Upgrade slums instead of relocating slumdwellers

If Slumdog Millionaire is a rags-to-riches tale of a boy from the slums of Mumbai, here is a man who helped an entire community of slumdwellers in Indonesia shun poverty for prosperity. Community involvement was a little-known concept till professor Andy Siswanto of Soegijrapoto University in Semarang, Indonesia created a collaborative and inclusive model for slum upgradation in the 1990s. Today, it is considered the best case practice for such projects worldwide. Instead of relocating slumdwellers from Surakata to low cost housings, Siswanto had painstakingly assisted the residents of the slum to acquire land tenure. This became the first step in transforming the area into a sought after neighbourhood in the city. DNA spoke to Siswanto on the sidelines of the workshop on 'shelter security and social protection for the urban poor and the migrants in Asia' at Gandhi Labour Institute on Thursday.

How did you manage to secure the tenure for the land?
It was a long and drawn-out process as land, as we know, is a prized commodity. First, I met the local government officials, who said that the area is a prime land and so it was impossible for them to grant the tenure. So, I drew up a cost-benefit analysis in terms of the spill-over effects that tenure can provide to the society, and approached the central government, parliament, lobbyists and politicians. Then, I invited one politician to come to the community centre for a meet-and-greet session with the people. There, the community asked him many questions regarding their rights. After sometime he let-up and said, 'Yes, I will grant the tenure'.

To what extent was the community actually involved in the whole upgradation project?
First, we only spoke to the members of the community and got an idea of what they thought were their problems and what they believe could be the solutions. Then, we started contacting banks to arrange for loans, architects and engineers to deal with sewerage and sanitation issues. Once the community saw that we were serious, they started responding with more feedbacks and even provided time and labour for the project.

Did most of the funding come from the government?
At that time the government didn't realise that any investment in the project would see returns in millions of US Dollars, so only a small fraction of the investment came from the government. Banks, professional bodies like doctors and engineers, and philanthropic organisations were the main investors. But, the core investor was the community.

How did you manage to secure credit for such a project?
Indonesia has a traditional system of co-operative savings, where groups of people get together to regularly pool money and take turns to take out money from the pool. I had taken records of this method of savings to the banks to prove that the slumdwellers had sophisticated financial literacy and a proven track-record of honouring loans. With this, they agreed to provide loans without collateral. Years down the line, the banks are still working with the community and default rates have been low.

Can the project be replicated elsewhere in the world?
A model like this is highly replicable elsewhere, provided that the people are patient enough to involve the community. The project has been picked up by the World Bank as a good case practice, and today, David Westendorff from Urban China Partners in Shanghai invited me to come to China to present it to their government. My belief is that if Indonesia can make this work, so can countries like China and India.