16 Informal Settlements

Asmita Bhardwaj

epgp books

 

 

Introduction

 

When we think of informal settlements, many of us think of jhuggi-jhopdis, kaccha structures, built with the most basic of materials — mud or tin walls, a length of plastic of tin for roof –on public or private lands, outside the town planning framework. Whether called shanties, bastis, or slums, such informal settlements are often seen by policymakers and elites as the bane of Indian urbanization. In this view, the slum subverts land use and planning regulations and harbours public health hazards, thanks to poor sanitation and public services besides. Hence the lament, referred to in Module 3.2 on “Paradigms of Planning”: “if only our cities were better planned!”Yet, informal settlements encompass tremendous diversity – from temporary shanties to “ notified slums” to “unauthorised settlements” wherehousing is predominantlypucca. In this module, we aim to ask: what do we mean by informal settlements? Why do they emerge? Is it really possible to attain a slum-free India? If so, what policies can help achieve it?

 

The rest of the module is divided into five sections. Section 3 looks at some of the data on informal settlements in Indian cities, against the backdrop of severe shortages in housing availability for specific income groups, and how and why informal housing emerges. Section 4 analyses policy responses to informal settlements and assessea the effectiveness of policy initiatives that aim at a Slum-Free India. The section In Briefconcludes.

 

Understanding Informal Settlements

 

First, this section lays out some definitions.Much like the definition of the urban (Module 2.1), scholarly and policy definitions ofinformal settlement also varies widely across countries, as well as states and cities. Therefore, international definitions by UN agencies may offer a useful starting guide. It is worth quoting in full a definition offered by an issue paper for the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (UN HABITAT 2015:1):

 

Informal settlements – are residential areas where 1) inhabitants have no security of tenure vis- à-vis the land or dwellings they inhabit, with modalities ranging from squatting to informal rental housing, 2) the neighbourhoods usually lack, or are cut off from, basic services and city infrastructure and 3) the housing may not comply with current planning and building regulations, and is often situated in geographically and environmentally hazardous areas. Further, slums can be seen as the most “deprived and excluded” forms of informal settlement (UN HABITAT 2015:1).

 

It can be argued that the most important issue that informal settlements face is land tenure. Land tenure refers to the rights of individuals or groups in relation to land. (Durand-Lasserve 2006). Security of tenure is a central issue because its absence also means constant threat of eviction. As McFarlane (2008: 8) notes insecure tenure is associated with poor quality housing, actual or fear of consecutive demolition, lack access to sufficient and clean water and sanitation facilities, and polluted environments with high level of vulnerability to illness and disease. In an important report, UN-Habitat (2003:82) distinguished between two categories of informal settlements — squatter settlements and illegal land developments.

  • ·       Squatter settlements are housing units constructed on land to whichoccupants have no legal claim, or have not purchased.
  • In contrast, “illegal settlements or subdivisions” refer to settlements where legal owners have allocated plots to occupants, through (re)sale,subdivision, leasing or rent. The illegality arises from features such as “low standard of services or infrastructure; breaches of land zoning; lack of planning and building permits; or the irregular nature of the land subdivision. ”

   The UN-Habitat definition emphasizes physical and legal aspects of overcrowding, poor housing, inadequate access to water and sanitation and insecure tenure, and plays down the social aspects of economic and social marginality that characterize the slum in popular imagination (Davis 2006).Squatter settlements correspond to what is known as slums and are widespread across the developing world, from the favelas in Rio de Janeiro, to barricadasof Lima and barrios of Manila (Davis 2006).

 

Slums or Bastis?

 

Scholars note that the term “slum” has had a long and troubled history, being seen as a source of social vices such as “immorality ” and dysfunctional families, rather than consequence of economic inequality (Weinstein 2014; Davis 2006). Similarly recognizing the legal connotations of the term and its absence from vernacular discourse in India, authors such as Bhan (2013) prefer terms such as basti.

 

The label of “slum” thus requires careful unpacking and analysis even in India. As Naidu (2006) and Bhan (2013) note in the context of present-day Delhi, the old walled city have been declared as slums. The booming economies of these areas as well as the relatively higher levels of public services may not bear out the characterization of slums we have discussed above. Based on the varying classification as slum of old city areas despite the serious problems of dilapidated housing and urban decay in these areas, Naidu argues that the administrative label of “slum” reflects a political decision, rather than an objective assessment of housing quality alone.

