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Promotion of Innovative Building Materials and Technology through Micro-Enterprises

Shrashtant Patara, January 1998

Shelter conditions in India have deteriorated steadily over the last 50 years. While the privileged few have access to better housing in terms of design, technology and delivery systems, the vast majority continue to live in sub-standard conditions with no link to these necessary supports.

Housing statistics, official or otherwise, confirm that the number of families that are homeless or living in structures that need upgradation is likely to be approximately 30 million by the turn of the century.

There are three basic premises upon which the thoughts contained in this article are written:Government programs, in their present form, cannot close the housing gap. Measures taken to strengthen entrepreneurial activity in local building economies will have the maximum and most sustainable impact on shelter conditions.Voluntary agencies can play a crucial catalytic role in transferring sustainable building technology packages to rural micro-enterprises.

Housing is a people’s programme

People build homes, they do not consume housing. The best evidence of this is that over 95 per cent of addition to housing stock is through non-formal building material producers and village masons. Therefore, the ultimate objectives of any initiative aimed at improving shelter conditions on a large scale, particularly those that are designed to enhance supply of cost-effective building material through the promotion of technology, should be:

• Continuous research and development work on sustainable building technology packages that enable decentralised production and marketing in a profitable manner
• Capacity building in local institutions to create economically and ecologically sustainable enterprises that supply building material and construction services and create meaningful employment.
• The conversion of people’s need for shelter into economic demand.

Even though these three conditions may seem obvious to planners, practitioners and administrators the fact is that over the last five decades, government has supported research institutions that isolate R & D from economic reality, paid scant attention to the second and actually worked against achieving the third by portraying housing as a welfare measure.

Limitations of government initiatives

Government action over the years has been extremely well intentioned. Rural housing has been a high priority area with regular increases in budgetary support, improved programmes, more effective implementation and much closer monitoring. Sadly however, all of its efforts put together have not had much impact on shelter conditions. Even positive estimates show that they do not account for more than 5 per cent of addition to housing stock. We must ask ourselves why and understand the underlying reasons that prevent these programmes from being more meaningful.

Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that despite the enormous advantage that the government has because of its widespread reach, existing infrastructure and human resources, its programmes are limited to target oriented scheme-based supply of houses. Awas Yojanas (housing schemes):

• Are highly dissipative with high overhead costs.
• Are rarely innovative with in-built resistance to the use of sustainable technology.
• Are not participative; beneficiaries have no say in design or technology choice.
• Adopt rigid management and financing structures.

Above all, the most significant shortcoming is that government schemes do not have the capacity to penetrate local building economies. There are no components within these schemes that make contact with and provide catalytic input to the real builders in India- people themselves.

Infinite potential of enterprise

It is vitally important that government initiatives in housing begin to reach and strengthen the vast number of non-formal building material producers, masons and small contractors who are in fact, the only means available to the poor and low-income groups for improved shelter. When developed into micro-enterprises, they are the best and perhaps only means to deliver building material and pre-fabricated elements on a widespread, decentralised scale at a rate that actually closes the housing gap. These builders have distinct advantages:

• They are efficient with low operating costs, that need not be subsidised.
• They work with products, building technologies and design that reflect local priorities of their users.
• They maximise the use of meagre material and energy resources with very little waste or leakage.
• They use innovative management and financing methods and, what may be most important, they have the ability to draw family income and savings into the building economy.

One may, on the other hand, legitimately ask why, with all these advantages, the building material producers and village masons have not been able to provide adequate shelter. The answer is that they also have serious shortcomings, the biggest being that they do not have the capacity to meet increased and changing demand from a depleted and significantly altered resource base. They cannot conduct their own research and development or invest in new technology packages and tools. Moreover, they operate in extremely depressed market conditions where people prefer to wait for housing benefits from the government.

These are shortcomings that the government can help remove by reorienting government effort and funding from just house building to technical, institutional and financial support for enterprise-based sustainable production systems within existing housing programmes. This shift in approach will revitalise housing processes.

Technological, institutional and financial supports

What are the characteristics of the technology options institutional networks and financial measures required to bring about change?

Technology options, in the form of complete packages, must :

• Be more cost effective to users than existing building systems of similar performance.
• Utilise materials, the availability of which can be sustained economically and ecologically.
• Utilise locally available renewable energy sources.
• Be deliverable through existing or easily trained manpower. Be income generating and locally manageable.

These characteristics can be ensured by careful selection and upgradation of alternative building technologies.

Institutional Networks should accomplish the following tasks:technology identification, development of technology package,production of equipment, manuals and other software,dissemination of technology to potential entrepreneurs,co-ordination.

These activities can be divided between government agencies, R&D groups, building centres, the private sector, voluntary agencies, Council for Advancement of People’s Action and Rural Technology (CAPART) and non-governmental organizations.

Organizations such as the Development Alternatives Group, with in house innovation-production-marketing links and a strong business orientation, are the best suited for technology identification and development, production and marketing of equipment including training. Grassroots voluntary agencies are best suited for disseminating technology, especially to rural areas.

Financial Measures taken by government and other external funding agencies should:

• Support technology identification and development.
• Promote production of equipment and material with capital assistance.
• Support market development activity.
• Give soft loans to entrepreneurs identified and trained by local voluntary organizations.
• Provide initial markets to material producers in the form of housing projects managed by local voluntary organizations.

Micro Concrete Roofing technology

The example of Micro-Concrete Roofing (MCR) technology offers a case study. The MCR tile, a product of R&D for the poor, offers the lowest cost pucca roof in India: quarter the cost of Reinforced Cement Concrete and half the cost of Asbestos Cement Concrete sheets when laid over local wood understructure. Extremely versatile MCR can cater to a variety of market segments on steel understructure or even as a cladding material. It is produced locally, and is environmentally sound.

The technology package creates building material and local jobs. A micro-enterprise can install a unit for only Rs 90,000, produce roofing material for 300 dwellings every year, provide seven jobs and get full return on investment in just 18 months. There are more than 120 units already operational, 85 of which are private businesses, with the rest being operated or supported by local voluntary agencies.

To date, over five million tiles have been installed on roofs in two years. This represents roughly 400,000 square metres of improved roofing and approximately Rs 90 million worth of goods and services bought by people without any subsidies.

The number of enterprises and their impact could have been much more with government support to:

• Finance the setting up of units in every small town and slum.
• Provide initial markets within the government housing schemes and action on the part of voluntary agencies to identify and establish entrepreneurs and motivate the beneficiaries of government housing schemes to adopt MCR roofing.

These tiles would then reach every village and town and people could build their own homes without large bureaucratic or financial interventions by the government. If the concepts outlined earlier are extended to other building systems and are incorporated in government support packages, such as those being offered by the Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council, HUDCO, CAPART, DST and Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment, voluntary organizations will be responsible for not just building a given number of houses but entrusted with a much larger task: that of ensuring the establishment and profitable operation of micro-enterprises. Or, in other words, the creation of sustainable livelihoods within building economies that can draw local resources to create durable assets and improve upon our built environment.

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