Securing Property Rights for Slum Dwellers: The Successes From Odisha

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Queen's Podcast. Welcome to Season 2 of the Queen's Spot Nightly Podcast, Land of a Billion. We aim to bring you expert conversations about the most contentious of the Holy Roti Kapraha Macantunity. That is, the Macan over our heads and the larger ecosystem that governs it.

[00:00:33] This podcast is produced in association with the Property Rights Research Consortium supported by Omidya Network India. I'm Bargavee, a researcher interested in land and access to finance and your host for this season.

[00:00:53] Winding back to the first few months of the Covid pandemic, you may recall how Slums had become a focal point of conversation, especially in the media. As Covid cases were on the rise in cities, there was a growing concern about how Slums could

[00:01:05] become a trend of the box of infections in this pandemic. Being on could imagine how others like social distancing, frequent hand washing and stay at home meant little to slum dwellers with poor access to a regular supply of basic amenities like water and electricity.

[00:01:20] And the reality of living in clamped quarters while working a daily wage job. The pandemic also brought to fall an important question which has been lying open for years, which is what is the state's obligations to bring slums and informal settlements within

[00:01:34] the mainstream infrastructure and urban planning of a city. This question has been partly answered by Odisha. In 2017, Odisha passed the Odisha land rights to Slum dwellers Act which provided working titles to Slum dwellers and brought slums within the main planning fabric of the city.

[00:01:53] It also provided for allocation of funds for slum and gradation, construction of toilets, a paved street lights and access to stormwater drains in notified slums. The Jaga Mission which was enacted under this law, 200,000 working titles have been

[00:02:09] conferred across 2,000 slums in more than 100 small to medium towns in Odisha. The laws one thing but the implementation and capacity required to roll out this law is quite another. How did the government of Odisha go about conferring these titles?

[00:02:25] What are some of the trade-offs that the government had to make? What is the political economy of all of this? To answer these questions, we have with us Mr. Martin Baterman who is the principal secretary of department of housing and urban development in the government of Odisha.

[00:02:39] He led the Jaga Mission Initiative among many other urban development initiatives in Odisha. We also have with us Mr. Shubagato Darskukta who is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and the Director of the Scaling City Institutions for India in its sanitation initiative.

[00:02:55] Welcome Mr. Baterman and Shubagato to the land of a billion podcast. Thank you so much. Mr. Watenan, why don't we begin with understanding a little bit about the context of the Jaga Mission. How did it start? What motivated the bureaucracy and the political masters

[00:03:13] to undertake this seemingly how-culient task? What does the need for it and how far have we come? If I have to share the generosity of the intervention, we call that as the two major interventions. One is the Odisha land rights to slump down its act 2017.

[00:03:28] Followed by the launching of the Jaga Mission. See, if you travel in a city even within five minutes, you can't avoid seeing a slump. Under the UN meditative mode, sitting in the car. You have to see any city.

[00:03:41] Slump is an universal issue not only in our cities, it became every country. We can't leave that problem to the city managers. City commissioners are the mayor and at the same time we can't say that it is there in every city

[00:03:55] in every country. So it's a global problem. So the world leaders will solve it. We can't leave it to the mouse. So hide, deciding over the urban governance in the state of Odisha.

[00:04:04] Whenever I look at a slump, it paints me. It tells me that, you know, I'm not doing my job. So the city administration or the urban development role is to ensure there is an inclusive development.

[00:04:19] So very is the inclusivity if you see the slump. See the conditions of the plight of this city is slumped on us. So they have come into the city to build the city. They have not come in

[00:04:30] search of employment. You offer the employment. So you wanted to build the road, you wanted to build the large projects, bridges, you know, big malls, buildings, housing complex. You wanted laborers and that labor market attracted the people from surrounding villages and the rural areas. So they

[00:04:48] came in. There is no employment opportunity if you don't need them, they would not have come here. So having come here has the city, you know, provided accommodation where will they go?

[00:05:00] What will they do? You want them to work for you. They build the roads, they build the building. They do every work in your home in the city without slump to a city. We come to a standstill

[00:05:10] halt. So they make the city, they run the city. But what the city, in turn, pays back a maker wages. We don't provide them the space, the land, housing is there. Do we have enough rental

[00:05:24] housing? Is that affordable as a city built it? Your construction workers will for at mandates under section 35 that every large project with a government or private should provide housing facility within the project area. The government is the biggest employer. The government

[00:05:42] invests the maximum. So that's the government provide accommodation within the private area for the workers which they employ. You may be saying that I'm not directly employing. I'm leaving it to the contractor, but the contractor engages them and those people are working

[00:05:56] for you in your project. They only sit your products. So be failing your duty. The city failed the government's fail. It's a collective failure of the government. City government, state government, central government. That has resulted in the formation of the slums.

