Urban Typhoon, Khirkee, New Delhi, was held between November 9 to 16, 2010. This was the 3rd edition of the Urban Typhoon, organized by URBZ in partnership with KHOJ.

The report for the workshop is out! It can be downloaded via these links:

http://urbanlab.org/UrbanTyphoonKhirkee2010.pdf (low resolution – for web)
http://urbanlab.org/UrbanTyphoonKhirkee2010-highres.pdf (high-resolution – for print)

For the URBZ Team, and for all the participants this is a moment to celebrate and reflect.

The focus of each Urban Typhoon is the bringing together of local residents with invited participants – who are interested in the particular neighbourhood – to brainstorm collectively and produce new projections, alternative visions, ideas and solutions for the neighbourhood. The Urban Typhoon can only happen when the practitioners are invited by residents or groups active in a neighbourhood. They are usually connected to a cause or issue that the residents are trying to solve. In Shimokitazawa (Tokyo) and Dharavi’s Koliwada (Mumbai), the residents where opposing a redevelopment project by the authorities which would have reduced the residents autonomy and threatened the identity of the neighbourhood. In Khirkee we were invited by KHOJ, a leading art collective, in the context of their ongoing community arts initiative. Although KHOJ was already dialoguing and working with residents, it was harder than elsewhere to get residents involved before the workshop started. The Urban Typhoon Khirkee thus focused on establishing relationships and starting projects that Khoj could subsequently continue with the help of some of the workshop’s participants. This seems to have happened in different ways.

The fact that KHOJ is an artists collective was particularly significant. Art is central to the workshops. As long as art is defined in a way that includes collective engagements, as long as urban practitioners value the presence of creativity and imagination as fundamentals of living, art is far from incidental. Even in the past, the most successful projects were the one run by artists. We believe that artists often have a very creative way of engaging with the context and people. This is more important than the output. The output will be good if good relationships have been established. Artists and other creative practitioners are essential in an event like Urban Typhoon for these reasons.

We look at knowledge as something that encompasses expression, imagination and experience. Knowledge without these is only an abstraction. Subsequently, knowledge exchange happens at ALL levels in these workshops. Of course, there is also knowledge production. The Urban Typhoon produces new ways of looking at familiar places for residents. A new context puts the previous experience of the invited guests in a new perspective and allows them to get deeply immersed in an environment that they may have otherwise overlooked or ignored. They learn about the place and experiment with their practices. The most interesting knowledge creation happens when local residents and guests find a common ground to discuss local issues and understand how they are related to larger issues affecting everyone. When communication channels of this kind are opened and activated knowledge starts flowing both ways and new knowledge is produced through a creative process.

In each workshop, a local group’s involvement with the locality is extremely important – especially as they continue to engage with each other in real time and presence. Without the involvement of local groups the workshop becomes superficial. Local groups allow Urban Typhoon to connect with an ongoing history of the neighborhood, local activism or local interventions. It also allows activities and relationships that were started during the Urban Typhoon to continue afterward. This gives great meaning to the event. We were particularly happy to do this with Khoj, because we knew the team would make sure the activities continued and the relationships sustained.

The workshops are collaborative. As long as the projects and participants agree on collective authorship, with individuals and groups signing within their acceptable zones of comfort, whatever the arguments, discussions, conflicts and complexities that emerge are never a problem.

URBZ sees itself as a hackivists group who aims at understanding the complexities of the system (at the level of a neighbourhood in the case of Urban Typhoon) and plug-in “devices” (events, interventions, projects) that subvert the system and modify the output. This type of intervention draws its social meaning through inclusiveness and crowd-sourcing. It also confronts conflicts creatively.

Conflicts are part of the workshop at the levels of process and output. But they are never a hassle. They help generate fresh perspectives as we saw in this workshop too. What remains unsolved are not being able to put processes for follow up on certain projects that had high expectations into place. These include the road and sewage project.

In Khirkee it was harder to get local residents involved. And this therefore become the focus of the whole workshop: “how do we engage?” The insider/outsider problematic became larger than necessary mainly because of the doubts and guilt of some of the outsiders who feared that the workshop may become exploitative of the context. Through discussion, we would address this and engage the issues as meaningfully as possible. The larger proportion of artists also helped create a high quality output and presented it in a whole new way. We made it clear that no PowerPoint presentation should be used for the final day presentation and that they would need to take place in the street. This was a great success, which did produce nice connections with passersby and by stimulating many questions and discussions.

