Also:
Technologies | Resources

Lure of City Lights: Evolving a Paradigm of Sustainable Livelihoods

A.K. Das, June 1996

Introduction

Humankind is on a relentless march towards urbanisation. Four decades ago, less than one billion, people lived in and around urban centres. In the industrialised countries, nearly 54 % and in the developing countries about 17% of the population were in urban areas. By 1985, the urban population had doubled. In the next decade, the percentage of urban population stabilised in the advanced countries, but the growth in the urbanisation process continues in the developing countries.

This rate of growth is not uniform globally - there are wide regional variations. The UN forecast for 2020 AD is that 43 % of the population in East Asia and China, 51% in South Asia and Africa and 83% in Latin America will be in cities and towns.

Why do rural people move?

The migration of rural populations into urban centres is caused by enormous dynamic forces - the primary one being the will to survive. The easily identifiable forces are:

1. Environmental scarcities and degradation in the rural belts are responsible for diminishing employment opportunities.
2. Societal oppression including ethnic violence targeting vulnerable, often landless groups.
3. The pull of cities is an irresistible one.

What do cities offer?

It is the poor people who migrate and what do they have to lose in the process? Migrants deserve to be treated in a humane manner. Their right to survival has to be accepted. Their voluntary and at times involuntary influx is in pursuit of fulfillment of their needs. The way to realise all this is through employment by doing jobs, earning a livelihood.

Most of the poor probably have no land, or have lost their land, are unskilled and often illiterate. A segment of rural tradesmen having traditional skills move out since the villages are unable to keep them engaged in their trades gainfully.

In Senegal, for example, nearly 80 % of industrial enterprises, 66 % of salaried employees and 80 % of all doctors are concentrated in the Dakar area which accounts for only 16% of the population. In Pakistan, Karachi generates more than 40% of the industrial value addition, 50% of all Bank deposits and only 6% of the national population live there! In spite of deliberate efforts of some governments in the developing countries towards redressal of the inequalities, the urban centres seem to have the dice heavily loaded in their favour. The investments in health, education, communication, financial institutions have a heavy bias towards the cities. Who can blame the migrants for getting drawn to the cities?

What are the job opportunities?

Cities and urban centres appear to be bursting at the seams all over the developing world. There is not enough drinking water and power, and the sewage system is inadequate. Mountains of solid wastes pile up often creating unsanitary conditions. The influx of migrants imposes great stress on the civic infrastructure and causes general resentment. But, the migrants come to be tolerated because they provide cheap labour, particularly in the domestic and informal sectors.

Nature of migrant settlements

Conceding that some jobs are available and the common man's ingenuity for survival leads to his improvising a living often out of a city's wastes, where do the migrants live? In Cairo, almost one million people live in cemeteries. The slopes of steep hills, river banks, tidal zones, even garbage dumps are converted into habitats. An invisible process of solidarity of the deprived creates settlements on public land - settlements that are not authorised. The settlements grow up in connivance with the lower echelons of the law enforcement agencies and local politicians who have a stake in creating 'votebanks'. Such settlements are often a microcosm of human existence - with all shades of virtues and vices co-existing. It is the seamier side, the darker side of life - crime, violence & brutality, that engages the public attention.

"Yamuna Pushta", one such settlement of nearly five hundred thousand people in Delhi is a classic example. There is no civic institution that can legitimise this settlement. The resources for the minimum infrastructure, healthcare and education necessary for human development are not provided and most of the settlers appear to be condemned to live in sub-human conditions. In the 'habitat spontane' of Ouaguadougou in Burkina Faso, Mathare Valley of Nairobi, the medina in Tudis; gecekondus of Ankara, Turkey, 'urbanizaciones piratas' of Bogota, Columbia, 'pueblos jovenes' of Lima, Peru, it is the same story.

Employment opportunities and globalisation

In developing countries, industrialisation is an ongoing process - the growth in the tertiary sector is its fall-out. Globalisation of trade and opening up of economies have helped developing countries to generate additional job opportunities mostly in the formal production and commercial sectors for the skilled and highly skilled entrants to job markets. Export-driven growth has also thrown open avenues in certain soft sectors where the value-addition is low and the competitive advantages are derived from cheap labour.

Informal sector

It is the informal sector that provides unstructured job opportunities to newly arrived immigrants. The domestic sector absorbs a large number of women who slog for petty compensations over long hours without the strength of an organized body. Child labour may be illegal, but is openly visible in small eating houses, wayside repair shops, in garbage collection - sad evidence of the state's failure to protect the vulnerable; to general insensitivity of the well-off segment of society. Often enough, the children live on the streets, off the streets.