 

In light of this evidence, to what extent does the Census class of “slums” adequate capture aspects of urban poverty and vulnerability? Bhan and Jana (2013:13-14) critically analyse the three categories under which “slums” are counted in Census 2011:

    • Notified Slums declared as such under any statute including Slum Acts.1

•  Recognised Slums that may not be notified under statutes but are acknowledged and categorised as slums by state or local authorities.

•   Identified Slums “of at least 300 residents or about 60-70 households ofpoorly built congested tenements, in unhygienicenvironment usually with inadequateinfrastructure and lacking in proper sanitary and drinking water facilities” that are identified by the charge officer and inspected by a nominated officer by the Directorate of Census Operations .(Registrar General 2011b).

 

Note that this categorization does not consider the underlying characteristics that qualify a housing cluster to be listed as a slum, only the official categories under which they are counted. Even here, Bhan and Jana note several issues in the Census reckoning of the slum population that deserve attention.

 

First, they caution that the size cut- off of 60-70 household in the category of “identified slums” would exclude many smaller clusters of vulnerable households. Placing this in the context of increased displacement in Indian cities, Bhan and Jana argue that these evictions are accompanied by low rates of resettlement because evicted households cannot either are not eligible for resettlements or cannot afford transport and other costs of living in urban peripheries where most resettlement sites are located. These households are rendered homeless or relegated to highly precarious tenements, where the cycle of eviction is likely to continue. Thus the category of slums does not take full account of urban poverty and vulnerability. 2

 

In practice, this means that states and cities that report low levels of “slum” populations, according to official and Census definitions may be severely underestimating levels of marginalization and urban deprivation.

 

Moreover, they point out that data on basic services delivery in slums may overstate access by not taking account of quality of service. Thus for example, data in the aggregate shows that slums have better access to treated tap water1  This refers to the Slum Areas improvement and Clearance Act 1956which includes buildings are “unfit for human habitation”, though it in no way takes account of tenure (Dupont 2011: 86)

 

2Dupont (2010) notes that the Slum Census adopted a more comprehensive definition, that even includes slum clusters of 20 or above. As can be seen, such a definition can be more useful in adequately including pockets of urban deprivation. than non-slum households, but this is premised on shared and communal taps rather than household access in the former case.

 

   In sum, Bhan and Jana (2013) argue that the Census definition of slums as it is applied today fails to fully capture the extent of urban poverty and deprivation in Indian cities. Where it is used to guide eligibility for schemes such as Rajiv AwasYojana, it may miss the most vulnerable and deserving households.

 

Beyond the slum

 

Across India, informal settlements encompass a tremendous variety beyond the slum or basti, as does the policy response to them. They include forms such as the unauthorized colonies of Delhi, the gunthewadis of Maharashtra, Akrama-Sakrama of Karnataka, among many others (Bhide 2014; Nair 2013). These settlements correspond to the UN-Habitat category of illegal developments.

 

For instance, in Delhi “unauthorised colonies” comprise housing “ that is built on land not included in the development area in the plan or one built on land within the developmental area but not yet zoned for residential use” (Bhan 2013:61). These unauthorized colonies are often established by land assemblers or “aggregators” who buy rural land and then chop it up for sale into plots. In all these cases, the plot owners are not squatting – they hold paid ownership of their land in some sense, but may not be able to register legal title on the land with relevant authorities because the land falls outside the plan. Also because these colonies are not included in the masterplan, they have typically not eligible for basic municipal services, though Bhan (2013) notes that this has changed under new policy frameworks such as the JNNURM. Even unauthorized colonies vary widely in size and character. Some such as SangamVihar house over 1 million inhabitants (Sheikh et al 2015), while others such as Sainik Farms are exclusive enclaves of the elite (Bhan 2013).

 

Elsewhere, in states such as Maharashtra, there are forms such as the gunthewadi, “a construction on a layout with plots that are around 1,000 sqft, that is, less than the acceptable norm for planning, which is 3,000 sqft” (Bhide 2014: 92). Bhide (2014) notes that these layouts are rendered unauthorised for several reasons: (1) they are below the minimum size suggested by the planning regulations and may not follow building codes (2) the land use has not been appropriately converted from agricultural to non- agricultural (3) the layouts are not approved under the applicable Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act.

 

Many of these studies draw on city-level research in the absence of comprehensive national data and standardized terminology for informal settlements in this mode. Nonetheless, it should be evident that such unauthorized developments are an important component of informality in Indian cities, in Delhi housing almost 5.3% of the population (Bhan 2013). Lama-Rewal and Leminski (2012) argue that in the context of Delhi, these unauthorized colonies comprise a missing middle of urban governance, including a large section of the lower middle classes, and hence their political and policy significance.