[00:06:10] So we need to address it. As the Secretary in charge of the urban development, I can't close my eyes and go that it is not my problem. Then who's probably that? So someday someone has to address

[00:06:20] it. So that moment came to Odisha on if I if I remember correctly it was 22nd July. That moment came when the Secretary to Chief Minister called me over the intercom asking me to come for a

[00:06:34] discussion and when the event and met Mr. Partiel who is the Secretary to Hartville Chief Minister he said we have been discussing about this law to land rights. Can we do that? I said it is the

[00:06:44] moment I have been waiting for. We must do it. That's all that's the beginning of Odisha land rights to slum dollar act that's the beginning of Jaka Mission. That's the beginning of the transformation of slums in Odisha. That's a fantastic story. So I absolutely agree with you actually,

[00:07:00] you know the graphic images of thousands of people walking from cities to their homes in the middle of the pandemic actually reinforces the concerns that you have just mentioned which is that we need to tackle the question and the problem of informal housing in cities on an urgent

[00:07:20] basis as if it had to be done yesterday. And unless we actually take a systematic as opposed to an ad hoc approach to this question maybe we will not be able to scale it up and maybe we won't

[00:07:30] have answers for a very, very long time. So thank you for that context setting. But I suspect every city administration faces destroys right? I mean there are slums in most areas in India,

[00:07:41] some to a larger extent than others. Most people want to live close to where they work, land discus and every city administration has to make a choice. Either they treat slum dwellers as you know some sort of encroaches on public property and continue to threaten them with demolitions

[00:07:59] and eviction notices, disconnect supply of essential amenities or they recognize that slums are actually a feature of scarce housing in cities for people who need it. And they give it a certain degree of formality and include it within the main infrastructure of the city. And the popular notion

[00:08:21] is that when city administrations choose to do the latter, they actually incentivize illegal and informal settlements and encroachments on public property. And I wonder how do you deal with this popular perception of incentivizing the wrong things as a lot of people would see it versus

[00:08:39] recognizing that a large part of the city's workforce actually decides in slums? Frankly, you know this misplaced incentive story around this is better articulated by people who have services, have land and fear in them. As the government, the government has multiple responsibilities

[00:09:03] ensuring private property and the protection of private property is surely a very important one. But beyond that there is a development context to the government's actions and the state kind of reflects the multiple interests of various stakeholders right? In our growth trajectory at the moment,

[00:09:23] why Oresa is so unique and so progressive with the jagam mission, is that it balances this without breaking the contract on protection of private property. It goes so much further to understand an unbundled a whole set of land regulations and laws which are colonial in nature

[00:09:47] have been handed down over generations which have created these unclays for slummed wellers without access to services and improved housing and have kept them outside what the city is right? So around

[00:10:01] dialogues of the right to the city, the jagam mission in that sense is born out of the conception of the right to the city of who does the city belong to and it creates a level playing field for

[00:10:15] both the poor and the rich. So it protects the rights of the rich but it surely does proactive action to ensure that inequality is not maintained in the system going forward. It's unique also because in this post-liberalization phase that we are in commercialization of land has become very

[00:10:37] valuable and they interests are aligned around making sure that the private property is projected protected or even public properties protected in case of larger cities. This is very visible is very strong. So for research to take this step within this regime of a where the bias seems

[00:10:59] to have moved very strongly towards commercialization of land even if it does not provide equal services and land rights is very structurally very strong and therefore could impact the nation as a whole in terms of you know how does the state balance the various stakeholders that

[00:11:19] it needs to respond to. As part of that we have also studied the CDICP of the cities, the master plans of the city and done with this at-late maps and it's very interesting to note

[00:11:32] that the informal settlements which we call as slums, they occupy not more than two to four percent of the land usable land available in a city, two to four percent, maximum it is 4 percent.

