(Smart when you create...dumb when you consume) <-- How to recognise unnecessary technology and some Jaga Mission Stories

The challenge of humanity, since the industrial revolution, has not been one of scarcity, but one of excess (and of the exploitation and inequality that naturally appear when that excess - which can provide for the whole world - ends up being controlled by the few). 

The trouble with technology is the same. How much is enough ? Where does one draw the line between the need and the want...the useful and the useless ?

Perhaps, there is a simple way to distinguish the technology that one needs from the technology that is unnecessary, superfluous and, in all probability, harmful.

Any technology which makes you smarter while you use it and keeps making you smarter and more creative the more you use it, is a healthy and useful technology for you. The technology that makes you dumb and dependent when you use it, is neither very useful nor very healthy in the long run, irrespective of the convenience that it brings.

Most of the time, we use (rather consume) technology that makes the creator of that technology - and those who control the creators - smarter and more powerful, while making us dependent and constantly distracted (which cannot but cause a steady dumbing down over time).

Technology ...Consumer and Creator

A casual glance at the way people use their computers - one of the most powerful tools of modern technology - can confirm the above statements.

Google-maps may make map-reading, navigation and orientation very easy, but it can also decrease our ability to use our sense of direction, powers of observation and of memory to remember and locate landmarks, judge distances etc.

Typically, when we use google-maps our eyes stay glued to the smart-phone screen (the effect is the same even if we are looking at the road while driving...the app tells us everything), but if we were to go old-style with paper maps we would have to constantly look up from the map to scan the surroundings and ensure that we are at the right spot.

Of course, I am absolutely not suggesting dumping google-maps and returning to paper maps. After all the whole purpose of technology is to make life more convenient for humans so that they don’t have to engage in ceaseless manual labour and mundane tasks and engage in more meaningful pursuits instead.

But if the consequence of such “convenience” is a steady process of dumbing down and engaging in such "meaningful pursuits" like spending hours on social media and the "struggles" of becoming an influencer, then it might actually be healthier and more meaningful to return to a life of heavy manual labour (if one can, that is).

The idea is not to turn ones back on technology (it simply cannot be done), but to be aware of the manner in which the technology is owned, controlled and provided to us so that we can be conscious of its effects on us.

GPS and the Kargil Lesson

Talking about the conveniences of positioning systems, that is exactly the lesson that the Indian army learnt the hard way during the Kargil war of 1999. India was denied access to the Global Positioning System (GPS) by USA exactly when she needed it most in the context of high-altitude mountain warfare. The Kargil war was also a trigger event that led to the development of NavIC (’Navigation with Indian Constellation’...the word ‘navik’ means sailor in Hindi), India’s alternative to the GPS. 

Therefore, the simple learning that the above case provides, is that it is alright to be a user of technology, as long as you also play a role in developing it (or at least understanding how it operates), but it can be downright dangerous if you forever remain merely a consumer of technology.

Still, no matter how dependent google-map may make you, it is still a very useful tool. What arguments could one possibly offer to justify the helpless addictions that are caused by the largely useless social-media platforms ?

I am sure the people who develop these platforms continue to sharpen and develop their skills in programming and problem solving, whereas the users continuously lose the ability to use the computer for the main task it was created to perform – to compute. On top of that, the more they use...the more they generate data for these very same companies.

One cannot wait for society to change to protect oneself from such devastating trends...one simply has to jump off this crazy train oneself.

Linux and Synaptic Connections

For me that jump was in April 2016, when I made the switch from Windows to Linux...and never looked back.

I realised that the users of open-source operating systems and software, inevitably, start transforming into developers with time.

Or as my dear friend Titusz Bugya, who introduced me to Linux and taught me pretty much everything that I know about the proper use of computers, once put it jokingly-

"Linux IS user-friendly !! It is a friend of the User...not of the idiot !"

As the Linux beginner starts overcoming the hesitation and fear of the terminal window and has the first conversations with the computer using the command line, s/he begins to hone that most essential and fundamental skill required for solving a problem, no matter how complex -- the ability to formulate a question.

The clearly formulated question leads to the precisely formulated command and that leads to the desired result.

Here, the Unix philosophy, which is also used in Linux, of using programs that do only one thing and do it very well becomes a great tool. It encourages you to break down complex tasks into component parts - which by themselves may not be as overwhelming - and then deploy the appropriate programs to tackle them one at a time. 

It is not just about approaching and successfully completing a task, but about developing a certain way of thinking and approaching a problem - or as the geo-political expert Andrei Martyanov put it in his brilliant book - "to develop complex synaptic connections which are applicable for everyday life."

Some more hands-on stuff...(OR) how Linux helped Jaga Mission in Odisha

In the previous post I had started discussing about the Linux command line and the incredible flexibility and power it provides to the user. 

Using the command line, and progressing (which happens quite naturally) towards scripting and programming, also halts and reverses the "Smart when you create - Dumb when you consume" process.

The simple fact is that we can't depend on an external IT specialist or a ready-made software for most of the problems that we face regularly in our work.

Only we know the specific problems that we face in our particular work environments - and they may pop up anytime. It is impossible to out-source all such problem situations to an external software consultant.

Similarly, there may be many tasks at work, which could be solved and/or automated through the command line or scripts (a series of commands written down in a file for execution). I have already showed some examples in the previous post. 

In this post let me show another example of a slightly higher order of complexity than the ones I showed earlier.

The implementation of Jaga Mission, the flagship slum improvement project of the Government of Odisha, where I worked as a consultant urban planner, involved the creation of a pretty huge geo-spatial database.

In the first phase of the project, about 2000 slums located in 109 cities and towns of the state were mapped using quadcopter drones. The very high resolution (2.5 cm) imagery was geo-referenced and digitized to create the necessary layers of geo-spatial data layers. 

