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About The People's Planning Campaign

Background
“India's life is in the villages. Unless villages and people are not strengthened, Swaraj or self-reliance is not possible.” This quote by M.K. Gandhi is still relevant even 50 years after India achieved its independence. Till date 75% of India's population lives in rural areas and more than 48% are below the poverty line. In August 1996, the newly elected left government of Kerala launched a unique ‘People's Campaign for Decentralized Planning'. Involving almost 31 million people, this is probably the largest experiment in local democracy and local empowerment being carried out in the world today.

The aim was to achieve a sustainable development, local empowerment and environmental protection through people's participation in the planning and implementation process, based on the belief that the people know best what is good for them. The final goal was to maintain and extend Kerala's earlier achievements of a rich quality of life.
The idea of the government was to effect relaxation in bureaucratic control by placing people's immediate needs above partisan politics. To achieve this, an elaborate process of planning and local resource mobilization was undertaken, solely by the people's initiative.
The State Planning Board, which was the implementing agency for the programme, recognized that knowledge about local resources is important for all planning exercises. Hence, it initiated an elaborate ‘resource mapping' exercise by way of surveys and seminars to document both natural and human resources, thereby providing the baseline data for future planning for all panchayats.

The PPC's methodology of work is to empower elected local bodies to work out their own planning and project proposals for implementation, thus bring about decentralization of governance. Transparent selection of beneficiaries for schemes benefiting individuals was undertaken at the Grama Sabhas, the bottom-most democratic body. Local level plans were made here. Groups of villages make up "blocks," units through which certain central government development schemes are implemented. Blocks of one to thirteen village or urban units were assigned the task of coordinating the local plans with national schemes and for making sure that local plans did not clash. The block units were also responsible for trying to fill in gaps in local plans. Local body plans now form a major part of the total state plans.

Projects prepared by tens of thousands of volunteers and by elected representatives with little or no prior experience in plan preparation were deficient in many technical aspects. Campaign organizers called on retired government employees, experts , officials, volunteers and other professionals to provide technical expertise. It is estimated that more than 100,000 volunteers helped in mobilizing people, and around 2.5 million people attended the various local body meetings.

Among the major programs of the PPC the “Total Housing” scheme was an ambitious project undertaken for fulfilling the basic housing needs of the people in the 3 major districts of Kerala, namely, Trivandrum, Kollam, and Thrissur. The three main organisations involved in cost-effective building construction in Kerala, namely, Habitat Technology Group, Costford and the Nirmiti Kendra or the Building Canter, along with HUDCO and the Government Engineering department were identified for implementing the housing schemes.

The Government census data proved to be outdated and incorrect; hence, for gauging the housing scenario too, physical surveys were conducted at the local level with the help of the local government bodies and the people themselves. The people below the poverty line were identified and a list including all other target beneficiaries was prepared. A database of the housing situation, including the need of materials, was recorded for any future use. It was planned to repair and retain houses in good shape and rebuild only those house that had become structurally unstable. Local level planning and housing schemes and were formulated.

To counter the risk of building material suppliers forming a lobby and hiking the prices in anticipation of such a big demand, a price freeze in the rates of building materials was implemented for a period of three years. The total number of buildings to be constructed was also not made public to be able to control the market forces against escalation.

For construction activities of such a large proportion, there was a lack of trained masons and labour. Hence a series of training camps were organized. About 200 engineers were trained in each of the three districts using the barefoot engineer's concept of training. More than ten to fifteen thousand people were given hands on training in the art of masonry and basic construction, all resulting in the creation of a skilled labour bank.

As such a big scale of construction activity was to be undertaken, within the limited State resources, it was out of necessity, more that anything else that cost-effective technologies had to be employed. The training given was mainly in the use of appropriate technologies which were cost-effective, energy friendly, locally available, gave economic independence, and responded to physical, social and climatic needs of the region. Moreover, the training also gave some orientation in the management of the land, trees, water and infrastructure of the site.

As these technologies were non-conventional and not familiar, there was a lot of resistance from the bureaucrats and the panchayats for their acceptance. Hence, awareness programmes for even the politicians, administrators, bureaucrats and government technicians was arranged with an agenda to achieve ‘Habitat Literacy.'

One of the political agenda of the whole movement was to ‘demystify technology' and to break the nexus of the architect, builder and building material supplier and, thus bring as change in the present day market dynamics.

To provide the necessary impetus, the financial allocation was tremendously increased. The government was proving an allocation for housing in one year that was earlier provided in the whole term of a five-year plan. Financial flow was also made easier, with 75 per cent budget of a project released as soon as the project was approved. For construction purposes, people's committees were given preference over private contractors.

As it was a people oriented housing movement, a democratic approach was adopted for planning, wherein, the people designed their own house plans as per their vocational needs. The concept was that buildings grow. Hence, a core house should be designed and allowances made for future expansion. This core house was roughly worked out to be about 300 square feet, including a living room a bedroom, a kitchen and a toilet and bath, each costing about 35 to 45 thousands rupees at an average rate of 150 rupees a square foot of construction.

During the process of construction the people were trained to assist the masons as labour or were made to help in collecting material. The idea was to use local people to build in their own habitat with the help and supervision of the trained engineers, thus instilling in them a sense of ownership.

In 2001 the communist party lost the election and the total housing scheme was stalled. It was implemented for 3 years from 1998 to 2001, but was unable to achieve all its goals. However, in many cases up to 60% of the targeted number of houses have achieved completion.
The idea of breaking market dynamics was not a success, but in Mr. Shankar's opinion it can at least be considered as the beginning of a process.

The present government is trying to evolve the program in another model. However, it is encountering problems due to the great financial crisis that the State is currently facing.