The workshop tried its best to be multilingual and inclusive. It valued co-creation between guests and local residents the most. Urban Typhoon’s methodology has always been one of inclusiveness, of other approaches and methods as well. Even if a participating team had a strongly top-down approach. This has happened in the past, especially with architects who often find it the hardest to connect with the community. We try not to be ideological about things. But in the end we can clearly see the type of output that has been produced through different approaches and our experience is that in the context of the Urban Typhoon, the teams which have been able to bring together people from different backgrounds and perspectives into common projects are the most innovative and successful ones.

At Khirkee, people across disciplines worked together in many projects. We only wish that more local residents would have joined the workshop from the beginning. Fortunately, the workshop came to them and integrated them in many different and creative ways.

In terms of follow-up we are very much looking forward to working with Khoj on specific project ideas that the workshop generated. A few participants have continued the work they have started during the workshop with the support of Khoj.

All the photos taken during the workshop are available here.

The report was compiled and designed by Karin Andersson.

From managing displaced people during Delhi’s biggest urban resettlement program – the partition of the Indian subcontinent in  1947- to routinely displacing its workers and citizens in the name of beautification, development projects or pure spectacle, India’s capital city has a poor track record of humane urban administration.

Sawda-Ghevra, a resettlement colony for erstwhile jhuggi-jhopdi (poor home) residents from an assortment of neighbourhoods in Delhi, is a story that has been documented and commented upon for several years now. It is a well-known fact that every Indian city depends on neighbourhoods of poor workers to provide cheap services and goods to middle class residents, for economic production and street-based retailing. The live-work economy of these settlements manages to keep costs down by reducing commuting expenses.

Sawda Ghevra is divided in three parts: Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3. Phase 3 is 4 years old, Phase 2 is 2 years old and no one has been resettled in Phase 3 yet. Photo mHS.

However rather than integrating them into the fabric of the larger neighbourhood and improving civic amenities, most urban administrations see them as squatters who must be eliminated from the surroundings to make way for larger projects.. Add to this is the exploitation of civic insecurities of these residents by politicians – who present these resettlement projects as if they are grand gestures of charity or favours when in reality it puts the residents into greater nets of insecurity – the most obvious one being the fracture of their living and working environments.

The Sawda-Ghevra resettlement colony was carved out of mustard and wheat fields on the border of Delhi and Haryana. The farmers sold off fields at rates they were dissatisfied with. The quality of water below the sold fields were highly saline and undrinkable and the tiny plots carved out for each family was the site of much despair in the early days of their relocation. Several families speak about battalions of police men and women who came with official eviction notices and sent them off packing in the middle of what was then nowhere. Sometimes in the middle of the harshest of winter and cold rain and with literally nothing covering their heads.

Over time each family built a tiny home brick by brick against a frenzy of constant speculation of their deeds, sales and resale’s, bartering off tiny shaves of profits, controlled by local land-controlling leaders. Those who eventually remained behind started to make a neighbourhood against all odds. With literally nothing around them except for fields which they had no access to, they brought with them their skills and resources and created a mirror image of the urban village that they used to occupy. The ‘rural city’ that thus emerged had shops and services that largely bartered with each other and over some time they began to connect with regions and neighbourhoods around to create a semblance of an economic map, which they could plug into.

Sawda Ghevra residents are not allowed to use their plot to open businesses (although this cannot possibly be enforced). Plots are either 12.5 sqm or 18 sqm and can only go as high as ground + 2.5. Photo mHS.

Sawda-Ghevra repeats a story that has happened in several neighbourhoods all over Delhi when they were in the periphery of the city on cheap land. Mongolpuri and Sultanpuri are some examples. Now very much within the main urban fabric these neighbourhoods in some way  represent the future of Sawda-Ghevra. Since the resettled people are one of the most industrious and hardworking components of the population they regenerated those neighbourhoods by infusing them with economic energy and one can see that pattern emerging in locality after locality over the years.