The following were the major data layers that were prepared for each slum settlement -

a) the high-resolution drone image

b) layer showing the individual slum houses

c) layer showing the slum boundary

d) layer showing cadastral (land ownership/tenancy) data corresponding to the extent of the slum settlement.

e) layer showing the existing land-use of the slum settlement

This led to the creation of a pretty substantial geo-spatial database of about 10,000 map layers. In an earlier blog on operational parameters, I have explained how this database was crucial to fulfilling the goal of Jaga Mission of granting in-situ land rights to slum dwellers. 

The geo-spatial data was particularly useful when encountered with complex situations, such as slums located on certain specific categories of land, where granting in-situ land rights may not be possible. 

When this data was handed over to the Jaga Mission office by the technology consultants, the data-sets were organised in a manner which made quick retrieval and analysis difficult.

The individual layers were stored in a series of folders and sub-folders in a manner as shown in the diagram below -

 

In order to retrieve any layer of a particular type (say, the slum household map) of any slum, one would have to first open the folder of the respective district; then the folder of the respective ULB (Urban Local Body i.e. the city) ; then the folder of the respective slum and then the necessary layer(s).

The file names of the individual layers just mentioned the type (e.g. "hhinf" for the household layer; "rplot" for the revenue plot/cadastral layer etc), without giving any further information suggesting the name of the slum or city.

While this is absolutely fine for manually retrieving the separate layer files and operating on them on a Geographic Information System (GIS) software, this method of data management is incompatible with any attempt at programming, automating or quick retieval.

And when we are dealing with 30 districts; 109 ULBs; 2000 slums; and 10000 data layer, then quick and precise retrieval is essential. Any kind of programming or process automation could also be extremely useful. 

For example, it was decided by the Government that slums located on land belonging to the Railways may need to be re-located to alternate sites. The process could be done by filtering the cadastral layers based on land ownership by the Railways and then selecting the houses which intersect with those parcels from the slum-households layer. 

However, given the manner in which the files were named and organised, this process would have to be done manually on a slum by slum basis. In the absence of an army of GIS technicians (something that the Jaga Mission did not possess), the process was bound to revert to an even more laborious process of municipal staff and revenue officials physically visiting the slums and checking if they were located on railway land.

It was almost as if the elaborate digital database had never been created.

Titusz and I wished to rename and re-organise the data-files in a manner which would enable near instantaneous retrieval and processing. But, of course, even to rename the files (in order to enable scripting), we would need - you guessed it - scripting !....or else how to rename 10000 files stored in separate folders and sub-folders ??

So, we wrote a script which would loop over each of the 30 district folders and recursively go down each sub-folder until it reached the bottom-most level where the data files where stored. 

Every time the script would move down a folder level, it would store the name of the folder as a variable. Once it reached the level of the individual file it would rename it by adding the relevant stored variables as prefixes to the original name of the file. The resultant file name would therefore contain the name of the city, the name of the slum and the type of the data layer (there was no need to add the name of the district to the file name).

The following diagram shows the concept behind the script -

 

Once this process was completed, there was no need to store the files in separate folders and sub-folders. They could be kept in a single folder and files of any combination of city name, slum name and type could be retrieved instantly.

Not only did we have fun trying to create a script that would solve our problem by making use of the names of the very folders in which they were stored (which was precisely the problem that we were trying to solve !), but we also ended up creating a fresh system which drastically reduced the time taken for analysis and decision-making regarding all future tasks.

Effectively, we used the problem to solve the problem.

As a direct consequence, it reduced the burden of manual labour which would have fallen on the shoulders of municipal workers and also reduced the problems faced by slum dwellers due to incorrect decision-making in a process as challenging as relocation.

More on those stories in the forthcoming blogs...

 
 

 

 

With great power comes great...Idiocy !

One of the tragedies of computers in the present times is that they are almost always used for things which they are not supposed to be used for. 

As the name suggests, the primary task of the computer is to compute - to take over the boring, repetitive and labour consuming computing tasks of human beings so that the species can focus on more creative and meaningful pursuits (i.e. human pursuits). 

However, if I were to observe the use of the computer by development sector managers and professionals, it would appear sans doute that the electronic computer was created for the sake of making unnecessarily heavy and pointless graphics loaded power-point presentations. 

Indeed, if one counts the amount of hours (sometimes, all the hours) that young professionals spend adjusting images, animations and texts on their power-point presentations one wonders whether computers have increased office-based manual-labour by orders of magnitude instead of reducing it. 

Of course, a major cause of this, which I have already written about in a previous blog , is the continued dependence on proprietary software despite the steady growth of open-source software and operating systems. 

While proprietary software and operating systems treat computers users primarily as consumers of technology (distracting them with ever flashy and "user-friendly" software products, which are designed to make the consumer feel tech-savvy while simultaneously building a technological dependence akin to substance addiction), open-source software and operating systems encourage users to gradually transform into a free community of developers...liberating them from the addiction of any specific product created by a company (for its own profits of course) and enabling them to create their own products which are suited to their needs.

The super-computers in our pockets

In his brilliant talk titled "You should learn to Program", computer scientist Christian Genco said something, which was quite eye-opening and embarrassing at the same time. 

He showed a photo of the Apollo Guidance computer that was created by NASA engineers to do the complex calculations necessary for the Apollo-11 moon-landing mission. He then flipped out a smart phone from his pocket and said, 

"Your cell phone in your pocket right now, has the computing power to do the calculations of a million Apollo-11 missions simultaneoulsy ! NASA scientists in 1961 would have fallen to their knees and worshipped you for having this kind of technology !"

The Apollo Guidance Computer 

Christian then wrapped up the irony by showing a clip of a little video game and said,

"And what are you using it to do ??"

Here we are, faced with a zillion challenges that are hammering our clueless city governments from all sides....the challenge of affordable land; of urban poverty; of the vulnerability of the informal sector; of climate; of traffic; of housing...(the list goes on and on)...and we use one of the most powerful tools ever created by human beings to play video games, spend hours on social media, make colorful powerpoint presentations etc.

