The Odisha Liveable Habitat Mission (OLHM) or ‘JAGA’ MISSION
After the enactment of the Land Rights to Slum Dwellers Act in 2017, Tata Trusts partnered with the Housing and Urban Development Department, Government of Odisha, to support the pilot implementation of the Odisha Liveable Habitat Mission or Jaga Mission in nine Urban Local Bodies - one in Puri district and eight in Ganjam district. The Odisha Liveable Habitat Mission or Jaga Mission aims to transform slums into liveable habitat with civic infrastructure and services at par with developed areas within the same Urban Local Bodies. The vision is to continuously improve the quality of civic infrastructure and services, and providing better access to livelihood opportunities.
The Mission also focuses to leveraging and converging various schemes, programmes and funding opportunities by strengthening collaboration between the concerned government departments, urban bodies, NGOs, financial institutions, international agencies, trusts, communities and other stakeholders. It will also provide advisory support to the Odisha government on the policy reforms required to sustainably transform the lives of the state’s urban poor.
During the pilot, the Trusts extended technical support to the Government of Odisha for promoting sustainable habitat development through equitable and affordable supply of land, shelter and services.
The support from Tata Trusts for the programme extended to
- Providing technical support for drone surveys, slum mapping, holistic habitat planning and, housing and common spaces design. It also involved establishing suitable institutions and processes within the government to build and maintain the habitats created.
- Capacity building of ULBs, NGOs and the Slum Dwellers Associations, who are the primary stakeholders in the execution of the Land Rights Act and transformation of slums into liveable habitat.
- Community mobilisation and district-level inception meetings to create awareness among stakeholders to ensure their participation
Insights from this exercise were helpful in developing a strategy for scale up of the programme in all 30 districts of Odisha.
Key achievements of the project:
- A unique spatial and household database of the slums, the characteristics and socio-economic information about the slum dwellers created for 168,141 households across 1725 urban slums in Odisha.
- 52,682 families granted land rights, and 15,207 families have started building houses in 109 Urban Local Bodies, which include 61 Notified Areas Councils (NACs) and 48 Municipalities.
- New habitat sites have been identified in 28 ULBs of Odisha for the settlement of slum dwellers from untenable slums in these towns
- In accordance with the Master Plan prepared by Norman Foster Foundation involving the local community, the Odisha Government has launched activities such as construction of community toilets, development access roads, public spaces in the coastal slum of Nolia Sahi in Konark, Puri district, working on shifting of beachfront houses and alternate plot allocation.
- Preliminary assessment has been done by the Norman Foster Foundation to develop strategies for slum-free cities, develop and demonstrate prototypes with indicative designs for slum upgradation based on vision maps developed by the community
The Government of Odisha and the Tata Trusts were awarded the India Geospatial Excellence Awards for their contribution to the Odisha Liveable Habitat Mission. The awards were hosted by GeoSmart India in Hyderabad on December 3, 2019.
About GeoSmart India
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