We were invited by our friends Rakhi and Marco of Micro Home Solutions (mHS), a very interesting multidisciplinary social enterprise start-up in Delhi that has done much work in the resettlement colonies of Mangolpuri and Sultanpuri and who are on their way to starting work in Sawda-Ghevra too. Their attempt is to help residents rebuild their homes into structurally sound low-rise, high-density structures for each family plot so that they could expand their economic bandwidth through rentals, retail or manufacture in the additional spaces generated. They explicitly keep a distance from an NGO approach of charity or indirect market transactions and work with a sensitive professional mindset  through which they partner with finance institutions who give loans to each house client, while micro home solutions itself provides technical assistance and ground level support. mHS works with local masons and are genuinely interested in intervening in a sustainable manner and establishing long term relationships with the localities in which they work.

The government is providing water via water tankers since it has not yet been able to implement water pipes. Toilets have been built but they are still not opened. Open drains have been set up but are not connected. The planning of Sawda Ghevra is a total disaster. Photo mHS.

We felt that given the existing scenario in places like Sawda-Ghevra, interventions such as these are creative ways of helping regenerate such neighbourhoods. Especially when they grow roots and engage with issues of livelihoods. Home improvement projects, done outside the framework of pure charity, and with a socio-economic objective in mind can repair some of the violence that has been wired into their history.

One aspect of mHS work that we appreciate the most is that they do provide a very concrete and viable alternative to the construction of mass housing for the poor, which as we have seen in Mumbai are environmentally and economically unsustainable. By dislocating the place of life and work, SRA type redevelopment projects, which are so typical in Mumbai put a great stress on the transport infrastructure as they produce more commuters. Micro homes, which integrate spaces of work and are well connected to the street economy seem to be far more viable on the longer run at all levels.

Julia Gutge
Paroj Banerjee
Claudia Roselli
Suruchi Dumpawar

The patchwork group investigated the social configuration in Kirkhee and in its neighborhoods, trying to catch the true composition of the area. By meeting and interviewing inhabitants, collecting objects and stories, the group aimed at understanding the real or the narrated image of Khirkee. The result includes an emotional map, a photo give-away and an interactive book, together telling the story of Khirkee.

The Emotional book.

Julia Gutge
Paroj Banerjee

The idea was to create a map of Khirkee. But not an ordinary just geographical map. We wanted to create  a  map,  that  is  connected  to  the  people  in  Khirkee. A map, that is  full of stories  and emotions … So we went out and talked to people we met in different places all over Khikee: In the  streets,  in  their  shops  or  in  their  homes.  All of  them  were  really  surprised  that  a  team  of  exotic  looking  people  with  cameras  and  notebooks  want  to  talk  to  them.  But  after  the  first  seconds  of  irritation  and  thinking  “what  do  they  want  from  me?”  the  conversation  somehow  gets  a  natural  flow.

After a little regular  talk,  there  were  two  main  questions.  We asked everybody:  One  “colour question” and one  “object question”.  The  “colour question” was about the clue,    that  we  wanted  to  find  out  what  colour  the  people  associate  with  Khirkee.  It was not so easy to answer, because the question is quite abstract, but after some moments  of  thinking  people  answered  pretty  interesting  associations.  For example:  “Green, because many  Muslims  are  living  in  Khrikee  and green  is  the  colour  of  their  religion”, “Red,  because  the  fort  is  red  and  I  can  see  the  fort  everyday out  of  my  window”,  “Grey,  because  everything  is  so  dirty  in  here” or  “Brown,  because  Khirkee means  window  frame  and  window  frames  are  usually  brown”. With this  information  of  the people we were finally able to create an emotional patchwork map with the colours they told us. 

The “object question” was about the clue, that we wanted to find out what object, can be a symbol  of  the  peoples  connection  to  Khirkee.  Here again  the  people  had  to  think  a  while,  but  then  they  give us really interesting objects. For  example:  A  man  we  gives  us  a  piece  of  kohl,  because  he  is  working  as  an  ironing  man  and  he  uses  the  kohl  daily  for  his  iron. And another  man  gives  us  a  chip  for  playing  computer  games,  because  he  owns  a  small  shop,  were  children  can  play  computer  games.  A  young girl  we  interviewed  gives  us  a  picture  of  her  family  picture,  because  she  lives  together  with  her  family  in  Khirkee.  And  the  owner  of  a  little  paper  recycling  shop  gives  us  a  piece  of  newspaper,  which  symbolize  his  work  in Khirkee.

At  the  presentation  day  we  hang  out  all  our  collected  things  in  the  street.  The patchwork  piece,  which  had  coloured  pieces  of  fabrics  and  quotes  from  the  interview  on  it. And under  a  construction  site,  we  hang  some  mobile  pieces.  On the  mobile  pieces  you  could  see  the  interview  texts, photos and the objects.

