The Hindu Business Line : The importance of inclusive development

Including the poor is much more advantageous than excluding them even if they have only social, and not `legal,' rights. Official plans invariably exclude the poor and thus planners get into serious trouble, says P. V. INDIRESAN.

The previous article explained that slums can never be cleared so long as there is constant influx of migrants from villages. The concept of PURA (Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas), with its emphasis on installing a wide range of urban services in rural areas, and resultant shift of high-wage employment to villages, is useful in that regard. However, schemes of rural empowerment such as PURA will only prevent further growth of slums; they will not clear existing ones.

Several years ago, right at the beginning of this series, I pointed out that there is little use offering to the poor what richer people covet. That is the problem we face when slums are so much improved that they become attractive to richer families. Then, richer families will bid higher prices than what poor slum dwellers can pay. In consequence, slum dwellers may be forced, or tempted, to sell out to richer families and shift to a new slum.

Hope for the Poor

This problem will be avoided when, and only when, the number of desirable dwellings is more than the number of families needing them. Only when there is a surplus of residences over and above what the rich need, the poor can hope to get one of their own.

Mumbai has around a million substandard dwellings. By the Law of Supply and Demand, only when all of them are replaced by better ones of acceptable quality, and further, when no more immigrants crowd in, the poor will get proper shelter, not otherwise.

It is no secret that slums, and their clearance, are riddled with corruption, even criminality. Both corruption and criminality are unavoidable so long as there is scarcity. The moment scarcity is removed, both corruption and criminality will vanish the way they have in the case of car allotments, telephone bookings and train reservations.

Therefore, supply of dwellings in excess of demand is the final solution for slum clearance. It may not be feasible, or it may be unaffordable to build a surplus of dwellings where slum dwellers are currently working. In that case, there is no option but shift their workplace to where houses can be constructed at an affordable price.

Transfer of work from crowded cities is nothing new. All large cities shed their industries and several other businesses when they grow too big. Even Mumbai has shed a lot of its industries.

However, unlike London and New York, whose populations have shrunk, Mumbai and other Indian cities have continued to grow. If our cities were wise, they should slim down to become healthy.

Three-pronged approach

To recapitulate, slum clearance needs a three-pronged approach: One, make the rural areas so attractive that rural-urban migration stops. Two, maintain the supply of dwellings in excess of demand. Three, rid the city of unnecessary flab by moving out jobs that can be done elsewhere — promote SEZs and industrial/commercial estates in the rural areas.

This three-pronged approach is feasible. The obstacle is not money because this approach is much cheaper than finding all slum dwellers (current ones and newcomers) shelter in situ. Space is no problem because change of location guarantees enough and more space. People's willingness to move is a problem, but not as difficult as one imagines. Slum dwellers have migrated once before; they will migrate once again if that is worth their while.

Apart from these economic issues, we should address basic socio-political ones too. In particular, security and protection of social networks are matters of prime concern.

To the outsider, a slum such as Dharavi, will appear a criminalised, lawless space. The reverse is the case. To the residents, the slum is a safe haven. In our cities not a day passes without stories of elderly people being murdered. However, such atrocities rarely happen in slums; they happen only in legally established and protected middle class areas — in spite of employing innumerable private watchmen. Slums need no such protection. For a resident, the slum under the whip of the slumlord is safer than expensively protected middle class areas.

Safety in Crowd

Jane Jacobs, who demolished many sacred theories of urban development, has explained in her classical work The Death and Life of Great American Cities why people are safe in crowded places: "There are always a hundred eyes watching all the time," she says.

In slums, the shacks are so uninviting that most people are out in the streets day and night. Hence, whatever incident happens, there are always witnesses. Resultant fear of being discovered makes slums safe from indiscriminate crime. That protection is lost in middle-class localities where population density is low and houses are big enough to keep people inside.

Five-star hotels face a similar problem. Their lifts and corridors are lonely places; hence dangerous. Hotels minimise that problem by putting lifts in a glass case and locating them in an atrium from where they are always in view of a number of people. Often, the corridors too are kept in full view of the atrium.

High-rise apartments are unsocial places where few persons are to be seen in corridors and lifts. World over, high-rise apartments built for the poor at great cost have proved a failure; they become so badly infested with crime that few policemen dare to go there. On the other hand, suppose we copy five-star hotels and build high-rise flats around an atrium. Then, the atrium will serve as a place for socialising, for children to play.

It will always have any number of witnesses to all that happens. Atrium is the solution for promoting social togetherness in high-rise apartments.

Lessons from Singur

It is important too to learn a lesson from what has happened in Singur and Nandigram: Excluding the poor is much more expensive than including them. In such project areas, there are two classes of citizens: Those with rights according to government's legal system and those with social rights based on unwritten verbal contracts. Official plans invariably exclude the latter; thereby, planners get into serious trouble.

Even though "inclusive development" is the cliché of the day, the Government excludes poorest people on the ground they do not have legal rights as defined by the law. The government asserts it is unwise not to uphold the law. That sounds hollow when we consider how much lawless erupts when the government overrides local custom.

In his book The Mystery of Capital, Hermando De Soto goes to great lengths to explain how even totalitarian regimes have collapsed in trying to enforce laws that conflict with customary practice.

As he argues, "There remains an enormous distance between what mandatory law commands and what has to be done for the law to work". A German saying puts the issue pithily: The law must come from the mouth of the people.

Officials complain that including people with informal contracts is expensive; it opens a Pandora's Box. As experience in Nandigram and Singur has shown, it is cheaper to include, rather than exclude, the poor even if they have only social and not "legal" contracts. No doubt it is difficult to identify who all have such social rights and who do not. For that dilemma, De Soto has a simple solution: Ask the neighbours!

Slums thrive because they have well knit social networks, and informal systems of justice. Woe betides any slum clearance scheme that overlooks those binding forces.

(The author is a former Director of IIT Madras. Response may be sent to: indiresan@gmail.com)

(This is 197th in the Vision 2020 series. The previous article was published on March 19.)

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