Interview with Prabhakar Kunte, Minister of Housing (Maharashtra) and Paramjit Singh Bhogal, Director World Bank Project-MHADA (Ralli Jacob, Rafeeq Ellias, P.K. Das)

Interview with Prabhakar Kunte, Minister of Housing (Maharashtra) and Paramjit Singh Bhogal, Director World Bank Project-MHADA

Director: Ralli Jacob, Rafeeq Ellias, P.K. Das; Cinematographer: Rafeeq Ellias

Duration: 00:22:17; Aspect Ratio: 1.366:1; Hue: 53.993; Saturation: 0.119; Lightness: 0.403; Volume: 0.106; Cuts per Minute: 0.718; Words per Minute: 119.443

Prabhakar Kunte was the Minister of Housing and Chairperson MHADA. While being the Housing Minister he saw the first ever slum census conducted in the year 1976 under which identity slips were issued, known as 'photo-pass'.

Paramjit Singh Bhogal was the Director of the World bank funded Bombay urban Development Project implemented during the period 1985-1995 by MHADA. The project included programmes like the Site and Services Scheme and the Slum Up-gradation Programme.

Interview
Prabhakar Kunte
Prabhakar Kunte, was the Minister of Housing and Chairperson MHADA. While being the Housing Minister he saw the first ever slum census conducted in the year 1976 under which identity slips were issued, known as 'photo-pass'.

Prabhakar Kunte: To be very very frank with you I am not quite happy with the kind of pronouncement that the leaders are making. See, nobody even, not even Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru accepted socialist philosophy or theory or practice as the sine qua non of everything. (?). You will kindly recall that Pandit Nehru himself differed with the communists in the early days.

Prabhakar Kunte: Are we going to forget the fact that there are millions and millions and millions of people in this country. In fact even today 50% of our population is below the poverty line. Against that background if you go on talking about privatisation, I consider it to be a sin. Are you shirking your responsibility to provide those 50% of what that (?) model, I mean that Swedish or Norway or... you know that model's book... poverty... or even our Rath and Dandekar.

Prabhakar Kunte: So what are you doing? By talking of privatisation, by leaving everything to individuals are you discarding the responsibility, your moral duty, your moral obligation to look after almost 50% of the population in the country? Is it not the responsibility of the government. Jawaharlal JI assumed that responsibility because Jawaharlal Ji felt that as a leader of a revolution he had a responsibility toward those downtrodden people. I just don't like this kind of talk. Pragmatism is another thing - you have a pragmatic approach and you feel that results as far as production is concerned, as far as achievements are concerned will be better by this method and not by that method is a different thing. And that kind of openness of thinking Pandit Ji always maintained, everybody always thought of it. But today I feel that instead of God 'x', we are now going to worship God 'y' - that I am not going to do.

Q: One last one question that probably....

Prabhakar Kunte: No as far as the city of Bombay I have dealt with it for a pretty long time now, and I have told you about it - That I would like a total plan for the city to be made, the smallest house of 180 sq ft to be offered to everybody at 25,000 rupees. I am against giving free houses which some people are talking about. I am totally against that. Because it is that again that private.... it is a part of privatisation. I want not equal sacrifice but some sacrifice, some contribution from everybody in the nation building works. But at the same time those who are underprivileged, those who are less fortunate let them contribute less, those who can pay more let them pay more - that should be the strategy.

Prabhakar Kunte: As far as the other growth centres in the state are concerned lot of work needs to be done. Personally I feel I should, and all of us should request the State Government that they should evolve. The State Government must evolve a comprehensive policy for urban centres or growth centres in the state. See, Maharashtra is... the population ratio in Maharashtra shows that about 40% of the population of Maharashtra is urban. And therefore, the problems of urban areas and urban citizens need to be taken on hand by the government as early as possible.

Prabhakar Kunte: Now what are those problems? - Clean and safe water supply. Safe in the sense free from all health hazards. Number one priority drinking water facilities should be number one priority in the State of Maharashtra. Drainage should be next, education and other things of course follow. Housing also follows because the urban areas in Maharashtra, in Pune, Nashik in many places in Maharashtra - these is a growing shortage of houses. But more than that, these infrastructural facilities are lacking. The urban areas in Maharashtra state are seriously lacking these infrastructural facilities. Bombay gets good water supply but its not... you cannot say the same thing about other cities. You know Bombay's water supply, it is very recently that you are getting filtered water. Earlier you were not getting filtered water 10 years back. Now you are getting filtered water. And you have seen personally I have myself seen what a vast improvement it brings about in your health standards. So, that is top priority - drinking water, then drainage, housing - these are priorities.