Facing Khirkee.

Julia Gutge.

“Facing Khirkee” is a photo project which tries to face Khirkee in the way of a portrait series. When I walked around in the small streets and entered hidden yards during the “Urban Typhoon workshop” I met many interesting people and started to interact with them. All together I clicked over 100 portraits; the ones you see down there are just some of them. As a resume I can just say: “Muchco Khirkee log bahut passand hai!”

Imagine Kirkhee.

Claudia Roselli

“Imagine Kirkee” is an interactive notebook containing stories discovered during walks around Kirkee and Hauz Rani Village, histories of informal workers that are interconnected economically with the Saket Mall – as formal and informal economies have always a silent or hidden dialogue. Interactive because, there describe some performative and participatory process to do with the local people, aimed to re-contextualize the symbolic role of the Majid and to give a possible interpretation of a nowhere land between the neighborhood and the shopping mall.

Each book cover is unique, because made by fabric pieces gifted to me by the local workers after the interviews that I made. The pages of the books are composed by words and images picked up during the exploratory drift around the neighborhood. It’s a collection of spots, private views inside a hidden work place, where the sounds of the stitching machines are the work’s rhythm: a starting point for thoughts on the contemporary Kirkhee urban composition. It can be an instrument for play with the imagination, rather to prove the possibility to create performative ideas with the Khirkee inhabitants all around the neighborhood.

Tools utilized:

Free walks – Free meetings – Informal interviews – Collection of objects and histories  – Images – Observation

- Example of per-formative actions useful as a dialogue with all the people that live in the neighborhood -

What it’s the MOSQUEE today?

This performance is thought to be acted on the Khirkee streets and on their closest places and spaces. I printed post cards, one side an ironic question in what is the real meaning of Mosque today, and on the other side all white space, as a blank supports that can contain all kind of expressions. It creates a possibility to play with words or drawings, regarding the future interpretation for the Khirkee Masjid. Giving the possibility to the inhabitants to express themselves by different tools, not only verbal one, that they usually use during the committee of the Resident Welfare Association. The sentence, the question on the post cards will be translated in Hindi, Urdu and English.

Distribute the small cards all around the neighborhood, asking the people to draw, write or represent their opinions, or their imaginative ideas/desires for the space of the Masjid. After the distribution of the cards, fixed an “appointment” inside the Masjid, inviting people to come there. The date will be an appointment to talk personally regarding different opinions and a performative interaction to discover the architectural spaces inside the monument.

The public situation will be thought for:

- creating an open discussion between people.

- decontextualize the place of the Masjid, across a real action that can revitalized the space.

What did you imagine for this land?

PLAY WITH THE IMAGINATION (for the land in between)

There is a land “in between” the Saket mall and the Khirkee neighborhood.

To set up an open discussion with the people aims to create a participatory action and talk, I thought to print different postcards, with the imagines of this piece of land and the question:

- What do you imagine for this land? -

The activity is thought to made for awaken the possibility to imagine for the local people, to understanding their real needs and necessities and to create a real project suitable for this area, able to better respond to the future sustainable development of this place.

At the end, collect all the postcards and creating a public dialogue with the people. As there is a project thought for this area: parking and a series of small shops, the participatory play with the local people, will be an instrument to “check the pulse of the idea”, for collect new impressions. As this land  “in between” will have really a strategic point, for the people who live there as hinge zone among the Saket city mall and the urban village of Khirkee

Process of making “Imagine Kirkhee”

Each unique cover-board, made by different pieces of fabrics that the artisans gave to me as a material element of their work, represent the uniqueness of the hand made work “made in Kirkhee and in Hauz Rani”. The aim is to develop a real relation with objects born in Kirkhee, a strong relation between true objects and place, to develop the sense of belonging in the neighborhood. To strengthen the place’s local identity instead of suffocating and destroying it as the slow process of gentrification aims to do.  The interactive book can be utilized by people as a diary to write sensations and change on the neighborhood.

Searching for the windows

Bhupendra Devre
Jit Ray
Malini Kochupillai
Sytse de Maat

The treasure hunt leads its participants all over Khirkee. Photos taken by the kids of the village are the clues given, that act as guide through the urban landscape, revealing new places and sites to those willing to take on the challenge. Through he kids´ eyes we get to know their village and its many winding roads.

