Breaking the "Research Aristocracy": Why Climate Resilience Must Be Co-Produced in Learning Labs

Sheela Patel

For decades, international climate discourse has been dominated by what can only be called a "research aristocracy". Prestigious journals and elite academic institutions dictate what constitutes valid knowledge, often treating vulnerable communities merely as data points or passive recipients of expert advice.  But as extreme climate events intensify, this top-down approach is failing. The real experts on urban climate survival are not sitting in lecture halls; they are the women living in informal settlements who manage the daily realities of heatwaves, floods, and storms.

To build true structural resilience, we must completely invert the traditional architecture of dialogue. Resilience cannot be delivered; it must be co-produced.

Moving Beyond the "Isolated Pilot"

Traditional climate adaptation frequently relies on isolated pilot projects—highly subsidised, tightly controlled experiments that look brilliant in a report but crumble the moment the funding ends. They rarely scale because they ignore the organic socio-economic structures already operating on the ground. Instead of rigid pilots, the Roof Over Our Heads (ROOH) campaign relies on Learning Labs, which are active, community-embedded spaces where women’s collectives, local artisans, and young professionals work together as peers to test localised solutions.

Rather than treating a neighbourhood as a testing site, a Learning Lab uses a "spine" of standardised data tracking while allowing complete freedom for local experimentation. What works in one lab is shared peer-to-peer across a global network, creating an exponential multiplier effect rather than a slow, linear rollout.

Grounded Innovation: The Power of Lived Experience

When you give women the tools to map their own vulnerabilities, the focus shifts immediately from theoretical carbon metrics to practical, lived realities. In ROOH labs across different climate zones, adaptation is measured by everyday breakthroughs:

• Micro-Climate Materials: Testing breathable ‘Vedic Plaster’ in the hot, dry climate of Surat, or using solar-reflective roof coatings in Pimpri to cut indoor heat.
• Tangible Comfort: In upgraded homes, internal temperatures drop significantly, reducing ceiling fan usage from 12 hours a day down to just two.
• Livelihood Protection: A secure, climate-resilient roof means a home remains a safe space for women to run home-based businesses, secure from monsoon leaks or blistering summer heatwaves.

"We used to sleep outside in the summer because the heat inside was unbearable. Now, after the upgrades, we host guests. This is no longer just a shelter - it's a home."  Anita Sathe, Mahila Milan Leader, Pimpri

The Reality of Incremental Finance

Perhaps the greatest disconnect of the academic approach is finance. High-level adaptation funds expect neat, multi-year bankable assets. But for a household in an informal settlement, the financial reality is an annual refurbishment cycle—patching up the roof with tarpaulins or scrap metal sheets ahead of every monsoon season. These informal borrowing mechanisms cannot be dislodged overnight. The goal of a Learning Lab is to work with existing community savings networks, like Mahila Milan, to introduce blended financing models. By combining small community savings, non-cash contributions, and targeted climate finance, we can transition families from the financial drain of yearly survival patching to long-term, incremental structural upgrades.

Resilience is not a luxury or a high-tech import. It is a fundamental right, and the women of informal settlements are its true architects.

 

This blog post talks about the core philosophy of SPARC and the Campaign for Roof Over Our Heads (ROOH). It focuses on how we turn the "victim" narrative into one of agency through community-led data and design.

Sheela Patel

From Pavements to Power: The SPARC Way of Building Cities

For over 40 years, we at SPARC have heard the same story: that people living in informal settlements are a "problem" to be solved or "victims" to be saved. However, we know that the truth is the exact opposite. These residents are the city’s most resilient architects, its hardest workers, and its first responders to climate change. Based on this knowledge, we developed a methodology that isn’t about charity; it’s about democratizing knowledge and ensuring that those who build the city actually have a say in its future.

When Sheela Patel started this journey in 1974, she asked the women living on Mumbai’s pavements what they wanted. They didn’t ask for a handout; they asked for a future where their grandchildren weren’t born on a sidewalk. Over the years, we learned that women are the best managers of community resources, and by forming Women’s Collectives, we create a space where the women can negotiate with men, with governments, and with international banks. So our secret sauce for the ROOH Campaign was: Start with the Women.