Enter the Command Line...may the Force be with You

Many years ago, when I was in high school, it was screens like the one shown below that made me run away from computers.

 

Little did I know that many years later this grim, dark screen - known as the terminal window - would turn into my biggest ally. I shall tell the story of my introduction to Linux in another blog. But for now, let us talk a bit about this dark screen. The terminal window is the one in which you can type in commands to your computer...when the computer responds, i.e. executes your command, you begin to sense both the true power of the machine and of yourself.

Of course, in the beginning the advantage is not very evident and I wondered why I should not go click-click with the mouse on the graphical user interface (GUI). After all, that is the most familiar and convenient way of interacting with computers running Windows on them. 

But very soon the things you can do with the command line starts overtaking all that you can do with your mouse...and then, suddenly, it goes totally beyond the reach of the mouse as if a spaceship from "Star Trek" just jumped into warp speed and disappeared from sight.

Let's say, I want to create a folder called "data" using the command line. I would type the following at the command prompt and press enter -

mkdir data

On the terminal it would look like this -

 

 

But I can easily do the same by right clicking on the windows file manager and then selecting the option for creating a new folder right ? 

But let us now try to make five folders with names data-1; data-2; data-3 etc. Now it begins to get slightly inconvenient to use the mouse.

But on the command line you would just have to type the following line and press enter -

 

And it's done.

But now....let's make 500 folders !

On the command all that you have to type is the tiny command-

That's it ! When you open your file manager, you see this waiting for you -

You have activated warp drive and left the mouse somewhere far behind in the universe. 

Now, imagine that these folders have been filling in over a long time with all kinds of files (word files; excel files; image files; pdf documents etc) concerning your work.

You would create a new folder called data-pdf and copy just the pdf files into it. It may be that all the 500 folders could contain pdf files or only some of them...you cannot be sure. What would be a mouse based way to do this ? Open each folder, select the pdf files and then copy them into the new folder. 

Or you could type the following two commands -

 

The first command -- mkdir data-pdf -- makes a new folder with the name data-pdf.

The second command -- cp  -r */*.pdf  data-pdf -- uses a command called cp (copy) to recursively (i.e. goes inside each and every folder) check for files ending with a pdf extension and then copy just those files into the newly created folder called data-pdf.

 

Well, well ! Now that is something isn't it ? We asked the computer to perform quite a complex search-n-retrieval task and it did it...in much much shorter time than the blink of an eye. 

And we did this with just two lines of ultra-simple commands.

Imagine what all we could do with a series of such commands.

A series of commands tied together....well, that's a program !!

If you could do so much with these mighty single-line commands (and they are mighty as we shall see)....what all can you do with a bunch of them tied together !!

That's what we will explore here.

(to be continued...)

 

 

 

 

The importance of Operational Parameters...and the pointlessness of Data-hunting-gathering

The tragedy of data-hunting-gathering 

A defining feature of urban poverty alleviation programs in India in the present times is their ever increasing size, scale and speed of implementation. The Government plays a leading role in the planning and execution of these programs in collaboration with large (often multi-national) private sector consultants, think-tanks and non-profits with financial support from international donors and philanthro-capitalist foundations.

Increasingly, the implementation of these projects involves the creation of vast amounts of digital data, which fuels an ever growing data-hunger among all kinds of development organisations and professionals. 

Everyone is perenially looking for data these days – students, researchers, the organisation that just partnered with the government, the organisation that wants to partner with the government, the organisation that will never partner with the government, the odd travelling scholar in search of a good case study...the list goes on. 

Most of the time, the DHG (data hunter-gatherer) community is not even aware of what kind of data they need, the reason they need it for or the use they intend to put it to once they acquire it. The belief seems to be ("belief" is the right word, for there seems to be very little of science in such an approach), that once these mythical Himalayan data-sets would be acquired all the other questions would magically get answered too.

Rather than searching for data in such a hopeless manner, it could be far more useful to understand the technical aspects of the development programs that generate this data and the operational parameters they need to adhere to. Exploring in detail "how" a program is executed, also throws light on "who" actually implements it and with what tools and techniques. One can then also understand "what" data gets generated in such programs and what uses it could have.

The usefulness of studying operational parameters

Compared to the data, which may be extremely hard to obtain, the goals, objectives and  standard operating procedures guiding the implementation of these projects are more accessible. Even if they are not available in the public domain, the government is generally far more comfortable sharing these documents than the actual data. 

Having even a general understanding of the operational parameters of a project can help one deduce what kind of data may or may not have been produced as part of the project. 

For example, in the case of Jaga Mission, the operational parameters were clearly laid out in the legislation - "The Odisha Land Rights to Slum Dwellers Act, 2017" that guided its implementation.

Let’s look a bit deeper into the operational parameters of the mission in order to understand what kind of data was produced and why it was produced. 

The operational parameters of Jaga Mission

According to the Act

• A slum is defined as a compact settlement of minimum 20 households; 
• Land rights shall be granted based on the area of actual occupation; 
• The maximum ceiling for granting land rights is 45 sqm for slums located in Municipal Councils and 60 sqm for slums located in Notified Area Councils (NACs); 
• Land rights shall be granted free of charge for up to 30 sqm for families belonging to the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category; 
• Non-EWS households shall pay a certain percentage (later fixed at 50 percent) of the benchmark value of land for securing the land rights and EWS households shall pay a lesser percentage (25 percent) for the amount of land occupied above 30 sqm.

From the above parameters, we can get a pretty clear idea of what kind of data we require in order to execute the program. It is clear that the implementation of the Mission would not only require the boundaries of slum settlements to be clearly delineated (according to the definition) but also an exact mapping of every single dwelling inside the slums in order to calculate the area under actual occupation. In its first phase, Jaga Mission covered 168000 households in 1725 slums in 109 cities, which are spread across the length and breadth of the state of Odisha (155707 sq.km), turning the mapping and survey process of the Mission into a huge logistical challenge. 

