Hello everyone. Welcome to this exciting webinar titled Land Rides for Slum Dullers in Orissa. Making technology work for the urban poor. My name is Narayan and I teach at Azim Premji University in Bangalore, India. I will be moderating this webinar which is organized jointly by the Government of Podisha, Tata Trust, Azim Premji University, the Kadista Foundation, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, NRMC Center for Land Governance and the Land Portal Foundation. As I mentioned earlier, this webinar is on a project launched by the Eastern Indian State of Odisha to give secure land rides to slum dwellers through a legislative act called Odisha Land Rides to Slum Dullers Act 2017. Although the project itself is very region specific and local, it has significance beyond the region. It has drawn on some of the global best practices in its design and implementation. And the lessons learned from this project have much wider policy and academic implications. As we all know, providing slum dwellers with secure land rides is a challenge faced by many countries all over the world and therefore lessons from a successful project like this needs to be understood in greater detail. The project is quite unique also for very innovative use of technology. While it has used unmanned aerial vehicles or drones for mapping slums, data collection was done using GIS and other advanced technological applications. It is perhaps for the first time in India that drones are being used to create high resolution maps of slums. The objective of this webinar therefore is to understand this project and its significance in detail by focusing on certain specific areas which include first the evolution and the context of the project, second the innovative use of technology in its design and implementation, third the multi-stakeholder partnership that the project has forged and finally lessons and research opportunities that emerge from this project. To discuss all of these and more, we have a panel of experts with us. Let me now introduce them. Our first finalist is Mr. G. Mathi Vodhanan. He is the principal secretary in the department of housing and urban development in the state of Odisha. Mr. Mathi Vodhanan has been in charge of the implementation of this project right from its inception. Our second panelist is Professor Amitabh Bidey. She is the dean of the School of Habitat Studies in the Tata Institute of Social Studies in India. We have also with us Mr. Frank Pichail from Kedesta Foundation US and finally we have Mr. Sishir Das. He is from the Tata Trust which has partnered with the government of Odisha in the implementation of this project. Okay, so that is the panel for today and the panel members will speak for the first one hour or so in response to the questions that I am going to ask them. Then the panelists will address the questions from participants. May I request the participants to use questions feature on your screen to post your questions. We will ensure that your questions are addressed during the open discussion. Well, with this background, let me ask the first question to Mr. Mathi Vodhanan. Mr. Mathi Vodhanan, can you give us an idea about the context in which the project has emerged and what are its main objectives? I mean, is it limited only to the provision of land rights to slum dwellers or is it also aimed at improving their overall standard of living? Mr. Mathi Vodhanan. Yes, please go ahead. All of the rights of the provision of the government land and lack of land being have deprived slum dwellers from the housing assistance from the government and other basic essential civil infrastructure amenities and services from the municipal authorities. Apart from that, the slum dwellers always need the clear permission and addition of their houses and have realizing the significance of their contribution to the city's existence and growth. And given the fact that they provide all the labour and manual workforce necessary for the functioning of the households and the city life. Our government came out with a landmine and historic app which is the original land rights to slum dwellers act 2017 which ensures the conforming of land titles to the slum dwellers on in-situ basis. That is, wherever they are residing in, they are able to land. In case of honorable land such as forest lands, railway lands, defense lands, they will be moved into a new habitat, in the nearby vicinity with their full consent. The act covers around 109,000, I mean more than 3,000 slums with 200,000 households benefitting 1 million people. We are in the process of issue of land titles and as of now, we have only distributed 40,000 land titles to the eligible slum dwellers and by the end of this month we target to distribute around 60,000 to 70,000 land titles. Well, some of the slums we found are in untenable lands which cannot be settled with the slum dwellers. And as for our calculation, around 668 such slums would be moved to a new habitat with in-situ land status where land titles can be given. In the course of implementation of the act during the confinement of land titles, we realized that mere settlement of land titles would not be able to make such impact in their living status. Unless we work on a dedicated mission to upgrade the housing and other civic infrastructure and of course, we realize that and we conceptualize and wrote out a mission called JAGA mission to transform these slums into livable habitats. It will have all essential infrastructure amenities and of course, services. Accordingly, JAGA mission is now under implementation in all the open areas of the state covering 3,000 slums, 350,000 households covering 1.8 million populations. So the basic objective is to transform these slums into livable habitats not providing a land title in a piece of paper. Thanks Narayan. Okay, thanks Mr. Matiwadan. That is a nice summary of the context and the main features of the project. Can I now ask the next question to Professor Amitabh Bideh? Professor Bideh, one of the things that we hear about this project is that it is really inclusive in its approach. How do you think the project contributes to this goal of realizing inclusive development in Odisha? Thanks Narayan for this question. So I have two, three reasons why I think and in a way that this project will contribute to the overall objective of inclusive development. The first is really that Odisha is what is an opportunity state. Opportunity state because on one level while the proportion of urbanization in Odisha is growing consistently at the same time it is still at a fairly moderate level in relation to several of the other states in the country. The second implication of being an opportunity state is really that most of the towns in Odisha are currently small and medium towns and which means that we have a great opportunity to take action with respect to the issues linked to an inclusive or exclusive urban development or one that generates exclusion. And I think this program is therefore at just the right timing in order to not only do something about existing slums but also to do something about the future development of slums. Now how does it do this? So one of the first principles really which has been followed in the program is its beginning with the entire land titles program and one has to see this against overall context in India where in most states of the country slum dwellers are treated as encroachers, illegals, informals and therefore really as half citizens. They're also continually vulnerable to evictions which are conducted by different state authorities. The state of their services is extremely unequal in relation to the rest of the citizens. Now here giving them land titles first gives them security. It does away with the fear of evictions. It makes them into right bearing citizens who can demand from different generations of city governments. Having a land title in your name brings you benefits which are not just limited to this generation but it can carry over into multiple generations. Moreover I think we need to also think of the overall context of basic services. Having made slum dwellers as formal citizens of the city the program doesn't stop there but then it moves on to a define a minimum standard of living for all citizens in the city not just slum dwellers. And then begins to progressively make an increase in their living standards in a comprehensive