SPARC trained the residents—even those who were illiterate—to map their own neighbourhoods. Standard "top-down" research or data collection often produces rubbish because people tell outside surveyors what they want to hear. SPARC pioneered the Community-Led Census. In fact the women told us, "don't ask more than 10 questions, or we'll give you rubbish." This became the rule of 10 while doing a community census.

Through community census, data becomes a shield that provides legitimacy to the communities. When a community can present a government official with a detailed map and census of 100,000 households, they aren't just "squatters" anymore; they are a voting bloc with evidence.

The "Roof Over Our Heads" (ROOH) Learning Labs

Climate change isn't a future threat for informal settlements; it's a daily reality. The ROOH campaign operates through Learning Labs in 12 countries. Here’s how the labs work:

ROOH doesn’t just talk about change; it builds it. The campaign funds "demo homes" where volunteers test new materials—like heat-reflective paint or improved flooring—to show the rest of the neighbourhood what’s possible.

Local masons are the ones who have been building these houses for decades. ROOH looks at the masons as engineers, and instead of bringing in outside firms, we train local masons by helping them upgrade their skills using better materials and resilient designs. 

The campaign collects real-time data to monitor heat by installing sensors that track temperature and humidity every 15 minutes. This data is then matched with "perceived heat"— by comparing the actual temperature to what it feels like to the residents.

The Value Proposition: Why This Works

Our approach offers a "Triple Win" for the communities, the climate, and the state. SPARC treats the poor as clients and partners, not beneficiaries. The poorest families already spend 11% to 22% of their annual income repairing their homes before every monsoon. ROOH’s methodology repurposes that existing spend into long-term, resilient assets rather than temporary measures and expenditures that recur annually. This creates a pattern of overall economic efficiencythat the communities are beginning to understand.

Climate money often gets stuck in government offices. By focusing on the 5 Verticals—Habitat, Health, Transport, Relocation, and Disaster Preparedness—we build a decentralised infrastructure that can be scaled up. Once a Learning Lab proves that a certain material works for one neighbourhood, it goes "viral" because the neighbours can see the results and the demand for that material increases, creating scalable resilience.

The gap between "illegal" settlements and "formal" planning is bridged by bringing in architects, university students, and material scientists to work inside slums. We force the formal system to acknowledge and integrate informal transport (eg, shared rickshaws) and housing into the city’s master plan, thus legitimising the informal.

The Goal: A Global Resource Network

SPARC and ROOH are on a journey to establish 100 Learning Labs. These aren't just construction sites; they are resource centres. They are places where a woman can learn about her health, a youth can become a data expert, and a community can prepare for the next disaster.

We aren't just building roofs; we are building the power to stay. We are the warriors who are the first responders to disaster, and we refuse to be treated like “victims."

Join us in changing the architecture of development.

 

 

 From Crisis to Catalyst: The Disaster-to-Development Framework for Climate Resilience

By Sheela Patel

When extreme heatwaves bake our cities, unseasonal deluges flood low-lying neighbourhoods, or chronic environmental stressors tighten their grip, informal settlements bear the heaviest burden. For decades, the global humanitarian and urban development playbook has relied on a predictable cycle: disaster strikes, emergency relief arrives, temporary shelters are set up, and communities slowly pick up the pieces—only to wait for the next inevitable shock.

This reactive loop keeps vulnerable populations perpetually on life support. At SPARC, we believe it is time to fundamentally break this cycle.

Our core philosophy is simple yet radical: We must transform the trajectory of disaster into a pathway for long-term development.

Climate resilience cannot be achieved in a boardroom or dropped into a neighbourhood via top-down mandates. True resilience is built from the ground up, turning moments of vulnerability and crisis into catalysts for permanent structural change. Here is how our Disaster-to-Development framework is reshaping how cities face the climate crisis.

1. From Passive Beneficiaries to Community Architects

In traditional disaster management models, residents of informal settlements are treated as passive recipients of aid. Our framework flips this dynamic entirely.

In our approach, the communities are the primary designers, testers, and builders of their own futures. Through grassroots leadership pyramids, peer learning exchanges, and localised housing labs across cities, residents take the lead. Whether they are testing thermal-comfort construction materials for extreme heat or managing community health and environmental monitoring networks, the expertise always rests where the lived experience is: with the people.

2. Incremental Housing as Climate Infrastructure

Climate adaptation cannot afford to wait for slow-moving master plans. Incremental housing is the reality of the Global South, and it is also our greatest tool for climate resilience.