It was this massive geographical scale and the need to complete the survey within a reasonably short time which made the Government consider the use of drones. Teams of 3 to 4 professional surveyors would travel by road and reach the cities allotted to them. They would then team up with the local municipal staff and NGOs to visit the slum settlements. GIS companies and NGOs were hired and simultaneously deployed to cover all the cities and slums of Jaga. On reaching the slum, the survey team would prepare the drone flight plan (based on inputs from the municipal staff, NGO representatives and slum dwellers), set up the ground control points, fly the drone and then move on to the next slum. For an average sized slum (1.2 hectares), this process would take about 1.5 to 2 hours. After covering all the slums in a city, the survey team would pack up and drive on to the next city. The raw drone captures for a batch of cities would then be sent for processing and turned into extremely high-resolution (2 cm) ortho-images (i.e. geographically corrected images which allow true distances to be measured). While the image processing was being done, the survey teams would continue their surveys in other cities, thus ensuring a simultaneity of data capturing and data processing activities. The high resolution allowed the digitization of even the tiniest dwellings to be done directly on the ortho-image, without the need for additional DGPS surveys to be conducted in the slums (as was done in the case of the RAY project a few years earlier). 

The following three map layers (vector data) were the most crucial and where prepared for each slum -

i) Slum boundary layer – showing the exact extent of the slum on the date of the survey.

ii) Slum dwellings layer – polygons showing each dwelling unit inside the slum (along with the household survey data).

iii) Revenue parcels layer – showing the ownership details and formal records of the land parcels on which the slum is located.

Together with the ortho-image (raster) layer and an additional land-use (vector) layer, this translated into a huge dataset of 8625 map layers for the 1725 slums of Jaga.

But, once the above map layers were ready, all sorts of geographical and mathematical operations related to mission implementation could be done easily. Let's consider the following cases in a slum located in a Municipal Council (with a maximum ceiling of 45 sqm for being eligible). Let’s assume the benchmark value of land to be INR 80,00,000/acre (i.e. INR 1977/sqm).

1. Beneficiary A - EWS family occupying 27 sqm.
2. Beneficiary B - EWS family occupying 33 sqm.
3. Beneficiary C - Non-EWS family occupying 35 sqm
4. Beneficiary D - EWS or Non-EWS family occupying 50 sqm

Solution of land rights eligibility criteria for each case would be -

• Beneficiary A - Family would get land right free of cost for 27 sqm.
• Beneficiary B - Family would get land right for 33 sqm on payment of INR 1482.75/- (0.25 x 1977 x3)
• Beneficiary C - Family would get land right for 35 sqm on payment of INR 34597.5/- (0.5 x 1977 x 35)
• Beneficiary D - Ineligible until family agrees to surrender the extra 5 sqm.

We can see clearly from the above example that the operational parameters of the project as defined in the Act pretty much dictated what kind of data needed to be generated and how that data was to be used to calculate the eligibility criteria for settling the land. 

But it also becomes clear from the above, what kind of data was not generated as part of the Mission. 

The truth is in the grind

The bottom-line is that the data that governments produce for the implementation of their schemes and projects may or may not be of any use to researchers, scholars, practitioners and organisations which are not directly involved with the project. The operational parameters help us understand what kind of databases may or may not have been generated.

It is far better to have ones own objectives and questions clearly articulated and produce the datasets accordingly. In this digital age it is easy to imagine that the grind of being a solid development researcher can be avoided by just scooping up all the data that exists in government offices and working the magic of the computer on it - but that does not work.

No amount of aimless data-hunting-gathering can replace the power of scientific knowledge, well articulated research questions and a robust methodology.

The truth is in the grind.

Sorry...we cannot share the data with you !

The truth is in the verb

One of the most tragico-amusing facts that most researchers, students, consultants etc get mis-led by when going data hunting (especially for digital data) in government offices, is that when the concerned officials say, "We cannot share that data with you !" (which they almost always do) - they are telling the truth....as in literally !

For sure, they may not "want" to share it with you, but in most cases they simply "cannot".

In order to share any data - they must first have it in their possession. Well, it's a bit hard to part with what you don't have isn't it ? 

So, let's not be overly harsh on the officials of refusal, and focus instead on what are the deeper structural reasons which create this absurd situation, where the government itself is not in effective possession of its own data. And just as Thomas Piketty often says, that the structural economic problems such as wealth inequality can be better understood by resorting to the novels of Austen and Balzac than the works of economists, I would like to approach our present puzzle through the medium of personal experiences and anecdotes...and believe me, I have tonnes of them. 

Looking for data...and finding the cave of Ali Baba

Couple of years ago when I started working as a consultant for the Housing & Urban Development Department in Odisha, one of my tasks was to collect whatever data was available in the various offices of the department on the slums of Odisha. 

All through my years as a student and researcher of city planning, I was accustomed to all kinds of data collection warfare that one has to conduct in government offices - combined arms, protracted, geurrilla, psy-ops, corridor-corner-mugging...you name it - to get even the most obvious and useless bits of information. So, going data-digging with the seal of the Principal Secretary was like a walk in the park and I was quite enjoying the breezy feel of it. Even so, I didn't really expect to find anything useful at all. 

After visiting desks and cubicles, where I would be kindly directed to other desks and cublicles (I love strolling the halls and corridors of bureaucracy...it's not half as masochistic as it sounds and it has its benefits), I ended up in a corner desk in the office of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), where I struck a conversation with another consultant who was nearing the end of his contract. He seemed to remember that there was some data stored in a desktop, which was barely ever switched on. As he searched for the folder, he reminisced more, "This data was collected during the RAY scheme...then the scheme was abandoned, and no one used it anymore."

