The Right to Squat

2013

Co-Authors: Surabhi Naik, Kedar Undale

Winner of Annual NASA Writing Architecture Trophy 2013

This article was originally published in the Annual NASA India Convention materials 2013.

A RETROSPECTIVE NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR - Feb 2022

I am making this article available on this website because its subject remains significant and pertinent a decade after its original publication. The core subject matter continues to be relevant in contemporary discourse. However, I must acknowledge and address a critical oversight in the original text – the deeply ingrained legacy of caste-based discrimination and hierarchical structures in the Indian subcontinent. This legacy has historically and persistently denied marginalized castes access to essential resources like safe water and sanitation, and it continues to perpetuate caste-based segregation in urban areas. This oversight is significant as it represents a significant gap in the article's exploration of justice. I urge readers, whether you're engaging with this work for educational purposes or otherwise, to be cognizant and sensitive to this crucial aspect that was not adequately addressed in the original publication.

The Right to Squat

“Public Shouchalay mein jo Potty hai, woh kahaan jaata hai?”

“Nadi or Sewage mein”

“Saara potty Sea ke andar jaata hai... Sea mein Fish hai... Fish usko khata hai... hum fish ko khaate hain... iska potty tumhare pet mein... tumhara potty uske pet mein... Thank God mein machchi nahi khata”

- Auro, Paa - The Movie

A twelve-year old kid with progeria ponders upon on the entire food consumption chain in piercingly raw and realistic way. The dialogue forces a laugh or two for sure and even tucks itself into the mind’s drawers of comic-horror, vaguely reflecting a Fact we choose to ignore. A Fact that more than 60 million people across our urbane nation wakes up everyday to. Although, in a process much less complicated than Auro’s, the urban poor of the squatter settlements are continuously ingesting each other’s feces. They do it simply by not washing their hands after they Go or by not having water to wash out or ultimately, by having a place neither to Go nor to Wash at.

Gandhi spoke about the significance of Sanitation sixty years ago and yet a recent assessment by the Municipal Corporation of Mumbai reveals that not a single toilet exists in nearly 200 Mumbai’s slums; this in the most progressive city of the country.

Rising slum populace and lack of adequate sanitation framework force over 50 million men, women and children to defecate in the open every day. Lack of sanitation is much more than an inconvenience, day by day, deepening its roots as a major contributing factor of Poverty.

1,600 children die every day before reaching their fifth birthday, 24% of girls drop out of school and more than 30% of marginalized women are violently assaulted every year directly due to the lack of proper Toilet facilities.

“Toilets give the most vulnerable members of the society dignity, health and privacy”

It is not just the lack of infrastructure that is the most responsible, although it largely is, but also the attitude of people towards the current institutions of sanitation. The scanty toilet blocks provided by the municipal corporation are virtually of no help, when it comes to taming this attitude. In most cases, a corporation employee cleans the toilet once a day in theory.

However, the number of people using them is so huge that the blocks cannot be kept clean. With Toilets that always remain dirty and knowing that someone is employed and paid for doing essentially zilch, there is naturally no motivation for the users to maintain them.

In the squalor of the Two-tier
The urban poor of Pune is the broad (and veiled) face of India’s ‘growing’ cities. Forty-one of the 400 informal settlements in Pune have absolutely no toilets. The crude toilet to person ratio is as low as 1:2,500. Even where the figures indicate that toilets are available, many are old, dilapidated and unusable. Moreover, hardly any if none of Pune’s informal settlements are connected to the municipal sewer system.

One such was a small settlement called - Shantinagar where the toilets were ‘too big’ for the children and they were often pushed out of queues at busy times. The children then defecated in the gutters or on the ground outside the toilets. The place around the toilet thus, became dirty and odorous and was the ‘obvious’ place for residents to dump their garbage. This part of settlement attracted flies, mosquitoes and pigs gradually becoming more polluted. In a high- density settlement like this one, toilets are unlikely to be located far from dwellings, so people’s homes were located directly next to these areas. But this story is not a statement of known issues. It is one of responses, initiatives and above all of justice.

Shelter Associates, a brainchild NGO of two attentive architects believed that the Urban Slum was a vital part of a city and should be incorporated into formal urban planning systems to prevent them from being further marginalized. Shelter Associates undertook responsibility for the construction and maintenance of 13 community toilet blocks. Given their role in sanitation, women tend to be aware about current facilities and their quality, can identify barriers to accessibility, and provide insights on how to improve hygiene behaviors. Yet, historically there has been a tendency to leave them out of planning, designing and construction in initial stages, and operation and maintenance for income generation later. There is evidence that water and sanitation services are six to seven times more effective if women take an active role in setting them up, from design and planning, to the operations and maintenance required to make any initiative sustainable.