Through initiatives like the Roof Over Our Heads campaign, we view every incremental upgrade—whether reinforcing a roof against severe storms, upgrading walls for better thermal performance, or improving local drainage—as a foundational block of urban infrastructure. Housing is not just shelter; it is the frontline defence against climate shocks. When people are supported to build better incrementally, they build permanence and security into their daily lives.

3. Data as an Instrument of Collective Agency

You cannot manage what you do not measure, but measurement must belong to the community. We design rigorous monitoring, learning, and evaluation (MLE) frameworks and collaboration maturity scales not just for institutional donors, but to empower local leaders.

When neighbourhood networks track their own health data, spatial vulnerabilities, and project milestones, they generate undeniable evidence. This data shifts the power balance, allowing grassroots groups to negotiate directly with municipal authorities, claim their stake in the city, and demand equitable infrastructure.

4. Bridging the Gap: Neighbourhood Handshake Protocols

Grassroots action alone cannot rewrite city-wide systemic vulnerabilities without municipal alignment. Scaling resilience requires institutional bridges.

Through instruments such as Neighbourhood Handshake Protocols and civic planning partnerships—including our ongoing work tackling urban heat islands and greening potential across municipal wards—we formalise agreements between local governments and communities. These protocols ensure that community-led adaptation measures aren't just isolated pilots, but recognised, integrated components of official city development plans.

The Road Ahead

The climate crisis is accelerating faster than traditional urban planning can adapt. We can no longer afford to treat climate disasters as isolated anomalies requiring temporary fixes.

By shifting from disaster response to locally driven development, we unlock a powerful truth: the communities most vulnerable to climate change possess the ingenuity, resilience, and leadership to solve it. Our job is simply to back them up, build the frameworks, and get out of their way as they build a safer, more equitable urban future.

Many of the learning labs at which we have begun to work on producing resilient housing are presently facing the challenges of heavy rain, and we will follow this up with stories about those learning labs that are dealing with this challenge, whether the ROOH solution produces protection against this weather, but also addressing the challenges of flooding.

 

 Relocation and resettlement of Urban, informal settlements

This note has three parts. The first is about an emerging vertical program that SPARC has on relocation and resettlement of vulnerable urban communities. The second, a short summary of it’s past work and the principles that it has produced. The third is an introduction to an emerging relocation that is happening in Ahilyanagar, Maharashtra.

The crisis of cities is constantly morphing with people moving around either to plan or to discuss relocations. This is how cities are born and grow, for the elite and for the formal there are systems and processes but for those who live informally, these are traumatic and their impacts multigenerational. City development produces changes that are going to be exacerbated with climate crises as oceans rise, as unbearable heat occurs, there is either lack of water or flooding along with other traumas that climate change brings into our lives.

The city not only demands that existing residents move, if they’re living informally without their consent, but this is coupled with the fact that there will be more and more urbanization as rural areas around cities, and even in distant locations have weather related crises that reduce lives and livelihood opportunities in rural areas. The world has already turned urban, however the imagery that poverty resides in rural areas alone and that those who live in rural areas need support while those who live informally in cities need to be driven out and evicted has yet to change.

The challenge of addressing informality takes many forms in most instances. People invade vacant spaces, build their homes and survive with informal jobs while, defending their right to live in the city. In some instances, through a range of opportunities their tenure gets recognized, however in other instances, the city chooses to relocate them, and this is often when the real estate value of that land increases, either for formal housing stock or for infrastructure purposes.

In most instances, this relocation is forced and even if it is not forced it may produce some form of tenure, but it produces a lot of hardships, challenges, alienation and other kinds of distress that households in neighbourhoods have to face when such a process happens without prior preparation.

SPARC began its work in 1984, addressing the challenges of pavement dwellers in Mumbai and dealing with the reality that as an organisation you cannot produce secure tenure on a pavement. When this was discussed with women’s collectives in communities, it became clear that the women and their families chose to live on these particular pavements, historically, because it was easy to walk to work, and somehow they were able to protect it for short periods of time, facing some demolitions which in some instances forced them to move somewhere else but in other instances they rebuilt their home again.

Yet they realized that this process did not in anyway produce an ability to make serious long-term investments in their homes and together communities and SPARC began to look at the possibility of designing a relocation process which would be driven by them, considering their needs and their challenges and with the possibilities of exploring solutions which were prepared in advance of a crisis of evictions.

