HOUSING: SHELTER AS BASIC NEED

Housing: Shetre as BasicNeed
The Challenges of 21st Century
by Remigius de Souza

"Foxes have their holes, and birds of the air have nests,
but the son of man has no place to lay his head."
- New Testament: Luke 9.58, Mathew 8.20

MODERN URBAN CONCEPT of housing is that of a finished product and a marketable commodity. In that, the orientation of thought process on the issue of housing goes beyond the man's basic need of shelter, i.e. architecture as art form, as a result of material affluence enjoyed by the privileged class of the society. An object of art, being aesthetic experience, could be a lucrative investment avenue, if the risk is accepted on a condition of lobbying the markets through media.

Perhaps there was a time when art had gone beyond psychological need of self-expression and had reached a higher level of spirituality, like that of Tyagaraja in music, Kabir, Tukaram in poetry... and in the thousands of Indian temples helping to build up and hold the community, not only the guilds of artisans and Sthapatis, while 20th Century's contribution to culture is, by its fine specialised division of labour , all possible commercialism of art in every possible medium. Housing has resulted to a matter of mass production by taking away the autonomy of the householder. Housing by people has been a process: planning, management in materials - labour -construction, maintenance, expansion and rebuilding; through participation of family and community.

The three 'conventional' basic needs of man are food, clothing and shelter. The modern western and the westernised societies, however, have a long list of basic needs, as they advance in technologies of increasing wealth and increasingly creating waste... We have witnessed in the Indian tradition that even the three basic needs being elevated from the body level to the divinity by the higher spiritual beings to have achieved amazing forms: hunger to fasting which could baffle medical practitioners; clothing to complete naked body or perhaps a single loin-cloth for all seasons; and a tree as a shelter at Bodhi Gaya for the Buddha or a rock in the seas at Kanyakumari for Swami Vivekanand.

During the Kumbha at Varanasi and Haridwar one witnesses thousand of ascetics who are actually naked. And in the forests the tribal continues to live in the half-naked state. The culture has accepted them without taboo. Both the instances must have certainly boosted the Indian economy in the second half of 20th century by easing the burden on the exchequer in the distribution of resources for the welfare services and 'common good'. We wonder if any economist has ever worked the statistics of these phenomena!

'Begging Bowl' belongs to a Sanyasin on 'Sarva Sanga Parityag' - giving up total worldly life. We have heard of Buddha's 'Bowl' and the 'Grail' of Jesus Christ. In the ancient Indian cultures we have seen 'Yaksis' carrying bowls that are known to provide food abundantly to the needy, particularly in the times of famine and draught. 'Manimekhalai', a legend in the Tamil literary form , appeared in the hall of the hungry and destitute with inexhaustible bowl in her hand. Now a days we hear the begging bowl' expression used by some benevolent non-government organisations [NGOs], whatever it may mean. We consider this as an influence of millennia old cultural heritage, with, of course, 20th century variation, of encashment on financial charities by the way of income-tax concessions. Some may even claim this to be a modification of Lard Krishna's advice of 'Yajna, Dana and Tapa' - sacrifice, charity and penance - in Gita, to suit market economy, an offshoot of prophecy of Adam Smith. I is an added feather in the cap of modern development viz. commercialisation or monetisation of altruism.

Considering food as basic need, the national indicators say that there are 237.7 million persons [1987-88] or 29.9 per cent of total population living below the ‘Poverty Line’. (Poverty Line: expenditure required for daily calorie intake of 2,400 and 2,100 per person in the rural and urban areas respectively. The expenditure is officially estimated at Rs. 181.50 and 209.50 per capita per month in the rural and urban areas respectively at 1991-92-price level.) The annual private consumption of food is Rs. 2,271 per capita in 1990-91 [at 1992-93 price level]. In other words the entire nation is below the Poverty Line and thus is entitled to enjoy the status as a developing country or a Third World Country. This is a magic of Numbers and Words [definitions]. This is a most lucrative situation for the First World India within India, to profit from. Obviously the First World India of Industrial Society is drawing advantages out of the very existence of the people below the Poverty Line for profiteering in the international ‘community of man’; and to maintain a status quo to keep the development ‘wealth orientated’ and not ‘people oriented’.

Are people below the “Poverty Line” any indicator to the shortage of housing?