Shelter Associates worked on this in principality. It soon dawned on them that it was not a matter of getting the government to build, but one of getting structures built the way people want them and will feel responsible for. The Dattavadi Project, an earlier housing project for the same settlement had also shown how the owners cherished their toilets. Shelter Assoc. began by spawning "Baandhinis" [meaning 'the Bond'], which are women ¬ led local groups in the project areas that would research, counsel, plan, build, administer and maintain the community toilets ¬ with Shelter Assoc. only formalising and technically finessing the ideas.

The Process
Initially, the project focused on the demolition and reconstruction of old dilapidated toilet blocks, which had been identified in the corporation’s, own surveys, in the process increasing the number of toilets in many blocks. Later, other sites were identified for completely new blocks. The toilets were based on septic tanks for the lack of sewer system connections. Baandhinis would endlessly discuss and narrate their needs and the architects would draft plans with costs and soundness in mind.

In settlements where old toilets are first demolished, a tankful of sludge and raw sewage has to be cleared. This is very low-grade unpleasant work in which most community members, and even many labourers, refuse to be involved. This was when Shelter Assoc. brought in mechanical excavators.

In high-density proximities, women living next to the toilets suggested shielding walls at the toilet entrances. Each of the new blocks built by Shelter Associates was different, according to the needs and ideas of the local people and the available site and space. The toilets were pour-flush latrines, that is, water tanks (approximately 800 litres) were located outside both the women’s and the men’s toilets so that anyone using the toilet can take in a jug or small bucket of water. This was sufficient to flush the pan and used less water and is easier to maintain than a mechanical flushing system.

Each block had a small toilet for children under the age of five. This consisted of a half-pipe, which the children could squat over, and is located inside or just outside the women’s side, where mothers or older sisters can supervise. The women who accompanied and supervised the children flushed this in the same way as the adult toilets.

Prior to the inauguration of a new block, the caretaker, together with other community members and with the support of Shelter Associates, drew up a list of the households, which will be using the block. The number of toilets was adequate so there have been no queuing problems with respect to the toilets, which were already in operation.

This included locating entrances carefully so that people couldn’t see right into the blocks (something that isn’t pleasant for people using the toilets, nor for people living right next to the blocks), constructing kids’ toilets and ensuring that the gents’ and ladies’ sections are well separated, with entrances at opposite ends of the block: this makes it safer for the women.

Even when construction work was on, discussions continued with the local communities, who had clear ideas about what they needed, so the designs got adapted and changed because they noticed that they didn’t feel would work out: an entrance facing someone’s house, or a need for walls to shield other entrances. So the designs got adapted even once the drawing stage was long over and the gattus were going up. Unlike the old PMC-built toilets, which were just plopped into slums, local people have been active in contributing to these new blocks. So each block was different, reflecting local needs and conditions. Building a lovely toilet is relatively easy. Keeping it lovely for years is the tricky part.

Shelter Associates’ focus has been on involving local people in the maintenance of the completed block. Community members are best able to work out a maintenance system which will function effectively in their own settlement. This does not mean that local people are expected to clean and repair the toilets themselves but it places them in a position where they decide who will maintain them and how, and can ensure that the work is satisfactory. Such a system is also likely to be more sustainable over the long term since it reduces the dependence of poor women and men on outsiders for clean and functioning toilets, whether the outsiders be corporation employees or an NGO. The PMC project wants the NGOs to employ a caretaker to maintain the blocks, paying his/her salary out of a monthly contribution of Rs. 20 from each household using the toilets.

But the SA/Baandhani team followed a model where the local community, not the NGO, works out their own maintenance system. This might involve employing a caretaker, but it might not. The main thing is that the local women and men know how things work in their settlement, so they are the best people to work out a system that will work for them. There's such a sense of ownership of the block, that no-one's likely to mess it up anyway. The experience of this project indicates that a toilet block can be a very tangible focus in different settlements for bringing people together, to discuss both the toilets and also broader issues relating to the settlement and local environment.

Community construction is a learning process which takes time. It has, however, been possible to employ skilled people from within the settlements to work on the project, which has increased local interest and a sense of connection to the new toilets. Residents from Kirkitwadi fringe village are working on their toilet block and two Shanti Nagar residents took on the painting of their toilets and added their own murals to the block. They are now also painting other blocks in the same area of Pune that may provide a basis for constructive community links between these settlements.

The extent to which Shelter Assoiates have, so far, been able to involve local women and men and use the project as a tool for community-building has been applaudable.

The Caretaker’s Room
The caretaker’s room has evolved as a key community focus and an area where the corporation has proved very supportive of community involvement. It was a requirement of the project that a caretaker’s room be incorporated into the design of each block as part of the corporation’s recognition of the importance of establishing systems for long-term maintenance. In the settlements where Shelter Associates is building, different communities have recognized this room as a potential space for a number of uses.