It began with transforming a perspective that the city had no land. It became clear that planning instruments reserved lands for everything except for those who lived and worked informally, and that informality came out of the realisation that the city did not have instruments, political will and a perspective that acknowledged that a very large percentage of people in the city were already living informally.  Along with this came the realisation that plan allocations that were technically and legally put in as non-negotiable constantly changed with political will to utilise this land for other purposes.

 Having understood these external realities, this process began with a series of steps that emerged from dialogue and discussion not only within the group, but with government officials, professional planners and learning from other peoples’ experiences of traumatic relocation.  It began with a detailed census of every single household, providing each house with an address that demonstrated that the Indian Postal Service actually provided them with letters that came to them at a time when there was no Aadhaar. Each partner federation produced an ID card for each family with their photograph and their names, they produced every single government document (a list of 14) from immunisation to driver license to past legal notices of evictions to demonstrate how long they had been living in the location. They formed Cooperatives and formed committees, began savings that were meant for a start-up capital for getting a loan and a separate savings group to deal with the relocation costs.

In short, this introduction is to remind ourselves and those who read this process that all the case studies that I now present in the form of articles, blogs, or videos is to show a process that began in 1986 for a range of different relocation programmes that the alliance of SPARC, Mahila Milan and NSDF took up with three clear objectives

1.            The first is to say that communities, especially women’s collectives were critical core members of designing and executing, preparation, and ongoing evolution of the transition process of relocation.  They need technical, organisational support and in most instances a relationship with government officials to produce solutions that are robust, that work for them and work for the city. This has a protocol, which we hope with more people engaging in this strategy we will be able to make it more robust.

2.            There are many traumatic, unplanned, disastrous relocations, and there are planned relocations that haven’t worked for a lot of reasons and there are relocations in which everything was planned, but there were still unexpected, unintended negative impacts. All these need to be studied and documented and must come into the discussions of solutions with a realisation that a group or a constituency of people living informally and being neglected for the last several decades are themselves unable to find perfect solutions as the duty bearers often participate in this process unwillingly for the good of the city.

3.            For SPARC in its reformulation, relocation and rehabilitation are now an important vertical to develop not only with a view of deepening and sharpening our own practices and learning from what we have done but to develop a community of practice with collaboration, knowledge sharing policy formulation, building new protocols for developing and designing relocation, and building community capacity to acknowledge that solutions are never perfect but can be worked on and improved as we go along and learn to work in collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders, both duty bearers and others to work on these issues.

From Settlement to Relocation: Life at the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule and Varuracha Maruti post relocation, Ahilyanagar

One of the core lessons from SPARC’s work over the past 40 years is that sustained engagement and not a one-time intervention is  what enables real change in relocation settlements. Relocation is often presented as a solution to informality—an administrative response that replaces precarious housing with permanent structures. But for families that move, relocation is not just about new buildings; it is about rebuilding lives.

SPARC is working at two relocation sites in Maharashtra: Mahatma Jyotiba Phule (Khatwan Khandoba) and  VarurachaMaruti that were developed by the Ahilyanagar Municipal Corporation under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). Around 372 families (2000+ individuals) were moved to Mahatma Jyotiba Phule in 31 buildings (G+3) in 2017 from various slums situated 3-5 kms away from the original settlements While in VarurachaMaruti, around 252 families were relocated in 21 buildings (G+3) from other slums.

For the city, the project represents a significant public investment in housing infrastructure but for the residents, the experience of relocation has been much more complex. While the new housing provides formal shelter, residents at the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule and Varuracha Maruti continue to face multiple challenges that affect their daily lives and long-term stability.

The construction of the buildings is substandard, and while individual toilets with a connection to septic tanks have been provided for each house, no underground or overhead water tanks have been provided and there is a daily struggle for water. Garbage collection mechanisms are not yet in place, there are drainage issues, and a lack of streetlights at both sites.  As yet no individual electric meters have been provided in Varuracha Maruti.

These challenges related to maintenance, common infrastructure, and service delivery, highlight the gap between housing provision and long-term habitability.

One of the most immediate impacts of relocation has been the distance from earlier livelihoods. Many families were earlier dependent on informal work opportunities close to their original settlements. Moving several kilometres away has increased travel time and costs, and in some cases disrupted income sources entirely.