The treasure hunt.

download the treasure hunt folder

Khirkee Ki Khoj is a treasure hunt. Khirkee Ki Khoj is a journey through Khirkee village along Route 1 and through Khirkee Extension along Route A. Khirkee Ki Khoj is not your usual hunt for treasure, it does not promise pots of gold buried under a tree. There may be treasure along the way, or maybe at the beginning, or even at the end. The process remains traditional – one clue leads you to the next!

Khirkee Ki Khoj gives you pictorial clues of popular chai wallas, stylish barbers, the best samosa shops, sreet galleries showing the works of up and coming local photographers, clothing boutiques selling the latest fashions, candy stores, and mobile shops with the latest in cell phone technology- all run by proud inhabitants of Khirkee. Khirkee Ki Khoj leads you to discover the hidden alleys, friendly neighbors, tasty treats, the real treasures of Khirkee.

Kids´ photo project.

Download the folder on kids´ photo project

What better way to learn about a neighborhood than from the kids who play in it! With this simple idea, the Khirkee Ki Khoj team set out to first familiarize ourselves, and then map out the treasure hunt with kids who live in the village and the extension. With our cameras in hand, the kids took us around to the places around Khirkee that are important to them, a school that they wish they attended, the shop owned by their friends’ family, the reasonably priced grocery store their families frequent, among others.  Ankur and Rishi, who have participated in a number of Khoj’s initiatives, were super excited to be taking  the pictures for a change, and were exceptionally quick to pick up the basics of using a very complicated camera! We plan to continue this exchange of learning about Khirkee as we teach kids the basics of photography to keep up the momentum of the Urban Typhoon workshop.

Rahul Srivastava
Matias Echanove
Jose “Cole” Abasolo
Aastha Chauhan
Andi

This project was initiated during the Urban Typhoon Khirkee (Nov 9-16) by members of URBZ, KHOJ and independent participants. It looks at ways to rebuild the road in front of KHOJ in a sustainable way, while involving the residents and stakeholders.

Interaction during the final day presentation.

Content:

1. Road & Water crisis

2. Interviews

3. Moving Ahead

4. Possibilities

5. Action plan

1. Road & Water crisis

Khirkee Extension, August 2010 (Photo: KHOJ)

Civic facilities like water, electricity and sewage came very late in the day, almost towards the latter half of the 1990s.  Residents had already got used to ad hoc connections and retrofitting of infrastructure but without any confidence or coordination. As a result, homes have water connections installed all over the streets, the sewage pipe laid a few years ago is inadequate and not well laid out. All of this got compounded when the Municipal Corporation of Delhi broke the sewage connection linking the pipes to the main grid and hastily fitted it back but with the alignment all wrong.

Ever since, the roads in Khirkee extension are logged with sewage water at the tiniest of showers causing all kinds of health crisis for the residents. Rainwater drains have been cemented over, a rainwater pit has been filled up and cemented. The habit of clogging drains with rubble and harsh dry garbage have inevitably compounded the problems many times over.

In the past 10 years the road has been redone and destroyed 4 or 5 times. We tried to understand why. It is clearly not just a technical issue. The road could never be repaired and maintained without the active support and involvement of the people living alongside it. The people themselves are a widely diverse lot. They are mostly tenants or new residents who have moved into flats built hurriedly by builders making a quick buck. There are few landlords who have made some attempts to improve the situation and seem ready to come together to rebuild the road but are not necessarily willing to explore long-term solutions to the water and drainage issues.

The road issue is linked to the water system. The pipes under the road are completely plugged during the rainy season and used water comes back up to the surface and inundates the road. Last July-August going to the KHOJ office meant walking through sewage. The shopkeepers were particularly affected since no business could happen. The stagnant sewage water became a breeding ground for mosquitoes. The three queens: Malaria, Chikungunya and Dengue are endemic in Khirkee. Many people told us how they had been sick for long stretches of time, including colleagues at KHOJ.

Historically, the water problem emerged with water pumps, which suddenly meant that more water was getting consumed and that evacuation had to be organized more systematically. Masterji, an elderly resident who knows Khirkee since pre-independence days said that before water pipes and pumps were installed no drainage system was needed. Consumption of water and the waste generated was of a lower intensity and quality.