Prabhakar Kunte: Basically, the prime minister's grand project has... or led us to think of many of the problems for the city. I must tell you that the 100 crores of rupees which Mr. Rajiv Gandhi when he was the prime minister allocated to... for Bombay's development... some plans were made by the then State Government. We have spend about 76 crores out of that. The idea was to create a... treat this as a kind of a revolving fund, to generate money out of this. The PMGP has done excellent work in urban renewal. They have done some good work in Dharavi also. The cost of establishment has been kept very low. But there are... there is definitely some scope for improvement in all that. I wish to take advantage of this to say that... to request the new prime minister also to think in terms of augmenting this grant and at least sanction 500 crores of rupees for the development of the city of Bombay. I am sure we will be able to return that money to the government of India in course of time. But if adequate funds are not made available for the city of Bombay, not only the development where even the ongoing works will be discontinued. But the pace of development if it is slowed down or halted, it way create a havoc in the city of Bombay.

Interview
Paramjit Singh Bhogal
Paramjit Singh Bhogal was the Director of the World bank funded Bombay urban Development Project implemented during the period 1985-1995 by MHADA. The project included programmes like the Site and Services Scheme and the Slum Up-gradation Programme.

Paramjit Singh: The world bank project is a unit of Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) we have a Bombay board which does construction of units and which are sold to people at various income levels. But the world bank project basically goes in for the lowest poorest of the poor. You know we have 3, 4 categories like, economically weaker section that is the people who are living in the slums. Then people who are very poor will come in the lower income group. Then we have people in the middle income group. And we are also covering people in the higher income group. Now what we do is for the lower income groups we give them subsidised housing sites and for the higher income group we give them at near market price. And that money which we save from selling at market price, we give a cross subsidy to the people who are in the lower income group.

Paramjit Singh: The basic concept of the world bank project is that we are trying to give house sites, serviced house sites with the sanitary connections, sewage, roads. And then we give a loan to the beneficiary so that he can construct the house, and loan is repayable in about 20 years time. And we basically get the people to get together and form cooperative societies and then those people after the society is registered they are allotted the cluster - this is for a lower income. For the middle income group there are various number of plots - our architect will tell you in more detail. For the higher income groups we are giving high rise apartment plots. The allotment is done by lottery. In a place like Bombay. The number of applications is so large. For our last draw we had 5 lakh applications and we have only about 10,000 plots to be given.

Paramjit Singh: So, the method found out to deal with these 5 lakh applications was that a preliminary lottery was taken and 40,000 applications... numbers were drawn. Now those 40 thousand people are called for hearing along with their documents and they are scrutinised. One of the primary conditions is that he or she must have stayed in the Bombay metropolitan region comprising Bombay city, Thane, Kalyan and all for a period of at least 15 years. And once their eligibility determinate then we take out a second lottery in which we will take out 10,000 numbers. So, there is a 25% chance for each of those applicants to get a plot.

Paramjit Singh: This portion which I have just talked to about house sites we have another component of the world bank project which is the slum upgradation work SUP we call it and in that we take existing slums and we try and see that whatever input they have put in that money should not be totally wasted. So, we try to rationalist their structural give them sanitary blocks, drainage and roads and I mean rearrange their area by providing civil works. We also give them a lease for that site for 30 years so, that in effect they they become the owners of that land and they're charge very nominal portion for a...

O: What is the criteria of selection of a slum?
Paramjit Singh: Well, it is not possible to select all - we are working in specially selected are as which we find out that are they are suitable for development. One thing which has to be taken into a account is that the Bombay Municipal corporation has a development plan in which there are reservations for certain areas. So, we are we find that the slum is located in areas which does not conflict with the development plan or that the major portion of the slum is free from reservation and in case some area is reserved for some particular thing then we also try and help the slum dwellers to try to get that reservation changed or altered or shifted.

Paramjit Singh: About 80% of our work is for providing house sites for building of tenements by the people themselves. And about 20% of our budget goes into slum improvement.