As many would remember, RAY was a promising scheme of the central government to create slum free cities which met a pre-mature end in 2014 when the Congress led UPA-II government was defeated by the BJP led NDA. While the scheme was abandoned before any serious implementation could be done, it seemed that it did generate some data before dying.

When he finally opened the folder, it turned out to be a treasure cove containing detailed shapefiles of each of the 436 slums of Bhubaneswar, organised neatly in 67 sub-folders corresponding to each ward of the city. The slum-level data consisted of separate map layers for the slum boundary, land ownership, open spaces, infrastructure and dwelling units along with the full household survey data of over 90000 households. Then there were city level map layers showing the city agglomeration area, the muncipal area, municipal wards, location of slums and the road network. From the pdf files containing the layout maps prepared for each slum, one could even find the details of the private consultancy that had prepared the maps (that's always a lucky find, as GIS databases in India almost never contain any metadata files....more on the horror of GIGO - Garbage In Garbage Out - of digital data in later blogs).

The RAY data that we discovered in that abandoned, dust-coated desktop, had been produced sometime around 2013-14. Judging by the time-stamp in the pdf files it must have been handed over to the Government in 2014.  

Data absence through Data obsolescence

Whether, a scheme gets abandoned or not, there is nothing stopping the government from making full use of such a comprehensive and detailed database and also update it in the process of using it. However, a general lack of familiarity with GIS  (although everyone keeps talking about it all the time...agreed, mostly the talk is on buzzwords and eye-candies and not on serious cartography or computing), the dependence on expensive and proprietary software (which ensures that the GIS consultants produce and process the data...and the government has eyes on it only through the consultants and for just as long as the contract period lasts) and lack of awareness regarding free and open-source alternatives creates a situation where the government just does not have the systems and capacities in place to "receive" the data even if it is "handed-over".

Well, what inevitably happens to something which you never use ??....you gradually forget that it even exists. And as the consultants (for what is the government nowadays but an army of consultants embedded in various departments and offices doing everything from preparing reports, drafting standard operating procedures, analysing data, preparing powerpoint presentations...you name it) involved with a certain project leave at the end of their contract period, the last traces of the organisational memory regarding the data disappear with them. 

It was clear from the RAY survey guidelines and the database that I discovered that the survey involved an elaborate process involving the collection of cartosat-1 (2.5 m resolution) and, the now decomissioned, cartosat-2 (< 1 m resolution) satellite imagery; differential global position system (DGPS) surveys to mark the edges of each structure inside the slum; extensive digitization to prepare the maps; detailed household surveys of over 90000 slum families etc. For sure, it must have been an expensive process too. 

And here we were, 3 years later, where the best case scenario for the data turned out to be that it was forgotten in a desktop in the corner of BMC to be accidentally discovered by me on a random data safari. If this happens in one case, then, for sure, it happens in other cases too, especially considering that the underlying causes remain mostly unchanged.

It so happened, that a few years later, when I showed that data to the then Commissioner of Bhubaneswar in a presentation, he made a sincere request that I share the data with his office as they didn't possess any GIS data on the slums of Bhubaneswar. 

So here I was in a surreal situation where BMC was asking me to share BMC's data because BMC did not possess it. 

I had half a mind to say "Sorry, I cannot share the data with you." 

Well, the trouble was that I..."could" ;))

Reviving a dormant blog...And a few words on Lefebvre, Cartesian geometry and Open-source GIS

The Lefebvrian Paradox

In his famous and influential book ‘The Production of Space’, Henri Lefebvre had written that ‘social space, and especially urban space, emerged in all its diversity – and with a structure far more reminiscent of flaky mille-feuille pastry than of the homogenous and isotropic space of classical (Euclidian/Cartesian) mathematics.’ 

Ironically, in the decades following the publication of Lefebvre’s book, it is precisely the dramatic developments in the application of ‘Eucliain/Cartesian’ mathematics to geographical analysis – namely through the development of various Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software – that helped unravel the innumerable layers of the urban mille-feuille. However, such technologies were proprietary, expensive and largely out of the reach of community groups. For the power of computerised geographical analysis to address the complexities of social space, it had to be accessible by the community and become the technological arm of 21st century participatory development. That became possible with the emergence of the Linux operating system and the free and open-source software movement as a powerful alternative to proprietary software.

Altruism through technical necessity - the revolutionary potential of the open-source movement

The democratic and community oriented nature of the open-source movement is not just a function of altruism (which definitely motivates many members of the movement) but of technical necessity. It is only through the collaborative efforts of millions of developers around the world that the open-source movement is able to create its software. The fact that the opensource geo-spatial foundation describes itself as a ‘not-for-profit organization...devoted to an open philophy and participatory community driven development’ (https://www.osgeo.org/about/) has a lot to say about the movement’s potential role in the field of participatory urban development.

A quick glance at the remarkably informative maps prepared by the citizens of Kibera slum in Nairobi demonstrates the power of this combination. My personal favourite is a thematic map on the status of safety and security in the slum, which identifies dangerous places through a clustering of “bottles” (signifying alcohol vending spots) and “bulbs” (signifying operational or non-operational street lights). A dense clustering of bottles along with black bulbs (non-operational) suggests dangerous locations. The map is prepared using the opensource QGIS software and uses openstreetmap as its base layer (https://mapkibera.org/download/maps/Security%20map%20final.pdf).

The process effectively combines the depth of qualitative information, which can only be aquired through detailed community mapping exercises, with the accuracy, speed and processing power of modern computing. This is where Cartesian/Euclidian mathematics (what are the “bottles” and “bulbs” if not coordinates on an x-y cartesian plane ?) meets the local knowledge of the community. 

The major distinction between proprietary and opensource software is not that one is generally expensive and the other is mostly free. While proprietary software treats users primarily as consumers of technology (causing stready technological dependence, while simultaneously creating an illusion of being tech-savvy), opensource software encourages users to transform into collaborative developers (encouraging community participation and causing technological empowerment).

