Human Settlements Review - Parliamentary Monitoring Group

Human Settlements Review, Volume 1, Number 1, 2010
The central government is the highest
authority and its level of action should be to
guarantee equal access to resources (land,
finance, training and appropriate tools); the
intermediate level is the municipal government
whose level of responsibility should be
provision of infrastructure; and the lowest
level is the local community and individuals
whose level of action ought to be building
and maintaining houses and their immediate
surroundings. Thus actions that are targeted at
larger catchment populations demanding more
stability are better handled at higher levels
while those for smaller catchment populations
lending themselves to flexibility are better
handled at local or individual level. Closely
related to self-help is a more fundamental
approach termed as ‘the popular approach’
by Hardoy and Satterthwaithe (1989). This
approach advocates for full participation of
communities in determining the form of tenure
and property rights, involvement in determining
how land use will be defined in settlements,
control over which houses (or shacks) have to
be moved to pave way for infrastructure etc.
It also means giving the poor more access
to finance, information and know-how, which
can make their participation more effective.
The approach calls for formation of community
organisations and close collaboration between
the government and these organisations. It
also requires enhancement of the role of NGOs
to act as liaison between the community and
government, and provide technical advice and
training for the community. Thus, government
through scaled-down intermediaries finances
and facilitates numerous small self-help
projects at community level. In short, the
popular approach is a bottom-up one.
The popular approach also advocates that the
problem of housing is not looked at in isolation
but is put in the broader social and economic
context. This requires innovative ways of
organising government and other role players
in the building construction sector.
In this paper, the specific proposal is that the
municipality government gets decentralised in
a three tier system Under this proposal, the
role of the municipality is decentralised and
its core functions get more streamlined to
those that can feasibly be accomplished at a
city-wide scale of operation. The lowest level
of government (Level 1) would be in direct
contact with people and would be responsible
for about 500 households. Level 2 would
comprise of about 40 Level 1 units. This level
would oversee the L1 units below it while also
being responsible for more complex buildings
and for infrastructure facilities with a high
catchment population. And finally all L2 units
would fall under the municipality (L3). The
municipality’s functions would then include
provision and safeguarding of infrastructural
facilities with city-wide catchment populations,
synchronisation of the activities of L2 units
under it and approval of very complex
building plans. The current administration
system, which expects the municipality to
provide housing and regulate all aspects of
urban development at neighbourhood level
is unworkable and is prone to inefficiencies.
To directly concern itself with each individual
plot subdivision and house construction as is
the case today, the municipality is taking an
approach that can only be made successful
by heavy expenditure of resources to create
a police-state. Such resources are unavailable
and a police-state is obviously undesirable.
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