manner. The basis for future planning of the city thus becomes it begins with inclusion and moves towards equity. I don't think any other state in the country has so far attempted to be so far reaching in its overall goals. And I think this perhaps maybe is successful one of the biggest contributions of this program to the overall project of inclusive development. Thanks Professor Bide for nicely speaking out how the goal of inclusive development is helped by projects like this. Let me now move on to the technological aspects of the project. The question is to Mr. Frank Pichel. So Mr. Pichel please tell us how innovatively technology has been used in the project for slum mapping, data collection and networking purposes. Mr. Frank Pichel, yeah. Excellent, well thanks for that question Narayana and it's actually a very interesting one because I would say that it's not the technology itself that I see as the biggest innovation. You know we've seen many of the tools applied with this project used around the world whether that's UAVs and the imagery from those satellite imagery, GIS and cloud computing or mobile phone applications. What really made the project a success was in part using these technology technologically appropriate tools in combination. But more importantly it's been the government support at all levels. These tools have all been used around the world but this government support made the difference from the recognition of a need to adopt a new policy that would allow for the recognition of informal rights to the execution of that policy and then the willingness to test and try new approaches. And then when something works the ability to quickly integrate these new tools or approaches into a process and ensure that all government agencies supported the process. And that really can be understated. It's not easy to change entrenched systems, processes and staff skill sets with new technologies. But the government did manage to pull this off. So before giving any credit to the technology it's probably first better to give some credit to the government and government structure and leadership that allowed for the state to quickly pass the act and then get the buy-in from all levels. But as we look at the technologies that were used there were a number of core tools that really made the project a success. First was the use of extremely high resolution drone imagery. So we're talking imagery that is precise to three to five centimeters and really allows for contextualization of the area. And being able to use that imagery to identify parcel boundaries in the very built up urban environment where each building abuts one another and a traditional survey instrument would be almost impossible to use because drone imagery made it possible to digitize the boundaries. I think we'd also all agree that looking at a sketched polygon on the backdrop of an imagery is much more accessible and useful for most people than looking at a list of coordinates or a polygon that just exists on a blank sheet of paper. So the drone imagery really made the process participatory and inclusive with the community. It became very clear that the rights were being captured accurately and appropriately. It just brings a lot more trust into the process. Now in addition to the drone imagery we used mobile technology and mobile applications from Cadastra. And these tools were designed to be simple yet powerful enough to allow the members of the community themselves to become data collectors. And more importantly again was the government's willingness to trust that these local citizens are often best placed to capture the information. These members of the community have the trust of the community, the local knowledge, and as compared to an outsider coming in they're going to be able to operate much more effectively and efficiently. Now that's not to say the data is not reviewed. Of course that data comes in and is still reviewed and validated so we know that it's meeting the necessary government requirements. Now in addition to the drone imagery and mobile applications the ability to quickly communicate with field teams was critical. And we use a ubiquitous tool that I think everybody's probably aware of what's that. And that was great because it allowed for very real-time communication and it's a tool that people are already using. It didn't require additional training or account setup. It was simply sharing contact information and getting on with the work. And finally I'd say being able to bring all of this data together and integrate it into a DUGIS that allowed the data to be shared, analyzed, contextualized with historical information and then accessed by the relevant government agencies. So it was this combination of tools compounded by government support that allowed a tremendous amount of work to be accomplished in a very short period of time. Thank you. Thanks Mr. Prichel for giving us your views on the technological innovations of the project. But what I really like is you also touched on the governance structures and the leadership issues which really made the use of technology possible. I would come back to these issues later in one of the in my questions to one of the one of the panelists. Anyway, so let me move on. The next question is to Mr. Shishir Das. So Mr. Das can you enlighten us on some other innovations used in this project, mainly the kind of partnership and capacity building strategy that it has adopted? Yeah, thanks Narayan. The project from the beginning adopted a multi stakeholder partnership strategy. The slum community are the foundation of this project. Each slum community is mobilized to form a slum dwellers association and the members of this slum dwellers association drives the entire process right from identification of the slum boundaries to household level survey. Till the time land rights is given they became as the continue as the co-travelers. About 27 civil society organizations were partners for data collection at the field level and validation and about 6 to 700 field facilitators were hired by the state government to collect the data from the field. Networking with knowledge partners from the private sector is crucial to the success of the project. The involvement of private technical agencies for slum mapping and GIS related activities has already been innovation technique by combining high tech drone survey with ground level physical verification of slum settlements by the NGO and the members of slum dwellers associations. Some of the private agencies like Tata Trust, Karasta Foundation, Omidya Network and Tata Institute of Social Sciences with its vast experience in the field of property rights has contributed significantly through its resources technology and knowledge sharing. Its collaborative approach has brought together unique strength and in that sense the implication has been able to best practice has been able to draw the best practices from some of the most sophisticated land titling program globally. The capacity building program were also organized in this program to a massive number of stakeholders under this project about 2700 stakeholders has been trained on spatial data management as well as collection of data from the field and how to integrate the information that has been collected from the spatial data as well as from the field. This implementation process was based on the learnings from the pilot and all the stakeholders have participated very actively throughout the project. Thanks Narayan. Thanks Mr Das. The partnership and capacity building strategies that you have just elaborated really seem interesting. Let me ask a few more questions about that later but for now let us go back to Mr Mathew and try to get some ideas about the use of technology Mr Mathew what made you think of using these drones for slum mapping and what are some of the specific problems that you could overcome because you are using drones which otherwise would have been difficult to tackle. Thanks Narayan. These unmanned aerial vehicles were used in the survey to produce very high resolution images which were used to geofence the existing slum boundaries. The auto maps produced using these high resolution maps images captured the minute details of the slum like streets, trees, food prints of the buildings or houses areas of the land occupied by the individual households open spaces present in the slum