The housing need of the nation is estimated somewhere about 32.85 million units [1985] in urban and rural areas. In Mumbai 4.12 mn. [1990] out of 9.19 mn. [1991] live in the slums. In the four metropolitan cities of Mumbai, Calcutta, Delhi and Chennai, about 13.82 mn. people live in the slums. During 1981-91, the population of Mumbai and the two adjoining cities of Thane and Kalyan have grown up by 20.2, 157.1, and 645.4 per cent respectively. Slums are on the increase not only in the cities but also in medium and small towns. Ironically a large number of skilled and unskilled worker in the construction industry of housing and civil engineering works live in the slums.
Without going in to statistical data, one can realise the enormity of lack of housing, even if one takes a walk in any town and looks around. It is enough to take a walk in any town and look around. It is enough to take a look out
of a window of an automobile or railway going across the country along any urban centre. The squatters, slums, pavement dwellers are not only to be found in the cities but appear even at small towns. They are mushrooming in the place of the trees even on the slopes of Western Ghats, close to the hill station of Khandala in Maharashtra State.

‘Shelter’ must be understood.

With the smell of monsoon the honeybees migrate to dry and safe areas. Come winter and the birds from Siberia migrate to Nal Sarovar [ Nal Lake] in Gujarat State. Come summer and the cowherds of Saurashtra migrate to Satpura Ranges with thousands of their cattle and sheep. On the full moon day of Coconut Festival, the fisher folks of West Coat of India worship the sea and their boats and then move them in the Arabian Sea. Seasons, pastures, sea, hill, boats, sheep, cattle… are shelters. Shelter is an experience. It is not an isolated object, not a compartment merely made of floor, walls and roof. Neither it could be isolated from survival. The modern westernised urban elite lives off the land and off the house. Such people often need discourses on patriotism. They read word-numbers. They can hardly read the soil and those – people, birds, animals, insects, plants - who live with soil.

The constitution, the proclamation by the Supreme Court, host of well-intentioned laws, appeals by the concerned – VIPs and the institutions alike – all indicate that shelter, as a basic need is everybody’s right. But the situation of want, lack scarcity of housing has reached a monumental dimension. So also our self-deception about progress and development. While the nation with steady rise in GNP from Rs. 260 in 1950-51 to Rs. 7,155 in 1991-92 per capita [at 1992-93 market price] is marching towards progress and development, towards 21st Century, the land is ceremoniously deforested, hills being bulldozed, air polluted and water… Water?

‘Growth’ is a key word, alike the password to the legendary Alibaba’s Cave, to the modern day progress and development. Hence there is growth in the housing shortage. Evidently there are other areas of growth; GNP, per capita income, industry, commerce, scams, terrorism, violence, inflation...

And in a very imperceptible way, now, the hunger, malnutrition, starvation, [and also death by starvation] are growing. The effects of war, epidemic, earthquake, floods and riots are visible because of their impact. It is not the same with hunger and starvation. These are neither seen, searched, nor attended to, unless someone does report, as this is not written in the code of conduct of progress and development.

Lack of housing and food are not fully perceived. The statistics fail to convey these maladies, mainly because the housing and hunger are very personal experiences. A homogeneous and cohesive community, could only perceive these not by a mass type society, the industrial society. These can neither be fully perceived with help of numbers, nor by any organisation, as these are faceless entities devoid of any sensitivity.

Researches, seminars, workshops, conferences, deliberations by the experts, volumes of reports... are taking place at city, state, national, international levels in India and elsewhere. Monumental funds and programmes are raised. Housing and housing ‘design idea’ competitions are floated for cheap, economical, affordable, replicable housing models by the professionals, policymakers, administrators, funding agencies, state ... by strictly excluding the people who need housing. Yet the end to scarcity and want in supply of housing seem to be nowhere in the sight.

Creativity of the advanced and the progressive seem to be too feeble in spite of all the expertise, scholarship, propaganda, campaigns, such as, “The International Year of the Shelter for the Homeless” etc.; and in spite of the existence of hundreds of colleges, polytechnics, and the ‘Indian Institute of Technology’s [IITs], engineering, planning and architecture in the country; and of course, the foreign collaborations.

To reduce or to remove the housing shortage some advocate alternative technology, non-conventional building materials, training programmes for the skilled workers, public participation [Public Participation meaning ‘we decide, you - the public – follow.] and self-help. Some invent machines and technologies. Some advocate replicable models for mass production etceteras. Indeed the housing has many dimensions beyond the floor – walls – roof.

