Housing mobilization in Calcutta empowerment for the masses or awareness for the few?

Transcription

1 Housing mobilization in Calcutta empowerment for the masses or awareness for the few? INDIA Eldrid Mageli Eldrid Mageli is currently a researcher at the Department of History, University of Oslo, working on a post-doctoral project on Norwegian Japanese relations Her doctoral thesis, completed in 2001, focused on the NGO Unnayan. Her earlier research, on South Indian feminist organizations, was reported in her book, Organizing Women s Protest: A Study of Two South Indian Activist Groups, NIAS/Curzon Press (1997). Address: University of Oslo, Department of History, PO Box 1008, Blindern, 0315 Oslo, Norway; tel: ; fax: ; eldrid.mageli@hi.uio.no 1. See also Mageli, Eldrid (2001), NGO activism in Calcutta : exploring Unnayan, PhD thesis, University of Oslo. 2. Chhinnamul means pulling up by the roots. The full name means uprooting for the rights of the labouring people. 3. The term houseless is used here rather than homeless because the term housing refers to more than just shelter: it also encompasses the right to live in a healthy and safe environment, with access to state services and social facilities such as education and health security. Since SUMMARY: This paper describes the evolution of the Calcutta NGO Unnayan and the two related movements which it initiated and supported, Chhinnamul and the National Campaign for Housing Rights (NCHR). Unnayan was concerned with the situation of the poor in Calcutta, and was very active in housing issues. Chhinnamul Sramajibi Adhikar Samity (Chhinnamul for short) was a local movement intended to mobilize the squatter population and involve them directly in political activism. NCHR was a nationwide campaign that sought to link housing activists throughout India and lobby for the legal housing rights of the poor. The paper describes Unnayan s successes, both in stimulating a national debate on housing issues and in creating a platform for popular protest. It also explains the organizational challenges faced by this small NGO, and the conflicts which led to its funding being cut after 20 years. In particular, it highlights the frustrations of poor citizens, whose immediate material needs loomed larger than the longer-term gains envisioned by the organization. I. INTRODUCTION IN 1977, AN interesting experiment began in the city of Calcutta with the founding of an NGO called Unnayan (which means development in Bengali). (1) Unnayan s main concerns were the deteriorating urban situation in Calcutta and the lack of city planning for the poor. From the start, funding was secured from the Dutch aid organization NOVIB and, over the next 20 years, Unnayan was extremely active in housing issues. It was not distinguished by its size (there were a number of larger voluntary organizations in Calcutta) and the total number of workers rarely exceeded 25 and, compared to influential NGOs in, for example, Bangladesh, it was small and possessed limited resources. However, Unnayan initiated two distinct and contrasting movements in the area of housing that involved several thousand people overall, not only in Calcutta but also in a number of other Indian cities. One movement was Chhinnamul Sramajibi Adhikar Samity (Chhinnamul for short) (2) and the other the National Campaign for Housing Rights (NCHR). While Chhinnamul was mainly concerned with the housing situation in Calcutta, the NCHR was a nationwide campaign launched to strengthen the legal rights of the houseless. (3) For Unnayan, the aim was to mobilize the poorest of the poor to argue their own case through Chhinnamul and to engage in lobbying and academic discussions at a nationwide level through the NCHR. The Environment&Urbanization Vol 16 No 1 April

