 Hello and welcome once again to this episode on NewsClick, the series that we are running on the Delhi master plan 2041 and today we have Mukta Naik who is a fellow with the Center for Policy Research and also part of the Mabhi Delhi campaign actually the organization I would say not just an organization but you know a group of many organizations and individuals that is spearheading this campaign for a more participatory kind of role for the master plan. So welcome Mukta and just for our viewers I mean just to recapitulate what we've been doing we have actually tried to traverse the history of the master plans right from 1961 even prior to that and then we've touched upon the social exclusion part we've also touched upon mobility and also the general trajectory of the master plan especially post 90s where you know the earlier master plans used to speak about here we decided this but we couldn't achieve okay so let's again try to do something but this we are told is more of a framework and Mukta we are going to discuss I think something which is very essential in fact quintessential for the habitat I mean I mean for the people to live in the cities and we've seen how in just 24 hours when the lockdown was announced people couldn't stay I mean they just started moving back one of the reasons apart from the livelihoods that they lost was actually the habitat they didn't have places to stay. So Mukta I think you're the best person to talk to us on you know what does the master plan offer does it offer at all and what are what are the fault lines and you know what are the gaps that should have been so straight I think over to you Mukta please. So thank you so much Tikhanda ji and news click for the opportunity to talk about perhaps one of my favorite subjects on earth not because I've done research and I want to sort of blow my own horn but because I think shelter and habitat issues have been pressing issues the world over and the fault lines have appeared the world over during the pandemic especially if you think about the kind of agitation that's been happening around rent you know where tenants are being evicted tenants are not being able to pay because they've lost their jobs and those those conversations global conversations are reflected in the Indian context in interesting ways because we have such a high level of both work informality as well as housing informality because there are a lot of people who work in the unorganized sector and they live in unplanted areas so their livelihood issues combine and the problem increases more so that's the kind of situation context that we are sort of entering in with a very top down instrument like the master plan it's talked down by design it so that's the that's sort of the tension that we are working with here so yeah go ahead Mukta I mean fantastic I mean you brought in I mean I'm glad that for the first time hearing this housing informality also I've been also talking about informality in the the workplaces so please go ahead I mean I mean I mean what is it that the 2041 offer but I mean maybe later I would like to ask you this question once you finish finished off your presentation that you know this working informality has actually also given a kind of mirror to the to the top down planning process that hey you couldn't construct but we have done it for ourselves okay so I mean how do you take it but later maybe absolutely I think I can bring that comment of yours into the conversation so this is so like I said in the master plan I'm trained as an urban planner so urban planners are trained in a very technocratic way they are to I mean they're trained to see the map of a city and sort of block areas of the city into various zones that's what a master plan a traditional land use plan does and that's what's been the trajectory as has been explained in earlier episodes you know in in Delhi especially where the Delhi Development Authority basically assigns land use zones to various parts of the city unfortunately the the government has been sort of responsible for the supply of affordable housing for many many decades and it kept falling back on the targets that it set for itself so over decades we've had a situation where people who working class people who either come into the city or have been living in the city for very very long have had to make their own housing just echoing what you just said so they have made occupied land it could be public land in the case of Delhi it's a complex you know sort of landscape of land ownership itself because there are many many public agencies owning land it's not just the DDA it's the Delhi government it's the railways it's PSUs it's many different army you know the Contourment for instance so forest land so many different kind of public agencies own the land into which slums have come up also unauthorized colonies which is a big big part of Delhi's housing landscape and this is these have come up not so much because they have illegally occupied government land but because they have built housing in a place which was not designated for housing so at the time that they came up the land was agricultural and somebody plotted it and built housing on it so there are many and then there is a third type of sort of unplanned area which is the Lal Dora area where which are urban villages the city developed and the Abadi areas of the villages remained in a sort of neglected state as the agricultural land urbanized acquired and sort of converted into the Delhi that we know today so you see the Munir guys and the shampoo charts of the world coming up in 21st century Delhi these areas the Juggijopi clusters the unauthorized colonies the Abadi areas in the Lal Dora areas actually supply the majority of affordable housing whether ownership or rental in the city and that's the reality that the plan is now coming into so they have this situation where you're making a plan for a city where much of the land is already developed whether planned