etc. Auto maps are very accurate the measurement of the area of the land occupied by the slum and the land occupied by each households. The auto maps are integrated with the existing cadastral maps and revenue record of rights to identify the revenue plot on which the slum exists and to decide if the land is tenable or non-tenable as the survey will result in giving land rights to the individual slum dweller accuracy of the survey process and public perception of the survey are very important factors. As the communities saw the drone survey process in the field, later on they saw the images and maps and got convinced that it is scientific accurate and free from manipulations. The drone survey played an important role and communities repost complete trust on the findings of the drone survey. This resulted in zero dispute I reiterate zero dispute or zero litigation in the whole process and though we have settled almost 40,000 land titles so far not even one appeal petition or dispute has been filed so far challenging the decision on the land titles that clearly shows the success of the drone based survey and the strength of the community concentration process and the fairness and transparency adopted in the implementation of this program. Thank you Arayan. Thank you Narayan. Thanks. It is really interesting to know how the use of drones helped avoiding disputes and the fact that it was a kind of zero dispute situation was certainly something that one needs to pay special attention to. Anyway, so let us now move on to the research opportunities arising from the project by bringing in Professor Bide again. Professor Bide, how do you think the special and household data generated in this project can be sort of used for future research? Professor Bide? Hello. Professor Bide, please go ahead. You have got my question? I did, I did. Thank you. So the sheer amount of data which has been collected by this entire exercise already explained by both Shishir and Mr. Matiwatnan and the kind of methods which have been used lead to tremendous research opportunities. So let me perhaps confine currently my response to basically three areas of research inquiries. Number one, what is a slum? Now this is a very important question because the definitions of slums have always been approached in a very normative manner world over or whether by data sources like census etc. And there is one standard definition which has been imposed on slums. However, this collection of data gives us first of all an opportunity to inquire what is the kind of diverse conditions that we are actually calling a slum? What about the slum is actually a problem? Is it the land title only? Is it in terms of the lack of space or the area of the land or perhaps lack of open spaces? Or perhaps it is none of these but a basic just sheer denial of basic services. And this gives us clues then how things can be also corrected in the long run? It also gives us an idea and insight into saying that a slum may not be one thing in one town but it can be many things in many towns and perhaps lead to a more comprehensive understanding of how this term, how this concept has actually been deployed. The second area of inquiry is what is life in a slum? Government data has never bothered with this question of what is life in a slum? How do people get basic services? What is the kind of housing that people live in? What are their basic priorities and needs? What is the connection between housing and livelihood and the arrangements of space which happen within? What are the kinds of associations which happen? And I think currently this entire merger in some ways of social data with the spatial data gives us again tremendous opportunity to develop a baseline and perhaps as we move into the future into the program to understand what difference we make to this baseline. And this brings me to my final area of research inquiry and which is in terms of what is the difference that participatory programs and participatory processes as well as the material benefits what are the impacts that they make on the slum community? How does it change the entire relationship between a slum and the rest of the city? Does the provision of a minimum basic standard raise the city to a new standard? And these are all new and new areas which I think we will get insight into as we move ahead in this program. Thanks, Professor Bide for highlighting the recent possibilities that can arise using this project data. May I now ask Mr. Frank Fitchell and Mr. Fitchell do you think you would like to add more what Professor Bide said what other kind of research possibilities you think is possible using the data? Certainly, thanks for that Narayana and Professor Bide certainly captured many of the key issues that can be looked at in more detail because as she mentioned the government really now has a data set on places and people who are previously informal not on the map and almost seen as irrelevant. Bringing them into the formal and capturing all of this data opens up tremendous possibilities. The key area of interest for us at Cadastra is the impact of this somewhat intermediate form of tenure. It's a first step of bringing citizens into formality for the first time. And ultimately how is this changing between citizen and state as these citizens that were previously informal now have a right to demand these services and recognition? So it will be very interesting to see how this affects self-esteem of individual or the effect on broader family relations. But we're also very interested to see what the impact of certificates has been as compared to other forms of tenure including the complete informality that most of them knew. Are these certificates leading to a reduction in land conflicts? Are we seeing changes in the investments people make in their property? Or are we seeing changes in socioeconomic factors, health, education, status of women in society? And from our side as well how is this affecting the perception of tenure security? And being able to compare that to the metric from Prendex as well. And as we look at the government perspective we're very interested in looking at how the different departments responded and how the process could be improved and expanded going forward. Because the mission really innovates at multiple levels there's so much to really look at. And then finally I might mention the planning data. Having access to this data and hopefully being able to integrate it into the city planning is incredibly useful. Are citizens going to receive better services? Are they able to leverage their recognition of rights to demand those services? Can the government deliver these services more cost effectively with the data? So again just as the professor previously mentioned there's so much with the amount of data now captured that the research opportunities are valueless. I would like to see an investigation further. Thank you. Thanks Mr. Prichel for placing before us the entire canvas of research possibilities that the project has created. Before I move on to the next question may I request the participants to send in their question. We have plenty of time to address your questions. Please do send your questions using the questions feature on the screen. So my next question is to Mr. Sishir So Mr. Das what do you think are some of the best practices you think have been adopted in this project and also what are the main learnings from the project? Well let me discuss some of the early learnings from the project because it's just execution of one and half years of the project. So let me discuss some of the early learnings. The first learning was the project adopted a strong accountability framework during the execution of the project. The legislation is unique in its determination to provide services at the worst of the beneficiaries and stick to the timeframe. It was deliberately designed not to bring beneficiaries to the government offices. It adopts community-based approach with focus on worst of delivery of services wherein the urban local bodies and NGO partners are visiting the slums and collect the household information. The project has already delivered landline certificates to about 50,000 families at their worst. The project also used technology and partnership with different resource organizations for efficient delivery of services in a time-bound manner. This shows that accountability lies