An innovative Jaga Mission programme, which is aiming to upgrade almost 3,000 slums in Odisha, has won the prestigious Bronze World Habitat Award.
The awards, which are organised by the World Habitat in partnership with UN-Habitat, are the world’s leading housing awards, which recognise and highlight innovative, outstanding and revolutionary housing ideas, projects and programmes from across the world.
The State Government has set itself the ambitious target of becoming the first slum-free State in India and is leading the Jaga Mission programme to upgrade all of the State’s 2,919 slums – improving living conditions for 1.7 million people.
The project takes a holistic approach to addressing poverty, focusing on three core issues– granting land rights to residents to mitigate the threat of forced evictions and enable access to public housing subsidies; infrastructure upgrades to improve living conditions and livelihood opportunities and community mobilisation to empower marginalized groups to construct, manage and maintain upgraded facilities.
To date, 707 slums have been upgraded across 30 cities, of which eight have been declared slum-free.
Inspired by Odisha, it is now being replicated in the northern State of Punjab, where it will benefit an additional 1.4 million people.
The Jaga Mission worked closely with people who lived in the slums to find suitable vacant lands, plan layout designs and create new mini neighbourhoods for them to live in.
Their new habitat contains piped water supply, individual household toilets, electricity, storm water drainage, open spaces, children’s play areas, community centres and paved streets with lighting. And importantly, all the families received land titles, ending the possibility of eviction. The project’s annual budget is approximately 5 billion rupees ($65 million USD), which comes predominantly from the Odisha State budget and grants from the Central and State Governments that are meant for various components required for slum upgrading.
Principal Secretary, Housing and Urban Development, G Mathivathanan said, “We are delighted to receive the Bronze World Habitat Award for Jaga Mission for the second time.”
“The Jaga Mission has successfully demonstrated that there is an urgent need to have a paradigm shift in the Government's approach by recognising the informal settlements and the slum dwellers as indispensable part of the city fabric and empower them with land tenure security, and better living habitat. This global recognition helps in promoting this best practice for other governments dealing with similar challenges of rapid urbanisation and the consequent rise of informal settlements,” the Principal Secretary added.
Chief Executive of World Habitat David Ireland said, “Jaga Mission is a hugely ambitious State-wide project that aims to make Odisha slum-free by upgrading informal settlements, improving governance and securing land ownership for slum dwellers. There is nothing else like it.”