and Indore, mark-3 in Cuttack and
Kochi, mark-4 in APUPP, ad-nauseum) that was
extrapolated, by the usual uniquely participatory and
consultative process, to the dubious draft national
slum policy in 1997-99, with a VAMBAY addition by
prime ministerial grace later. This got back-burnered
(I like to believe on account of the minor irritant of
the impact assessment of the DfiD projects and the
protest in Indore and the connections made to the
draft policy and role of HUDCO/HSMI therein), but only
for a while. The housing rights NGOs demanded it of
UPA last year while celebrating their world habitat
day in Delhi and the Left has now asked it of Sonia-ji
in name of CMP.
All this is not quite about appropriating slum land.
That, we all know, is usually lousy marginal land that
(as Mumbai has shown) builders would not want even
with TDR type incentives. And the occasional prime
site that the poor manage to hold is often actually
better suited for uses other than housing or
low-income housing (Yamuna Pushta, for example, is
actually better suited for riverbed green for
ecological reasons and inappropriate by its
configuration for decent housing). The ilk of CREDAI
and MNC NGOs are not in this monkey business for the
peanuts of slum-land.
This is (as land issue) about appropriating city land
-- by eliminating equity as a factor in land
allocations. The models of shoddy resettlement,
in-situ upgrading (with or without participatory
planning and ownership, with this or that option like
individual or community toilets or with or without
builder/surrogate-builder flats) and transit shelter
(including night shelter, pay and use plots, etc) all
have in common one attribute. They are relatively
land-less options. They fail to admit failure on
housing the poor, appropriation of land meant for
their use (under planning law, throughout the country,
in different ways). They condone that appropriation
and they legitimise it for the future. This is where
the paradigms substituting city plans with combination
of fuzzy visions and somehow 74th empowered local-area
planning (with unequal area-specific development
control) dovetail. And this is where community
structures are hijacked, weakened not organisationally
but by being driven to ludicrous position of begging
favours rather than demanding rights, till rights and
favours blur.
The nexus is tripartite: those who have failed to make
over to the poor the land that is meant for their use;
those who benefited / profited from appropriating that
land; and those in the (very lucrative) business of
obfuscating to downsize the rights of the poor in the
name of rights of the poor. It is the diabolical last
that make it all possible. Without them the nexus
remains unholy. With them it becomes unbeatable. And
their strength comes from weakening whatever is needed
to beat the nexus. That is not about appropriating
land. That is about appropriating institutions of
democracy from people. The brazen use of land
appropriation as an instrument for that signals I
think a milestone in neo-imperialism that we ignore at
our peril.
Thanks for your post. please cc such to me. am copying
to mpisg media list.
regards, gita
__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com
saw your post at:
http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2005-October/006348.html
SINISTER DESIGN TO APPROPRIATE SLUM LAND IN CALCUTTA?
I have been wondering about Cal. What is called
Mumbai-Model (thanks to ShivSena free flat scheme for
builder flats in place of slums by impossible magic)
is actually the Cal-model, no? That is where the
wretched slum-upgrading paradigm was born, as was the
crafty business of reducing housing rights to the
right to not be evicted from wretched slums. That was
where DfID landed its first city-wide slum upgrading
project (and like in AP, no one asked why it was given
second chance to fail again later) as well as the city
planning model without plan and just a fuzzy vision
plus a fuzzy articulation of the 74th with lateral
support from a multi-country study, including
NaviMumbai and Hyd in India, to advocate urgent need
to modify development controls to make them more
pro-poor, humane, etc (the two have now come together,
by private consultancies including by a Cal based
firm, in the USAID-sponsored legislative amendments to
MCD Act in name of byelaw reform assuming powers that
MCD does not have under its statute but are claimed to
flow straight from the Constitution to the
Commissioner by decentralization magic by USAID!).
It was the DfID-model (mark-1 in Cal and Hyd, mark-2
in Vizag, Vijaywada and Indore, mark-3 in Cuttack and
Kochi, mark-4 in APUPP, ad-nauseum) that was
extrapolated, by the usual uniquely participatory and
consultative process, to the dubious draft national
slum policy in 1997-99, with a VAMBAY addition by
prime ministerial grace later. This got back-burnered
(I like to believe on account of the minor irritant of
the impact assessment of the DfiD projects and the
protest in Indore and the connections made to the
draft policy and role of HUDCO/HSMI therein), but only
for a while. The housing rights NGOs demanded it of
UPA last year while celebrating their world habitat
day in Delhi and the Left has now asked it of Sonia-ji
in name of CMP.
All this is not quite about appropriating slum land.
That, we all know, is usually lousy marginal land that
(as Mumbai has shown) builders would not want even
with TDR type incentives. And the occasional prime
site that the poor manage to hold is often actually
better suited for uses other than housing or
low-income housing (Yamuna Pushta, for example, is
actually better suited for riverbed green for
ecological reasons and inappropriate by its
configuration for decent housing). The ilk of CREDAI
and MNC NGOs are not in this monkey business for the
peanuts of slum-land.
This is (as land issue) about appropriating city land
-- by eliminating equity as a factor in land
allocations. The models of shoddy resettlement,
in-situ upgrading (with or without participatory
planning and ownership, with this or that option like
individual or community toilets or with or without
builder/surrogate-builder flats) and transit shelter
(including night shelter, pay and use plots, etc) all
have in common one attribute. They are relatively
land-less options. They fail to admit failure on
housing the poor, appropriation of land meant for
their use (under planning law, throughout the country,
in different ways). They condone that appropriation
and they legitimise it for the future. This is where
the paradigms substituting city plans with combination
of fuzzy visions and somehow 74th empowered local-area
planning (with unequal area-specific development
control) dovetail. And this is where community
structures are hijacked, weakened not organisationally
but by being driven to ludicrous position of begging
favours rather than demanding rights, till rights and
favours blur.
The nexus is tripartite: those who have failed to make
over to the poor the land that is meant for their use;
those who benefited / profited from appropriating that
land; and those in the (very lucrative) business of
obfuscating to downsize the rights of the poor in the
name of rights of the poor. It is the diabolical last
that make it all possible. Without them the nexus
remains unholy. With them it becomes unbeatable. And
their strength comes from weakening whatever is needed
to beat the nexus. That is not about appropriating
land. That is about appropriating institutions of
democracy from people. The brazen use of land
appropriation as an instrument for that signals I
think a milestone in neo-imperialism that we ignore at
our peril.
Thanks for your post. please cc such to me. am copying
to mpisg media list.
regards, gita
__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com