2 initiation of both of these movements represented enormous challenges for a small organization like Unnayan. After some years of intense activism and campaigning from the mid-1980s until the early 1990s activities slowed down, differences and conflicts increased, the NCHR moved its secretariat to Mumbai, and Chhinnamul broke with Unnayan. Partly as a result of all the organizational problems, NOVIB cut its financial support to Unnayan in However, the point here is not to label Unnayan s experiment as either a failure or a success; it is probably both. Although some of its projects failed, Unnayan contributed in no small way to the public discourse on urban housing and development in India. Through Chhinnamul and the NCHR, Unnayan provided valuable experiences in terms of strategies for empowerment and awareness. This paper aims to make known these urban experiences and to share them with an audience interested in issues of urban housing and mobilization of the poor. Unnayan s attempts to mobilize around the issue of housing, both on a micro and a macro level, were highly significant as an innovative case of urban activism. As the movements unfolded, it became clear that a number of contradictions proved difficult to solve. However, the overall experiment in mobilization should prove highly valuable for others concerned with NGO activism and housing. Some of the complexities and challenges connected with this kind of mobilization will be outlined later. Through Chhinnamul and the NCHR, Unnayan wanted to highlight the extremely difficult situation facing around one-third of all Indian urban dwellers. Chhinnamul was an attempt to involve Calcutta s squatter population directly as political activists, through demonstrations and street protests. The NCHR, on the other hand, was a nationwide campaign concerned with lobbying for the right to housing for all. The main activists were not squatters but middle-class intellectuals, who numbered among them several prominent legal experts. The NCHR s goal was to have passed in Parliament an alternative bill on housing rights, one that would make the right to housing a fundamental right in the Indian Constitution. Although this goal was not fulfilled the bill was never passed the issue generated heated discussions in a number of fora, and put the question of poor people s right to housing on the political and legal agenda in the country. Calcutta is perhaps even more famous than other Indian cities for its long-standing urban neglect and dismal living conditions, its congested slums, the thousands of homeless living on the streets, the squalor, dirt, floods, open drains and related urban disasters. (4) Already in 1947, the city was comparatively worse off than other Indian cities in terms of infrastructure and lack of amenities, and the situation deteriorated further in the decades that followed, complicated by an increase in the number of refugees from East Pakistan both in 1947 and during the civil war in Pakistan in , when Bangladesh became independent. Although some steps have been taken to avoid the worst urban disasters, no visitor can fail to notice the general neglect, the overcrowded slum areas and the numerous shacks found everywhere that constitute poor people s homes. In Calcutta, as in most other cities in the developing world, there are a great number of people who, for want of a better alternative, put up their makeshift huts wherever they find a vacant spot along railway lines, on canal banks, in parks or simply on the pavements. Often, these people live under the threat of eviction by public or private landowners who want to vacate the area. In Calcutta, they are usually referred to as squatters or these squatters had huts and shacks, however poor the quality, they were not strictly homeless; but they were houseless in this wider sense. 4. Breman, Jan (1983), The bottom of the urban order in Asia: impressions of Calcutta, Development and Change Vol 14, pages ; also Moorhouse, Geoffrey (1971), Calcutta, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London; LaPierre, Dominique (1986), The City of Joy, Century, London; Pugh, Cedric (1990), Housing and Urbanization: A Study of India, Sage, New Delhi; and Naipaul, V S (1990), India A Million Mutinies Now, William Heinemann, London. 130 Environment&Urbanization Vol 16 No 1 April 2004

3 5. Sen, Jai (1975), The unintended city: an essay on the city of the poor, CRS, Calcutta. community dwellers, to distinguish them from the more established and, in legal terms, protected slum dwellers, who at least have a right to tenure and usually some basic facilities such as latrines and electricity. It was the housing situation of the squatters (community dwellers) that was Unnayan s main concern. From the start, Unnayan was a social experiment that attracted various well-educated individuals, including well-known intellectuals and researchers. Its founders consisted of a group of middle-class individuals, among them architects and town planners, who possessed visions for housing and urban development and who needed an organization to carry their ideas forward. Originally, the idea was not to effect mass mobilization around a single issue. The first handful of Unnayan members did not see the organization as a social activist group but, rather, as an enterprise that could offer professional solutions to issues of urban development. In the early years, Unnayan undertook a mixture of research, social action and project implementation. It established an office and a wellstocked library, produced a number of research papers and achieved recognition in academic circles. Unnayan offered vocational training and non-formal education for illiterates. It also examined various aspects of city life, including hawking and street-vending, the organization of bird sellers, snake charmers and dhobis (washer men), and the general transport situation in Calcutta. The organization was particularly concerned with the situation of the rickshaw pullers, a mode of transport characteristic of Calcutta, and modelled a modernized version of the cycle rickshaw. A major concern was the design of cheap and affordable houses, and the construction of low-cost and flood-proof huts in areas prone to flooding. The main ideological basis for Unnayan s work was an essay written by its first director, which came to have a powerful effect on a number of people. The essay was entitled The unintended city, (5) and its essence was that in Calcutta, there existed a kind of dual urban situation. There was the formal, recognized, intended city, where people carried on with their lives and worked as respectable citizens. They constituted an urban élite, representing a car- and consumer-oriented culture that stood in great contrast to the city s have-nots. The urban poor, for their part, formed a parallel and much larger segment, a rural urban hybrid where people, most of them from surrounding rural areas, tried to find their space within the intended city framework. As the essay pointed out, in the eyes of the regular city inhabitants the haves these people were invisible, regarded as a nuisance because they lived on the streets with their animals and half-rural lifestyles, and yet they were needed for the services they could provide to the middle classes. II. CHHINNAMUL IN THE EARLY 1980s, Unnayan workers realized that the organization s largely technical approach to urban planning was inadequate; housing and the general life situations of the squatters were political issues that had to involve the city authorities. Political and social activism was needed in order to focus on the enormous problems of lack of housing and lack of security of tenure for the urban squatter population. Chhinnamul was founded in 1984 and was intended to be a mass Environment&Urbanization Vol 16 No 1 April