[00:11:45] So the slum population which varies from 20 percent to 40 percent on an average what is a has 25 percent even if you take that 25 percent of the population occupies less than 4 percent of the land available in a city where is the question of you know incentivizing the enclosure or lawbreaker

[00:12:04] is there rightful demand need they deserve it they have an equitable right on the land land is a finite resource and how much we are giving we are only giving 35 meter maximum

[00:12:16] and how much land is under encroachment by the greedy people in the cities what are we doing about it when we provide that is square meter of land when if you raise the eyebrows why but what are we doing about the large scale encroachment happening commercial space encroachments

[00:12:34] they build your city they leave your city and unfortunately cities do not have that kind of public transport system which if it's a easy commutation for the kind of wages we pay to the slum

[00:12:45] dualaires can they afford you know motorized vehicle do they have a car or a two-wheeler like as to travel to far off area they have to live there it is not out of choice it's out of

[00:12:57] compulsion they have to live in their place of near the place of work because they have to commute to that workplace that's the reason that they live in the congested slums

[00:13:08] somehow managed to live there so they are in my opinion they deserve it and it's a duty of the city to do that duty of the state to do it thank you that gives a lot of perspective

[00:13:19] to the argument that people often make about how legalizing illegal slums and encroachments can actually be adverse to the city's larger interest and it's a fantastic answer and I'm sure that

[00:13:33] even to be able to do this it must have required a lot of state capacity right so for example it must have required a survey of the land identification of the people who will be conferred with

[00:13:43] title even the slum gradation exercise we know for a fact that surveys for example in the titleing exercise are extremely hard to do but before rolling out the jargon mission you must

[00:13:55] have done all that hard work and I'm really curious what are the kind of challenges that the government of Ores are faced in rolling out the jargon mission and if you go to advise another state

[00:14:05] government on a similar program what would you tell them to be careful about? See for granting the land rights land is a very sensitive subject very precious asset so survey is required so we didn't have the experience and no other state also had experience

[00:14:24] so everything we had to experiment we were learning at the time of doing it and correcting ourselves and moving forward because there was not said path so when it came to survey the what we did is that we tried with the conventional survey on pilot bases

[00:14:39] the chains survey using the revenue mystery I mean our traditional method and we also adopted we also tried with the drone survey and mandi aerial survey. If we tried in 2000s to RIS circles and then within a month we realized that we have to adopt high-end

[00:14:58] technology state of our technology the manual survey the typical conventional change survey we have taken 33 years minimum for us to complete the survey process in the entire state in 114 cities we adopted the drone survey method and we brought in three players and took up this

[00:15:18] simultaneously in all global global bodies in a period of six months we completed the entire aerial survey as well as the map preparation the technology has helped the use of the right tool is critical the speed is very important in such an exercise we used the drone technology

[00:15:35] GS based mapping also we also include we also you know ropentic grass room level in jose community NGOs to work with the slump communities to organize them into slump dual ed association

[00:15:49] involved in the slump donor community in the survey process and we also took up the house to house survey through the local NGOs for animating the households preparing the documents supporting documents and to prepare the land settlement proposal the NGOs facilitated that

[00:16:09] and the slump donor association driven that it was a completely community centric process using technology so that as a result at in the faster pace of implementation that as a result

[00:16:21] at in a zero these two and zero litigation process so far we have done more than one lack 75,000 land rights more than one lack 75,000 not even a single case of litigation or rate so I'm curious what is the political economy of a slump legalization program like

[00:16:46] or a slump operation program like every a slump operation program every some legalization program creates winners and losers right so while direct beneficiaries of this are of all the slump dwellers there are many people who may actually be adversely affected by it so for example

[00:17:03] what about the association that collectively represents the rights of slump dwellers I'm sure you had to deal with them what about other residents of the city what was their reaction to this

[00:17:12] program or say for example if you had to deal with slump lords or the builder lobby what are the different stakeholders who need to be dealt with when actually rolling out this program on

[00:17:24] the ground so there were lots of implementation issues the first of all we you know faced issues from the slump dwellers themselves there was initially there was a lack of trust from the slump dwellers side on the government on the city officials when we entered they were not

[00:17:42] very you know encouraging you were not welcomed there for the reason that so long several times the city officials have been visiting this long trying to do the survey trying to do some kind

[00:17:54] of schemes and all are failed they could not you know meet their aspiration they still the slump slump dwellers still leave without security of anyone they still have the fear of eviction

[00:18:07] when they look at a government official they suspect that we have gone there only to demolish their slump to remove them to evict them so to create that trust between the slump community and the