Pro-Poor Development goes Big Business - Government in hypersonic mode

Although community organisations around the world have effectively used opensource software to map their settlements and exert their agency, the increasing size, scale and speed of implementation of urban poverty alleviation programmes in the global south creates its own challenges.

In this new context it is no longer enough for community organisations to create detailed maps of their own settlements and prepare their own databases. Now, instead of having to deal with a lethargic, inefficient and apathetic bureacracy, they increasingly have to deal with a highly energetic, quick and effective state machinery, which is flush with funds and operates in partnership with large private sector consultants and technology firms to implement gigantic urban poverty alleviation programs simultaneously across thousands of slum settlements in hundreds of cities. Instead of being a reluctant antagonist, the state has turned into an extremely vigorous ally of the urban poor – in both cases community participation may suffer, but the community mobilisation methods of the past are simply not adequate in this drastically altered reality. Many NGOs and community groups have simply not grasped this altered reality well enough.

The challenge of technological development

Moreover, different slum improvement projects would require different types of maps. A Kibera like self-assessment need not map every single dwelling in the slum, but a land titling project like Jaga Mission of Odisha would require an exact mapping of the dwellings (as land rights are issued based on the area of actual occupation). Discussions on participatory mapping are incomplete if not seen in the context of the overall objective of the task and the technical requirements for accomplishing it.

In Jaga Mission, high resolution images of slums were captured using drones and GIS databases of slums were prepared by private sector technical consultants by digitizing these drone images and linking them to the household survey data. The fact that the mapping of 1725 slums spread across 109 small and medium towns of the state (spread across the 155707 sq.km area of Odisha) and the survey of about 170000 slum households was completed within a period of 7 months gives some idea of the speed, scale and intensity of the exercise. It averages out to the preparation of detailed and accurate GIS databases of about 62 slums every week for 7 months straight. 

Jaga Mission achieved this through a creative combination of high technology activities (such as drone mapping and GIS) with field-based community participation activities. About 24 NGOs were engaged to undertake community mobilisation exercises and create Slum Dwellers Associations (SDAs) in each slum. Both the drone mapping by the technololgy consultants and the household surveys by the NGOs were done in coordination with the SDAs. 

The combination was achieved through standardised operating procedures (SOPs) which, in turn, were based on the parameters of granting land rights as detailed out in “The Odisha Land Rights to Slum Dwellers Act, 2017”. While the slum dwellers did not prepare their own maps, as in the case of Kibera, they played a crucial role in ensuring that the mapping of the slums was done correctly. 

Infantile optimism or realistic pessimism ?

Jaga shows a possible model in which community groups can become partners of large and technology heavy processes and hopefully, in the future, take over of the databases of their slums from the private technology consultants and the government. They can then initiate a Kibera like process in which the maps of Jaga are constinuously enriched with qualitative information with the help of open-source software and technology volunteers. 

This may not appear as romantic as the vision of slum dwellers preparing their own maps using open-source software, but given the present reality of large-scale and high-speed projects, such approaches may be the only ones operationally possible to allow a successful egagement of communities with the developmental blitz. Over time they may even overcome the blitz and achieve the romantic vision at a massive scale – not unlike the way Linux overcame Microsoft.

Reviving the Urban Waterways of Kolkata - Conflicts of Ecological Planning

The canal systems of the city of Kolkata are more than just ingenious systems of inland waterways developed for the twin purposes of inland navigation and storm-water drainage. Within their now stagnant waters they contain the environmental and economic history of the city ever since it was established as the seat of the British East India Company in the late 17^th century. Though the system is conventionally described as man-made, the actual proportion of artificial canals in the whole system is very less. Out of the total network of waterways, the combined length of which is more than 1803 kilometres, only 120 kilometres are constructed through human labour. The primary design idea was to link long stretches of naturally existing creeks and channels with artificial canals at specific points to create long water transport corridors.

Adam Smith had made the following observation about the role played by inland navigation in the economic prosperity of the Bengal region in his classic work 'Wealth of Nations' :

'In Bengal, the Ganges and several other great rivers form a great number of navigable canals in the same manner as the Nile does in Egypt...It is remarkable that neither the ancient Egyptians, nor the Indians, nor the Chinese, encouraged foreign commerce, but seem to have derived their great opulence from this inland navigation.' (Smith, 1776, www.geolib.com)

For many years these waterways brought rice from Barisal (now in Bangladesh), tea from Assam and wood from the jungles of Sundarbans to the markets of Kolkata. Salt, finished products and Kerosene oil were similarly transported from Kolkata to the eastern districts.

The first such canal was constructed in 1777 under the supervision of one Major William Tolly. The canal was called Tolly's Nullah or Tolly's Canal. The volume of traffic on the canal was such that over the years many such canals had to be constructed and linked up with each other to keep the west-east trade intact. These included the Beleghata canal (completed in 1810), the Circular Canal (completed in 1831), the New Cut Canal (completed in 1859) and the Keshtopur Canal (completed in 1910). The choking up of the canals due to siltation was another reason for opening up new routes. The canals of Kolkata perform a very important environmental function too. Even in their present dilapidated condition, the Bagjola and Baghbazar canal systems in North Kolkata drain 15 percent and the Tolly's Nullah drains 10 percent of the total storm water of the city. Apart from the environmental and economic functions, there was the obvious aesthetic appeal of having a network of waterways with a stretch of open space along the banks. This was especially valuable for a city like Kolkata, which over time, lost much of its limited open space to the twin challenges of increasing density and urban poverty.