Why then is there the shortage of housing?

Population, shortage of resources, scarcity [!] of land, development [or lack of it!] are said to be some of the reasons. The less known reasons, however, are monopolising the resources in the hands of the few through the centralised powers; the economic disparity between the First World India and the Third World [and the Fourth World India of the tribal], resulting out of imposition of values by the former on the later through legislation, planning, administration, formal education and administration; the inequity that affects the price of manual labour, farm-forest-aqua products; and the resulting degradation of human energy. In the subcontinent, the Neolithic Age and the Post-Industrial Age exist side by side. The experts do not see beyond their eyelids.

Shelter and hunger are very personal experiences. Man is a dynamic entity and not and passive object. And individual and his community both have autonomy in the shelter and hunger. And they are equipped to meet these needs. Why not if a bird, a bee, an ant, are equipped to do that? The privileged few, the intelligentsia, the rulers take too much upon themselves to provide housing for the “others” – human beings – which is not their domain. They look for answers elsewhere, outside themselves, while the root cause is within them which have pushed people to the brink. Any model of replication, distribution and consumption, which is processed with external aids, is a direct intervention in their autonomy. Providing housing [and also food] symbolises the intervention by the powerful as a by-product of the mass exploitation of the weaker sections.

The emerging issue is the orientation – the thought process – of the concerned and those who intervene in the housing action. It may be educative to understand and learn where the roots of their orientation lie, when looking for answers to the housing shortage and to meet the perpetual need ever since the man made his first shelter on earth. During the course of development of civilisations what made housing to be replaced by man? It is high time to learn that the means do not justify the goals. The seeds of goals are very much present in the means.

Isn’t the scarcity of housing a residue – a by-product of global cancer the society suffers from? And isn’t the city –as a physical expression of the modern civilisation – a Black Hole which devours the resources of the earth – a symbol of centralised power?

Restore the resources of the earth to the houseless, and the landless and human energy will work wonders without the intervention of the external aids – the external agencies.
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[Note: This paper is one of the series on housing. It, however, is not linked in a serial form. Writing on technical subjects as an outcome of present situation of specialisation does not offer holistic. So the papers are based on relativity proposition; otherwise space-time, matter-energy are basic to house form. The central topic of these papers is an investigation of housing – the third skin of man – in our time. Spatial form of these papers interweaves or overlaps through multiple dimensions of the issue, which moves through subjective - objective modes. Man is not an object here. Space here is not three sides but presence of man in the cosmic space. Time is a memory of the Past; as Future it is speculation; the Present - NOW has no dimension. Matter is condensed energy: while energy here is not economic and its clan, or to put it other way, because these are dissipation of energy resulting in Entropy. These considerations may seem metaphysical dreaming. But it may be worth an attempt to discover a morphological form one may appropriately call a “re-search paper” in the present situation. Even if the effort proved to be ‘research parody’ in the true sense.]

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Remigius de Souza

Postal Address: 69, 243. S. B. Marg, Mumabi 400028 India

[This paper was published in JANATA, Vol.53, No. 12, May 10, 1998.]

Community Participation

Community Participation: Paddy farming in Konkan | Image by Pooja Rani

‘ZOLE’ IS A WORD FOR ‘COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION' in local Marathi dialect, just across the creek from Mumbai on the mainland of coastal district Riagad: So near yet so far!

Community participation at its tail end is there in the mega city, evident from the public festivals of Lord Ganesha. B. G. Tilak started the public festival to reinforce the Independence Movement. The citizens managed it by community participation. Even after the political independence, they celebrated it with the same zest for some time. Now it has turned into ‘commercial participation’ with sponsorships coming from trading houses of consumer goods etc. No more Bhajan* – Keertan*, no more Zimma – Fugadi*, instead the audio music packages of devotional / pop songs blast on the public address system.

After the independence, the governments, which took over the rule from the British, ignored the millennia-old tradition of community participation. Independence Day – 15th August 1947 – was indeed a memorable occasion. I was then in the primary school at my native village. The government distributed packets of sweets on that day to us, all the school-going children. The ‘other’ children outside did not get any. Tilak was no more. Gopal Krisha Gokhale, who fought for free primary education for all, was no more.

