Most poor immigrants to the city can find access to shelter only be squatting on public or private lands.  Squatters who have lived for long periods  in one place are now widely recognized  to have some rights.  They are generally not displaced unless the land is required for pressing public purposes.  Whenever they have to be shifted, arrangements are expected to be made to resettle them properly at another location.

Public administration has, however, failed to evolve any methodology for giving legal recognition to such rights.  The result is that families who have been living for long periods in slums are subjected to harassment at the hands of slum lords, unscrupulous politicians, municipal inspectors and the police.  Most slum dwellers have to make substantial and frequently recurring pay-offs called hafta to them as protection money.  They are often forcibly displaced without  proper resettlement by insensitive civic officials.  The insecurity of occupation is a major disincentive for slum families to invest in improvements to their shelter environment.  As a result, they continue to live in dilapidated, unhygienic  and crowded shanties for years, often for decades.  finally, since the occupation is illegal and not recognizable, they cannot be asked to pay for providing basic services for the settlement.  Political leaders avoid imposing taxes or user charges for fear of losing votes.  Thus, such taxes are neither administratively nor politically sustainable.  Whatever basic services are provided are at the cost of the public exchequer.  Political parties compete with each other for extending free facilities to the poor.  However, despite the large investments made by the State, most slum environments remain miserable.

Any talk of conferring title to slum dwellers quickly get mired in questions of loss of high cost land to the State and inducement to further influx of migrants.  In Madhya Pradesh where, some years back, titles were given to squatters, the move proved counter-productive raising unfulfillable hopes leading to frustration.  The current approaches, in all their variations, are unsustainable.

There is widespread recognition of the need for greater involvement of women in shelter and shelter related activities.  Public administration has, however, also not been able to evolve a framework for doing so.

As a result of this impasse, 30 to 40 percent  of the population of cities continue to live without legitimacy for long periods which is neither good for them nor for the city.

Empowerment of communities through Neighbourhood Societies
The above dilemma can be resolved and a legitimate solution worked out only by empowering communities for self governance.  Squatter neighbourhoods can then be given certain rights.  Along with these rights they will also have to take on certain responsibilities towards their neighbourhood and the city.  This paper provides a unique methodology for resolving this major problem of civic governance.

It is universally accepted that the present top down approach is undesirable and that greater involvement of the communities is required if improvements in city life are to be brought about.  The recent Constitutional Amendments giving constitutional status to civic authorities and village panchayats (councils) is a step in this direction.  To involve communities in civic management, it will be essential to recognize neighbourhood societies as the last tier of civic management in a manner similar to that for village panchayats.  They will likewise, have to be empowered to manage most of the neighbourhood level civic services.  This is important particularly for the neighbourhoods of the poor.

Further, civic laws will have to lay down that there shall be at least 40 per cent women in the neighbourhood management.  Once civic laws provide for recognition and empowerment of neighbourhood societies, peoples’ organisation (NGOs, CBOs, voluntary agencies) can play a useful role in organizing the poor for self governance.

Neighbourhood societies can thus provide a legitimate and effective forum for recognising shelter rights and the strengthening the role of women in decision-making.

Residents and their Responsibilities
People living in cities can be classified as those having access to formal housing, called “residents”, and those living in informal housing, called “dwellers”.  The problems of cities will remain largely unresolved if the rights and responsibilities of both residents and dwellers are not properly defined.

The residents generally hold the dwellers responsible for spoiling their cities.  However, their rack record is not better, in fact, it is worse. Many residents participate illegal land dealing and unathorized construction leading to densification.  These activities over-stretch civic services.

A powerful concept which gives squatter settlements a certain amount of legitimacy and thereby creates an environment in which they participate and pay for improving their own environment.

settlement for providing it subsidized services.  The residents should also offer old books, toys and clothes to the children of dwellers.  The settlers can, in exchange, provide services to the residents in a responsible manner.  A relationship of harmony can thus develop between the two communities.

Another 10 per cent of the amount collected should be kept in a corpus for major improvements which may be required from time to time.  The balance and such additional amounts which the society collects can be used for neighbourhood maintenance and up gradation.   With this money, the pavement, plantation and other landscape elements and services can be maintained and upgraded, improving the quality of the neighbourhood and the city.

The neighbourhood societies should be empowered to sanction reasonable improvements and remove illegal constructions.  They will be expected to maintaining a proper office under a manager, preferable an ex-serviceman, with supporting staff, to enable them to discharge their governance responsibilities properly.

The residents of a city, like its dwellers, must be made responsible citizens as a pre-requisite for having their rights to housing and civic amenities.