The design and planning of the site, while structurally adequate, has limited integration with surrounding services and economic opportunities. Access to transport, markets, schools, healthcare facilities, and anganwadis (government run health care day centres for children from 0-6 years) requires additional time and expense, especially for women, children, and the elderly.

Without sustained institutional engagement for the people who have been relocated formal housing brings the risk of becoming isolated rather than integrated into the city.

Building Trust, Step by Step

For the past two years, efforts were made to work with these relocation colonies. However, progress remained slow because there was no one consistently present—someone who could meet residents regularly, listen, follow up, and build relationships over time. SPARC now has a dedicated person working on an everyday basis to work closely with residents in both colonies. This is an important shift and though Pravin has been working with the communities for just two weeks, the difference is already visible.

Meeting the Community Regularly and Organizing them

Pravin meets with residents in smaller groups from both relocation colonies on a daily basis and these are ongoing conversations, not just a one-sided communication. He begins by explaining who we are as an organisation, why we are present, and—most importantly—why community organisation matters after relocation. At the same time, Pravin is navigating the community’s hesitations where many residents have valid concerns and past experiences that make them sceptical of organising or approaching authorities. He listens to their concerns; he also tries to explain why certain changes are important post relocation and what benefits collective actions can bring.

A key part of these discussions focuses on helping residents understand how, when they come together as a group, they can collectively raise their concerns and seek solutions—whether through local corporators, ward-level mechanisms, or directly with the municipal corporation.

Addressing Everyday Needs:

One concrete example of this work relates to Anganwadi services. In one of the relocation colonies, there is currently no anganwadi. While there is an anganwadi in a nearby settlement, women face serious challenges in sending their children there daily—especially since many of them also need to go to work and manage household responsibilities.

When the concerned government department was approached, their initial response was that an anganwadi already exists nearby. However, through continued engagement and explanation of the practical difficulties faced by women, a verbal agreement from the authorities to open an Anganwadi within the relocation colony itself has been initiated. The next step is to submit a list of eligible children so the process can move forward.

Health access is another area and though a healthcare centre exists nearby and periodically conducts camps in different locations, residents highlighted that many of their specific health concerns—especially those of women and children—are not adequately addressed. Pravin is now negotiating with a private organisation to hold regular health camps directly within the relocation colonies, focusing on issues raised by the community.

Ration Cards are also an issue since households can acquire subsidised food rations through these. Many residents fear that transferring ration cards from their previous address to the new location will result in long delays, during which they might not receive rations at all. Discussions with the ration office to understand the process clearly and explore alternatives are ongoing so that families do not lose access to essential food supplies during the transition.

Initial discussions and conversations around the formation and registration of housing cooperatives has also begun with the residents.

With Pravin’s consistent presence, conversations are moving forward, issues are being taken up systematically, and residents are beginning to see that something is finally happening on the ground. Though several issues will only be dealt with over a longer period of time, smaller and visible interventions will be taken up first so that residents can see how collective actions lead to real outcomes helping build trust amongst communities and their representatives before moving onto more complex processes.

 

 

Solar Energy System Explorations in Relocation sites of Mumbai

In dense cities like Mumbai, going vertical is the only option to maximise the utilization of available land. In such a situation, multi-storied buildings require and utilize a lot of electricity for common building purposes such as elevators and pumping water up into overhead water tanks. In the case of the buildings built by the city and by various developers in Mumbai for housing the slum dwellers, the residents see a very high maintenance expense, mainly dominated by the electricity bill. This proposal recommends exploring the possibilities of installing solar panels to generate electricity that offsets this monthly expense.

Both the state and central Government in India are giving a great push to the using of renewable sources of energy. Therefore, embedding the usage of solar energy to produce electricity for common electrical purposes in buildings, as a policy feature or within the building norms is a possible approach to maximise its usage.

Solar Panel providers have argued that, solar energy is available aplenty and small investments made in installation of these systems will pay off in a short period and prove beneficial in the long run. As an example, currently, a single building in the Indian Oil Colony (a relocation colony that houses slum dwellers in Mumbai displaced by various projects) has a monthly electricity consumption averaging to Rs. 15,692(about $ 250) or a yearly expense of Rs. 1,88,305 (about $3000). Based on a feasibility analysis, a 12kW solar plan will cost about Rs. 9,00,000 (about $14,000) and will not only offset this cost completely, but generate surplus electricity that can give electricity credits to the building via the usage of net metering systems. As such, the project should pay off within a period of 5-6 years.