 

Informal settlements have emerged as a major response to housing shortage in India and across the world. The next section traces the contours of this crisis and explores the origins of informality in human settlements in India.

 

Data and Origins

 

The number of people living in cities in the developing world is expected to double by the middle of the twenty-first century and the spatial extent of those cities is expected to triple. The majority of new urban dwellers will meet their housing needs in illegal settlements in informal city spaces (Garland 2015).

 

In the case of India, with growing urbanization cities will contain 40% of the total population and produce 70% of the GDP by 2030 (McKinsey 2010). To house these many people is a mammoth task given that there is already a housing shortage.

 

In 2012, about 18.78 million (1.8 crore) households grapple with housing shortage in urban India as per the estimate of the Technical Group on Urban Housing Shortage (2012-17) constituted by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation (MoHUPA). This included those who were homeless, lived in non-serviceable katccha housing, lived in badly depreciated houses or unacceptably congested ones. The estimate was based on Census & NSS 65th Round results on Housing conditions and Urban Slums (July 2008 -June 2009). What was worse was that the total housing shortage across both self-owned and rental categories was the worst in the lowest decile by expenditure, ie, the poorest households. In contrast, the top decile (10%) of households by expenditure faced the lowest housing shortage.

 

In another estimate by the private sector firm KPMG, some 18.4 million houses were needed in the 1 bedroom economically weaker segment (EWS) and another 13.8 million in the lower income group (LIG) segment, i.e., nearly 3.2 crore houses by 2022.

 

According to MoHUPA (2011:15), 52.37 million people as against an urban population of 286.12 million in Census 2001 lived in slums. Further, the authors reported projections by the Report of the Committee on Slum Statistics /Census, 2010. This estimate put the slum population in all 5161 Towns in 2001 at a higher 75.26 million, ie, nearly 26.31% of the urban population, and going up to 104.67 million people in 2017. Interestingly, over a third, ie, 36.6% of the entire slum population of India’s million-plus cities was in Mumbai (MoHUPA 2011:25). The MoHUPA report also noted other features of India’s slum population, but the most important was the caste break- up. Dalits comprised nearly 18.5% of slum populations, as against 10.2% of non- slum populations (p 27). Indeed, the 2001 census also showed that “of the total Scheduled Castes in the urban areas, 28.8 per cent reside[d] in the slums” compared to “20.9 per cent for Scheduled Tribes and 16.9 per cent for” others (MoHUPA 2011: 29). This suggests that slums also to some degree, serve to spatially segregate Dalit citizens away from the high-castes in the city.

 

Why and How do Informal Settlements arise?

 

The data we have seen indicates how housing shortages especially for the most underprivileged have been paralleled by a rise in slums. What are the specific circumstances that have strengthened this connection? Broadly, scholars have argued that slums have proliferatedin India since Independence due to the inadequacy of the developmental state. In the neoliberal era, ie, post-liberalization in India in the 1990s, the public sector no longer contributes to the provision of serviced land or housing for low-income groups. Furthermore, the private sector targets its land and housing development activities at high-income and middle-income groups with regular employment and access to formal credit (Masum2014).

 

As a result, the urban poor and large segments of low- and moderate-income groups are left with little choice but to rely on informal land and housing markets for access to land and shelter making them the only realistic alternative for housing for poor income people (Lasserve 2006).Despite that fact that the poor have used their own means to provide housing, such housing continues to be looked at in a negative light.

 

A number of researchers have looked at the genesis of informal housing in city-level case studies.Authors such as Weinstein (2014) and Saglio-Yatzimirsky (2013) for example trace the origins of Dharavi to the rapid industrial growth and waves of migration into nineteenth century Mumbai. Once a fishing village, Dharavi was designated a dumping ground, both for Mumbai’s garbage, and also its polluting industries, and “unwanted populations of labour migrants, refugees, and others with insecure land rights” (Weinstein 2014: 25). Saglio -Yatzimirsky (2013) highlights how a large number of tanneries were established in Sion, now site of present-day Dharavi, in the 1880s, and attracted migrant communities who quickly settled into caste and occupation-based “districts”.

