Strengthening Civil Society Voices on Urban Poverty in India

One of the major inadequacies in taking forward the agenda of inclusion and active participation of the urban poor in urban development programmes is weak civil society engagement with issues of urban poverty and urban governance. There are just a handful of civil society organizations in the country which have focused on organizing and mobilizing the urban poor to claim their rights and thereby to secure active participation and ownership of urban development programmes. There is no national network of civil society, or even a sub- sectorial coalition, that focuses on these issues on a sustained basis.

Under the project ‘Strengthening Civil Society Voices on Urban Poverty in India’, funded by Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation, PRIA and Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centre (SPARC) have come together to initiate an effort based on the experiences that each has had in addressing the issues of urban poverty. The project aims at facilitating and synthesizing engagements at the city (micro), state (meso) and national (macro) levels; and bringing together the broad spectrum of civil society actors – organizations of the urban poor, local NGOs, research institutions, media and other coalitions – that needs to be enabled to work together specifically in operationalizing Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY).

Objectives

• Organizations of the urban poor are able to raise demands and influence the designing and implementation of programmes of housing and infrastructure development under RAY and other related schemes.
• Appropriate capacities and mechanisms are developed in cities so that Urban Local Bodies (municipalities) can effectively respond to demands from urban poor and civil society.
• State and national governments develop policies and procedures that support the participation of the urban poor and civil society in designing and implementing various initiatives meant to promote ‘slum-free cities’.
• An active network of civil society organizations regularly and emphatically raises its voice and engages with governance authorities at all three levels.

Geographical spread

Key components

• Promoting capacity for city level citizen's engagements
• thematic research
• dialogues with state governments
• policy advocacy at national level
• preparation and piloting open distance learning course
• strategic communication

Key outputs

The project has reached 34 cities across 11 states

• Strengthening of voices in slums: Youth groups, women’s groups, cultural groups and sports clubs have been formed/aligned to monitor and demand urban services. Educated young men and women from slums were engaged to prepare GPS maps of their slums, profile the city, services and possible supporters (NGOs, CBOs, activists, clubs, etc).
• Citizens Slum Improvement Committees (SICs) formed in more than 60 slums across different cities. These SICs are anchoring community engagements with regular monitoring of services. They also engage (now more successfully) with local government officials (service providers) to improve delivery of services and safeguard their rights.
• Increasing engagement of local CSOs: After profiling CSOs in various cities, it was found that civil society engagement with issues and lives of the urban poor was far less than what was envisaged at the beginning of the project. But the project has been able to sensitize a large number of NGOs and CBOs in different cities who now proactively provide support to the urban poor.
• Coalition of NGO networks: Some organizations and networks have been working on services and rights issues of the poor in urban locations. However, inter-network support and synergies among them have missing. One significant effort of this project has been to evolve a platform of these networks. For example, a coalition of organizations such as Water-Aid, Action Aid, Bachpan, Muskan, Samarthan, etc, are working towards evolution of a slum policy and its acceptance by the government in Madhya Pradesh. PRIA is the secretariat for this coalition.
• Association of associations: Livelihood associations such as Hawkers’ Federation, Waste Pickers Associations, Construction Workers Association, Rickshaw Pullers Association, etc, have agreed to come together on certain common issues affecting the lives of (their) urban poor. PRIA is facilitating their association.
• Multi-stakeholders dialogues and interface: Regular interface between government, NGOs and the community are being facilitated at community, city, state and national levels. Local officials are encouraged to visit and take part in community dialogues in various slums. Efforts to build linkages between schools and colleges in cities with slums in those cities are now evolving.
• Advocacy: Evidence based advocacy with government has been emphasized in this project. As a result, a slum policy has been formalized and enacted in Rajasthan. Land rights, living security, access to and provision of basic services to the urban poor, reduced evictions, etc have been key success areas of intervention for the project.
• Knowledge generation: The project has been able to systematize grassroots experiences, issues and challenges. It has also compiled processes and methods used in achieving successes and/or failures. Various studies, reports and comments on the blog Terra Urban (http://terraurban.wordpress.com/) have been found to be very useful for practitioners and researchers.
• Six ODL courses have been developed on the basis of practical experiences and learnings of the project.

Year/period

2011 to 2013

Client

Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation