Housing Initiative Led by CITU in Solapur, Maharashtra Wins International Award

A housing initiative led by the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) in Solapur, Maharashtra, has won international recognition for its efforts which have resulted in the building of more than 15,000 houses for beedi workers.

The housing project has won the Transformative Cities 2018 award, established by the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute. The award was announced at a public event in Amsterdam on Friday, 8 June.

The struggles led by the CITU in Solapur over the course of many years starting from the early 1990s forced the central and State governments to provide funding to housing projects which would provide relief to the workers of Solapur from squalid living conditions in slums.

The first housing project, with 10,000 houses at affordable cost, is named after legendary communist leader Godavari Parulekar, and was completed in 2006. Each house cost Rs. 60,000. The second project has 5,100 houses, and is named after the trade unionist Meenakshi Sane who did pioneering work in organising beedi workers. The project was completed in 2015. Both the housing schemes have been built at Kumbhari, about six kilometres from Solapur city. Cooperative housing societies of workers were formed by the CITU for the implementation of the projects. One-third of the cost of the houses was borne by the central government, another one-third by the State government, and the rest by the beneficiaries.

The award

The Transformative Cities award intends to highlight political practices that can serve as an inspiration for others, in the fields of Water, Energy and Housing.

The institute compiled 32 inspiring stories of “radical, democratic, people-powered solutions” to a range of problems in water, energy and housing, from 19 countries.

Nine such initiatives – three each from the three fields – were shortlisted for the award. The entries were from Bolivia, Nigeria, France, US, Mauritius, Tanzania, Spain (which had two entries), and India.

The Solapur housing initiative won the award in the housing category, and also won the maximum number of votes, among all nine shortlisted entries, in the online polling.

“The Transformative Cities initiative is not a competition as such, but an exercise of sharing progressive initiatives, seeking cooperation and solidarity. The idea of the award really is to encourage public interaction and engagement,” Benny Kuruvilla of the Transnational Institute told Newsclick.

Other winners

The initiative from Cochabamba, Bolivia, won the award in the water category. The project involved the residents of the San Pedro Magisterio neighbourhood developing their own system for treating wastewater and for preventing contamination to the local river. 

Cochabamba had gained worldwide attention in 2000, when the people of the city rose up and defeated the attempt to privatise water. The uprising had come to be known as "Water War", and had managed to win back water and sanitation services back from the US transnational corporation Bechtel.

The award in the energy category was won the initiative from Cadiz, Spain, where a coalition of citizen campaigners led an initiative based on renewable energy, job creation and ending energy poverty.

Leading the way

The efforts which resulted in the building of the houses for workers in Solapur was led by Narsayya Adam, CITU leader and three-time MLA from Solapur city (North) constituency. He is currently the Maharashtra State Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The CITU in Solapur is now leading another initiative to build 30,000 houses for workers in the unorganised sector. Construction of the houses which are part of this project began in January 2018, and is scheduled to be completed in 2021. (A detailed report on the CITU’s housing initiatives in Solapur can be read here.)