at the core of such commitments and establishing this framework that outline accountability. The second learning that what we have got from the project is a critical need to invest upfront on alignment and on creating tighter management protocols. Given the nobility of the program, there is no existing template to ensure success. However, clarity in laying out roles, management structure and creating standard operating process in parallel will not only ensure a smoother process but also serve a credible public good to other states and programs with similar aspirations. The third learning from the project and from the execution is that the project aims to promote sustainable development of habitat with a view to ensure equitable supply of land, shelter and services at affordable prices to all sections of the urban poor. Urban poverty being multidimensional, various vulnerabilities faced by the poor in cities and towns. Occupational, residential and social needs to be addressed simultaneously in a comprehensive and integrated manner through original habitat mission. The fourth learning that the final learning is that the urban local bodies NGOs and slum dwellers association are the main stakeholders for execution of the land rights act and transformation of slums to livable habitats. It requires skill and expertise both in areas of community participation and mobilization and in the areas of special data collection and management. Networking with knowledge partners from the private sector is crucial for the success of this project. The project has confirmed to these conditions and proved to be as one of the very successful project. Origin leads the way in becoming the first state to validate the needs for future urban technology such as drone and geospatial tool in delivery and implementation of large scale systemic programs such as land rights and livable habitat. There are future collaboration for research and documenting the learning from the project. One of the hard learning from the project is that after using all this technology it is one of the low cost project for execution like for each family we have spent about 800 rupees and the beneficiary has got 30 to 60 square meter of land and housing support and other infrastructure support for each household. Thanks. Thanks Mr. Das for listing out the main learnings from the project. Before we move on to the questions from our viewers let me ask a question to Mr. Mathiwadanan again. What is the significance of going through this legislative route? Why was a separate act of the legislature required for a project like this wouldn't it have been possible through an executive order? Land titling cannot be the objective of giving land titling to the slum dwellers cannot be achieved through any other means so legislation the state act is the only way to achieve that objective that is why we decided that we need to bring a separate act in fact when we thought about it there were options like amending the existing acts to provide for this then we realized that the existing acts are all enforcement act so this has to be a welfare act so for the welfare aspect of an act should not be mingled with an ordinary act which largely deals with the land management and the enforcement of the land resources so we thought that we need to have an exclusive act that's why we bring out this act and the objective is to confer the land right to a slum dweller if the land right cannot be settled then this act does not deal with the eviction or removal of the encroachment or the slum if it is possible to confer the land right we will confer and provide all the infrastructures if it is not possible then we will leave the people like that we should not disturb them so we have framed in that way in that way it is a welfare act it is a very brief act and it provides for all and then we made it workable and then in the last less than one and half years we have delivered almost 45,000 land right certificates and we demonstrated that is a workable act and we are very happy about it thank you that is really good to know I have one more question for you which is this act and this project takes care of the needs of the existing slum dwellers so how does the Odisha Government ensure that in the future no such slums come up do you have any precaution taken either through this project or some addition to this to ensure that in the future we don't have the repetition of the problem see our thinking is that if you address the present problem which is an accumulated problem over decades if you are able to address the problem if you are able to provide the issues of slum dwellers provide land ideal provide shelter, provide other infrastructure facilities and transform them into a liveable habitat and then the migration you cannot prevent the migration is a continuous process depending upon the opportunities available in the urban areas the migration happens the pace of migration only differs so once the present huge quantity of problem is addressed then the future addition will be able to handle that will not be much difficult for the government to address the present magnitude is so alarming that the governments shy away from addressing it once we have decided to address this huge problem, enormous problem then addressing the incremental problem should not be an issue in future we should be able to identify lands for expansion of this slum for the new communities to move in new entrants into the city to find a place to find a shelter so I think those things will be able to address that thank you that is really good to know I have more questions for you and also many of our participants have questions for you but before that there is a question from one of the participants to Mr. Das or Professor Bide I think I will post this question to Professor Bide the question is from somebody called Michelle Macmillan is there any interest at the Tata Institute to do an impact evaluation on how this project contributed to the provision of public services Professor Bide would you like to take this up? yeah sure see certainly there is interest from Tata Institute to undertake an impact evaluation of this project for the impact evaluation to take place one will still need to wait I think for at least a year to see that the definition of minimum livable habitat and the operationalization of that all of that unfolds on ground currently I think it is the first phase which is of issuing of land titles which has actually happened the second response that I have is I would see and define impacts as not just end of the day or the end of the program kind of process but actually to also see and understand and document the entire process of how communities participate what is their uptake of the different projects what are the forms that participation from moving from an individual level to a settlement level to a town level and what sense of empowerment does that give them what are the material benefits of the program and how do they uptake that their dynamics within this how does the local governmental system and different kinds of vested interests in towns respond to these all process questions perhaps which are extremely critical and which need to be understood as well Thanks we have another question this is from a participant Megadatta this may be taken by Mr. Mathiwadan or Mr. Das the question is who were the key stakeholders involved what were their specific roles would Mr. Mathiwadan like to take this question about the stakeholders and their specific roles stakeholders at the implementation level the community is the major stakeholder the slum community so we organized the slum community into slum dweller association and then we empowered them with the information with the provisions with the new law and then what we intend to do it and then we took them on board and then they are mobilized they interned the slum dweller association in turn involved all the slum dweller families on all the households they did their internal meetings all those things and then they brought the community online with these governments intention and the project objectives so they are the main stakeholders state level partners in turn brought in the technology partners like Kedastra, the Home DR network and then they engaged the technical agencies they played a very critical part so at all the levels we had partnership with the stakeholders in