Research proposal on Housing Project Mumbai

Introduction

Population is one of the critical factors of development. According to the United Nations (UN) 2015 Report there are 7.3 billion people living in the world. The increasing trend of population growth has caused many challenges for the countries like India. China (1.4 billion) and India (1.3 billion) being most populated countries representing the world population with 19 and 18 percent respectively. However the utmost importance is a need of balance between the population growth and the healthy India.

With the increase in population there is a great stress on housing. The UN habitat report indicates that by the 2030 about 40% of world population needs a proper housing and other basic necessities in the infrastructure. India as being one of the highly populated regions of the world also suffers from less housing problems. In the present study, the problem of fewer dwellings in India’s most populated city the greater Bombay will be highlighted. Bombay is in the west coast of India, comprising of seven marshy Islands. The total population according to the 2011 census is 16.4 million (Watmough et al., 2016). The total slum population statistics in 2011 census revealed that out of 40.3 million people of the country population living in slums, 2.4 million people lives in Bombay in the Maharashtra state. These people live under the poverty line with deteriorating living conditions (Panagariya and Mukim, 2014).

The present study will highlight issues that led people to live in these slums and also suggest certain mitigating strategies in order to improve the living standards of these people with proper design of these houses. The major cause of the people in slums includes rural to urban migration in search of job and the poor planning by the government, colonisium, urban poverty, segregation, social exclusion, political problems and natural disasters. The housing options for theses people in India includes, Chawls; Patra chawls, Zopadpattis (squatter housing); and pavement dwellings (Patel, d’Cruz and Burra, 2002; Panagariya and Mukim, 2014). The people living in these Chawls; Patra chawls and pavements have various health issues. Both communicable and non- communicable diseases are cause of concern while most common diseases reported are dysentery, cholera, malaria, jaundice and typhoid. Similarly, HIV infections, heart diseases and TB are also recognized as the major health concerns in these slums because of the lack of awareness of these diseases and their symptoms while analyzing late complications of these diseases (Bapat and Agarwal, 2003).

 

These issues can only be solved when the environmental conditions of these people are improved. In order to improve the living standard there is a need of improving the basic infrastructure of their living. The houses in which these people live need to be designed in a more comprehensive way that caters all the associated problems of health and sanitations (Malhotra, 2003). However, many policy approaches are developed in order to improve the living standards of people in slums of Bombay. Such as the slum up gradation program of the world bank, Public-Private Partnerships in the Slum Redevelopment Scheme (SRD), The Prime Minister’s Grant Project (PMGP) and so forth. Beside such high funding projects there is no incremental increase in these people’s living standards. Therefore, in the following study we incorporate certain mitigating strategies in order to rehabilitate these people and improve their pace of living standard with more appropriate method of designed houses.

Various Micro-finance based initiatives are an appropriate method for solving the problems such as Local Development Programmed that will help in community infra-structure, housing loans to poor people and Self-employed Women’s Association (SEWA) interest rates for housing loans are another successful micro financing programs which has been adopted by many countries including Bangladesh. El Salvador, and Philippines (Schreiner, 2001; Malhotra, 2003). Bangladesh’s Grameen bank is one of the most popular micro financing programs initiated in 1983, the program has a more appropriate model of loan grants and the repayment system, and since its initiative the bank delivered about 600,000 loans till 2015 (Ferguson, 2003; Ferguson, and Smets, 2010).

However, there is a need of better and comprehensive plans for building dwellings for the development of these people with minimum associated cost. Around the globe different material and methodology were used in order to upgrade the slums. The Cob is an old method of construction where raw hearth is used in the construction process, the less material is also required by this method but the major concern is that this method would not be appropriate in Bombay because of the less available land in the out skirt areas of the city. The construction for the development of Bombay slums requires high quality cement and bricks that will help in building much better and sustainable buildings. These buildings need a firm base in order to cope with natural disasters.

Aims and Objectives

The aims and objectives of this study is to identify

• The total population living in slums
• Their Health concerns
• Sanitation problems face by these people living in slums
• How to improve living standards
• Number of dwellings require to rehabilitate these people
• Social and political factors contributing in their development
• The Micro-financing
• Comprehensive Architectural designing

 

 

Significance of the study

The following study helps to highlight one of the major problems associated with booming urbanization in the Bombay city. The number of slums has increased from the past decades thus this study will help in identifying factors that had led to such devastating conditions of human being living in theses slums. Following study also incorporates certain mitigating strategies in order to improve the living standard of these people living in slums. Furthermore a more comprehensive plan will help to rehabilitate these people through better designing of the houses with minimum associated cost and also catering all the problems associated with the sanitation and also incorporating other facilities for their development. Therefore this study will help in creating an adequate infrastructure for the poor people of Bombay while analyzing the associated problems.

Challenge of increasing Population

The population of India is increasing rapidly and the rate of poverty is greater in India which is making a share of 20% among the poverty rate of world. According to the World Bank’s measurement of poverty in 2014, there are approximately 872.3 million people which are living below poverty line and out of these people 179.6 million poor people are living in India (Watmough et al., 2016). The reason of selecting Bombay as the case for current report lies in the fact that Bombay is the most populous city of the India which is comprised of 18.4 million population of India. The Bombay is the ninth largest urban agglomeration of the World, which is indicating that overall population rate of Bombay is significant. It has been estimated that on average one quarter of poor community of Bombay is earning less than US $ 0.6, which is lower than the poverty threshold mentioned by Government of India (Gupta, 2012). This increasing rate of poverty is causing issues regarding housing in Bombay which requires immediate attention and rehabilitation efforts for marginalized communities.