The Indian capital city of Delhi is witness to a unique urban phenomenon called ‘Unauthorised Colonies’. While informal settlements have been a part of cities across the world, especially the developing countries, the scale, morphology and socio-economic character represented by the unauthorized colonies as the typology of informal settlements in Delhi is intriguing for urban planners, architects and scholars.
Unauthorised colonies are certain type of ‘unplanned’ residential settlements in Delhi. They are categorised as ‘unauthorised’ because they are constructed on illegally subdivided land with incompatible land-use and/or byelaws. However, these colonies are not termed ‘illegal’ because the land tenure is bonafide in most of the cases as the Delhi Development Authority builds them either on private agricultural land or on unutilised public land under various stages of acquisition, since the first Master Plan of 1962. It is due to this quasi-legal status that the residents have access to normal privileges and facilities like electricity, election card, Aadhar card, passport, bank accounts and telephone connections.
The unauthorised colonies are often confused with slums or squatters. But these colonies comprising large-scale brick and concrete multi-storeyed construction are totally distinct from the slums, which are usually single-storied, temporary constructions on encroached land. Slums usually do not have sanitation facilities, while houses in the unauthorised colonies have separate toilets and other facilities. The condition of the built environment and physical infrastructure is also considerably better than in the slums. Unauthorised colonies are the largest form of informal housing with various surveys indicating that almost 30-40% of the urban population of the country resides in them.
Emergence and growth of unauthorized colonies
The unauthorised colonies started to emerge right after Independence, in conjunction with the planned or formal housing setup. The population increased due to influx of refugees and migrants soon after Independence, which led to the acute housing crisis in Delhi.
In the year 1961, about 118 unauthorised colonies were identified in Delhi. However, in the year 1974 the number of unauthorised colonies rose to 612. During the 1990s, the migration due to multi-national jobs resulted in the rapid increase in the number of unauthorised colonies. The number touched 1521 in 1997. In 2007, 1639 colonies applied for regularisation. The tentative list available with the Unauthorised Colonies Cell mentions the number as 1797 in the year 2015. The emergence and growth of unauthorized colonies has been consistent and parallel to planned housing.
Scale and magnitude of unauthorised colonies
At present there are 1797 unauthorised colonies interspersed across the city of Delhi as per the official list. Conservative official estimates say that about 40 lakh people inhabit these colonies. However, the unofficial estimate puts the population of these colonies in Delhi at almost 70 lakhs. The magnitude of the phenomenon of unauthorised colonies can be understood by the fact that the population of other major regional cities like Bhopal is under 20 lakhs, Lucknow 28 lakhs and Jaipur 30 lakhs.
Sangam Vihar, which is the largest unauthorised colony in Delhi, has an estimated population of 10 lakhs. This population size is larger than that of the 50 metro cities in the country including Guwahati, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Thiruvananthapuram, Gurugram, Aligarh, Bareilly, Moradabad and Jamshedpur. Other unauthorised colonies like Shaheen Bagh, Abul Fazal Enclave, Zakir Nagar, Seelampur and Hauz Rani Extension have a population of about one lakh each. It can be said that the scale of an unauthorised colony is comparable to an average-sized city in India.
Process: Collaboration model
The magnitude and nature of the unauthorized colonies makes them a counterpart of planned housing in the city and poses a question to the planners and scholars of urbanisation: ‘What is the process that creates such large scale informal housing phenomenon?’ ‘How do people come together and collect resources, gather finance and create residential settlements that the formal system has failed to?’
The answer lies in the ingenuity of the people to innovate against the various restrictions and constraints that are posed by the formal system. One such innovative solution is called the ‘Collaboration Model’, which is the result of no access to formal housing finance in these colonies.
Prior to the year 2000, the unauthorized colonies comprised of individual houses. People bought land at relatively cheaper rates and gradually built houses as per their needs and economic conditions. These houses were mostly one or two-storeys, constructed in a phased manner as per availability of resources. However, after the year 2000, large-scale migration saw increased demand for informal housing that caused the beginning of construction of flats by the local builders. Due to the non-availability of formal finance, builders are engaged in a barter arrangement, locally known as a collaboration system.
Both the public sector and private sector banks don’t provide housing finance for properties in these colonies; only a few cooperative banks operating in these areas provide finance, like the Jamia Cooperative Bank, which has its presence in Jamia Nagar. The rate of interest on loans provided by the cooperative banks is about 16% per annum, which is much higher than the rate of interest on regular housing finance that is about 10.5% presently. In the absence of housing finance in these unauthorized colonies, some buyers also opt for personal loans from banks to buy property here.
Properties are bought mostly as cash transactions. Apart from limiting the finance options of the buyers, there is immense loss of revenue to the banks and financial institutions due to this restrictive policy.
The shortage of finance along with rising costs of land has given rise to unique barter arrangements between landowners and builders. In this arrangement, the landowner offers his plot to the builder who undertakes the construction of the apartment building from his own resources. Once constructed, the flats in the building are distributed between the landowner and the builder. This arrangement of the Collaboration System is entered through a legal agreement between landowner(s) and builder(s).
The distribution of the constructed flats is done in the ratio factoring the prevalent market rates of the land and construction. With rising rates of land, the prevalent distribution is done in the ratio of 75:25, where the landowner gets three flats against one for the builder. Earlier, when the rate of land was lower, the ratio of distribution between landowner and builder used to be 50:50, leaving equal number of flats for both the landowner and the builder.
The property acquired after distribution is sold, rented or used for self as per the individual requirements of the landowner and the builder. In most of the cases, the builder recovers his cost of construction by selling off his share of flats while the landowner usually keeps one as his own residence and rents out or sells his other flats. This model is preferred by landowners who do not have funds to finance the construction of flats and dovetails the situation with a builder without paying any amount. As a result, the landowner gets flats for his own use as well as to generate revenue from renting or selling the surplus ones. Thus, the collaboration system is a unique example of ingenuity and adaptation by the people to avoid large investments by collating their available resources.
In the year 1972, the Delhi Lands (Restriction on Transfer) Act 1972 was enforced, which banned the sale of land notified for acquisition in the Master Plan. This act stopped the registry and transfer of the title deed of land including agricultural land in Delhi. However, the transfer of the properties continued through a General Power of Attorney (GPA). The GPA is executed by paying a stamp duty of Rs. 100 while the stamp duty for a title deed is 5 to 7% of the cost of the property or the prevailing circle rates, whichever is higher. Sometimes, in order to substantiate the ownership of the buyer, the GPA is also supplemented with a Will of the owner executed in favour of the buyer.
Although GPA does not provide a comprehensive ownership title, along with the Will, it provides enough legal basis to use, alter, rent and further sell the property.
The GPA plus the Will is used to transfer flats, houses and land a number of times. Despite the inferior nature of the GPA as compared to Registry, there are seldom cases of property disputes between the people. GPA has been used as a legal bypass or alternative by the people en masse and collectively honoured both in letter and spirit. The loss of revenue to the Government on account of restricting Registry will run into hundreds of crores of rupees.
Conclusion
‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ cannot be truer to describe the innovativeness and ingenuity of the people to create informal housing for themselves in the form of Unauthorised Colonies. While planning agencies look at these colonies as a problem, they are ignorant about the potential of people in aggregating the resources in building parallel settlements or to say informal cities if the magnitude of these unauthorised colonies is kept in mind. It is time that the formal planning process recognises the power and potential of informality in our cities. By doing so, more sensitive, inclusive and responsive cities will be created.
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