unplanned legal illegal people are already living in those places and now you have the not enviable job of making a plan so it's not empty land it's occupied land so that's what the master plan is dealing with so there are two parts when we come to the housing issue the master plan one is the use of new housing so the use of what is imagined as vacant land for housing and this demand is largely envisaged to be supplied from what the plan is terming land pooling areas so these are areas to the north and west of the city if you look at the land use plan you will see sort of a belt to the north and west of the city which is envisaged as being to be land pooled in a policy via a policy that was already developed before the master plan came into being so the master plan is like riding on this land pooling policy now this policy ke tahit imagination ye hai ki log apni land go all developers or other type of on owners ke saath milke consortium banayenge aur fir consortium us land ko develop karega so this consortium is supposed to develop the land and how and what the norms would be for development that has been specified in the master plan now so the master plan envisage is about half of the demand for housing to come from these land pooling areas so they've said that about 34.5 lakhs is what they've estimated as housing demand in the city i'd like to point out that this estimate is based on 2011 census numbers so unlike previous master plans they are not projecting to say that 2041 me ye population okay so they're not projecting a 2041 population they've said that we have done it for 2011 and we will revise as we go on so as of now these 34.5 lakh units are to be built of which roughly half are going to come from land pooling areas yeah in fact this is one of the most tom-tom scheme by I remember the DDA why she a person sometime back actually claiming that look this is this is going to be kind of an alternative yeah please please go ahead yeah I mean land pooling as in I think as an idea has now come it's a really fascinating policy makers because the land acquisition has been such a road block for any form of infrastructure development in this country so the idea that landowners will voluntarily partner you know with this with infrastructure development is a very seductive idea but the practical realities is a totally different thing the scheme so what are the practical realities you know because Mukta why I'm so so concerned about this I mean or rather eager to know because I've spoken to many of these people who are going to pool their land and they are really fascinated with the idea some of them they say okay appreciate land appreciation but then another contradiction that gets proved is with the houses that are going to come up on this land would that cater to you know the working people who are flooding the city yeah I mean how do you look at that so it's both aspects yeah and that's I think there's a little bit of a clue in the master plan there because 15 percent of the additional FAR has been given for EWS housing in new areas where housing is coming up the plan itself flags that the Delhi economic survey says 85 percent of the housing demand is for affordable housing so if we assume that affordable housing is low-income and EWS segments of housing is EWS and low-income and you are only giving 15 percent of the FAR as mandatory for EWS you have a huge gap right there so you know I'm I think the master plan needs to break this 34.5 lakhs down and say he is 34.5 lakh me how many are going to be for EWS LIG MIG HIG segments some indication of this would be really useful going forward I won't get into the complications with the land pooling policy per se we know these are very complex areas I'll just say this much that you know there are many kinds of players there where the so-called rural villages have kinship networks with urban villages who have already experienced development over these many decades so they understand how these processes work they don't trust the stage to give them the fairest deal they may not have the power of the ability to negotiate with large developers there is a lot of inequality within these urban villages in terms of you know larger land owning and smaller land owning so there's all of these fragmented kind of complexities which a policy like land pooling doesn't really address so insecurity, uncertainty, a promise but the other thing is the land pooling policy itself has gone through multiple regions. So I think there's a very interesting thing that you pointed out that the contradiction or you know kind of different layers that exist in this whole process of land pooling well all that said and done but I think what is also important is that earlier what the DDA used to do like for example they used to you know do this process of constructing houses you know I mean and then handing it over to the EWS sections but don't you think that that activity has been obligated and that responsibility kind of stuff has been completely obligated now left to I mean it's here market forces don't you think so something to that and if that is so what should be the alternative and what is it that we are looking at? Right so I think yes it's sort of related to the other side and we know that from the experience and this is not new in India I mean we have been seeing that the housing the national housing policy moved into this role of facilitator instead of provider of housing decades ago I mean in the 2000s and we've seen how it's played out through India where the gap between the supply and demand for the affordable housing sector and when I say affordable I'm not talking about 30 lakhs per unit when I say affordable I'm talking about people the poor who need homes the gap between the demand and supply there in the formal sector in terms of formal supply has only increased over time so yes I think I mean to say that the DDA should be building homes for the poor is also something that I'm wary of