The informal sector is able to absorb the able-bodied in a vast multitude of occupations - cleaners, drivers, loaders, shop assistants, deliverymen, repairmen - of cycles, electrical appliances, and automobiles. There is scope for small enterprises - vendors and hawkers bringing vegetables and fruits to the doorsteps. But, the maximum opportunities are in the construction sector - the backbone of the development process.

Nearly 80 percent of fixed capital formation takes place through construction activities. This sector includes building material producers, small-scale contractors and skilled artisans such as masons, electricians, plumbers, welders, carpenters and along with them unskilled workers as helpers. In the urban centres, the wages of the artisans and unskilled labour are demand-driven and tend to provide the basic necessities of food and clothing. But, a proper 'shelter' for an immigrant is quite unaffordable. Should he/she be allowed to live in a subhuman state or is it possible to upgrade the settlement?

A society's wealth is based on development of human resources - a vastly extendible resource base. The squatters, too, contribute towards functioning of a society. They deserve that little place under the sun and to form 'communities' where they can live over a period of time. These communities have the potential for self-sufficiency and capabilities for generation of livelihoods through enterprises that take care of their needs, particularly shelter needs,

Livelihoods in squatter communities

All squatter settlements comprise make-shift rudimentary structures made with what can be picked up as discards. Over a period of time, the income level of most of the squatter families tend to rise. Legitimization of the settlements motivates them to improve their shelter - the upgradation process is gradual. Enterprises can be set up here to produce alternative inexpensive building materials. The mudwalls can be replaced by compressed earth blocks that will help in creating a stronger structure.

A potential entrepreneur (a small contractor, or an artisan) can buy a machine at a relatively low-cost and employ four to five people to produce these compressed blocks through most of the year except during the months of rain. The roofs can be gradually replaced by alternative affordable material such as micro-concrete tiles that can be produced on a simple vibrator machine. The setting up of the enterprise calls for a small investment of capital which provides excellent returns. The workforce will come from the settlers. A building material shop can come up. Carpenters can set up workshops to produce doors & windows. For the civic administration, it will be an act of wisdom to provide drinking water and community toilets - maybe electricity to those who can afford it. This will lead to creation of more livelihoods, reduced expenditure on health care and an active work force which will be self-reliant and thus gaining in self-respect and dignity.

Artisans such as tailors or seamstresses, can accept job-work and make a living. Weavers, who tend to lose their livelihoods by the invasion of powerlooms, can be encouraged to work in cities and produce high-value cloth for which there always seems to be a good demand for home-use or export. Blacksmiths/ tinsmiths can manufacture energy efficient woodstoves, settlers can be encouraged to use solar cookers for which the outer case can be fabricated by any sheetmetal worker or even by a potter.

Upgradation of settlements

Squatter settlements may not be treated as "ugly sores". A relationship of mutual dependence between the original city dweller and the migrants gets established. Any society that claims to be civilized, is obliged to provide the basic infrastructure for drinking water, appropriate sanitation, roads, elementary healthcare and education and to evolve institutions that can provide small entrepreneurs the capital and settler families credit at reasonable terms for upgrading their shelters. Above all, the communities should be empowered to run their affairs independently within the bounds of law.

Human resource development necessarily calls for capacity building through hands-on experience, classroom learning and apprenticeship. Communities may feel encouraged to organize themselves into a cooperative informal training centre with the help of resident master craftsmen. Perhaps, initial management and funding support can come from the voluntary sector. The migrants must be helped to merge into the mainstream.

Back to the villages?

Simultaneously however, efforts to reverse the urbanisation process must continue. Food production and animal husbandry will be always part of the rural scene. The productivity of land has to be improved and the environment upgraded. Employment opportunities need to be created through biomass based enterprises. China seems to have done it through their 'Spark' programme which over a period of five years helped create "19.1 million rural and Small town enterprises absorbing 100 million people in agriculture-related industry. Their fixed assets reached $50 billion. In 1991 they contributed a quarter of the GNP, shared 20 percent of national export volume. The output of rural enterprises has increased steadily by 28% annually during the decade. 100 million rural people have lifted themselves out of poverty". Escape to cities is to escape from poverty. If the processes that keep poor people poor are attacked and overcome, the poor are likely to stay where they were born!

Finale

The complexity of squatter community settlements must not take away the attention from other areas. The city as a whole has to be provided a healthy environment and services - clean water, clean air, freedom from crime and violence, an accountable law enforcement agency and finally a responsive, honest, humane system of governance. Global perceptions on the various issues do not focus on to a point solution. But, many workable location-specific solutions may emerge. Two weeks of collective wisdom in deliberations at Habitat II ought to produce workable solutions to some of the great complexities of the habitat scenario? We have to wait and see.

Quoted from an article by Jiang Song "Spark Programme and Sustainable Development" in "Reaching the Unreached (Ecotechnology)" Edited by Dr. M.S. Swaminathan.

Also:
Technologies | Resources