Concrete action needed on unauthorized colonies.

Updated On, 16 April 2012: GURGAON: Even this new international city has failed to prevent the mushrooming of unauthorized colonies, sadly negating its mythical image of being "millennium". Early this year, the MCG had reportedly said that a recent survey conducted by it showed 39 regularized colonies and around 150 unauthorized ones in its jurisdiction. These range from colonies with a few hundred houses to large areas numbered as phases.

Later, the Gurgaon deputy commissioner announced that over 50 unauthorized residential colonies in Gurgaon district will be regularized.

However, beyond concerns about its "millennium image", unauthorized colonies can actually be detrimental to a city's character and growth.

In many different ways, the continued existence of unauthorized colonies will impact the future sustainable growth of Gurgaon. Allowing unauthorized colonies is actually anti-people politics at best. Lack of civic facilities often cause serious disease outbreaks in these areas. Gurgaon is in Seismic Zone 4, making the city prone to earthquakes. With no checks and certification from a housing authority, houses here rarely invest in earthquake-resistant structures, thus becoming hazardous.

It is critical that urgent and concrete strategies are adopted for sound solutions. To begin with, a thorough assessment must be made of the number and nature of unauthorized colonies. Assessment should include size of a colony in respect of number of houses constructed, total area occupied, and location; age of the colony; size and quality of construction of each house; actual ownership and number of family occupants in each house; availability and accessibility of civic services, educational and cultural institutions; socio-economic characteristics of the residents, and similar demographic data. Many of these data can be easily derived from existing Census records.

After careful analysis of the findings and based on pre-decided parameters, all these colonies can be categorized as small, medium, and large. The strategy should include analysing possibilities of reducing the number of unauthorized colonies, such as by shifting residents away from smaller colonies and accommodating them into medium-sized and larger colonies either through additional land allotment, or by promoting additional floors to be constructed over single-floor houses.Adopting such a strategy will have a number of benefits.

*Decongests occupied area. * Reduces the number of unauthorized colonies that will need managing. * Available land can be used as common good and for public services. * Cost of providing municipal services and demand on resources get reduced. * Makes it easier for authorities to focus on making lesser houses disaster-resistant. * More people are able to share equally public and municipal resources. * Calculation and collection of property taxes becomes simpler. * From a social point of view it promotes co-existence and shared dependency.

A second strategy could be to grant license to the unauthorized colonies to develop as private housing colonies, since most of these colonies have been developed on privately-owned land anyway. The land owner can be granted the status of a colonizer, and asked to pay the state external development charges proportionate to area occupied and number of plots cut. They will be mandated to provide all civic amenities and adopt all standards applicable for any authorized and developed housing colonies, and thus brought under the ambit of tax payers.

A third strategy can be for the government to adopt some of the smaller and medium-sized colonies and convert them into legal colonies for economically weaker sections (EWS). This way, the government will be able to meet its target of "housing for the poor" without allotting additional government land for this purpose.

A fourth strategy could be to promote the system of rentals rather than ownership, since many people, especially migrants, tend to move to different cities once opportunities reduce here. Private-public partnerships can be explored for development and management of these "converted colonies." The various parameters of payments, compensations, and financial assistance by the government (if necessary) can be easily worked out.

A full stop has to be put immediately on any new unauthorized colony while existing colonies are dealt with strategically. Citizens have a key role to play. They will need to be extra vigilant, and civil society has to be alert to any new unauthorized colony coming up. Every city has its carrying capacity, and limitations on the extent to which it can be expanded horizontally and vertically. There is a need to act now. Only then can Gurgaon become a sustainable habitat for everybody.