Gandhiji, the Father of the Nation, may not have heard of this evil discrimination, a petty event. He was struggling somewhere; and the fractured communities had turned to ‘communal’ riots. We hear that in the backyard of Mumbai there are children affected by malnutrition; even die, while the governments plan ‘mid-day meals’ for the schoolchildren. One is silently corrupting the mind like cancer; the other comes with a bang. Which one is the worst than the other?

Few elites and the learned have picked up an imported idea of ‘public participation’ in recent times. There are volumes written about it, yet it remains at lip service, or “I decide, you follow” idea. If people of certain class have lost their roots due to colonization, and in the wave of modernization, it is no wonder.

But there are people who have lost their roots because of persecution, displacement, development, marginalization, deforestation, conversions, exploitation and oppression. One computer displaces 100 persons. One TV set colonizes a thousand persons. These assaults have left them dazzled, stunned; they cannot even cry. If an earthquake, or a cyclone or tsunami destroys everything – life and property, the survived ones can at least cry, and help each other.

Otherwise, after the politically induced Ganesha Public Festival, the next on the agenda could have been ‘Water and Sanitation’ or ‘Hygiene and Civic sense’ festivals through community participation, for not only the mega-cities, but also the towns and villages. Indeed, we Indians love festivals. Even some god could have been associated with it. Moreover the industrial and commercial houses and corporate sector could have had contributed the lion’s share; perhaps that could have had washed away, or absolved them of, some of their sins of polluting the natural, social, political and economic environment of the country.

The traditional community participation touches almost all aspects, may it be education, farming, house building, water management, local fairs and festivals, and much more, of individual and the collective living wherever a community still does exist. For example, Warlis at Dahanu taluka in the backyard of Mumbai, we noticed, build indigenous dams / weirs of stones collected from the riverbed, tied and held with bamboos, bullies and vines, at the end of every monsoon. Warli paintings are famous among the elite of Mumbai; hardly anyone mentions about their dams! Some time back we had another revealing experience in Tamilanadu.

With ten of my students, I was attending the second Congress of Traditional Sciences and Technologies of India (1995) at Chennai. We took some time off to look into the backyard of the city. We visited Kanchipuram, a historical city, a seat of Sri Shankaracharya and famous for silk sarees. We went around the neighbourhoods, temple complexes and silk saree shops, and spoke to people. The following day we visited one of the villages that produce silk sarees, about ten kilometers away. We remained there from dawn to dusk.

It is a small hamlet of families belonging to one of the castes in the village. They receive silk yarn from the cooperative societies at Kanchipuram. Every member of the family works in various operations in the production of the sarees. Even the children work; it’s not ‘child labour’; it is education by ‘experiential learning’, which many of the elite often miss. The operations such as sizing, where quick working is necessary, 10 or more people from other families come to help. Sometime two weavers work on one loom. They use simple bamboo and wooden tools other than loom. One or many, they work with amazing coordination through all operations, marginally literate as they may be. They were working through the day combined with other household activities.

Some of them have farms, but they do not produce silk. It comes from outside. If they learn the skills, they too could produce it as others do. They are paid rupees five hundred for each saree. (Perhaps, it may have increased now!) What is the ecological–environmental–energy cost and ‘currency-cost’ of this produce compared to industrial product? We leave it to the experts. To witness such actions helps to define ‘community’ better than by dictionary or discourse.


I obviously remember my primary school days when I learnt spinning and weaving for three years under ‘basic education’, and practiced in spare time: now no more. The cotton was brought from outside as it doesn’t grow in Konkan. The spinning and weaving education was soon discontinued. Academic bureaucrats failed to see there were other local venues for basic education other than Khadi, which they blindly followed. In any case, what is the role of the British-made formal education to disintegrate ‘community’? What will be the avatar of ‘Panchayati Raj’ in the 21st century?

The essence, the first and the foremost, of this community participation is ‘sharing of the work, place and space’. The most vital, though silent, element is ‘decentralization of power’. Would it be palatable to the hierarchies / bureaucracies? It also is a ground for collective decision and collective creativity. The industrial societies ruled by capitalist economy may not even know it. Their members face the crisis of individuality and identity. Some of them, however, have been campaigning and fighting for 30/40, or even less, working hours a week, of course, within the social-economic-political structure they follow. But those who are compelled to work for more than 80 hours a week, either in the first world or third-world, may not be ready to share it with their fellow citizens; they may prefer hoarding it! Even IT industry, though its trait is fast – faster – fastest work-speed, is not an exception. More the speed, more are the working hours!

