HUDCO

Suddenly today, I was reminded of the trophy sheets we worked on for HUDCO trophy at the National Association of Students of Architecture. It was a great experience in itself, apart from being fun. An enthusiastic group of students, working their asses off on a project that they understood very little.

This was a project on the rehabilitation of rag pickers, who were residing in squatters. Squatters are different from slums, in that they are more disorganized and more unstable. Most squatters are denser than slums and are built using temporary materials like canvas and plastic sheets.

These rag pickers had settled on a dry piece of land on the banks of river Musi, which has been reduced to a sewer, and ran the dangers of falling prey to many contagious diseases, owing to their proximity to the river and the unhygienic living conditions.

But the main reason for the rehabilitation was even more severe - a fire. A fire broke out from one of the dwellings, and spread faster than wild fire, gutting the whole squatter within hours and taking quite a few lives. And the fire department couldn't reach the squatter on time and put the fire out on time because of the inaccessibility to the area and the density of the squatter..

So the remaining rag pickers were rehabilitated to the city outskirts, where permanent dwellings were built for them, promising water, electricity and sewer connections to the whole 'colony'. By the time we went there for a case study of the 'colony', it was supposed to be completely built and ready to be occupied. And it was. It was occupied almost to the 100 percentile, and surprisingly, most of the rag pickers continued their profession even after 'rehabilitation'. The promised electricity and water connections were not given. They spent their nights by lamps and candles, although it was funny and relieving that they had street lights!

The dwellings built for them were not individual houses, but apartment blocks. There were ten to twelve such blocks, incompletely built, some didn't have doors, some didn't have parapet walls, some didn't have finished stairs etc. What was common in all blocks was that none of them had toilets. None of the apartments had toilets. A religious group had built two semi-functional toilets at one end of the colony, and the only other alternative was to go in the open. The only respite was that the colony was built on a slight slope with a stream of water passing next to it and that partly took care of the dirty end.

Another good step taken (I think this was taken by an NGO) was to setup a primary education center for the next generation, so that they need not depend on rag picking to make their ends meet when they grow up.

A project well-begun, half-done - which only helped the people to shift from dirty, utility-less, disorganized conditions, to again dirty, utility-less, relatively organized conditions. Another case which proves that promises half-fulfilled are as good as promises not fulfilled at all!