On 17th January 2013 residents (312 families) of the slum known as ‘Indira Nagar Gharkul’ in Miraj dismantled their homes and relocated to their transition site to allow the land to be redeveloped under the Integrated Housing and Slum Development Program (IHSDP). Once construction is complete the capacity of this site will more than double as Shelter Associates proposed site layout, which has been sanctioned by the Government of India and approved by the local governments town planning department, shows that 651 residential units can be accommodated here in 21 four storey buildings.
The residential units will provide the beneficiaries with a kitchen, bedroom, hall, bathroom, and individual toilet and will be accommodated in medium rise buildings to eliminate the requirement for lifts which frequently break down and require maintenance. The houses will also be integrated into the municipal water, drainage and electricity networks and will be leases to a cooperative society on a 99 year lease basis.
In addition to improving the quality of life and providing security of tenure to the resident of Indira Nagar Gharkul the extra housing stock will be used to accommodate people in the vicinity of Indira Nagar Gharkul who live in slums on land with is undevelopable (land with development plan reservations, land which floods, or land affected by road-widening projects).
The strategy at this site is in keeping with Shelter Associates city-wide vision for the IHSDP in Sangli & Miraj, which impressed the Government of India in 2009 and lead to changes in the most recent national slum rehabilitation policy ‘Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY)’. The strategy is to develop land which can be used for slum rehabilitation purposes, to a higher density to provide new housing (with security of tenure) not only for the slum communities which occupy those site but also to other slum communities in the vicinity who are in a much more vulnerable situation and are at risk of eviction to the outskirts of the city which pushes them deeper into poverty.