4 movement focused on the poor housing conditions in squatter communities, where the community dwellers themselves would take a leading role in articulating their problems and demands. The idea was that Unnayan would give the new organization infrastructural support and guidance. In addition, a number of left-wing political groups in the city offered their support to strengthen Chhinnamul, something which had a significant effect on the development of the movement. Otherwise, the idea was that Chhinnamul would function as an independent organizational entity, in other words, it would be a movement from below, with Unnayan merely playing the role of catalyst, mainly in the initial stages. Unnayan s workers were aware that specific projects in limited areas would effect only small changes and not do anything to alter a situation in which a large number of the city s population lived in appalling conditions. They therefore wanted to initiate a process of empowerment at the grassroots level. This belief in the potential of locally generated social movements has, over the years, come to be reflected in development theory in general. (6) In the 1990s, empowerment of the people, local knowledge, participation and development from below became part of the theoretical discourse on development for the poor. (7) Unnayan s Chhinnamul experiment was an effort in line with this, an emphasis on people s participation through social action and grassroots mobilization. Through Chhinnamul, Unnayan attempted to make use of people s local organizational capacity to create new channels of influence. Unnayan invited both left-wing political activists mainly people who adhered to a Marxist-Leninist ideology and people from the squatter communities to create Chhinnamul. Several of the central actors in Chhinnamul squatter members or intellectual guides had political affiliations. Unnayan had broad contacts with left-wing groups, trade unions, civil-rights organizations and intellectuals. In particular, people who had been active in the Naxalite guerrilla movement were influential. (8) But the problem that emerged was people s diverging opinions of what kind of forum Chhinnamul should be. Various interests were at stake. Unnayan was already an NGO of moderate fame. Would Chhinnamul mainly enhance Unnayan s image as a successful NGO working for the poor? Should it be part of a wider left-wing political movement in Calcutta? Should it only focus on housing issues or should it include other issues as well? Should it extend material support to the communities, or merely encourage the inhabitants to articulate their demands? Chhinnamul was an Unnayan-initiated organizational entity dependent on Unnayan s infrastructural support. One big issue was economic. Chhinnamul activists who were mainly squatters received no remuneration for their activism; Unnayan workers who had middle-class backgrounds received a monthly salary to undertake Chhinnamul work. Community dwellers found this highly unfair; they knew Unnayan was funded from the Netherlands and wanted a share of the donor flow. However, Unnayan was not willing to accept this, as one of the basic ideas was that Chhinnamul would not receive financial support from Unnayan. The point was not to effect material improvements in the squatter communities but, rather, to assist squatters on a mass basis in their struggle for a higher standard of living. Basic funds for Chhinnamul were to come from collections, with each settlement making a contribution to the central body. If there was a rally, a particular settlement would collect money for it. Chhinnamul continued a number of community-level activities that 6. Korten, David (1990), Getting to the 21st Century Voluntary Action and the Global Agenda, Kumarian Press, Connecticut. 7. Long, Norman and Magdalena Villarreal (1993), Exploring development interfaces: from the transfer of knowledge to the transformation of meaning, in Schuurman, Frans J (editor), Beyond the Impasse: New Directions in Development Theory, Zed Books, London, pages This movement started in West Bengal in 1967 and spread to other parts of India, particularly to Andhra Pradesh. The movement consisted, for a large part, of students who established strongholds in rural areas. Using guerrilla tactics, they engaged in the killing of individual landlords and, branded as terrorism, the movement was severely repressed by the Bengali government in the early 1970s. See Banerjee, Sumanta (1980), India s Simmering Revolution: The Naxalite Uprising, Zed Books, London. 132 Environment&Urbanization Vol 16 No 1 April 2004