First unit was built into building 11C, where 86 families reside in apartments in a ground + 7 stories. Due to the placement of the building, the solar panels had to be set up on higher extensions to allow for maximum exposure to the sun for most of the day. This required a lot of civil works for the mount beyond the cost of the panel and its installation.

12kWp – ON grid Rooftop Solar PV plant with smaller modules installed on pre fabricated mounting structure. Additional construction was required to support the mounting structures.

The first unit was inaugurated on 21^st November 2017.

Training for the Solar maintenance was done and to start with 3 young women from the Mahila Milan were trained to do the following:-

1. Clean the panels per the procedure and protocols

2. Take meter readings for in/out power values  on a defined period and keep the records. The Solar panel provider is also an expert in monitoring who gave the training and receives the value updates from these women. This is used to monitor the surplus as well as any abnormalities in usage and maintenance

3. Protect the panels and their peripheral equipments from miscreants and misuse.

 ROOH 

A story of change: Anita Lok-suman Sathe

This story chronicles not only the shift from what Anita Sathe’s dwelling was like before and after her partnership with ROOH, but the history of her dwelling of which the most recent upgrades have been a part. We also cover some interesting additions from our most recent visit which provide a glimpse into how finances are redirected when a certain level of dwelling consolidation is achieved.

1972-1900s: The progression from  a shack to a house: Anita’s life thus far

Anita’s dwelling was Built in 1972, One of the first among a few others to be constructed when the settlement of Landewaadi first emerged. As a young girl, till she was around 10 years of age, she and her family lived in a shack built using rag cloth, pieces of scrap plastic, wood, other salvageable materials and tarpaulin sheets. In the early 1980s, given how to damage their shack was, the family made their first set of increments. As the industries in the area started mushrooming, the family was able to find tin sheets and wooden poles of varying sizes which they used to build their walls and roofs. They were also able to procure water saturated with cement from nearby construction yards, which they mixed with mud and applied on the ground;  an attempt to make the floor more robust.  Whilst this had little impact on the ability of the dwelling to withstand climatic extremes, daily concerns of damage and security were alleviated to a certain degree.

Repeated expenditures to keep the dwelling standing had begun piling up, and the family decided to consolidate the dwelling, at least to the extent that it was livable and not subject to repairs each year. This was concurrent with a changing set of construction trends in the area, when people started using pieces of asphalt from roads which were being newly built, along with stones and cement mortar to build their walls. For Anita’s dwelling, this was no different. This was a substantial first step in constructing what they could call a semi-permanent dwelling. The porous and shifting partition of their dwelling was built using bricks, which helped delineate two separate rooms. For an added sense of security, the walls now made it possible for them to install doors with latches and bolts. The two rooms contributed not only to a sense of privacy which was ascendant given the increase in their family size but also laid the foundation for a clear separation of functions which is evident now.

The 2000s: The first foray into making a pucca house

Several factors such as the marriage of family members and childbirth contributed to an increase in family size. Considerations of privacy emerged again as the individual families sought to have their own spaces to live and use. This coincided with the retirement of Anita’s father, whose retirement gift was a set of building materials! In the year 2000, Using these materials that the family was donated, in addition to a few they procured from a nearby vendor, they set out to rebuild their dwelling using stronger materials such as bricks and cement, and for the first time, gave thought to the addition of tiles to the floors. This also gave them the chance to do something they had desired for some time now, that being the addition of two more rooms over the existing structure. This was further impetus to build load bearing walls. With all of these considerations in mind, they made a crucial switch in their journey of gradually incrementing their dwelling; they enlisted a contractor to procure the materials and bring in construction laborers. Thus far, the family had built their dwelling by themselves, with assistance from their neighbors. For the rather substantial investment that this was, they thought it best for them to have their dwelling built through others who were already trained in the craft.

