THE BIGGEST ENEMY OF RESPECTABLE HOUSING FOR THE POOR IN
RURAL AREAS OF UTTRAKHAND
Last time I had written about the state of housing for
the poor in the urban areas. Let us look at the state of affairs in the Rural
Areas.
The entire machinery of the state related to housing and
building materials is completely oblivious to the problems of the poor and
their shelter related problems in the rural areas especially in the hills and
the foothills.
In the rural areas the issues of land are less
problematic and the issue of availability of materials and water and skilled
manpower are more important. The design is done with collective knowledge and
traditional wisdom.
The building materials policy of the state of Uttrakhand
seems to have been written by the truck operators and the building material
suppliers of Haldwani and Rishikesh. They have been helped by the armchair
environmentalists of Dehradun and Delhi.
It is the assumption of these armchair environmentalists
and the government that the biggest enemies of the environment are the native
people of the state. If you allow them to have their way they will plunder the
forests and damage the `fragile’ ecosystem of the Himalayas. (Sadly
they only have the Himalayas, where else should the villagers look for
their needs).
I can debate this assumption of this government but let’s
agree for some time and go to the next part of the argument. The people do not
deserve to get anything Free, but the people should be able to buy things which
are produced in the state in abundance.
The whole world is patting the backs of builders who use
local building materials by giving them green credits. The new `modern’ are
Green buildings which do not require materials to be brought from far off
and use those materials which does not consume large amounts of fossil fuels in
production and Transport. The Three big items which are the worst in this
list are `BRICKS, CEMENT AND STEEL. Besides not being `green’ these materials
are seriously expensive for the rural folk. The Policy for housing in the hills
is a cruel joke on the poor.
The government is convinced that the best materials for
construction in the hills are `BRICKS, CEMENT AND STEEL.
ALL LOCAL MATERIALS ARE DISALLOWED OR BANNED. And I
Repeat
ALL LOCAL MATERIALS ARE BANNED
People when they build themselves use their own hands and
sometimes some local masons. These people have skills in using mud, stone with
mud mortar, timber, slate, thatch, bamboo, etc.
The picking of all these materials in the state is
BANNED. They are allowed to be used only if they are either illegally procured
OR bought from a Mafia of Suppliers.
MUD
It is not allowed to dig a pit in a land not owned by you
to bring home some mud to build a wall. It is not allowed to buy the mud from
some one if he is willing to dig a pit in his land to sell to you under the
mining rules. I am obviously talking of two truck loads of mud and not a basket
load.
THATCH
The poorest of the poor in the foothills, places like
Ramnagar, Kashipur etc build houses with Thatch Roofs and they bring the grass
which grows along the water channels on Government land. A few years ago the
Government has given the harvesting of this grass to contractors so the poorest
have to buy grass for making thatch roofs. Cutting of Tall grass for building
your own roof is disallowed.
STONE
It is not allowed to bring stone from a land not owned by
you. You cannot pick from the floor of the forest under the forest rules. You cannot
quarry stone unless you go through a winding process in the local collectorate.
There are very very few government approved quarries in the hill districts,
which are allowed to quarry stone to sell.
In the box below is a separate piece on the business of
stone and quarrying in the hills.
Imagine five little hillocks each say 200 meters wide at
the base and 60 meters high. The entire Himalayan belt is made up of hillocks.
Suppose we dig up hillock no. 4 the area of which is 10 acres at the base and
dig it so much that it becomes a lake 20 m deep. Do you know what amount of
stone will come out of it. In my view some 10, 50,000 cum or some 1, 75, 000
trucks of stone will come out. A small house may need maybe 10 trucks, if it is
built from scratch.
If the stone is semi dressed at the quarry it will
generate some 20% volume of usable aggregate. With semi dressed stone it is
possible to build thinner walls also. This semi dressed stone has a market in
the plains as premium stone. Any way hundreds of trucks bringing cement and
steel are going back empty. This can bring in revenue for the state apart from
giving employment to a large no. of people. A new skill of expert masons can be
developed too.
Why is the land area in the Uttrakhand like a holy cow
and the environment of the whole country depends on it. We are talking of a
size of 3 football fields (hell I didn’t think of it earlier. we can make some
flat grounds for our children to play on) in two places in each district. Some
6 hectares in each district far from human habitation. If the leopard
doesn’t walk there any more or the birds can’t make a nest in the shrubs on
this 4 hectares so be it. Once it becomes a lake other organisms will come. It
may even become useful in other ways. This 3 hectares (78 hectares if made in
two places in each of the 13 districts) is much less than the 270 hectares
given to JP group for the F1 Track. Incidentally environmentally speaking the
area under F1 track or Mayawati’s monuments and under thermal/ hydel power
plants becomes a complete ruin. The area under mining in states like Rajasthan
and MP is in hundreds of square kilometers and not in mere hectares. (I sq km
=100 hectares)
The reason why such a proposal has never come up is
because it is a felt need of the poor people and not the political class.
Provisioning of all these materials is a daily battle of the poor people.
Families where the bread earner works outside and brings
the cash once a year, they buy materials in installments sometimes over years
in order to build a house. 2000 bricks bought in sep 2008, 500 kg steel bought
in aug 2009, cement and aggregate bought in july 2010, extension to the house
built in the holidays in November 2010. plastering pending till the next time
the poor `fauji’ can get some money and `chutti’.