[00:18:17] government was the first challenge we encountered that's the reason we you know roped in the grassroots level NGOs community based organizations to work with the slump communities to organize them into slump do the association to communicate with them why commenters there what is

[00:18:32] this act why we are doing it so it took some time for us to you know build that you know break the barrier and build the trust then once they are on our side then the implementation has

[00:18:44] you know become faster there are invisible forces in the slums there are slump landlords there's landlords on government land actually the government is a lot lot but there are in between middlemen they are encroached their land and build their houses and they print it out to the slump

[00:18:59] owners so that was a challenge for us so that's the reason that we took up the survey and enumerated the occupant going by the document any government issue the document is taken as

[00:19:11] a proof of their state whether it is water ID card or ration card or electricity collection what a supply connection anything if it is a government issue document then it was relied upon

[00:19:21] and the land right was given only to the person who is living in that piece of land not the person who constructed the house and rent it up so we completely ignored the slump land law so they were

[00:19:34] trying to mobilize the slump communities against these all those things but the we had the strength of the you know encyclical NGOs we anticipated this and started working on it we built to their trust

[00:19:47] between the slump community and the government that's how we could break those barriers and succeed in our efforts great so what about the impact of this initiative of misadasku tar the scaling cities institutions initiative that you are leading has been working with the

[00:20:04] Oresa government in rolling out the jagamishan how would you describe the impact of the jagamishan the impact of the jagamishan is at various levels right so it means to each slump weather it makes a whole lot of difference first by giving the land title but secondly backing

[00:20:26] it with all the services at standards that are available to the rest of the city and it means very close to each other right so means let's say the land rights were given two years back

[00:20:37] and now they have water sanitation roads, drains etc so at the household level at the individual level of whole set of benefits not benefits rights have been delivered to them at a very rapid

[00:20:53] pace and that in one sense has shown the progressive nature of the government and thereby brought more and more slump dwellers on board and as Mr. Buffy Wattan was just saying the opposition to it

[00:21:07] has been sideline in that sense it is the major program in Oresa at the moment and a lot of very interesting work around it is happening for example the urban wage employment program

[00:21:18] that was created after covid but now is called the muka program where the slump dwellers were involved through a wage employment program to build their own city so no longer are they only viewed as

[00:21:34] service providers to the reach in the city but now they've literally built their own communities by participating in the construction of these roads and drains etc and in the future as per government

[00:21:46] of Oresa's plans they're also going to be involved in ward level infrastructure so at the slump level the community infrastructure building has helped decentralize and create a new relationship between the local body the urban local body and this slump dwellers association so from individual

[00:22:06] benefits it's come to the community benefits and then to the at the city level at the city is now all inclusive they provide services at the same standard across the city and in general the city

[00:22:21] is much more resilient because the pockets of this kind of you know let's say disaster impact or epidemic impacts are being mitigated in the medium term then at the state level it provides a whole

[00:22:36] new opportunity for various sets of programs to succeed all kinds of urban programs the probability of its succeeding is much higher because everyone is now within within a system right at the state

[00:22:53] level and at the national level it kind of let's say creates a new model shows states that it's possible to do at this rapid pace earlier slump upgrading programs for example took ages to do

[00:23:08] they were pilots done and then more pilots done but what government of Oresa and Mr. Mathi Wadhan have managed to do is put this in at a scale that's in the past never been seen and then

[00:23:20] at the global scale it speaks to the sustainable development goals to the to the urban goal within it it takes you know the main underlying theme of the sustainable development goals this time is to

[00:23:32] leave no one behind and have inclusive and sustainable cities it speaks to the heart of the problem at the global scale and creates this new model which can operate even within a market structure neoliberal framework and can deliver goals so it has these multiple benefits at various levels

[00:23:54] would you say that the Jaga mission actually made a difference to the way the pandemic management was done in this slums that were actually covered within the Jaga mission so for example I think

[00:24:05] the most graphic images that gave many people sleepless nights during the pandemic word those of thousands of migrants working from the cities back to their homes in thousands of miles away and primarily because of tenure security and job loss and complete breakdown of trust

[00:24:25] in city administrations to take care of them right so would you say that the Jaga mission actually made a difference and did you say a different perception of people who were covered under the

[00:24:35] Jaga mission during COVID or is it too early to ask for that kind of impact yeah during COVID we have in fact we have experienced the you know the benefits of our interventions so by the time we