because it wasn't very successful in doing so when it was supposed to be doing it so where are we right now you know so I think there is some mid-path that we need to follow in the case of Delhi there is actually a lot of public land that is held by a host of different kinds of public agencies so I think there is an opportunity there to take a mid-path where yes you have your reservations maybe you can increase the 15% reservation that private developers are making to a 20 or 25 if you have if you can push that a little bit but also complement by making public lands available and incentivizing public agencies to use that land towards housing that's something that you know there's been a lot of hesitation around doing that which which which the maybe the Lee campaign and and I'd say that this is not an opinion of mine but because the campaign has spent three years sort of talking to groups working working class groups unions collectives Basti dwellers associations across the city this is something we can say with some confidence that that sort of land reservation and commitment is required to give you an example there is a mandatory reservation of 10% land required for green areas in the master plan and the master plan says you need to reserve it you need to and you need to hand this over to the DDA so something similar needs to be done because without that so there has to be a basically a collaboration where if whoever is developing it actually dig your max land and either it hands it over to a public agency to develop or there are norms for a public private you know form of development other other thing is that public land is actually brought into utilization and then the actual project can be developed through multiple modes so I think the idea that there will be private sector investment is here to stay to say that everything will be done by the government just means that it will never happen so we need to find something which is workable but where the government definitely put something of value on the table I don't think it's tenable for the government to be sitting on land in a city where it's very clear that poor people do not have adequate shelter it's the capital city that's the least that we can do for you know like you said earlier people who built the city and were running it on a day-to-day basis I think probably the last question I mean so concretely as you pointed out the master plan offers more of a facilitated role I mean you know land pooling and all and we don't but the master plan also speaks about TOD you know transit oriented development and TOD is not just mobility it is also housing you know the kind of housing that it has elaborated and of course it's brought in some of the international experiences which are not like really very vibrant so the point is that I mean what is it that we are heading for I mean even if it is a TOD how successful that's a question that's another part but the point is then again it is for the middle class or it doesn't include as you pointed out 85% of the housing demand comes for the weaker sections and and and another one I mean the last one you know many of the many of the migrants especially who come to the cities do not even want houses they want some rent some either rental housing or labour hostels so how does the 2041 master plan deal with this subject because we have two successful examples we have an example of Kerala and also of Simla you know where labour hostels are are pretty good I mean and then Simla is I mean dates back to more than 100 years yeah so I mean how do you look at both these aspects? Yeah I'll actually take the second question first the the plan actually does make a departure from previous plans in giving rental housing adequate sort of importance it's not very clear on how and what and how much but there is definitely a tilt towards providing more rentals so there's a lot of land there's land reservation in industrial areas planned industrial areas for worker housing there's also sort of language in terms of working women's hostels labour hostels so these things have been mentioned in the plan and that's something that we should appreciate in terms of rentals there's been I just want to bring in one other major shift that the plan has made it has brought in this word regeneration across the board note that they are not seeing redevelopment they're not seeing renewal which are loaded terms because historically they've been used in India in particular ways they're using this new term called regeneration and they are imagining that parts of the city that are dense crowded have multiple problems can now be regenerated either through amalgamating plots or through you know RWA is demarcating their areas and coming up with new plans so again there is a role here for investment for private sector to come in for all of that to happen and there's also an as is mode where regeneration means just improvement of but it is not kind of you know neighborhood neighborhood committee is developing that plan it's not like that it is I mean the the neighborhood committees are very much at the forefront of course the processes have not been outlined in the plan but if we see how the trajectory has been that's the imagination and you know the unauthorized colonies conversation in Delhi is very interesting because it's a very political conversation it's been an electoral issue for decades in the city and in 2019 there's a regularization act that the government has central government has brought in which they've been trying to push with not the best uptake for the last couple of years so the master plan actually comes in endorsing that sort of sort of pathway of development but to come to your point on rentals they're also saying that these are areas where a lot of rental housing can be created when the regeneration happens so the imagination is just regeneration hoga top rental housing create hoga or fear you know so there's and also then there is the