Shelter Lease for Slum Settlements
For slum settlements, the concept of shelter lease is proposed.  Neighbourhood societies of slum settlements more than five years old, should be made eligible for applying to the civic authority  for shelter lease from the civic authority  for shelter lease from the civic authority for the land under their occupation.  The civic authority, after such enquiry as it deemed fit, may grant shelter lease to a neighbourhood society conferring right of (a) non-transferable occupancy and (b) negotiated re-housing if and when displaced.  The neighbourhood society would then grant shelter sub leases to the dweller families.

Before granting sub lease, the neighbourhood society may direct the shelter owners to adjust their shelters to make them more conducive to better circulation, ventilation, privacy and sanitation.  This naturally would be done through consultation and consensus possibly facilitated by an NGO.

The shelter lease would place an obligation on the neighbourhood society to levy shelter and sanitation tax on the sub lessees, for the upkeep of the neighbourhood.  The shelter lease can, if so considered necessary, specify the minimum shelter tax and sanitation tax which would be thus levied.

Finally, the shelter lease would lay down that the shelter sub lease should, to the extent possible, be given in the name of the female head of the family.  This will promote women’s rights to shelter and stability to the family.

NGO Support
The neighbourhood societies of the poor would need assistance in maintaining records, accounts, etc.  NGOs working in slum areas can extend such support and play an effective role in assisting recognized neighbourhood societies in neighbourhood governance.

The neighbourhood society can  have members in-charge of sanitation, health care, balwadis, women saving and loan groups, cultural activities, sports and so on.  Thus various community activities can be performed under the umbrella of the neighbourhood society.

Sanitation
The collections of the sanitation tax can be used for making low cost toilets for groups of families.  By drawing of lots, toilets can be installed gradually in the entire settlement within a year or two without any external funding.

After studying the needs of the poor, group toilets at the scale of one toilet for three families, has been incorporated in the Indian Standards.  The Shanti Vihar slum upgradation project in Motibagh, New Delhi, has clearly established that even one bath and one toiled attached to a cluster of six dwellings managed by the group or the society, are considered by dwellers to be adequate.  In fact, a larger number of toilets increase costs, block valuable space and even diminish the quality of the neighbourhood.  Contrary to current wisdom at the national and international levels, the poor do not need individual toilets and, in fact, detest toilets attached to their one room dwellings.  It is only when they move up in the social ladder and enlarge their dwelling to two or more rooms that they may want a toilet to themselves.

The cost of a sanitation unit including superstructure and disposal system, may be of the order of Rs. 6,000/-.  Spread over six families, it would cost Rs. 1,000/- per family.  If in a neighbourhood a sanitation tax of Rs. 50/- per month is levied, the entire neighbourhood can be covered in just 20 months without external assistance!

Water & Electricity
People generally regard water and electricity, as free resources, particularly where these can be illegally tapped.  Water is a vital environmental resource and must have a price to prevent households and communties from wasting it.  The hazardous and illegal act of tapping electricity must also be stopped.

One simple method could be to provide metered connections of water and electricity for the entire neighbourhood to the neighbourhood society.  The society would than have to recover user chargers from its constituents.  The society can evolve its own methods of sharing charges through sub-meters or consensus among its members.

Densification and Transfers
Once the neighbourhood society gets the shelter lease over the land, community interest will take precedence over individual interest.  The society and its members will prevent new entrants who generally come in with the connivance of slum lords and other interest.  Thus the shelter lease can act as a deterrent against irrational densification which later poses serious problems of management.  The neighbourhood society will also not allow transfers of dwellings or land to outsiders for profit.

Political Sustainability
Within the framework of electoral politics, with every political party competing to extend greater benefits to the poor, it is difficult to tax the poor.  In the proposed model, Government and politicians can take credit for providing slum dwellers with the security of a shelter lease while distancing themselves from the tax, which is collected by the community for what is anyway community benefit.  As the neighbourhood environment improves, politician can, no doubt, take credit for this also.  Furthermore, the city government can, as in Indonesia, offer assistance under Government programmes, to those neighbourhoods that mobilize maximum internal resources.  This way, funds from government programme will be channelized to those who display greater civic responsibility.

Administrative Sustainability
One major problem of conferring any type of right on squatters is that it given impetus to further encroachments.  It is for this reason that a period of five years has been suggested as the minimum threshold for the neighbourhood society of a squatter settlement to apply for shelter lease.  During the five year period, the land owning agency, civic officials and police can make efforts to protect the land.  If they fail to do so, the settlement can be assumed to have come to stay and it can apply for shelter lease.

Neighbourhood societies of a squatter settlement can, after three years of occupation, possibly with the help of an NGO, apply for shelter lease providing complete details of the names of the families, with rough location map, living on the land and giving and undertaking that it would not allow further encroachment and would also improve the settlement by recovering contributions from the residents.  The civic authority would observe the conduct of the society and its members during the following two years, and if satisfied, would give shelter lease at the end of the five year period.  Civic authorities can evolve various procedures in this regard.