Khirkee, being an “unauthorized colony”, the authorities are not taking any responsibility regarding the water system. Whatever exists now has been built by groups of residents (it is a user-generated water-system of sorts). The water comes from the municipality but the pipes have been installed locally. Since then many new 6 to 7 stories-high buildings have emerged along the road, substantially increasing water consumption. The existing sewage pipes, which were laid down fifteen odd years ago, have become too small to take the load produced by the new high-rises. To add to the problem all kinds of plastic waste and rubble that is thrown on the streets ends its journey in the pipes which block it further.

Since the pipes are below the ground they are much harder to clean. To clean them someone must go below the road through a manhole and manually remove some of the junk plugging the pipe. The rest is pumped out by a machine. However, according to some of the residents, trying to unplug the blocks in the sewage with high pressure pumps may cause pipes to burst.

There are several suggestions being made which we will factor in our research and action: to retrace the water flows through older well systems and use them to absorb rain and storm waters, thus easing the pressure on the sewage and other systems; having regular clean ups of the sewage, plugging the points of entry of dry and rough garbage so that systems do not get clogged, so on and so forth.

2. Interviews

Collage produced by Cole during the Urban Typhoon Workshop

During the Urban Typhoon workshop, we recorded testimonies from the street residents about the road and water issues. We asked them for specific solutions and ways to maintain the street. In the process we have collected invaluable knowledge that should inform any new road project.  Here are some quotations from the people we interviewed.

Context:

“The road was built 4 times in 15 years and it has been raised to 5 feet.”

“Electricity is being put underground… They will come back again and dig the road to install the cables.”

“Not everyone in the neighbourhood has a regular water and electricity line and will continue to destroy the road to build their line and connection.”

“Just yesterday someone fixed a new water connection.”

“Trucks cant be stopped… there are businesses…”

“My tube well is poisonous.”

“Sewer was blocked in the DDA grounds where the parking is done… And then the rubble was put in it and that’s how the choking took place.”

“Now builders dump their rubble in the drains and pipes…”

Cooperation:

“We have to do things on our own.”

“Everyone must sit together… Many of us are willing to do it ourselves…”

“Everyone must contribute according to their capacity and financial strength.”

“Economic cooperation was done in the past.”

“The landlord is important. He has to take the responsibility.”

“Tenants are too poor… Landlords uninterested.”

“Help us all becoming civically responsible.”

“We must know each other’s neighbours.”

“Collectively appoint a sweeper… and cleaner”

Technicalities:

“Sewage line is shared with the mall. But the main pipe is higher then ours, that’s why ours gets logged.”

“Road should be made after the drainage system is organized.”

“Water clogging has always been there. Sewage is overloaded.”

“My water comes from Jamna Vihar pipeline.”

“People must stop throwing garbage.”

“Earlier the water used to drain into the soil… but now they have put rubble and mud and stopped its porosity.”

“We must revive a soak pit near the temple…”

“We can use the old tube wells to absorb rainwater… they are very deep.”

“We could raise the road and then make a slope.”

“We have to redo the manhole.”

“Water and Drainage must be separate.”

“Sewage must be attached to the main sewage pipeline.”

“Now there is no place for a rainwater soak pit. The one Pradeep had made is plugged.”

“If we clean storm water drains then many problems will be solved.”

“One must use existing manholes to separate water and drainage.”

“You cannot put a new sewer. Its too costly.”

3. Moving Ahead

Final day presentation of the Urban Typhoon workshop in Khirkee Extension.

The memory of the “failure” of earlier attempts to improve the roads cast a thick shadow over the existing post-monsoon crisis and acted as a huge discouragement to all those making attempts at improving the situation. In the earlier cases, the newly done up roads were dug up by shoddy official jobs to relay pipes, individual water connections or in one case, stealing of tiles and blocks that made up the road. Today the direct stakeholders are the residents (tenants and owners), landlords and business owners and renters along the streets.

At first sight, the level of discouragement is palpable in the street. An attempt at gathering a community meeting on the road and water issues during the Urban Typhoon workshop miserably failed as no one showed up. However, as the workshop went on, we realized that the failure was not to blame on what appeared to be an exceedingly high level of apathy. The meeting was conveyed on a Monday at 10AM in the morning, a time when shopkeepers are busy starting the day. It may have sent the message that the meeting was actually not aimed at them but at the landlords who can afford to spend time in such a meeting. The form of the “meeting” itself is not ideal to bring together residents and shopkeepers, who anyway are in a precarious situation and do not feel they have a strong voice. The final presentation of the workshop, which was held in the street and throughout the evening saw massive amount of people gathering in front of a map of the road. People started writing on the map and many have said that they would like to participate in the project.