Q: So, that means the money also is being proportionately distributed... being used?

PS: Yes, yes.

Q: 80% of money is being used for the upper...?

Paramjit Singh: No not upper... even the people who are living in the slums they are eligible to apply and get sites, our lower income group sites. In which basically we have cooperative societies which are formed in clusters. You will be shown the clusters in the afternoon today. The clusters are small cooperative societies where they have a one room kitchen along with toilet and bath. And the basic idea is that the repayment of the loan that we give them - it should not be more than 20% of his income.

Q: How do you identify income of a person who is...?

PS: No, we ask them we have a various... We ask people on the form to declare their income and we have various a, b , c, d - we have the... up to which level the person has to find out what level he fits in. And we have to see that not more than 20% of his income goes back towards repayment of the loan.

Q; What you can do if they don't repay or are unable to repay? Take over the house?

Paramjit Singh: No, we don't... you see in case the loan is not repaid, the instalments are not repaid in time, then some very nominal penalty is imposed. So, our experience is that people who require housing are living in slums or other places not out of choice but because there is no facility available. And so once the facilities arranged to them we are getting about 90% recovery of the loan advance to us. And the balance 10% is not because those 10% don't want to pay. But because of either that they have not gone in stayed in sites which are constructed, or they have shifted their addresses, or our recovery system is not fully geared. So our recovery is almost cent percent. There is no evasion as such.

Q: Do you charge an interest rate from the people for the repayment?

Paramjit Singh: We are charging about... we are giving a loan at... the world bank gives a loan at 8%. You see... The World bank gives the money in foreign currency to the Government of India. The Government of India gives it to the Government of Maharashtra and the Government of Maharashtra gives to us for use.

Q: What is the rate of interest charged by the World Bank to the Govt of Ina?

Paramjit Singh: The world bank gives at a loan of 8% and the same is recovered from the beneficiaries at 12%... we are recovering. So that difference is for servicing the..

Q: And is there any difference in the charging? That means... what I mean is, is it is uniform for whatever the income... ?

Paramjit Singh: Yes, we are the charging the same rents...

Q: In this Charkop project you have planned for mixed development - you have sites and services, you have HIG, Housing...

Paramjit Singh: One of our successful new township where we have got the entire lot - the lower income group, the middle income group, and the higher income group.

Q: And for the lower income group in Charkop you have I think the majority of sites and service as you mentioned, the pitches(?) and you're giving them toilet facilities. How do you see this as a....

Paramjit Singh: Basic idea, it has to be affordable. A person who is in the lowest income group cannot afford to buy a ready made structure. So, the idea is that he is first given the site and then he is encouraged and helped to make a cooperative society with similar peers of his. And then those people are given a loan and a contractor is engaged and the contractors also act as the architects - there is no... for the lower income group clusters they are single storey tenements - so, there is no great expense of architecture servicing or architectural costs. For the higher income group people they have to take the architects and because their multi storey structures, apartment plots. At par with any other private builders. The sites you'll see at Charkop we have got very beautiful - one thing I liked about Charkop was it doesn't show the drab uniformity, barrack type or... every society every plot has given a new... it looks like individual initiative is at play. And no 2 societies are similar to each other so that the human personality is at full flowering instead of being imposed that you will only make these type of tenements and not make a difference in the design. So, I found when I first joined the project, and I visited Charkop, I was under the impression that it will be very drab. But I got a very pleasant surprise. And people have shifted, they are staying there and our loans are being recovered.

Paramjit Singh: Fairly simple set up where we invite applications and once the person is successful then they are given the allotments. So, then after the cooperative societies forms, the society is having a constant interactions with our we have a deputy directors and land managers who are helping the people to keep the records, to form the societies. We also have a assistant registrar from the cooperative society department on deputation to us here at MHADA. So, he is helping in registering the societies. There is a constant interaction between the people and our staff.

Q: What are the areas?

Paramjit Singh: We have 25 meters plots... 25 meters, 40 meters then 60 meters, then for the middle income we've got 100 meters and then we got the bigger plots for the higher income group which is given to a cooperative society. Who will then engage a regular architect and build a multi storey structure.

Paramjit Singh: The world bank insists that as soon as the allotments are made the recovery should start. Whereas in practice what was happening is that the people who have been allotted....

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