Legal Sustainability
A question may be raised whether a civic authority can grant a shelter lease conferring certain rights on land owned by another public agency like the State Government or railways or by a private person.  We believe that it would be perfectly legal for civic authorities to do so.

Under the civic laws, it is a mandatory responsibility of a civic authority to maintain hygienic conditions in the city.  Some civic authorities have, during recent years, been halted up in courts through public interest litigations and ordered to remove in sanitary conditions within specified periods.

The land owning agency, by not protecting its land an not talking measure to remove encroachments within a reasonable time, had created a liability for the civic authority which was coming in the way of discharge of its statutory responsibilities of maintaining hygienic conditions in the city.  The civic authority, in order to discharge its statutory civic responsibility, can confer a shelter lease without transferring  title over the land, to mobilize resources from the community for keeping the area hygienic and clean and placing a responsibility on the land owning agency to properly re-house the families if and when they are to be shifted.  It is thus clear that the action of the civic authority is in furtherance of its statutory responsibility and is therefore perfectly legal.

Finally, such an approach provides the public authorities who own the land with an administrative mechanism to get back the land for public use, provided they adhere to the requirement of re-housing the community under a negotiated settlement.

Failure of Societies
It is to be expected that not all neighbourhood societies will function properly.  If a society is not functioning properly, the civic authority can, after such enquiry as it deemed fit and after giving the society an opportunity of being heard, suspend its managing committee and appoint and administrator.  The civic authority may appoint an NGO and two persons from the community of whom at least one would be a women, to assist the administrator in his work.  When taking such action, respected members of the community and NGOs should be consulted and their views respected.

Resettlement
It frequently  happens that no preparatory work is done for years and suddenly squatters are de-housed for administrative exigencies and dumped at a new site without even basic shelter or survival facilities.  The trauma of the displaced persons, especially the women and children, stretches for years while the Government machinery slowly moves.  Political commitment for properly rehousing displaced families exists but, in practice, it is generally violated.  The right of negotiated re-housing if and when displaced, will prevent such administrative arbitrariness.

The failure of the land owning agency to protect its land from squatting, has reduced the value of the land to nothing and has, in fact, created a liability for the civic authority.  The land owning agency must pay the cost of re-housing the slum communities if it wants to repossess its land.

The negotiation for re-housing will be for basis human needs and would depend upon the contemporary living standards of the poor.  In India, it can consist of a minimum 18 sqm shelter clustered around a group  potential of a second room  as per Indian Standards IS 13727/1993.  The negotiation can be for a larger shelter if the resettlement is to be at a greater distance.  Social infrastructure of health care, school,  balwadi, etc, would also have to be negotiated.  More important than all these, are the economic linkages.  The terms of negotiation would therefore also cover sustainable livelihoods within reasonable distance of the settlement and necessary transport facilities.

After negotiation, the concerned authority should be required to prepare a scheme describing how the resettlement would be effected.  The law should require the scheme to be placed before a Citizens’ Forum constituted for hte purpose.  The Citizens’ Forum, after hearing the parties and negotiating such modifications as it considered appropriate, accord approval to the scheme.  The Citizens’ forum should  then monitor the implementation to ensure that  the resettlement was indeed in accordance with the approved scheme.

The concept of negotiated rehousing thus provides a legitimate, reasonable and humane method to rehabilitate communities, being displaced.

Illegal Colonies
Though many illegal colonies may take on the character of a slum, they do not fall in the category of settlements of communities below the poverty line.  a person who can pay tens of thousands or even lakhs of rupees for a plot in an illegal colony and pays his way through illegal construction, does not fall within the category of a person below the poverty line.  The State Governments should frame regulations laying down that no civic authority shall regularize an illegal colony without imposing penalty equivalent to at least twice the cost of providing adequate services in the colony followed by penal property tax.  Citizens’ Forums should be set up in different parts of the city to prevent growth of such illegal colonies with the convenience of unscrupulous politicians and civic officials.

General
Squatter settlements constitute a substantial component of the cityscape and population of all Indian cities.  They cannot be brushed under the carpet.  It is incumbent upon public management to evolve a legitimate method of governing and managing these settlements.  The concept outlined in this paper reinforces  human rights, establishes the right of women in decision making, gives precedence to community over individual interest and, at the same time, establishes the principle of user must pay for the benefits it derives from a settlement.  It thus offers a legitimate solution to this problem which has vexed public management in all developing countries during the past several decades.

Formally housed residents must take on a larger share of responsibility in making cities liveable and sustainable.

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