At Shanti Nagar, community members suggested using the room as a venue which residents could hire for events such as weddings, the money from which could go towards maintenance costs. Some commu- nity members have suggested using the room as a local community group office at other times. In this way, the caretaker’s room has considerably increased community interest and, therefore, involvement. A community room which is attached to a toilet block helps ensure that the toilets also become a community focus and the room becomes an extra motivation for ensuring that the toilets and surrounding area are kept clean. The caretaker’s room as a community asset is a development that came from the local people and which the municipal commissioner has supported. This is an area of the project where residents have already been able to take on a controlling role, which the corporation has recognized and accepted.

The Project represents a positive new departure in urban development, which focuses on the poor in Pune enabling the implementation of large-scale and long-term projects, which can tackle the severe sanitation problems affecting thousands of poor women and men. However, the experience so far indicates that the project has provided a significant and tangible focus for working with women and men in informal settlements. In initiating this project, the corporation has demonstrated a new willingness to tackle their responsibility towards providing basic amenities for the urban poor. We have to provide people with toilets but more importantly, we have to mobilize communities to own a toilet and witness its positive impact on their lives. In the process, people are getting together to discuss different issues. Starting with toilets, this leads on to other aspects of the settlement... and has the potential to be just the beginning of a series of community settlement improvements in slums across Pune.

Sanitation brings the single greatest return on investment of any development intervention– for every $1 spent on sanitation at least $9 is saved in health, education and economic development. Most of us, the urban ‘literate’ inherently and to a great strength assume that justice is something to which we have an unquestionable and absolute right. Yet justice is not a concept that lends itself easily to manifestation – In this case, the most basic human right of all – The Right to Squat. These Architects though caught between the demands and everyday workings of the corporation chose to set the terms, and the interests and priorities of local women and men whose community toilets are the purpose of the project.

About the first duty of architecture includes empowering the accessibilities of all human beings to basic facilities while, the second task of architecture is recovering the conditions of space. The second one has been focal point of many architectural practices, studies and researches. As a result, while the majority of people are living deprived of their basic rights, architecture is working on improving the living conditions of a small amount of privileged people consistently.

Architecture both frames – and is framed by – justice.
As a consequence, in terms of living conditions, the gap between prosperous part of society and distressed part is getting deep. Architects become accomplices in this process. For taking a step toward realization of justice in architecture, I think that architects should focus on their first obligation, which is obtaining accessibility to all people and planning different programmes, which aim to answer the needs of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. Putting human rights in the Centre should take place as the main goal of architectural education and profession.

Planning and architecture are an effective democratic tool of social change and an instrument for mobilizing social movements for equality and justice. I believe that a city can truly be developed through larger public participation and the engagement of people’s organization in the development process. Democracy and democratic movements are the means to achieve this objective. Thus Planning and Architecture must integrate with it for enabling social changes and for achieving development justice.

There is a need to integrate planning and architecture, with larger democratic movements and to use it as an instrument to mobilize communities for political action to bring about development justice. We as a country require a Libertarianist perspective where designs and architecture stands up for the individual rights of all, while maintaining the fairness of background, wholesome conditions.

As Amartya Sen and Dreze believe `Public action can play a central role in economic development and in bringing social opportunities within the reach of the people as a whole. What the government ends up doing can be deeply influenced by the pressures that are put on the government by the public.’ (Sen and Dreze, 1998: 38 and 39) Planners and architects can help mobilize public action.

Co-relating design with larger and more important determining factors of social and political importance enriches the architect’s role and position in society to a much greater pedestal and engages the architect as an activist. Close relationship with the needs and aspirations of the masses need to be developed and effectively be reflected through social democratic designs.

As Ryan Messmore spoke on Social Justice in Architecture, “A building that is socially just is:

Expressive of the identity of the institution it represents, be it the family, the neighborhood, the corporation, or the state
Expressive of the whole of which the institution is a part

Orderly, hierarchical, and organic (in the true sense of the word) in and of itself

Respectful of the tradition which provides the context And, if the building gets all that right, it’s almost sure to achieve... Beautiful!

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. Social Justice and Architecture _ Marcantonio Architects
2. Sadri, H. (2009) “Justice, Human Rights and Architecture” (English) Architecture & Justice International Conference, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, P:53, ISBN: 978-86050- 228-6.
3. Sustainable sanitation: experiences in Pune with a municipal-NGO- community partnership, Jane Hobson, Environment&Urbanization Vol 12 No 2 October 2000
4. A new approach to sanitation for the poor. www.goodnewsindia.com
5. www.shelter-associates.com

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