Creating Humane and Sustainable Cities
April 2007
Banner photo: Lawrence Worcester/Getty Images
Uniting for Change
Jockin Arputham, from Mumbai, India, is the director of Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI), a movement to mobilize and empower squatters that spans 23 countries around the world. He is also a founding member of SPARC, the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres, an NGO that works in 21 cities in India.
Key to his work are communal savings associations that pool the contributions of the participants, allowing the urban poor to effect the development of their communities. In three years' time, 95,000 families will have been housed in Mumbai alone.
A slum dweller himself, Jockin has met with government ministers around the world to talk about what they can do for the more than 1 billion urban squatters in the world today.
In 2000 he was joint winner of the Ramon Magsaysay award, which honors courageous service to people and communities around the world. Visit: www.sdinet.org
SGI Quarterly: Do you feel that the voices of slum dwellers are being heard by city planners in Mumbai?
Jockin Arputham: The poorest of the poor are being marginalized all the time. They are not getting their space because the planners have ignored them. In the city I live in, 55 to 65 percent of people are living in slums in such a horrible condition. If their voices are not heard locally and globally--organizations like the UN have talked a lot and organized too many workshops and conferences on this issue without them--their number will always increase. How, therefore, can we raise our voices so that our society at large can hear them? The solution is not with others. We will raise our own voices and tell them we are finding the solution to our problem. All we need is the other actors to listen to us. We are not begging or asking for total charity, but we need to be participants, part of the development of our own people.
We are not going to wait for anybody to come and feed us. The urban poor can come together collectively. Today as the SDI, organizations like ours are working in 23 countries. We have organized ourselves. In South Africa the government is wholeheartedly supporting us. They are ready to join hands with us. In fact, this year in South Africa the first world urban poor forum, hosted by the urban poor, will be held. The world's urban poor are going to invite government, bilaterals and others. The illiterate, uneducated people will host them. There we will tell the whole world what we are planning, what is our strategy, what is our delivery mechanism in order to improve ourselves--invite the planners to ask: How do we look at it? How do we change the whole society?
SGIQ: Over 40 years you have lived in a slum in Mumbai. Can you remember a moment when you felt you were starting to move from a situation where no one was listening to one where you felt people really were listening?
JA: When I started, I was frustrated. During the first ten years of struggle we were unable to see anything. I think until very recently I felt like that. But today I can tell you that in Mumbai alone, we have managed to rehabilitate more than 30,000 families. There are another 60,000 people waiting to be housed within the next three years in Mumbai city alone, due to our efforts.
I am dreaming that in three years from now, it may be possible for me to look to a time when there won't be a single family living on the streets of Mumbai; that if you go to Nepal, there won't be pavement dwellers, in the Philippines, in South Africa or East Africa you won't see anybody living on the streets. This is the change we have managed to bring in.
I remember I was demanding this from different countries. Like in Malawi; I met the minister. The minister assured me that in six months' time they would be giving away this much land, and indeed in six months' time we were able to get 20 hectares of land and we are able to build houses there. There's a tremendous amount of change. We are not waiting for the government or the donors to deliver. We are fed up with waiting and watching and waiting.
Jockin helps lay the foundations of a new house
The change has become more rapid, but I am still not satisfied. Sixty thousand homes is not enough. This has to be done much more vibrantly for us to grow. The government has to make more changes. We the people are marching forward much faster. This is all possible because every urban poor today is putting their pennies into a savings scheme. Through that we are able to change everything. It is the effort of everyone together. Through people's power we are trying to change the situation.
Now we are moving toward the same thing in Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, and also in Ghana, and in East Africa, in Kampala and Nairobi. The movement has also started in Latin America. We are in the process of organizing savings, and through our savings we are building up federations. Through federations we are developing housing options.
SGIQ: Women have always played an important part in this movement?
JA: The women can pull my legs down and make me stand on the ground. When the women poor collect together, ill-treated women come together, share together, live together, then change may be possible. You can go everywhere in the world and thousands of women will be lined up. In South Africa, ten thousand, twenty thousand women will be coming, organizing and expressing their concern, which forces anyone to join.
SGIQ: When you first came to Mumbai, was there a moment when you decided you couldn't put up with what was going on around you?
JA: Exactly, I myself was struggling, I had no place to sleep, no place to wash, no place to do anything. I was homeless on the streets, which forced me to think, why don't you do something? The women critically questioned me all the time, "What are you doing wasting your time?" So the women didn't allow me to even have a good sleep. They continuously poked me, which forced me to collect money and keep on moving. "Don't expect any credit, don't expect any recognition," they said, "but keep on doing it, keep moving, keep moving."
So I only go forward, I don't look back. There is no regret. Whatever is coming, keep moving. It enables us to do what we have been doing today.
SGIQ: Is that your guiding principle then?
JA: Yes, absolutely. Keep walking. People are with you. You need to keep walking, and it doesn't help to look back.