[00:24:48] are already given the land rights people have started investing there you know in their house building their house the Jaga mission interventions have already started by the time water supply sanitation individual household toilet or car road street lighting those kind of infrastructure

[00:25:05] where it amenities services so they went the COVID spread happened some communities were already mobilized organized the Slam dollar associations were in place today were regularly meeting so basically the COVID was managed through communities it was COVID was more of you know the

[00:25:24] success of what is a COVID management was because of the decentralized management in villages it was managed by the surpunches the powers of the district collectors have been delegated to the surpunches they are functioned as the district collectors when it came to the you know disaster

[00:25:39] management so in the Slam areas also it was easy for the city administration to operate through the Slam door lets association so the containment happened at that place the isolation containment and the testing so the Slam door association acted as a bridge as volunteers as agents of the

[00:25:58] government to control and you know contain the spread of the disease so in fact we have actually reaped the benefits of you know organizing the Slam's recognizing the Slam's during the COVID misadask up that do we have any data points the demonstrates that Slam's cover under the Jaga

[00:26:16] Commission actually ended up being more resilient during the pandemic then Slam's that were not covered I mean what does data tell us about the impact of the Jaga mission on COVID management

[00:26:27] in Oresa so means in COVID management one of the main issues was around lockdowns and local lockdowns right in the lockdown period the Slam dwellers got wage employment in Jaga mission in their own communities yeah so it protected both livelihoods but it also created assets for themselves

[00:26:50] and the city as a whole because these protocols were in place and these plans were in place so it had a very positive impact on the communities itself during lockdowns the in migration into Oresa

[00:27:04] is something Mr. Mathieu at the can speak to I'll just add to the earlier point that Mr. Mathieu at the mentioned but Mr. mentioning the new mantra that kind of Oresa has put forth

[00:27:17] is the fourth tier of governance yeah this is a word that Mr. Mathieu at the using a lot and it has this new meaning because the way urban decentralization works there is a third tier

[00:27:30] the the local government and then there is a war so connecting the city to the slums has created this fourth tier which has been very effective during pandemic the pandemic period because it allows information communication it allows people to mobilise around smaller neighborhoods and all the

[00:27:52] co-benefits of it so one of the rewards of the Jaga program is also a deeper understanding of what four tier of governance might look like in India in the future sure truly of people's movement then

[00:28:08] since this podcast is called the land of a billion I have to ask you both one question which is that if there were one challenge that you would tackle put your weight behind put your energy,

[00:28:19] life resources into to secure land rights for a billion plus population that is India what would inclusive development of city should be the focus of the governance we need to give right

[00:28:32] priority for that it could be in the form of land rights it could be form of reticinizing the slum communities to be you know getting their rights right to city for the slum dwellers right to clean

[00:28:44] water sanitation livelihood opportunities and that is a direction in which we are working we are in fact not only empowering them we are also raising them to govern themselves who are great slum dwellers association as a as the fourth tier of governance if they should be governing

[00:29:00] yeah they should be governing the area they should be taking one the development process in the area and they should become a kind of you know the extended arm of the municipal council

[00:29:09] luckily working in our society you don't have to spend your entire life on doing a one reform reforms happen there very frequently what the next stage means one orissa has already demonstrated how inclusive slum upgrading can work at scale in a very rapid pace and other governments are

[00:29:32] showing interest Punjab has taken up a very similar exercise too but going forward in orissa the next examples are going to be around I'm hoping around include a making inclusive planning institutionally embedded across all the statutory provisions around urban development and planning

[00:29:54] so the urban planning laws have to secure how this data is managed how land rights once given are incorporated within the planning system and that is going to be another very structural reform

[00:30:09] because it will help these cities build and look towards the future so that this kind of inequality is not not perpetuated in the future fantastic urban reforms I mean I love it right I mean we

[00:30:23] just overwhelming will focus a lot of discussion on rural reforms and agriculture but very few people are able to talk and share their insight as it openly as both of you did so thank you very

[00:30:37] much for a fantastic episode and I hope the listeners have also enjoyed this thank you thank you so much thank you thanks for tuning into our podcast land of a billion produced in association with a

[00:30:54] property rights research consortium don't forget to catch new episodes every alternate Friday where I will bring you a rundown on the latest church around land and housing in India thanks for listening log on to the quince website and check out our other podcast