the implementation process along with the community to handle the community we engaged the NGOs the community based organizations to help us in mobilizing the community and then doing the house to house survey and then anchoring the entire process at the community level and help the community in documenting the whole process and then prepare the proposal which can be placed before the final committee for approval so that is at the community level then in the implementation level we had the support of the data and then they brought in the technical agencies like drone agency and then Spark Transverse, Jurong they were the technical agencies so we have the technology partners we had the community based partners and then we also had the government partners you know revenue administration the collector, the sub collector, the the RAE, revenue inspectors so they are all our implementing partners one project where we involved multi-level stakeholders at all levels of implementation and we achieved excellent coordination support from everybody so everyone worked for the project so we never call this as a government project it's a program it's a people oriented program community oriented program aimed at bringing up the slum communities so everybody put their heart and then it was a it's a great success I can see thank you Mr. Das would you like to add to what Mr. Mathiwadanan has said because you in your response to one of my earlier questions you also spoke about the stakeholders would you like to add something here I think most of the stakeholders he has covered but only one point I want to add is that the slum dwellers association or the slum community played a very important role in the entire process they participated and they took the decision starting from the planning phase to execution phase and to monitoring and the taking the decisions so they were the people who took the decisions like if there is a recommendation has gone from the because who will get the land rights that is being decided by the slum dwellers association the proposal moves from them so proposal goes to the urban local body label to take a decision but again they are part of that to take the decision so in all labels because they are the part of the the entire process of execution to evaluation and monitoring of the process and the quality control of the process so we like in the entire process there are less mistakes or the errors that we found in the entire process we have another question I think Mr. Matibodhanan is best place to answer this question and the question is from Mr. Patrick Mekelster and the question is about the cost can you break down the cost of the project this is the question cost of implementing the project we have not fully worked out I must say that as he said that you know it worked out to about rupees 800 per title for a family for household consisting of about say 5 members but I would say that from the government side except the cost paid towards the technical agency the technical agency for engaging drone you know and then for paying to the NGO or the community based organization for doing the house to house survey the other costs are very minimal or negligible I would say these are the two major cost the drone survey and map preparation and then the cost paid towards the NGO for doing the house to house survey other than that we engaged the various stakeholders within the government machinery and we used them and we have not paid anything from the project okay so we are getting a large number of questions and most of the questions happen to be directed at you Mr. Mathi I hope you wouldn't mind taking them one by one yeah we have one more from Mr. Nitin Mestram and his question is this in Nagpur the slum dwellers are getting land rights via government a government resolution how strong will that be with respect to Vadisha rights act to slum dwellers he wants to know how does it compare with the Vadisha project and also you know guaranteed through this resolution how strong the rights are going to be I think that's what he means by the question yeah I'm happy to know that in Nagpur slum dwellers are getting land rights via government resolution government resolution is a weak you know instrument so tomorrow the government may change the resolution and come out with the fresh resolution stating that slum dwellers are not to get the land rights whereas an act is a very cumbersome process it's a legal process it's a legislative process and then it undergoes various stages and then you know and then you confer a statutory settlement on the slum dweller that's the strength of the act visa with the resolution the citizen gets a legal right through an act suppose if tomorrow if we don't take up this exercise and then don't confer the land title with the slum dweller they can go to court and then challenge they can get a direction from the court directing the government to take up the process and then confer the land rights within time order manner so that is the strength of the act it almost gives a irrevocable right on the citizen to get a land right that's the difference I see can I also respond to this question please please just a small addition I think Mr. Matiwatnan has kind of put it on the dot but so coming from Maharashtra and knowing the GR which has been passed I think the difference between the Odisha Act and the GR in the Nagpur case is also that the Odisha Act gives ownership inheritable rights to the plot of land for every slum household whereas the Nagpur GR ties the fate it first of all confers these and it ties it to the construction of houses under PMAY so you're giving things on one hand but at the same time making it very conditional the other aspect in the Odisha Land Rights Act is that the government recognizes the slum the act also recognizes the existence of the slum and then that means it gives the protection to the slum apart from conferring the land rights that's right so I have a related question about the similar programs being taken up in other states one of the one of the significance of this project is that it has lessons for other states but I think it will be interesting to know how many states have taken a real interest in this so in your knowledge Mr. Mathiwadhanan have any other state approach to you for some help or whether they have been following suit to launch similar programs in India several states have taken the copy of our land rights and then they have discussed with us but so far we have not heard from any state about implementing this or replicating this model maybe the political will be still forthcoming there I think this question is to Mr. Das related question does the Tata trust have plans to scale this up within Odisha or other Indian states yeah thanks Narayan in Odisha we are covering all our Odisha so all the urban local bodies are covered so in Odisha it's completely scaled up so there is no more scope for Odisha but in other states the documentation and best practices we have drawn from this project we are trying to present in other states and what are the processes has been followed because we have a complete team to document the process entire process and what worked out during the project what has not worked out during the project and what improvements can be done and what are the learnings that has been drawn from the project so now because of the election so number of states we have discussed with two states but the initiative because of the forthcoming election it has not been taken up but we are expecting that next financial year at least four to five states will take this program to a scale of states thanks Mr Das there is a question about the gender dimension of the project the question is again from Mr Mestram and he wants to know are the titles given in the jointly in the name of husband and wife I think that is the case right Mr Matiwadanan that is the case so if it is a single headed women then the land rights will be given to the women but we found in the field also one most interesting fact is that women are so happy that because the land rights has been given to both the women and the wife and husband so in number of places women have complained that lots of male members they drunk and they started creating problem in the family life and some of the places we found that those male members they left for months together and they came back after few