Week 11, Slum Visit

On Thursday we went on our first slum visit in Pune, to Dattawadi. Well, it isn’t really a slum; it was a slum before Shelter Associates was involved in the redevelopment in 1996-7. It seems to me like any of the poorer apartment blocks you see around India. One of the most interesting things here is the huge contrast between people living right next door to one another; you get redeveloped slums right next to upper/middle class apartment blocks.



In the courtyard of the complex, you can see people hanging out, clothes drying, and satellite dishes! It’s interesting what people spend their money on.



The people were very welcoming and showed us into their apartments. Each family of 4-6 people got an apartment that has a footprint of about 125ft2. Part of the Shelter Associates plan was to provide a good quality shell for the building and allow the people to decorate the inside themselves to make it their own. They were allowed to build a loft so that the apartments became two floors with almost double the living area, and as a result the layout of each apartment that we saw seemed to be slightly different.

The general layout was that the downstairs has a living room (where people probably also sleep), a kitchen and a washroom with running water, and the upstairs is the sleeping area; toilets are along the corridor and are shared between 4 families. The space is tiny and the toilets are not nice, but it’s better than a slum where you don’t have running water or toilets at all! Every day here I am reminded of what we take for granted in the US and the UK!

The people in Dattawadi have really turned the little apartments into homes. Many of the entrances are decorated, there are pictures hanging on the walls, the kitchens are fully equipped with pots, pans and gas hobs (I didn’t see any electrical appliances like fridges though), and most have tvs to go along with their satellite dishes.