affordable rental housing complexes scheme the public rental housing route which is also mentioned in the plan so two avenues of rental creation have been mentioned there's a third sort of new typology of housing called small format housing which is 60 square square meters and below it's not very clear whether this is affordable or whether it's 60 square meters 60 meter square using 60 meter square is not small under or below we've been offering 25 meter square houses to that's true I think they were they've been a lot of pushback on 25 square meters also so I think that's but there's no clarity that this is affordable housing but there is a push to to sort of urge everyone to make housing that is more accessible to a larger protection of people and I think we should also acknowledge that middle income housing is also a problem in the city so you know students who are getting into first jobs even Bastille dwellers who are trying to upgrade in they move to unauthorized colonies when they can afford it so there's a housing trajectory that we also need to think of intergenerational housing trajectory in Delhi and also say that you know as somebody who studies cities and migration Delhi contrary to what we think is not a city which is overrun by migrants anymore the rates of migration into Delhi have actually been falling yes we have a lot of floating labor like you mentioned before lot of construction workers daily wage labor who come work in the city and then may go and work elsewhere in a few months they're not looking to make cities their home so they need a different kind of housing and here I'd like to also bring in the idea of shelters where also I think the plan can do a little bit more to recognize shelters as actually a legitimate form of housing for the working poor who are only in the city for a few months yeah I remember I mean I because I was a guide to you know the final year SPS students and one of the projects that I was guiding on was homeless shelters and I was amazed that 95% of the people who were staying in these home in one of the homeless shelters were actually working class people they were not beggars so they were working either here or there so I mean they couldn't afford housing that's why they were so yeah what you're saying is absolutely correct so what is the ladder I mean if I if I will come here and I work and one of my colleagues who's done a lot of research on homelessness in Delhi actually found that many of them had been in Delhi for years together while others were passing through you know there were there were a lot who came to Delhi then they went to Saaranpur for three months worked there then they came back to Delhi for three months so there is this mobility that we have to factor in and recognize that some forms of housing we will have to cater for this segment but other forms of housing we will have to imagine that people who are thinking that their children and their grandchildren are also going to stay in Delhi require to be able to own homes over a period of time where is that avenue for ownership which is legal and planned so I'm bringing the question of tenure into play here because the master plan doesn't really engage with the question it sticks to its mandate of land use allocations but it needs to at some point of time I know that it's not its mandate but unless these two mandates of tenure and space allocation come together we can't solve this problem of housing for the people who need you know affordable housing in the city ownership affordable housing just last one because that actually really provoked me to another another question you know because we can understand I mean most of the of the jargon that we find in the 2041 master plan is you know new industries have to come and then through that through I mean with the engagement like you know then we can we can expect some rental housing also I mean part being mandatoryly discussed or decided but I mean we've seen I mean industries are hardly coming I mean you know in the city in the city centers or even in some of the so we don't expect apart from some of the hospitality or maybe maybe some but we do not have the time frame and when is that going to happen so I mean does the master plan not think about I mean or what is your take on it you know there's some some kind of figure maybe it is too utopian to decide this number we should have rental housing and if not I mean we have so many buildings I mean that have been constructed by private builders take them over and then you know some kind of dialogue you go to Noida and you find them huge blocks that are lying empty they're no buyers for that so don't you think that kind of dialogue should also be perhaps not part of the master plan but kind of engagement there are houses there already been constructed but they're no buyers yeah I think that the role for the master plan to correct sort of historic wrongs in terms of decisions is limited and that falls into other sort of jurisdictional spaces like the RERA etc like I said the master plan sticks to it mandate doesn't really try to engage with and perhaps can't engage with these other things and that's a failure a governance a larger governance failure that we need to talk about like how does the master plan actually dovetail with everything else that's regulation and that makes us its city or what it is but coming back to the point of industry it's the master plan actually very clearly in its vision seems to want to move away from industry as manufacturing to industry as high tech and knowledge and hospital I mean services basically so this itself I think if we look at it from the perspective of the working class is something that needs to be talked about a little bit more because we've had moves in the past to move industrial areas pollution has constantly been used as a I mean it's always been a conversation but why is it that removing manufacturing from the city is the utopian dream and I'm bringing this you