The entire picture of construction in the hills will
change if stone and timber is made freely available to the people of the state.
Our entire traditional construction will come back to life. Villages will start
to get the benefit of peoples own creative skills. Our state will start to have
resorts and hotels built with stone and timber rather than the ugly cement and
concrete. Public buildings will look like hill constructions and not like
something imported from Haryana or UP. The state can have its brand of stone
available for cladding in homes in Delhi and Punjab and
Haryana. Many people can get employment close to their homes in these quarries.
(alternatively the state could at its own discretion disallow export to keep
quarrying in check.
The new picture will have four hillocks and one lake
surrounded by these four hillocks. Nothing else has to change.
SLATE
Quarrying of slate is banned. Period. The fact that it
provided and still provides a viable local roof cladding material is some old
village tale for the policy makers. Obviously the villager is forced to think
that this policy maker is not one of their own.
There is a need for a full scale debate on the
environmental impact of mining in the hill states like Uttrakhand. Mining of
soap stone is good, pyrites and phosphates is good, mining of RBM in some
pockets is good, mining of Lime stone is acceptable, Blasting for making miles
of roads is okay, mining and blasting for making dams and hydel projects is
good but mining for the provisioning of stone for construction of poor peoples
housing is MURDER.
TIMBER
Too much has been said about timber. The government has a
monopoly over timber production. All of it belongs to them. If you sow a tree
in your own house compound so that your son may get some timber 30 years later
to make some doors and windows, you cannot cut it without permission from the
government. If some timber tree happens to grow on your land you are not
allowed to cut it. They belong to the government.
If the government has monopoly over the timber then it
should cut the trees scientifically and then sell it so that people can buy
it. Entire armies of forest department protect the forests from fire,
from the local people and the unscrupulous elements, but when it comes to
utilizing what they have saved, the record is poor.
There is a `Van Nigam’ (Forest Corporation) to manage the
forest produce. It is not very decentralized, it has no saw mills, it owns no
seasoning, sizing, or treatment plant except a defunct one at Rishikesh.
Mostly Van Nigam sells. It sells marked trees in a
forest, sometimes it sells `lots’ of round logs, sometimes it sells uncut,
unseasoned logs piece by piece. It leaves out jobs which can only be done by a
corporation and not by a trader.(sawing, seasoning, utilizing timber waste at a
large scale, making products from wood waste such as briquettes, making
industrial products from good timber such as impregnated board,
dip-anti-termite treatment etc. It does the job which can be done by any
small trader. These jobs are measuring, marking, making inventory, deciding
prices and selling round logs.
The Van Nigam serves itself, it gives the government some
money, it pays the salary of its employees, it auctions timbers to traders, it
does not do any thing useful for the people directly.
Some powerful armchair environmentalists have banned all
felling in the pine forests in Uttrakhand. These forests have become too dense
and dangerous from the point of view of managing of fires. Let us cut pine
trees and make useful timber and make it available at the district Tehsil Level
for a fair price. People will return to making houses with Timber. It is
now an accepted Fact that `WOOD IS THE GREENEST BUILDING MATERIAL’
SAND AND GRIT
In the mountains there exist some pockets where the
strata have been completely fractured due to some geological activity. It is
commonly called a `bajri ka pahaad’ . the quarrying is banned. The picking of
sand, grit and stone from river beds except in specified `lots’ in the
foothills. No such thing in the upper reaches. The only way to get it is
illegally or to transport it in trucks from …..No surprise in this Haldwani and
Rishikesh.
It is allowed to pick stone from the river beds for a
price in the foothills (it actually benefits the environment by deepening the
rivers, and prevents flooding).
Some misplaced idea of environmental protection stopped
the picking up of such materials for nearly three years in Uttrakhand. The
government did not follow up the cases in the courts to get mining in the
rivers restarted. The truckers of Himachal and Uttar Pradesh which are just
across the border made huge amounts of money possibly in connivance with the
politicians of Uttrakhand.
Now this material is available again in the foothills of
the Himalayas. The so called environment has been `saved’ for three years
in Uttrakhand but it has been `used’ (dug up) just across the border. You have
to see to believe the vast hole almost one km wide and ten or more k.m.
long that has been made in Sunderpur just across Mohand , by removing
River bed materials which have been exported to Dehradun and beyond.
GOVERNMENTS ACTIONS
The government occasionally makes noises about the
importance of using local materials, the use of Earth quake safe technologies
etc but spends money only in advertising or in holding seminars for the bored,
already overloaded engineers for all departments of the state.
If you want to build a house in Karan Prayag or another
equally remote place
- you cannot buy legal timber in the town
- you cannot buy local stone for a price and a legal cash memo
- you cannot buy local sand or grit
- you cannot get legal or illegal slate even for a price in town
- you cannot quarry mud from the forest
But you can buy
- Sand,
- grit from Rishikesh,
- steel,
- cement and
- third rate bricks from Muzaffarnagar specially made undersized for the hills. (so more bricks can be carried in a small truck, consumer be damned).
The reader can decide who the biggest enemy of
respectable housing for the poor in the rural areas is.
Param Jigyasu
You can e mail the author at paramjigyasu7@gmail.com or view
this at his blog paramjigyasu7.blogspot.com
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