months so women are now happy that they have the right and they can now take the decision and they are part of the decision making process in the family okay so that is really interesting to know we have another question this may be taken up either by Mr Matiwadanan or Professor Bide the question is how did you avoid disenfranchisement of the most vulnerable people in the slum how did you avoid disenfranchisement of the most vulnerable people in the slum would Mr Matiwadanan wants to go first I think he should go first and I can add I can take this see the slums normally are covered by the electoral water survey survey process though we don't give the land rights or any other facilities or amenities but when it comes to election the election machinery in fact has enumerated all the areas including the slum areas the slum dwellers are provided with the voter ID card and then they vote in every election so they have that voting route rights so there is no question of retaking away their voting right already they have the voting right okay Professor Bide would you like to contribute so in terms of just the addressing the most vulnerable I think there is no doubt that slum areas differ like there are differences and there are intra differences but I think one of the key principles that I found which really worked is the way in which the land right has been worked out it talks of a minimum size of entitlement for everybody and then those who have larger spaces than that are then expected to pay at a certain cost for the extra space that they have and that is a for that there are conditions which are attached now this thing of defining the minimum plot area in fact has benefited several several several households the second I think part of vulnerability that one also sees is slum areas which are considered untenable or those which are extremely yeah untenable perhaps and I think this is also very interesting to know that the decisions of untenability which otherwise in most cities what I have seen are made on very very discretionary parameters high value lands and the value of land the administration almost ensures that no slum dweller is able to access high value land but on the other hand here these are being made through the position of the ortho maps on the cadastral maps so for the first time I think the legal dimension and a real dimension of objectivity has been added to the decision of tenability and untenability so these are two things which I have definitely seen which work towards the address of vulnerability a final response is there are several settlements along the eastern odisha which belong to migrant settlements and these are migrant slums again a very sensitive issue perhaps in several states of the country here the award of the land titles has ensured that these migrants get further integrated into the fabric of the city and stop here thank you we have a question on the use of technology and I think Mr. Frank Fichel is best suited to take this question it's a simple question the question is how exactly was wassup used Frank would you like to take this sure and actually I will defer this one to Shashir because I think you can give a little bit more context of how it was used on the ground than I can so apologies Shashir for dodging this one and passing it to you that's fine okay Shashir would you my pleasure that I would say the wassup has played a very important role in the management and execution of the project we are having about 32 groups starting from the implementation group to core group or to the groups in the districts so these groups like in the implementation group like starting from the district collector to the principal secretary to the joint secretary the director municipality administration the technical agencies and the civil society organizations are part of that group and the the command chain of command of the project management is being accelerated because of these wassup groups so immediately because it's also a way that how transparently you can share the information also like if there is somewhere in a very small urban local body there is a issue then it has been immediately been flagged to the level and immediately the rescue like the teams those who are they are immediately started rushing into we have different teams like starting from revenue team then starting from the data management team then data digitization team so data collection team and then people who actually takes the decision and execute the decisions and so forth different groups have started a convergence through these wassup groups so why I would say this project one of the pillar of the success for this project is the wassup communication that took place okay that's really interesting to know we have a couple of questions basically trying to draw a comparison between this project and the question of land rights in rural areas so the question is somewhat like this and do you think the same approach can be used in other scenarios like non slum urban and rural titling forest rights etc would you Mr. Matiwadan take this from the video I can add to same approach can be you know indicated in other scenarios like non slum I hope that in urban area apart from the slum areas we don't have informal settlements or they will have only a sporadic settlement other than the slum and this would be one or two houses encroach basically encroachers so I think it would be may not be advisable to take up this process in that area but in rural area for land titling forest area for the forest right yes this process can be replicated very much replicated and the ingredients of this act also can be made applicable basically this empowers the deprived people land less those who are traditionally occupying that I think following the same principles that it can be replicated but not in the non slum urban we will have difficulties thank you Professor Bide would you have something to say about this comment I think we may need to adapt technology though certainly I think especially implementing the forest rights act where mapping itself of particular titles has not been done very very long time and different state governments are having various impediments sometimes these are human resource impediments so at that point if we can adapt the technology to look at the forest areas and I think it will certainly be very beneficial on the adaptation to other urban areas and understanding data with respect to that I think whether it is possible to bring in different scales of settlements together it's a little doubtful process so when I say it's a similar approach are we referring to only the technology aspect of it are we referring to the mobilization of people and here both of these were critical because people had a stake in having that information getting the maps done there was a benefit which was attached to it in the rest of the city there may also attach to the existing level of benefits which are enjoyed by certain settlements so there may I think one may need to look at exactly what one means by saying this approach and which component of this approach that's right yeah okay thanks so Frank I think this question is for you so the question is the GIS data created in the process can be used by other line agencies of the state government how is it being used shared what systems are created for this if they are a CFE involved maybe Mr. Mathew Adhan can also add but Pichai would you like to start no I can add to this yeah sure sure but yeah sure happy to get started and then I'll pass it off so we can dive into details of how the state's agencies are using it but you know certainly one of the benefits of using the spatial tools and open standards within the GIS is the ability to bring all of this data together and through a combination of tools making it relatively easy to interact with to do a lot of the core functions now I'll probably leave it to Mr. Mathew Adhanan to speak a little bit more in detail about what state agencies are doing what with the data the spatial data and the household based data collected they provide precious information about the sub communities and then various aspects of their living so these data would be shared with the line agencies whether departments whichever department will require so far we have not because since we are implementing this we have so far we have not shared but these data would be available for