From the middle of the 20^th century onwards, the condition of these vibrant waterways became increasingly poor. There were many reasons for this. The maintenance of the canals declined steadily in the years following the independence of India. East Bengal became a part of Pakistan and West Bengal remained in India. This partition affected the economic inter-dependence between the east and the west, which was the main rationale behind the creation of the canal system. The political turmoils in the city of Kolkata, lack of resources to maintain the canals, decline in traffic, the prioritisation of rural development over urban development by the ruling Left Front government, the massive migration of refugees from East Bengal during the Indian independence in 1947 and the Bangladesh war of independence in 1971 were some of the important factors that led to the transformation of these vibrant waterways to the near stagnant drains that one finds in the city these days.

Both at the time of partition and during the Bangladesh war of independence the city was flooded with millions of refugees who were forced to occupy any vacant land they could find in order to live. The railway platforms, garden houses of the elite, public open spaces, green buffers along railway tracks, roads and canals all became home to this desperate multitude. The occupation of the canal banks by dense informal settlements made any maintenance or dredging of the canals practically impossible. Thus, in the last quarter of the twentieth century the canals of Kolkata came to perform yet another crucial function – to provide housing for tens of thousands of abjectly poor residents of the city.

In the year 1996, an independent report on the traffic and environmental situation of the city of Kolkata was prepared by Prof. John Whitelegg of the School of Built Environment, Liverpool, at the request of various non-governmental organisations in the city. The purpose of the report was to generate sustainable transport solutions for the city. Sustainable transport solutions were described as those, which met the needs of the all residents regardless of income; protect and preserve and enhance the health of the residents; and are not damaging to the present and future living conditions in the city (Whitelegg: 1996, p – 3).

The report took note of the severe traffic and environmental conditions that prevailed in the city. The traffic levels had doubled between 1985 and the time of preparing the report. Particulate matter pollution, which should not exceed 90 µg/cu.m according to the regulations of the World Health Organisation (WHO), were in the range of 1300 - 3000 µg/cu.m during the winter months. Benzene levels were excep­tionally high at 30 - 100 mg/cu.m. The matter is made more grievous when one considers the fact that Benzene compounds are carcinogenic. Noise pollution is another major problem due to the high traffic volumes and a traffic behaviour that involves continually blowing the horn. Noise levels in the city often cross 90 decibels, whereas the WHO recommended limit is 55 decibels during daytime and 45 decibels during the night. The incidence of traffic accidents is high, causing injury and death mainly to the pedes­trians and cyclists.

The report went on to list the potential transport resources of the city, which could be reclaimed and im­proved in order to generate scores of sustainable transport solutions for the city. One such under-utilized resource identified were the urban canal systems of Kolkata. The report stated, that ‘in a city where the most often quoted complaints are about congestion and lack of road space, the use of river and waterways in combination has tremendous potential to improve the quality of life and transport choices for the cit­izens of Kolkata.’ (ibid, p - 6) The report came up with ideas to create river-buses and inte­grating them with the existing bus, tram, train and metro networks in the city. Such a development of the waterways could also generate a better micro-climate and possibilities for water based recreation. Soon after this report was prepared the Government of West Bengal initiated a project to dredge and reclaim an important canal system in the city.

The North Canal Reclamation Project

The strategy to revive the canal system consisted of two main parts. The first part consisted of dredging the canals and the second part consisted of initiating various post-dredging services and development projects, such as operating a ferry service on the canals, improving and widening the roads along the canals, developing recreational and commercial uses along the canal banks and around the proposed ferry terminals etc. The primary canal in the North Canal system is the Keshtopur canal which also forms the northern border of a planned suburban township called Salt Lake City. The township is inhabited largely by middle -class households, government officials and some important political leaders of the ruling Left Front Government of the state of West Bengal.

In 1998, the state transport department, through the West Bengal Transport Infrastructure Development Corporation (WBTIDC), had appointed ICICI-Winfra (IWIN) a joint venture company of the Government of West Bengal and the ICICI bank, to prepare a feasibility report for the canal reclamation project. In the month of September IWIN approached British Waterways for assistance regarding the preparation of the feasibility report (www.icici-winfra.com).

The report prepared by IWIN and British Waterways was submitted to the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mr. Budhhadeb Bhattacharya, in 2000. It covered all the technical, market and financial feasibility aspects and expressed the view that the canal project was both technically feasible and financially viable (Business Line, Oct 16, 2002). The report estimated a project cost of Rs. 60 crores (1 crore = 10 million), of which Rs. 31 crores was for canal work and Rs. 29 crores was for the creation of terminals for the operation of passenger and cargo ferries. It is important to note that the feasibility study excluded the cost of evicting and resettling the informal residents from the canal banks.

The eviction of informal settlers from the canal banks and the dredging of the canals were to be undertaken by the Irrigation and Waterways department of the Government of West Bengal with the cooperation of various local governments through which the canal system passes. Following the clearing of the canal banks and the dredging, a private developer would be selected for implementing the second phase of the project on a 30 years build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis. The developer would be responsible for creating the necessary infrastructure and recover the costs by operating, either directly or through an intermediary company, the operation of the vessels (www.icici-winfra.com).

The project aimed at integrating the canal route into a multi-modal transport system. The proposed terminal of the ferry route would be within a distance of 100 meters from the Shovabazar station of the metro rail and the Baghbazar station of the circular rail system. It was proposed that the canal would also be used for cargo movement during the night. Fresh vegetables and other farm products would be brought into Kolkata and building materials and other finished products would be taken out of the city.

Despite all the planning, practically no implementation happened on the ground for the next two years. The political and human costs of evicting the informal residents continued to haunt the implementation process. In July 2003, the Salt Lake Municipality, decided to undertake the largest eviction drive in the history of the township. The aim of the drive was to check the mushrooming of informal settlements in and around the township. Apart from the direct connection to the canal dredging project, this drive was also demanded by the various residents' welfare associations in Salt Lake, who alleged that the growth of informal settlements was leading to a crime wave in the area. Six teams of workers and police were to undertake the drive accompanied by a magistrate and a senior police officer. A total of hundred hutments were to be demolished. (The Telegraph, Kolkata, July 29, 2003).