 

Looking at the experience of Sangli-Miraj, Akola and Aurangabad in Maharashtra, Bhide (2014;Bhide and Waingankar 2015) shows how a combination of factors leads to the rise of unauthorised settlements. Maharashtra has led in urbanization, and is the second most urbanized state with a 45% urban population. It has also been in leader in town regulation, with a nearly a century old town planning legislation, and also in slum population, with nearly 25% in slums, according to Census 2001 (Bhide and Waingankar 2015: 127). No data is available on gunthewadis, though they comprisea fraction of informal settlements in the state.

 

Tabulating the differences between gunthewadis and slums in detail, from nature of the layouts, to general level of amenities,Bhide and Waingankar (2015: 134) nonetheless conclude that: There is a gradient of ‘illegalities’ that these forms express. These range from non-approved constructions to non-approved use to non-approved sale of land to wrongly approved developments. In their very existence, they are a testament to the varying layers of regulation of housing activity in the state, their impact on housing activity and shadow activities linked to each of these regulations.

 

The lack of affordable housing and the state’s failure to plan for and provide land for such housing may be the underlying causes of the rise of informal housing but Bhide and Waingankar (2014) make an interesting argument, also made by Bhan (2013) in the context of Delhi (Module 4.3): housing regulation and planning processes have a direct relationship with the rise of informality.

 

In the case of Sangli-Miraj, Bhide (2014) illustrates this by pointing to the role of the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act (ULCRA) and of the Development Plan in the 1970s in hastening the rise of gunthewadis. Faced with the prospect of land acquisition for public housing, large landowners responded by creating residential layouts – the gunthewadis.

 

Bhan (2013) meanwhile notes how in Delhi, subsequent masterplans failed to include existing unauthorised colonies, and regularization drives selected some but not all unauthorised colonies for legalization, thus using the state’s discretionary powers to produce and regulate these settlements.3

 

In a study of informal housing in Guwahati, Desai and Mahadevia(2014) untangle the complicated housing supply chains that emerge through occupation of public and private lands. They argue that renting is often the last stage of such squatting where middlemen occupy land and sell to absentee owners or occupiers. However, renters are the most vulnerable in terms of tenure security in the absence of written contracts 3  Note that Bhan (2013) defines the terms “informal” and “illegal” differently from the sense used here.

 

Policy responses to informal settlements

 

In considering policy responses to informal settlements, it is important to note one of the most important: Demolition and eviction. Demolition drives routinely affect squatter settlements in Indian cities (Dupont 2011). In the national capital,Ghertner (2008) highlights how these demolitions have been justified by a legal discourse that constructs slums as “nuisance”.

 

In the case of Delhi, from 1990 to 2010, even just taking government data, over 260 bastis were demolished in the city (Bhan 2009). Bhan (2015) notes that he extent of evictions was so extreme that the 2011 Census recorded a 25% fall in population in the New Delhi district, attributing it directly to evictions of “slums and JJ Clusters.” In Bhan’s (2015) words: “contemporary Delhi is a city scarred by the repeated evictions of the homes of its poorest residents at a scale unseen since the Emergency”.

 

Other metropolises have seen similar numbers (Dupont 2011), though there are few national surveys or counts. For instance, both Mumbai and Kolkata, according to non-governmental data, 2004-05 saw over 450000 and 70000 people being displaced (p 79). Dupont notes that laws in states such as Maharashtra aimed to prevent slums by defining them as encroachments. As in Delhi, the courts supported this interpretation. More significantly, the Slum Act of 1956 distinguishes between notified and non-notified slums, with the latter being excluded from “improvement” in basic services (Dupont 2011).

 

However, more effective policy responses have also evolved over time. While many of these such were city-level programmes for resettlement or site-and – service programmes, a number of national programmes emerged alongside the JNNURM. These included the JNNURM programmes Basic Services for the Urban Poor (BSUP) (Kamath 2012), which evolved into the Rajiv AwasYojanaand the IntegratedHousing and Slum Development Programme(IHSDP) for smaller towns and non-million plus cities (Burte 2014).

 

The Rajiv AwasYojana (RAY), successor to the BSUP, was ambitious in its aims to create a slum-free India through an integrated slum redevelopment including housing infrastructure and titling (Kamath 2012: 76; Satterthwaite 2010). In a study of two BSUP cities, Kamath (2012) notes three shifts in these approaches:

 

(1)  the state has withdrawn to a facilitator’s role in order to encourage market mechanisms allow non-governmental actors to participate. (2) There is increased focus on tenure security. (3) Community participation and management of housing is being encouraged. And (4) eligibility for subsidies is increasingly determined through biometrics and similar technologies. This last has come in for specific criticism.