all the government agencies to use for taking up various activities and in the in the process I don't think we have used to OSAC or is our remote sensing you know center I don't think we have involved in this process we have engaged in taking agencies to do that we have not maybe she can add to this thanks sir the basically what has been the OSAC has supported is that with support from media network we have organized a test experiment for all the technical agency that has been participated in the bit so these technical agencies has been given once long to draw the reference points so the reference point that value that we got from the OSAC and OSAC is a part of the process because in all the urban local bodies the reference points has been identified by the OSAC so this data will be this data the special data as well as the household data that has been integrated the GIS into the GIS platform so all these data we are trying to develop a web GIS which can be utilized by all the line departments this can be source information which can be used by all the departments so the test bed that I have mentioned nowhere in India this has been done anywhere per selection of the technical agencies this is first time in India this has been done per selection of the technical agency and to measure how accurately the special data can be run okay so that's about the use of data and now we have a question on the on the participatory nature of this project the question is as the slum development committee been an executive body or an execution body and whether all the decisions taken jointly by its members so this is the question I don't know who would like to take this maybe Shishir or Mathi Vadanan Shishir, can I answer this? yeah so in the slum dwellers association that has formed at the slum level so each representative from each people those who are living in that slum are member in that slum dwellers association so intentionally what we have tried at least 50% more than 50% women members should participate in the slum dwellers association each slum dwellers association have an executive body so this executive body is being nominated by the from the different communities if a slum is having about 500 households then there are about 20 members those who are in the executive body that decision will lead to entirely to the slum dwellers association and during any decision that takes place it not been taken place in the executive body maybe the preliminary consultations might have been done with the executive body but the decisions have been taken by all the members consisting of all the members the slum dwellers association okay so the next question is about what kind of rights and I'm not too sure what would this mean so the question is how were renters rights managed so this is about the rights of renters so I think Narayan I can reflect this because we faced this when we started execution of this project in the slums we found there are some people on the rent and so we saw that those people are on the rent they should get the land rights not the owner the so called owner because this is a government land this is there is no owner to that land so whoever is living on that land if the evidences can be produced that one is that his identity he or she is living before the cut-up date that is 10th August 2017 if these two groups can be submitted by a person who is staying in the rent in that particular house then the land rights will be given in the name of the renter not in the name of the so called house owner okay I would like to thank you that the problem of the slum land was a lot of the house illegally in government lands have been thought about at the legislation drafting stage itself when we prepared the law that time it was thought about then accordingly we made a provision we made a conscious decision that the person who is in occupation of the land should get the land right not the person who was illegally constructed out of that so whoever is living in that particular house if he produces the proof of living there like because every family will have a water ID card with that particular address and most of the households also do have the other card also so the unique identity card so if their address is there and then they have been living there before the cut-up date people will get not the person who was rented out that will get so this aspect has been taken care of thank you okay so I have another question from a participant in fact it was the first question that we received the question is how many data collectors were trained on using the mobile app and how many people were trained to use the cadesta platform I think Frank, would you like to address this or say, Sishir sure maybe I can take it first attempt and pass it off to Sishir one of the great things about working with this consortium was the fact that there is so much technical capacity both within the Tata trust the government etc so the initial training on data collection actually happened remotely maybe about a year and a half ago with Sishir and I and probably 10 to 15 data collectors and then we had another remote session or two but Sishir and his team were able to really lead a train the trainers approach and then expand it to was it I think 600 data collectors I'll pass it off to Sishir and he can give the specifics of that approach for any no trainers S. Frank about 600 data collectors were there who had been trained on the data collection digitization and out of those 600 it is about 450 women so that's very important for us because the data collection that took place in all the places women also took a very important role in the data collection okay so we have roughly around 12 minutes left and questions continue to come in another question here which is about the sociological dimension of the project I think professor Bide will take this question the questioner wants to know something like this if we relocate persons from two different locations from different religions in one place how can we manage their rituals and spiritual activities or requirements in one place so I think the question is basically about the social mix of the slum dwellers and how it was managed did it pose any challenge if so how these challenges were managed can I any one of you so in this project so far we have not relocated people from their existing location number one number two because right now we have given only land rights or land titles on in situ basis wherever they are residing so we have not relocated second in case if the land is untenable and we cannot provide in situ land rights then we have plans to move them to new habitats that is entirely a consent oriented process the community has to give full willingness for that and then the entire community is moved entire slum is moved we don't pick people from here and there and put them in a place so it's a community process community decides to move the whole population with us of course and then they are also part of the planning process that who will reside next to whom the whole will be getting in a row of houses so they are part and parcel of the entire planning and execution process so there is no question of relocating people from different locations different religion in one place so it's not like constructing a group housing and then selecting people from various places in a group housing scheme this is different we move a community we don't leave out anyone present there and then we don't mix the communities also in the new habitat okay so Mr. Mathi Madhanan I would like to extend this question maybe by asking something which is not directly related to what is the most ticklish that you have come across with all the technology all the innovative features that you have included and what are some of the most ticklish part of the project that you have come across and how did you address them I have to discuss with Sisi to find out what was the probably I can point in the entire one and a half years of implementation so I don't think we have come across with any major hurdles in fact I would give credit to the solid thought process that has gone into making the legislation, making the act which has considered all the possible field practical and incorporated in the act and the way we implemented the act right from beginning so we tried because there was no benchmark there was no available template for implementing