Chapter 5
Strengthening the role of grassroots communities
tive tenure instruments – not just for forest management.
at a city scale would force municipalities to find solutions for those slums that have
The project has shown that organizations like Task Force Mapalad can play an important role in building capacity and in facilitating local consensus to unblock decentralized land administration and to enable communities to use the tenure regularization options available. It also reveals how such organizations can explore obstacles to policy implementation by engaging in implementation processes – so enabling them to engage constructively and effectively in policy dialogue. This work has shown the importance of empowering communities with legal and technical knowledge. Engaging directly with and influencing government systems are key to the delivery of security of tenure. More information: www.tfmnational.org/tfm, GLTN (2012a).
SCALING UP PARTICIPATORY MAPPING TO CITYWIDE LEVEL IN INDIA In 2009 the Indian government unveiled a scheme for urban development and slum rehabilitation, known as Rajiv Awas Yojana. This was designed as a participatory way
the most serious problems, rather than prioritizing better-off slums for which tenure security is not a issue. However, the scheme’s technical requirements are unwieldy. The technical guidelines say that the city-wide slum maps should be based on remote sensing, and an in-depth household-level survey should generate socio-economic data to use in planning. But this methodology is expensive and inaccurate: it requires massive investment in surveying, produces data that are out of date by the time upgrading is implemented, and excludes slum communities from the data-gathering and decision-making process. Plus, the guidelines assume that slums are “static” – so data gathered at a specific moment is frozen and forms the basis of all state intervention. In reality, slums grow, households move and multiply, and databases change. Basing state intervention on outdated data could distort all planning, leading to “non-starter” projects. All this threatens to exclude communities and civil society organizations from participating in planning and decisionmaking. The technical requirements could become a pretext for excluding these stakeholders.
to create city-development plans, including plans for upgrading and tenure security of all slums.
These are some of the criticisms levelled by an Alliance composed of the Society for the Promotion of Area Re-
In early 2010, technical guidelines were issued to cities for generating “slum-free city plans” as a prerequisite for receiving funds
source Centres (an NGO based in Mumbai), the National Slum Dwellers Federation, and Mahila Milan (a social movement of slum and pavement dwellers and women’s savings groups). This
from the scheme. The idea was that working
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