The dwelling, at this stage, took the shape that we see now. An assembly of four rooms, each with their own entrance across two floors. A metal staircase obtained from a scrapyard and pieces of plywood were used to build the landing for the upper floor. The metal sheets they had been using for the roofs were retained, though there were a few instances of patchwork repair. In 2014, the family had accumulated the finances to build a small frontage; a slightly raised cement platform with a depression on one end where they had a water tap installed; The Mori; a Marathi word for a general washing space, where families wash clothes and utensils. In these cases, where individual taps are shared between multiple families, these also become the sites for the procurement of water for everyday use. in 2022, this space became the catalyst for the family to add another important addition for which they had bee saving money, an individual washroom. Along the southern wall of the house, they built a partially enclosed structure and had a urinal installed though this served little purpose as it could not be connected to a sewer line. This remained an unfinished structure which they have continued using as a makeshift bathing space. Initially, they were using a curtain to enclose the structure, which was then replaced with a door purchased from a scrap vendor. During our discussions in 2024, they were planning to remove the urinal entirely and convert it to a dedicated bathroom, which they have managed to do in the months since the most recent set of upgrades were undertaken in partnership with ROOH.

2023: Where the partnership began: Concerns and needs

Among the many families, from settlements across Pimpri who were concerned about the impending rains, Anita’s family had a set of concerns regarding dwelling materials that provided an excellent opportunity for them to collaborate with the campaign to explore possible ways of incrementation to alleviate climatic stresses. For years, since the dwelling had been built, the family had been contending with high indoor temperatures, leaking roofs during the monsoon, and a worsening state of their flooring which was responsible for allowing the entry of insects and rodents. One of the rooms was practically unusable, and they had grown accustomed to comments from their guests and neighbors about its poor state.  With much insight, the family also associated these issues with the increasing instances of ill-health among their members. With this, we began a series of discussions to explore possibilities. They were certain that they wanted their floors repaired and were keen on materials that would make them usable for day-to-day use and keep temperatures down. In addition, they wanted to explore paint-based solutions to keep their roofing sheets cool instead of outrightly having them replaced. They felt that these upgrades would make the upper rooms more usable thereby allowing certain functions to be limited to the floors below. They also hoped that a set of such small upgrades, in line with the incrementality that they had been practicing thus far would change perceptions that they and others held about their dwelling; in some regards, it was a small glimpse into the social implications of poor dwelling conditions and the pathways families use to improve their social standing within a community. A later addition to their upgrades, repainting their front façade in a bright yellow color, further evidences this.

A series of discussions were held with the family where we discussed finances, the materials that would be best suited for their needs,  and how the materials would be procured. These discussions were insightful as they scratched the surface of market dynamics and predatory practices in construction, where contractors often charge exorbitant amounts to build or repair dwellings using substandard materials. Dismantling this was a task that the family took up with us. As a partnership between ROOH and them, they had saved some money towards these upgrades, with the campaign contributing materials. With this, within a week of discussions and decision-making on construction, the work began. 

Jockin Arputham (15 August 1947 - October 13, 2018) has worked for more than 40 years in slums and shanty towns, building representative organizations into powerful partners with governments and international agencies for the betterment of urban living. Arputham is the president of the National Slum Dwellers Federation which he founded in the 70s and of Slum Dwellers International which networks slum and shack dweller organizations and federations from over twenty countries across the world. The National Slum Dwellers Federation works closely with Mahila Milan, a collective of savings groups formed by homeless women and women living in slums across India, and with SPARC, a Mumbai-based NGO, and together they have been instrumental is supporting tens of thousands of the urban poor access housing and sanitation. He has also worked with the police to set up 'police panchayats' in many of the informal settlements in Mumbai. Here, for the first time, police are assigned to work in these settlements and are supported by a committee of ten residents from the community (three men seven women).

Jockin realized that slum dweller organizations had to change their strategy. They had to make governments see them as legitimate citizens with knowledge and capacities to implement solutions. So they sought to work in partnership with government to address their housing problems – and other problems. He has often said that how can you reduce urban poverty if you do not listen to and work with the urban poor.He has built more than 20,000 (toilet) seats in Mumbai alone.He insisted on new standards on redeveloped housing, an increased floor-space-index. Over the years, Arputham has built 30,000 houses in India, and 1,00,000 houses abroad.Funding for his work comes from many sources. Thanks to his work, he has met both Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela.

He has visited many other countries to encourage and support slum or shack dwellers to organize and to encourage them to take their own initiatives to show government what they are capable of. He is currently residing in Mumbai; his office is in Dharavi. He was the winner of the 2000 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding and an honorary Ph.D. from KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, in 2009. In 2011, the Government of India bestowed on him its fourth highest civilian honor, the Padma Shri award. He is well known for his charisma and excellent public speaking.