5 9. Unlike Delhi and Mumbai, squatter settlements in Calcutta are small and are found in pockets scattered all over the city. Unnayan had already started, such as building local community organizations, developing strategies for obtaining access to water, ration cards and postal services, and resisting evictions. School programmes and health services were part of these activities. Chhinnamul s general aim, and a significant element in all its areas of work, was to create awareness, self-confidence and motivation among the squatters. It was on the basis of these general activities that it was possible to mobilize the community dwellers to become social and political activists. Over a period of four or five years, Unnayan assisted Chhinnamul in launching rallies and protests opposing government housing policies. With Unnayan s support, Chhinnamul was able to form links with squatter settlements in different parts of the city. (9) From smaller demonstrations consisting of a couple of hundred dwellers, numbers grew to as many as 5,000 by , with people from different communities in Calcutta demonstrating with banners and shouting slogans. Sometimes, there would be encounters with the police and people would be beaten up. On the whole, however, the authorities took little notice. As one activist pointed out, in an Indian context a demonstration of 5,000 people is small; the larger political parties can easily draw more than 100,000 to a gathering. By the early 1990s, it was evident that cooperation between Unnayan and Chhinnamul had become problematic. This was partly due to Unnayan s increased focus on the NCHR, which will be outlined below. Another reason was the actors different perceptions of what kind of organization Chhinnamul should be. The movement was soon seen as a platform where diverging and partly contradictory interests were articulated. The left-wing political activists had their own agenda; they viewed Chhinnamul in the context of a wider class struggle. For them, Chhinnamul was part of a larger political alliance against the ruling Left Front government, and both Unnayan and the squatters were necessary in this regard. Community dwellers had their own expectations. Some saw Chhinnamul as a possible place of employment; others hoped that their activism would generate material benefits in their communities. Since every day was a struggle for survival, they found it difficult to work for long-term goals. Their first priority was to improve their standard of living. They looked to Chhinnamul as an organization that, with Unnayan s backing, would provide better housing for them. Unnayan workers were caught in a dilemma. They saw Chhinnamul as an effort in mobilization, facilitated by Unnayan; an organizational unit with its own identity and an ability to define policies. Unnayan workers never intended Chhinnamul to be a place of employment for squatter people. Unnayan could not and would not fund Chhinnamul with NOVIB s money. Increased material welfare was not the immediate issue at stake for Unnayan; awareness, consciousness and empowerment were needed first. Poor people must learn to fight their own struggle. They were encouraged to engage in social and political activism on a voluntary, unpaid basis. If Chhinnamul, with Unnayan s sanction, doled out money, building materials, food and medicines, it would be contrary to Unnayan s central idea of the need to empower community dwellers. It would make Chhinnamul an implementing agency for Unnayan s social welfare measures. However, as Unnayan workers realized, if Unnayan did not contribute to material improvements, the squatters would lose interest in Chhinnamul. Why should poor people lose a day s wages to engage in street demonstrations? Unnayan, through the estab- Environment&Urbanization Vol 16 No 1 April

