• The Ahmedabad Parivartan Initiative
• Ahmedabad Parivartan – Project components
• Physical Infrastructure
• Community Development
• Linkage with City Level Services
• Current Project Costs & Contributions
• ‘Parivartan’ – A Multi-Tier Urban Transformation
• Collective Initiative - Parivartan

The Ahmedabad Parivartan Initiative

"Parivartan" in Hindi and Gujarati means "transformation." Through the successful pilot phase of the ongoing Parivartan in Ahmedabad city, the physical environment in which informal sector workers live have been transformed, by providing basic infrastructure facilities and community development services in urban slums.

The Parivartan project has successfully improved the lives of over 30,000 slum dwellers over the last four years.

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), SEWA Bank, MHT, SEWA and the private sector are all integral partners of the Parivartan process. They each play distinct roles.

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Ahmedabad Parivartan – Project components

The basic services in the slums are provided on an equitable cost sharing basis, with a unique partnership between the public sector i.e. the municipal corporation, the private sector and the people’s sector (the slum residents), each of whom pay 1/3 of the total on site capital cost of the services provided. The physical work is undertaken by the municipal corporation. The process is based on the principle that services to a cluster should be provided, only when there is a clear demand for them. It is not a supply driven approach.

The project thus aims at having 33% partnership of slum dwellers towards the provision of physical services and a small contribution towards creating a corpus for the maintenance of the services laid for them.

Once the physical work begins and continuing after its completion, SEWA community organizers provide social security services including childcare centers, healthcare and literacy classes in the Parivartan areas, for ongoing, integrated development.

An important feature of Parivartan is to provide individual services, as opposed to shared or common ones.

Sinheshwarinagar - Before Parivartan	Sinheshwarinagar - After Parivartan

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• Water supply to individual households
• Underground sewerage to individual
• Households
• Individual toilets to each households
• Total paving of internal roads, lanes and by lanes
• Storm water drainage
• Street lighting
• Solid waste management
• Landscaping

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Community Development

It was felt that by mere provision of physical services, the overall quality of life of slum dwellers will not change. Community development is essential to involve the slum population in participating in the project, in the decision making process and in maintaining the services that are created for their well being.

Community development component includes:

• Establishment of neighbourhood groups, women’s groups and youth activities.
• Mobilization of community savings through savings and loan groups.
• Initiation of non-formal education opportunities for pre-primary age children school dropouts and illiterate adults.
• Organization of community health education and other interventions focused on disease prevalent in slums and maternal and child health.
• Support for vocational training, job access for unemployed persons and improving access to formal sector finance for small enterprises.
• Day care centers.
• Health centers.
• Corner shops located within the transformed settlements.

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Linkage with City Level Services

The slums, so far were being treated as separate entity, devoid of linkages with the city level services. The infrastructure connecting these slums was inadequate and without creating the additional infrastructure facilities, it did not seem possible to establish linkages with the slum pockets and integrate them into the main stream of the society. It was, therefore, decided to establish linkages of all services in the slums with the developed areas.

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Current Project Costs & Contributions

The project cost and contribution works out as under: -

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‘Parivartan’ – A Multi-Tier Urban Transformation

The Parivartan process is a transformation at many levels:

• From physical degradation and lack of services to upgradation and basic infrastructure provision;
• From no dialogue between residents of informal settlements and the municipality to a participatory process of dialogue between them;
• From illegal to respectable, from dirty to clean, from diseased to healthy;
• The transformation of a slum into a colony or society.

The positive impacts on the lives of urban poor particularly women and children in the informal sector due to improved services are several. These include improved health, greater availability of productive working hours and increased income. There is a great felt need from poor women in the informal sector to upscale this comprehensive development. The demand from grassroots women for improved services is tremendous. The initiative has demonstrated that the poor are not only willing to pay, but are in fact paying for the services. A total of Rs. 3.2 million have been paid over to the AMC by the CBOs within the Parivartan initiative, to date.

The Parivartan initiative has forged close relationships between three distinct sectors – the public sector, the private sector and the people’s sector. It is a unique model for on-site infrastructure provision, with great potential for upscaling, like microfinance had in the early eighties.

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• 43 families reside here since 1988.
• Average household monthly income: Rs.2,500-3,000 per month.
• Average family size: four adults and three to four children.
• Main occupation: Vegetable/fruit vending.
• Type of house: Semi-pucca with one inner room and an open verandah; some have two rooms; all houses have attached toilets.

Availabilty of water supply and sanitation before Parivartan

• One piped water stand-post to service the water requirements for all 43 families; water available for four hours per day; highly irregular service.
• Two to three hours spent by women of each household in water collection.
• Residents would bathe once or twice a week.
• Drinking water stored in pots for two to three days.

Availabilty of water supply and sanitation after Parivartan

• Individual water taps in each house.
• Residents are able to bathe everyday.
• Long-term storage of drinking water no longer required.
• Increase in income levels.
• Reduction in incidence of disease.

• Average increase of Rs.50 per day in profit

Most women in Sinheshwari Nagar are vegetable and/or fruit vendors. To get the best supplies, they need to reach the wholesale market as early as possible. Earlier, due to time spent in water queues, they missed most of the ‘best’ produce and had fewer hours available for vending.

Now they are able to reach the wholesale market by 6 a.m., thereby getting choicest selection, and spend at least two more hours per day in vending. On an average, profit levels vary between Rs.20-25 per hour. Thus, an extra two hours of vending per day has resulted in increased profit of Rs.40-50 per day for the vegetable vendors of Sinheshwari Nagar.

Within the residents of Sinheshwari Nagar, outbreaks of five to seven serious cases of typhoid, malaria, diarrheoa and skin disease were common every month. This was especially true in the case of children. Now, residents report 75 percent reduction in diseases due to access to clean water and toilets.

• Seven loans taken from SEWA Bank (of Rs.1,600 each).
• Rest of community paid their cash contribution from own savings.
• Rs.85,000 already deposited in SEWA Bank to be forwarded to AMC.
• Balance Rs.5,000 (5 percent) of community contribution due.

Mahila Housing SEWA Trust field workers have been visiting Sinheshwari Nagar since 1996 – introducing Parivartan to residents and urging them to save up for it. Thus, when physical upgradation work began in August 1997, residents were ready with their contribution safely deposited in individual accounts at SEWA Bank.

All of the seven women who have taken loans to meet their cash contribution are widows and thus economically worse off than others.

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