Lata Godke and her family had always lived on flood-prone land in Pune. “Every monsoon we had a tough time,” Lata recalls. “If you were asleep at night you would never know if the house was flooding or not. Sometimes everything would get wet and we would realize too late. So we stopped sleeping at night. And then at times we had to leave our house, run out of the house and stay at nearby schools.”
For years the government had intervened by temporarily shifting Lata and others in her community to other housing sites during the worst rains each year, but then Lata and her neighbors would return to swampy land and ruined settlements. Back at home, Lata would need to spend money and time replacing her spoiled abode with new plastics, sheets, and materials. And then the rain would come again. Something needed to change.
In 2003, a group of women from Mahila Milan stepped in to orchestrate a permanent relocation of the people living in the flood plane by encouraging them to take advantage of government subsidies that were being offered for permanent houses on different land. Lata remembers seeing the Mahila Milan women arriving and organizing the community to arrange for the upcoming relocation and construction. The Mahila Milan women helped families submit proof of their residences and started community savings programs to help families financially prepare to acquire permanent homes.
Lata explained that when she saw the Mahila Milan women organizing the community for the relocation, she wanted to join the organization so that she could understand exactly how the government resettlement scheme worked and how it would affect her family. Even though she is illiterate, Lata realized that she could participate in Mahila Milan’s documentation activities and savings programs.
After her family was successfully relocated to a permanent house in a safer site in 2004, Lata joined Mahila Milan. Now she uses her connections in the community to run the savings programs that enable relocated families to pay back the loans for their homes in small installments. 618 families have moved into permanent homes in the new housing site. Of these families, 56 families have completed payments for their homes while the rest have each repaid over half of the home’s total cost.
Nearly ten years later Lata’s new, permanent neighborhood is flourishing and community members are so proud that they relocated on their own terms. Children scamper around the paved streets in their school uniforms, and women from the community now harvest and sell corn at a local market while their husbands are at work. Every new home is made of pucca (cement) and includes a kitchen, bedroom, hallway, toilet, and shower room. “We are no longer worried about the elements,” Lata giggles.
Because Lata and her neighbors had a positive experience utilizing government subsidies for relocation, Lata now tries to encourage others in undependable housing to take advantage of government relocation schemes. “I think other people should take what the government is giving them –they can get a good house,” Lata remarks. “If you are very very poor you think that it is not possible to construct [good] houses. But when the government is helping us the money is not a very big amount. We can pay it and we can build such houses.”
Lata describes the power that Mahila Milan can have in motivating communities to take advantage of opportunities that will improve their living conditions. “When we go to the settlements we go as members of Mahila Milan. We are people like them –we are not from the government,” Lata remarks. “Since I have experienced things, I can give them good advice.”
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