6 lishment of Chhinnamul, had created expectations of a better life in the squatter communities. This contradiction between the community dwellers impatience and the actual organizational reality proved impossible to overcome. III. THE NCHR WHEN THE NCHR was launched in 1986, it marked the beginning of a new phase in Unnayan s history. The NCHR was not Unnayan s initiative alone. The founding meeting of the NCHR was organized by a number of different organizations, including the Lawyers Collective in Mumbai, and was held in Mumbai in late August Unnayan was asked to be the secretariat for the campaign. In the following six to seven years, the campaign consumed most of Unnayan s resources and was, in many respects, the organization s pride and favoured child. One of the NCHR s aims was to draft a people s law the People s Bill of Housing Rights and have it passed in parliament as a constitutional amendment. The bill would enforce curbs and regulations on existing property relationships and, with this measure, housing would be secured as a fundamental right for all. The NCHR sought to link housing activists in India s metropolises, in order to create a national lobby for housing issues. Several legal experts from all over the country became involved in the drafting of a people s law although, ultimately, the campaign did not bring about a legal amendment. However, the NCHR contributed actively to a national debate on housing in India. In the world of social and political activism, the NCHR and Chhinnamul could be regarded as complementary bodies. While Chhinnamul mobilized the poor directly, the NCHR sought to move the central authorities into taking steps to improve the situation for the country s houseless. While Chhinnamul s work was in the most squalid surroundings of Calcutta, where the poorest of the poor lived, NCHR activists conducted their lobbying campaigns through seminars, conferences and meetings, with the ultimate goal of creating a massive NGO front against the government s perceived anti-squatter policies, and obtaining increased legal protection for the community dwellers. However, the mere passing of a law could not in itself be enough. According to an early NCHR document: Housing rights can never be enforced or implemented due to the goodwill of the state. [These rights] can be enforced and guaranteed fundamentally on the strength of the masses of women and men and their level of organization and struggle. (10) There was therefore a second, equally important, reason for engaging in law-making, which was that the very process of drafting the bill would generate widespread debate and focus on housing conditions in the country. The drafting process should not be one of experts sitting together and drafting a bill that would subsequently be circulated for discussion and approval but, rather, a process in which several draft approach papers would be distributed in discussion fora and debates, to make room for popular suggestions and comments: [S]uch a process could strongly contribute to a healthy, democratic participation in the social and political process of our Indian society a society where there are increasing signs of authoritarianism and centralization. According to the campaigners, this would imply a radical departure 10. Unnayan s Library (1987), Towards a people s bill of housing rights: an approach paper, pre-final draft, August. 134 Environment&Urbanization Vol 16 No 1 April 2004

7 11. See reference 9. from the conventional view that it is the state s responsibility to pass and then implement laws: The whole purpose is to see people not as passive objects of law but as active agents of law-making and enforcement. (11) When the Unnayan activists became part of a nationwide campaign concerned with legal rights, they followed a pattern of activism that has a rich tradition in India. To achieve their goals, people s movements, radical women s organizations, NGOs and others in India have tended to orient themselves towards the legal system, in order to lobby for a strengthening of people s rights. Weaker groups have, on a number of occasions, had their cases successfully taken up by middle-class intellectuals and social activists. However, the NCHR was a different legal campaign in two respects. First, it was the first time that the issue of the right to housing for poor people had been taken up on a nationwide scale; and second, the campaigners attempted to engage in law-making themselves. In this respect, professional lawyers, among them some of the country s most reputed jurists, took on an active role, but the campaign extended beyond the exclusive work of technical experts. NCHR activists sought to engage local grassroots organizations, social and political action groups, squatter movements and others concerned with justice for society s marginalized groups. This all-india character, where the process itself was as important as the ultimate goal, made the campaign different from most other legal efforts. The educational process and the legal awareness that would ensue were, in other words, as significant as the formal goal of achieving a constitutional amendment. The campaign was not confined to a specific area, but sought to link regional campaign centres all over the country, which were to unite for an all-india goal. As a campaign, it was both radical and visionary, both a logical step in legal activism and a break with traditional legal behaviour. The NCHR was an exceptionally ambitious and visionary move to improve radically the situation for the country s houseless, at least formally. The campaign lasted for several years and brought Unnayan much recognition in housing matters. It also meant that housing became a nationwide issue. However, when the NCHR was established and campaign activities increased, one unintended consequence was that some of Calcutta s Chhinnamul-organized community dwellers felt neglected. They were painfully aware of the fact that while some key people, both from Unnayan and Chhinnamul, were allowed to move in the world of airconditioned conference halls, participate in seminars and discussions, and interact with politicians and other decision makers in housing issues, for the bulk of the dwellers, the national campaign appeared to have no immediate positive impact on their everyday lives. This realization made them both angry and frustrated. For these dwellers, a constitutional amendment was a theoretical issue, which seemed far removed from the hardships they experienced every day. Even to participate in Chhinnamul protests meant a financial loss. It is doubtful whether people in the communities demanded a protest movement. They wanted a better life, but not necessarily to become social activists, especially not unpaid ones. However, while Chhinnamul at least was an entity that, with Unnayan s support, concerned itself with conditions in their immediate surroundings, the NCHR was far removed from the situation in Calcutta. Environment&Urbanization Vol 16 No 1 April