The events mentioned above are out of the millions that are taking place daily across the country. We do not know how long it will last. Because we, while aping the so-called advanced societies, are out to destroy, by whatever means – legal, religious, political, or developmental or any other – the ‘community’ and ‘community participation’: A World Heritage for Conservation.

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NOTES:
* Bhajan: devotional songs mostly composed by the saints, performed individually or collectively, with or without musical instruments.
* Keertan: discourse with devotional songs and commentaries on religious / social issues before a congregation.
* Zimma, Fugadi: women folk dances combined with folk songs; people believe Lord Ganesha loves them.

(This article was published in Janata, vol. 64 no. 4, March 5, 2006, Mumbai.)

 ~ ~ ~ ~
© Remigius de Souza. All Rights Reserved

Sky-bound Earth-bound

('Sky-bound Earth-bound', pen and ink
on paper, by Remigius de Souza)

Springtime had gone long ago, since then
I walked, and walked the traders’ mall
Of the recognized teaching marts
And the recognized preaching marts
That promise happiness or welfare.

Now I try to recycle the historic manmade
Garbage collected over many monsoons since
The bygone spring; could I but ever recycle
The extravagant wealth and waste, I wonder,
now knowing a natural order of recycle?

~~~~

Remigius de Souza
Mumbai, India

All Seasons’ Greetings

TO MAKE A CELL OF GOOD LIVING
by Remigius de Souza

‘Make a cell of good living in the chaos of our world”, said Eric Gill, as I remember it. I read it in my early twenties. I then had just finished a course in architecture at a college. The aphorism remained inscribed in the memory like an affirmation. Enthusiastically I started to look for an ideal, model cell in places, books and journals, and with the masters of architecture. But soon I realised this cell is beyond floor-wall-roof. Inevitably I turned inside. Consciously I started peeling off a layer after layer. Alas, there was no cell there except my gaseous ego. It brought me to tears like a peeled onion.

Lo! And here too, within me, I found chaos. My body and mind riddled by some or other ailments and maladies: ignorance, taboos, models or dogmas; indigestion or malnutrition, maladies of teeth or skin or eyes or nose or stomach or some other limbs, and a victim of epidemics such as war frenzy or cricket frenzy or flu, and so on, spread by a city–market–media–mod–culture. And above them all there presides my omnipresent ego, whatever, wherever I am.

I have been moving, almost all my life, to places: cities, villages, forests, coasts, monuments and ruins. I have been moving in the First World, the Third World and the Fourth World and for a brief period the (virtual) Second World. I have been fortunate to share warm hospitality of numerous anonymous people. The aphorism never left me. It would appear any time any place like the pop ups on the Internet. I realise now and then while moving in the real world and virtual world, the aphorism is as valid today, even more than ever before, as may be it was hundred years ago. On the way slowly emerged a resolve:

‘From Here Now on
Live every Moment
Add every Moment
To the Time Eternal’.
* * *

“All Seasons’ Greetings”, is unconventional without any visual graphics and stereotypical messages, which typically come on the occasions of festivals coming and going. ‘All seasons’ simply meant to be day – night, dawn – dusk, morning-noon-evening, six seasons, flowering – fruition – harvesting – leaf shedding of plants; so also, childhood, youth, adulthood, old age, and anniversaries; and one can and may add many more. Oh, there are so many seasons that are intimately connected to Life and living to cherish and rejoice. In the “To make a cell…” I laugh at myself, if you see the irony. It has been a celebration for many years not marked by a calendar day / page, or a time clock.

The industrial society is too arrogant, which continues to believe that man is the centre of the universe and the master of the Nature, not going beyond a lip service to the gods or godheads of its members. It 'compresses' or 'minimizes' joy and celebration to a few hours or days that amounts to ‘man must toil and be miserable’ to curse Life for the rest of the days of living. Ironically it replaces joy and celebration by marketing conveniences and entertainment packages that includes ‘greeting cards’ or 'e-Greetings', in five hundred varieties for five billion people for their salvation. Is there a way for liberation? It is possible for an individual – surely there are many – and if one were to see this irony; and like the hundredth monkey that may work in the mass society on the collective consciousness.


Remigius de Souza
69-243 S B Marg Mumbai 40028 India
25/11/2005

Life-line (Graphic+text)

Life-line

by Remigius de Souza

('Life-line', pend and ink on paper, by Remigius de Souza)