It was in the same year, that the welfare associations of three residential blocks of Salt Lake filed complaints to the West Bengal Pollution Control Board regarding the failure to dredge Keshtopur Canal. They were assisted by Justice Bhagabati Prosad Banerjee of the Kolkata High Court, who is also a resident of the township (Interviews with Justice Bhagabati Prosad Banerjee, 28 June, 2005 and Sudhir Dey, Editor, Laban Hrad Sambad, July 1, 2005).

Despite the massive eviction drive and the demands by Salt Lake civil society, the plans to dredge Keshtopur canal couldn't be activated until January 2004. Finally, the West Bengal Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) stepped in with fresh financial contributions for the project. HIDCO was set up as a state government company in 1999 with the explicit purpose of developing the major suburban township of New Town, further to the east of Salt Lake. In the long run the dredging of the Keshtopur canal would benefit the New Town both as a water transport route and a source of fresh water for its residents.

It was decided that IWD would undertake the dredging and improvement of a 10 km long stretch, including the section that formed the northern boundary of Salt Lake and the HIDCO undertake the same tasks for the remaining 20.5 km lying to the east of Salt Lake. It was estimated that approximately 1000 informal settlers would have to be evicted for undertaking the dredging (The Telegraph, Kolkata, Jan 16, 2004).

This stop gap dredging process kept going on till early 2006. 8^th August 2006 was an extremely important date in the history of the North Canal system, as it was on this day on which a trial run of two launches was scheduled to be conducted. However, a rather unpleasant surprise awaited the passengers of the trial launches which included important officials, political leaders and media persons. Both the launches got stuck half way between the Chitpur lock gate and Salt Lake. One journalist who witnessed the incident wrote that "the VIPs made quite a picture, clutching on to their dhotis and hopping on to the ground from the wooden plank with great relief. Hundreds of spectators from the shanties, including many children, cheered and clapped." (The Telegraph, Kolkata, August 9, 2006).

The unfortunate incident created a furor as everyone started blaming the IWD for not having completed the dredging process properly. After this incident, the plan to start the launch service on North Canal remained suspended for almost one year. The IWD tried to rectify the errors made during the dredging process. Finally, from 5^th August 2007, the launch service could be resumed again albeit with much smaller vessels. (The Telegraph, Kolkata, July 25, 2007). The West Bengal Surface Transport Corporation, a state government undertaken company, was given the contract for operating the services. However, the launches continued to get stuck every now and then and the passengers became reluctant to use the service. In 2008, the service was discontinued and it has not resumed till date.

The Need for Inclusive Planning

This short chronological account of the project provides us with extremely interesting insights into the overall planning and implementation of the project and also raises many questions. The first rather glaring observation one can make is the complete absence of any mechanism for participation of either the informal settlers living on the canal banks, or the middle-class residents of the planned neighbourhoods bordering the canal. Most of the decisions were taken at high level meetings where there was a strong representation of project authorities, line departments and the local government, but which precluded any kind of active citizen participation or control. There were no public meetings, hearings or grievance redressals of any kind. Even when it concerned serious human rights issues such as the eviction of hundreds of poor families from the only land they could possibly occupy close to their source of livelihood, these were overwhelmed by quick decisions and equally stern official action. The absence of mechanisms for participation and the extent and nature of the eviction drives hint at the complete exclusion of the poor residents of informal settlements from the planning and implementation of such large processes and their utter powerlessness in the face of such events.

Yet, throughout the history of the project, and even before it was conceived, it was acknowledged by the concerned government departments that the major obstruction in the path of improving and reclaiming the canals was the issue of the informal canal bank residents. For many years, these abjectly poor, excluded and powerless people successfully frustrated all the efforts of the various departments of the state government to evict them and dredge the canals. Some powerlessness that must have been!

Let us consider another observation. The largest eviction drive along the Keshtopur canal in Salt Lake was undertaken in July 2003. Yet, during my field visits in 2004 I saw large concentrations of informal settlers still living along the canal. I was even more surprised, when I returned to Kolkata for another field visit in 2005 and still found more or less the same clusters standing. I am writing 'more or less' because it was clear that sporadic eviction drives had happened between 2004 and 2005. But the major clusters remained.

The above analysis of the canal reclamation project clearly shows that there are no short-cuts to sustainable planning based on purely technological approaches. Any approach to reclaim and revive the canals of Kolkata for sustainable transport solutions has to be inclusive of the informal residents whose lives and livelihoods are totally inter-woven with this urban resource. Primarily, this calls for openness to ideas, experiments and approaches which are beyond the conventional. The whole reclamation project could have been preceded by waves of consultation exercises involving various state and non-state actors, the various organizations of the local residents and creation of needs statements and proposals based on these consultations.

Considering the fact that after a decade of initiating the project, the informal settlements remain on the canal banks whereas the ferry service itself gets withdrawn, the lessons from such exclusive and non-participatory exercises at ecological planning should be all too clear. Thus, it is primarily by paying attention to the socio-economic issues and challenges in our cities that we can hope to ultimately address the issue of urban contribution to global warming and climate change.

References

• Business Line (2001), BW road map for Kolkata canal project, June 14, The Hindu Group of Publications.
• Smith, A. (1776), Wealth of Nations, http://geolib.com/smith.adam/won1-03.html
• The Telegraph (2003), August strike on Salt Lake shantytown, July 29.
• The Telegraph (2004), Canal de-silt boon for Salt Lake drainage, Jan. 16.
• The Telegraph (2006), Dream sail out of depth - launches run aground in trial cruise of Budhha’s showpiece Venice project, Aug. 9.
• The Telegraph (2007), Green light for Ferry, July 25
• West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, Invitation of Expression of Interest from Developer cum Operator for the North Canal System of Kolkata, www.icici-winfra.com
• Whitelegg, J (1996), Sustainable transport solutions for Calcutta, School of the Built Environment, Liverpool