know to the front because this is not we're not talking Singapore we're not talking Dubai we're not talking a city in the global north we're talking about cities in the global south which require to create opportunities for people who are working class who are less educated who have different set of skills and cannot aspire for white collar work immediately I mean maybe three generations down the line second what about the linkages with trade Delhi is a trading city people in Delhi what is it that they do for a living they run wholesale businesses they run retail businesses they're retailing you know hardware and lights and machine components how do you divorce this from the reality of I mean how do you have a vision of the city of the future that is diverse from this everyday reality of the city so these are questions that have been perturbing me about the master plan that in 20 years what has been historically built over hundreds of years how do you imagine that in 20 years it will turn into this clean tech knowledge so that's a question and if we just keep raising that question consistently and make space for the realities of the city and say let's plan let's fix the problems that exist whatever is going to happen in the future will happen as things move on but so that's a big sort of question mark that I would like to put I agree and they you know just to give a reference to that I mean if you go by the first urban commission I mean it the gist of the urban commission is that cities have to be manufacturing hubs so you know that's how the city the whole idea of city development comes we seem very uncomfortable with that idea today we seem to imagine that everything will become this knowledge you know very clean sanitized smart city space nothing against smart nothing against clean but you know you have to imagine that your workers are going to live in a clean well organized environment in addition to knowledge workers who will come I mean you can't imagine a city where there are only going to be tech you know folks who's going to you know clean their cars who's going to work their dogs I mean this is a question we've all been you know put so yeah so absolute last thing I mean you know I think one month extension is is what what the DDA is allowed to raise on and I mean not one of the first episodes pointed out that in 1961 there used to be a monadi you know the drama you used to go beat the drum and say so and here since you are part of the campaign so what do you think should be done because you know there were many people who said why don't you create an alternative kind of master plan I mean but you know you require I mean this is this is a four years exercise and so difficult I mean to come up with an alternative kind of stuff but you think there should be some kind of white paper or or maybe what do you propose as part of civil society group for engaging people so that more and more people come up at least oh boy our our role okay you given me you have given me a very good plug because we have got this window that we have got which DDA I think was very gracious in recognizing that there is a short shortcoming in terms of engagement is actually being used by the campaign to do busty meetings online offline in busties you know 10 people 12 people at a time and you can imagine in covid because we can't have a large public meeting it's that many more meetings that we need to do but that's being done where you know they their cons and thing is that the campaign is engaged with these busties for the last three years and they're already the members of the campaign are already organizations who are embedded in these locations so they know what the problems are so they're going back saying your problems this is what the plan is saying about those issues what do you think and then you know some of us have done work in terms of sort of putting together a dump of a large number of objections suggestions directions but depending on what those communities think somebody helps them articulate it in simple terms and then they are sitting and filing it and somebody's helping to sit and file it so this is what the campaign is doing it would have been ideal if DDA had been doing this that's really I think and and even now I mean I would use this forum to invite the DDA and the NIUA come be part of our community meetings I think people need to see that the makers of the plan are interested in the issues that the people face in the city it's a it's a question of trust it's a question of feeling that this is not a top-down plan that we are involved so that's an opportunity that you that they have and they should take it public meetings that the DDA organized were great but as we all know there is a digital divide public meetings are not online oh webinars yeah webinars are not enough they're not even public meetings we have been assured that you know once the objections and suggestions are filed there will be more sort of meetings to discuss once you know once they organize what comes in through this process but a lot more engagement can happen I'm appalled that in this city even even middle-class people they don't know what the plan is and how it is going to impact their lives going forward and that's not okay especially in a capital city which has so much to offer I mean from your background has Jamma Masjid on it you know it has you know heritage it has you know this this this this huge expanse of long history of different kinds of cities being built here and people don't seem to have that sense of the city so I mean there was so much opportunity to engage which which the plan could have taken up I think people in Delhi feel for their city there is a lot of feeling for Delhi which was untapped in terms of participatory processes. Thank you Upta speaking to us and yeah I think that's very very important I mean as far as engagement with the people is concerned all the best for maybe the league campaign. Thank you so much.