 

Regularization

 

When it comes to unauthorised settlements and gunthewadis, the preferred policy option has been regularization – “a process by which the colony is made legal – theproperty titles are recognised by law and can be registered”… subject to a charge (Bhan 2013:62-63). These regularization policies and legislations are largely implemented at the state level – for instance, in Maharashtra Gunthewari Developments (Regularisation,Upgradation and Control) Act was passed in 2001 (Kamath 2014). A key feature of such “drives” is that they apply a “cut-off” date such that only plots developed before that date are eligible. Thus Delhi has seen multiple regularization drives that have failed to regularize a proportion of unauthorised colonies, thus continuing to produce “informality” in habitation(Bhan 2013). Other critiques are also pertinent. Zimmer (2011) notes for example that in Delhi, regularisation remains largely delinked from infrastructure provision in practice even though services provision is a precondition for it.

 

Nonetheless, the fundamental limitation of this approach is that it holds out but does not quite fulfil the promise of post facto adjustments. In the case of Solapur,Kamath (2014: 80) argues that the “planning regime incites illegalities from the poor and the indigenousbourgeoisie at the same time” . Elsewhere in Maharashtra, Bhide( 2014: 100) concurs: “Regularisation acts as aperverse incentive for the generation of new informalities, and strengthens the very phenomenon it seeks to control.“

 

Rajiv AwasYojana

 

The most prominent government scheme for addressing slums in India is the 2009 Rajiv AwasYojana, which has a vision of “slum free” India, a scheme that is similar to the idea and practice of incremental housing as discussed above. Legalizing the informal with the particular aim for land titling is an important theme captured in the prominent 2009 Government of India scheme called Rajiv AwasYojana.

 

RAY is therefore a significant policy guideline for enabling slums redevelopment, rehabilitation and promotion of affordable mass housing (Das, 2014).Launched in the Eleventh Five Year Plan, it seeks to enable poor urban families to realize their dreams of home ownership, with a proper land title and access to basic civic amenities. Granting full property rights to slum dwellers and enacting state legislations in this regard are mandatory requirements under RAY, except in regions with control and ownership of land by the community (Kundu 2012).

 

RAY emphasizes in situ development, rather than slum relocation, and recognises the importance of land tenure security in the context of the first component of the Slum-free Plan of Action to be prepared at state and city levels (Kundu 2014). Since land availability is critical for developing housing for the poor, central funds are made available only to the states and cities that can provide land with property rights. This was previously considered necessary under Basic Services for the Urban Poor (BSUP) and Integrated Housing, under JNNURM. However while under BSUP, nearly 40 per cent of slum households were relocated; RAY has prescribed a 10 per cent limit on slum relocation (Kundu: 2014).

 

A major thrust under RAY, is preventing the further growth of slums in urban areas by redressing the failures of the formal system. This is done by strengthening legal, administrative and land surveillance system and allowing the land market to function strictly based on affordability. The guidelines, however, suggest that reserving 25-40% of land in city development plans for housing of urban poor and creation of new social housing stock would be necessary to meet the goal.

 

RAY would extend support to states that are willing to assign property rights to people living in slum areas and pursue a Slum-free City Agenda (MoHUPA2011). However, despite the grand vision of RAY, there are many problems that affect RAY. RAY also falters because allotting property rights to the poor is not easy to implement as many of these lands are disputed properties, which requires detailed documentation and complex negotiation of these rights (Mahadevia etal 2011).

 

In Brief

 

Informal settlements encompass a tremendous variety beyond the slum or basti, as does the policy response to them. Despite their economic value, slums have been subjected and viewed in a negative light, and often slum dwellers are termed as encroachers. The use of the term serves to provide legitimacy to a situation where the poor come to be seen as unworthy of legal and constitutional protection. (Bhan 2009).

 

People living in informal settlements are not accorded full citizenship rights in the city (Roy 2011). Some scholars have argued is that a full recognition of legitimacy by the state to informal settlements in their illegal occupation of land would threaten the structure of legally held property. The basic services that are extended to the poor are due to important social, economic and political reasons, ranging from ethnic ties, availability of low-cost labour and the city’s largest voting population to support particular political candidates. “As a result, a range of services and facilities are extended on a case-to-case, ad hoc, or exceptional basis, without jeopardizing the overall structure of legality and property (Chatterjee 2004:137 quoted in McFarlane 2008:9).

 

The slogan of “slum-free” India only partially addresses the issue of informality in habitat. Moreover, state policies aimed at preventing informality often exacerbate it.

you can view video on Informal Settlements

For Further Reading

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