In many ways, this moment is our starting point for a longer project, which will be multifaceted. Issues of community participation and collective maintenance of road and water system are deeply enmeshed with technical and financial issues. Technical questions of the sewage and water management are difficult to resolve, especially as they are compounded by official apathy by evoking the unauthorized status of the neighbourhood. Finance is clearly an issue as it always tends to be and leadership is another – given the fact that the authorities themselves are lethargic. However, after starting a series of dialogues with landlords on the one hand and technical experts on the other, we don’t feel that these are insurmountable problems. We also have no reason to believe that attempts at civic transformation in Khirkee village are impossible.

It is easy to see the community as divided in terms of ownership patterns, and surely the more humble establishments feel they cannot contribute beyond basic civic responsibilities towards any attempts at improvement of the roads. However, we know of landlords who are plainly disinterested in the upkeep of their own properties and tenants who take a lot of interest in doing so. It is also easy to say that the migratory quality of the population makes them less invested in improvement. Moreover, we have come across many well-established settlements, which are rich and connected by familial and ethnic ties, but are also deeply divided and dysfunctional in the upkeep of common property.

The biggest obstacle to any transformation is the use of a simplistic understanding that such moves must be ‘community’ attempts where notions of community are coloured by ideas of uniform, collective responses and obedient civic action on behalf of everyone. The “absence” of the community is often cited as a reason for an ineffective collective response. We believe that the migratory nature of the population, its divided residents in terms of ownership and tenant status are not insurmountable obstacles. We have seen many examples where migrant communities have revived decaying neighbourhoods that had been abandoned by long-term residents.

Those who feel the most about the issues, or suffer the most, could take leadership and put in resources to start the process. The idea that everyone can give his or her contribution in proportion to capability is also a good way of balancing the leadership and community participation equation. This is the issues that more than any other needs to be addressed with adequate time and resources.

Reflecting and researching through all these questions we have come out with some tentative suggestions and possibilities to improve the situation of ‘Hamari Sadak, Khirkee Extension’.

4. Possibilities

1. Localised System: Creating a decentralized system of water and sewage management following the suggestions of Ashish Ganju who advocates the use of ‘digestors’ – bio-mechanisms of sewage treatment that help in absorbing sewage into the local ecology. This would be accompanied by rejuvenating the existing water storage facilities including tube wells, to absorb excess rainwater.

Pros: It is off the main grid for drainage and self-sufficient.

Cons: It needs heavy maintenance – almost on a daily basis and it is expensive

2. Grid Connection: Reworking the sewage and drainage system through redesign and new infrastructure.

Pros: It will be a stable system with weekly maintenance.

Cons: Standard and expensive.

3. Cleaning and Repair: Clean the sewages every six months, stop garbage and rubble getting into the drains, open up the storm water drains so that the monsoon related water logging is controlled.

Pros: It is effective and comparatively reasonably priced.

Cons: May not be able to withstand more growth and may become expensive in the long run.

4. Coping strategies: Mosquito nets, spraying of stagnant water. Temporary arrangements to clean up sewage and drains before and during the monsoons.

Pros: Very cheap and fairly easy to implement.

Cons: Short term and not sustainable.

5. Hybrid: Implement/restore a local rainwater drainage system while the grid connection gets repaired and maintained. The road should allow for people to access the water pipes and clean the drainage easily.

Pros: Could get the best of each idea and create a semi-autonomous system

Cons: May be difficult to implement and costly

5. Action plan

Mural prepared by Cole for the last day presentation. Visit flickr.com/urbzoo to see the whole image.

1. Document the local knowledge about the physical history of the street.

2. Find out the most active residents and proactive establishments (irrespective of their status).

3. Organize events that bring the neighbourhood together through events with the active residents. These have to be creative and social events and not serious political meetings. The serious agendas should always centre on fundraising.

4. Encourage active residents to take on specific tasks with regard to fundraising through cultural events and political support.

5. Develop annual plans with the groups and committees formed.

6. Start implementing plans that the leadership, in consultation with the residents feel will tackle the road and sewage problem most effectively.

7. Take part in the Khirkee Resident Welfare Association Actively.

8. Lobby with state government on grounds of health and quality of life for higher up support.