this there was no precedence so we devised everything and then the execution also evolved over a period of time as we moved the execution process also evolved so we learned from our small mistakes and corrected and then moved forward and I would only give credit to the government that they have given us complete freedom and free hand to execute this in the field and we took inputs from the partners and the stakeholders from time to time and then we incorporated all those suggestions to make this successful I don't think we had any major implementation issues so far Siser can add to this I can just add one point that because the technology that has been adopted is new to the urban local bodies as well as to the civil society organizations so building capacity these people to acquaint with adopting the technology took some time so we are looking at that how this massive capacity building exercise that has been done the capacity that has been built for different stakeholders how to start sustain that beyond certain time periods that's the major challenge in front of us how we can sustain the community mobilization how we can sustain the adoption to the technology how we can sustain and continue this process beyond certain time periods that's the challenge in front of us I think I can add one more problem which we encountered in some areas see in urban areas we never had good credible NGOs working in the field urban sector unfortunately did not have enough welfare program schemes involving the NGOs so when we involved the NGOs in implementing this we got several NGOs but the capacities were lacking in many of the NGOs in some places the NGOs were absolutely hopeless somehow they got selected and then we couldn't get rid of them we had several non-performing NGOs unfortunately become part of the program which delayed the implementation process in those towns so we had to supplement the capacity and resources from the state level we managed it from the urban local body and reinforced the workforce and then somehow got the work done otherwise that could have been very impossible the lack of capacity of the NGO partners in several towns where one of the mixing issues we had there is a related question here which is is any refugee coming under this process or right to get land right certificate this may be about the background of the people who have been given the rights what kind of background check goes into the whole process so I can answer this question as of now we have not seen that any refugees has been because most of the refugees are being settled in the rural areas in Orissa and we have not came across that but the background check that three things we are trying to do is one is that the identity proof the second is that whether he is economically backward or not economically backward class and not economically backward but economically weaker section or the third reference check that is the address proof that whether the particular household is living before the cut-up date in that particular slum or not okay so I have a question to Mr. Mati Waddenan so one of the things that is emerging from this project as well as any other project which is sort of governance reform project is that these projects would feed only when there is a strong very strong political backup now what do you think is the source of this kind of a political backing for a project like this this project is a vision of our honorable Chief Minister Naveen Pranayek so this is his decision and then when we pose this problem before him that this is the mixing problem of the urban areas unless we address this problem we will not be able to do justice and there won't be any equity in the governance so Honorable Chief Minister has realized understood the issue magnitude and then he said that we should not wait for implementing this this should be done immediately and then that's why when it was decided to go for a legislation we took the ordinance route we worked overnight and then brought the legislation and then we didn't for the assembly to be convened to pass the legislation we took the ordinance route and with the governance ascent we passed the act later on it was ratified by the assembly the entire process got over in a few weeks time alright so you know with that I think we have covered most of the questions and now I would like to ask the panelists would you like to offer your final thoughts last round each one of you may I start with Frank because Frank maybe I don't directly any questions to you so maybe you can start sure, sure happy to do so you know there was one question that really resonated and it was the question of replicability and I certainly think that a lot of the approaches used could be replicated in other contexts whether that's in forest reserves or peri-urban environments now that's not to say there wouldn't be a need to contextualize and perhaps take a different approach you know drone imagery for example might not make sense when you have larger plots maybe a satellite imagery so I think there's a lot of scope to replicate the challenge of course is finding another government that's willing to try new approaches in a field that tends to be conservative so let's hope that others can follow the lead of Odisha's saying thanks Shishit, thanks Frank Shishit I would say that this would be a great project for learning and leading the research on land rights and as well as liveable habitat Odisha leads the way in becoming the faster to validate the need for future forward technologies and establishing that not just the land rights but the liveable habitat is possible so it can be a great opportunity for the students, researchers for the people activists for the people those who are working on land rights it can be a great opportunity for them to build on the data that is available because the valuable data that has been collected is nowhere has been available this type of data is available so one can develop a very long research process based on the data that has been collected Okay, Professor Bide Thanks, thanks Shishit Okay, see I've been working on land and housing rights with respect to slums in the country for some time now and the overall trend within the country especially in the more urbanized states seems to be that land rights are on the vein and there is an increasing emphasis towards monetizing the land under slums and converting slums into property which will actually perhaps generate a whole lot of displacement itself So we end up in students, in research we end up giving a lot of worst case kind of examples To me this is I think one of the emerging positive case examples that one needs to understand from and perhaps also hope for replicating it also in other opportunity states where urbanization is still at slower or moderate rates Thanks, thanks Nice way of putting it Would you like to give you a final thoughts and rather wrap it up Yeah, we have now reached the phase 2 of the program that the phase 1 of giving land rights certificates is over almost on an institute basis Now we have reached the saturation stage and we are moving to you know, moving the people to new habitats wherever the slums are in the untenable slums and there are about 670 such slums in the state which are untenable and about 70,000 to 100,000 families are involved required to be you know move to new habitats and about 800 acres are the land required to locate these families and the scope of work is huge, we need more and more partners to support us this it won't be so easy to be in fact 3, 4, 5 years project we need to move them, we need to give them adequate infrastructure amenities, services we have to create the livable habitat and then bring the people to this with their consent it's a challenging assignment we have more and more partners to work with us so I would like to use this platform to make an appeal to all that we need partners and partnership and we invite people to support us in this thank you so much, thanks for the opportunity thanks Mr. Madhivadhan and with that we have completely run out of time and it only remains me to thank all our panelists and participants personally I have benefited immensely from this discussion and I hope our participants too have benefited thanks everybody and have a great day or night ahead, thank you thanks thanks, thank you thanks Neil


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