8 IV. WHOSE MOBILIZATION? FOR WHAT? IN THE EARLY 1990s, dissatisfaction and organizational conflicts increased. Unnayan workers found that it was too demanding to run a national campaign as well as pay attention to housing issues in Calcutta. In 1993, when the NCHR campaign secretariat shifted to Mumbai, this was not enough to rebuild confidence between Unnayan and Chhinnamul. Following a disagreement over salary issues, three Unnayan workers turned to Chhinnamul for support. Some of the Chhinnamul-organized squatters, who were becoming frustrated, formed their own faction and entered into an alliance with the three dissatisfied Unnayan workers, and finally broke with Unnayan. These community dwellers claimed that Unnayan workers were mainly concerned with enhancing their own prestige as successful NGO activists, and that they exploited the squatters to that end. As some of the community dwellers saw it, Unnayan had not contributed anything at all to improving life in the communities. They had persuaded poor people to take part in protests, but had neither spent donor money on remunerating Chhinnamul activists nor provided better housing for the needy. Why should they demonstrate under Unnayan s banner and enhance their reputation as a successful NGO if they the poor received nothing in return? And in any case, city authorities did not respond to their public articulation. Furthermore, for several years, the national campaign had demanded most of Unnayan s attention so, were draft papers and legal technicalities more important than the unhealthy and dirty living conditions in Calcutta? Was it more convenient to participate in seminars than to help people mend broken roofs? The contradictions within the Unnayan/Chhinnamul/NCHR experiment were many. Unnayan workers had visions of an alternative urban development, and made sincere attempts to empower poor people so that they themselves could demand better housing conditions. It is perhaps ironic that the community dwellers were indeed empowered, in the sense that they demanded that Unnayan share foreign funds with them. When their demands were not met, the most frustrated among them broke with Unnayan. The NCHR was an equally ambitious move, although with a completely different character, which united housing activists all over the country. It was a bold attempt to reform the legal system, to secure for everybody the right to a place to live. If the campaigners had succeeded in having a people s law passed in Parliament, it would probably have had an effect on poor people s living conditions in most Indian cities. For the community dwellers, however, the NCHR turned out to be of little relevance. Chhinnamul and the NCHR were experiments in mobilization that highlighted a number of contradictions relating to increased awareness, empowerment and mobilization of poor people. Although Unnayan workers and Chhinnamul-organized community dwellers shared a vision of a better and more human urban development, it proved impossible to transform the poor people into social and political activists who could independently demand that city authorities recognize their existence, stop evicting them and upgrade their communities. One aspect of Chhinnamul that proved to be a weakness was the fact that it was not initiated from below but, rather, facilitated from above; its very existence was conceived by social and political activists from the middle classes. In that sense, Chhinnamul was not a genuine community organization, able to define its own identity. 136 Environment&Urbanization Vol 16 No 1 April 2004

9 Several community dwellers dismissed Unnayan s initiatives as useless. However, in retrospect, it is clear that Unnayan s contribution in housing matters was extremely valuable. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Unnayan was the only NGO in Calcutta concerned with housing for the poor. It established contacts in several squatter communities in Calcutta and facilitated a broad platform for mobilization for community dwellers, so that poor people themselves could articulate their demands. Through the NCHR, housing issues were taken to a higher level and became part of a national debate on housing as a right for everyone. Subjects that previously had been largely neglected were brought into the public and political arena. In election manifestos and state policies in the 1990s, several of these demands were recognized and became part of politicians vocabulary, particularly within parties of the Left. Thus, one could say that Unnayan has contributed to a greater awareness of and sensitivity to urban poor people s living conditions in Indian cities. The fact that most community dwellers in Calcutta experienced little improvement in their overall life situations can hardly be blamed on a small NGO like Unnayan. Ultimately, making substantial improvements in the housing situation for Indian squatters must be the responsibility of the state authorities. Environment&Urbanization Vol 16 No 1 April

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