Housing the poor in India

Deepa G. Nair decided to tackle this issue and recently completed her PhD research on sustainable-affordable housing for the poor in Kerala, India.

“There is currently a shortage of 41 million houses in India,” Nair reports, to give an idea of the scale of her home country’s housing problem. Although the national government has been implementing one housing scheme after another since the 1950s, none of the schemes has succeeded in eliminating the housing shortage.

Nair analyzed the various implemented housing schemes and found that even today the government is generally overlooking socio-cultural and environmental factors in its housing programmes. “There is often poor accessibility of building materials, people don’t have the skills to build houses, and the basic services, such as toilets and sewerage, are often insufficient,” she explains.

After Nair graduated from Kerala University as a Civil Engineer, she worked for six years as a volunteer engineer trainee at a semi-government organization that promotes Cost Effective and Environmentally Friendly (CEEF) building technology.

“I was fortunate to get involved in constructing houses for the poor,” she says. In doing so, Nair saw firsthand the actual housing problems poor people were having. This was the moment she says when she realized that she had to be able to do something really good for them, something noble and with social relevance.

Kerala State Nirmithi Kendra, the organization Nair worked for, gave her the opportunity to get an MSc in Habitat Technology, which meant she learnt a lot more about environmentally friendly building technology, demographic studies, how to reduce building costs and issues such as ventilation and lighting.

Eventually Nair left Nirmithi Kendra to become a lecturer at Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT). Still interested in housing for the poor, she focused on rural development, sustainable housing and the use of appropriate technology. As CUSAT and the TU Delft had, and still have, a close working relationship with each other, Nair signed up for a PhD position offered by the TU Delft in 2002.
Dream job

“For me, this was a dream job, because I could finally do the research I had been longing to do for a long time,” she says. Her recently completed PhD focused on developing a conceptual framework for sustainable-affordable housing on the one hand, and the use of innovative and locally available building materials on the other, while also combining policy and technology.

Nair chose the state of Kerala, a province on India’s west coast, to be at the center of her studies. “Although the housing situation in Kerala is slightly better than it is in the rest of India, there is something very interesting happening here, which is why I focused on Kerala,” Nair explains. “According to the state government, there is no shortage of housing in Kerala. Nevertheless, I’ve seen what the houses there are like, and they are definitely not sufficient.” On her computer screen, several photographs of unfinished buildings surrounded by pools of stagnant water, houses without roofs and open gutters that act as sewers clearly illustrate her point. “The government’s statement is merely based on numbers, not on real life.”

The result of her research is a general framework that can inspire governments to implement affordable and sustainable housing for the poor. Not only in Kerala and India, but in many other developing countries as well. In addition, Nair’s research into the use of rice husk ash as a (partial) replacement of cement for building applications, which was also part of her PhD work, offers new insights and opportunities.

“In India, rice is readily available,” she says. “Scientists have been talking about the possible use of rice husk ash for a long time, but it had never been applied in the field.” This is why Nair investigated the practicalities of various self-built ovens to obtain the ashes. “The use of this material will only work, if people can build their own ovens to burn the rice husk.”

Nair found that the ovens were sufficient, and that rice husk ash would indeed be an affordable and sustainable alternative to cement. As rice is available by the bulk load in many developing countries, such as China or Indonesia, these findings certainly open up new possibilities.
Sandwich

Nair, married and a mother of two, has spent the past four years living in two worlds: half of the time she was in India, the other half at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences in Delft. She followed a so-called ‘sandwich programme’, where she was in Delft for six months, then went to India for six, then went back to Delft, and so on.

“I’m really glad I did it like that, because four years without my family would have been much too long,” she says. In this way, Nair was able to use TU Delft’s facilities for her experimental research and at the same time conduct field research in Kerala, where she carried out surveys among the beneficiaries of the government’s housing schemes.

Now that her work at the TU Delft is done, Nair will return to her job as a lecturer at CUSAT. “I will definitely miss living in Holland,” Nair says. “Especially bicycling everywhere, as this is impossible in India.” Apart from looking forward to being with her husband and kids again, Nair is also eager to oversee the Kerala State government’s plans to apply her strategy to one of the ‘panchayats’ (village councils) in the rural areas of Kerala.

“I will most certainly be involved in that,” she says. Furthermore, she’s hoping to carry out practical research into the use of straw bales for constructing walls. “Like rice husk, straw is also an agricultural residue from the paddy fields, which means it’s cheap and accessible,” she explains. “And there is also plenty of it.”

Deepa G. Nair (Photo: Sam Rentmeester/FMAX)

“There is currently a shortage of 41 million houses in India,” Nair reports, to give an idea of the scale of her home country’s housing problem. Although the national government has been implementing one housing scheme after another since the 1950s, none of the schemes has succeeded in eliminating the housing shortage.

Nair analyzed the various implemented housing schemes and found that even today the government is generally overlooking socio-cultural and environmental factors in its housing programmes. “There is often poor accessibility of building materials, people don’t have the skills to build houses, and the basic services, such as toilets and sewerage, are often insufficient,” she explains.

After Nair graduated from Kerala University as a Civil Engineer, she worked for six years as a volunteer engineer trainee at a semi-government organization that promotes Cost Effective and Environmentally Friendly (CEEF) building technology.

“I was fortunate to get involved in constructing houses for the poor,” she says. In doing so, Nair saw firsthand the actual housing problems poor people were having. This was the moment she says when she realized that she had to be able to do something really good for them, something noble and with social relevance.

Kerala State Nirmithi Kendra, the organization Nair worked for, gave her the opportunity to get an MSc in Habitat Technology, which meant she learnt a lot more about environmentally friendly building technology, demographic studies, how to reduce building costs and issues such as ventilation and lighting.

Eventually Nair left Nirmithi Kendra to become a lecturer at Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT). Still interested in housing for the poor, she focused on rural development, sustainable housing and the use of appropriate technology. As CUSAT and the TU Delft had, and still have, a close working relationship with each other, Nair signed up for a PhD position offered by the TU Delft in 2002.
Dream job

“For me, this was a dream job, because I could finally do the research I had been longing to do for a long time,” she says. Her recently completed PhD focused on developing a conceptual framework for sustainable-affordable housing on the one hand, and the use of innovative and locally available building materials on the other, while also combining policy and technology.

Nair chose the state of Kerala, a province on India’s west coast, to be at the center of her studies. “Although the housing situation in Kerala is slightly better than it is in the rest of India, there is something very interesting happening here, which is why I focused on Kerala,” Nair explains. “According to the state government, there is no shortage of housing in Kerala. Nevertheless, I’ve seen what the houses there are like, and they are definitely not sufficient.” On her computer screen, several photographs of unfinished buildings surrounded by pools of stagnant water, houses without roofs and open gutters that act as sewers clearly illustrate her point. “The government’s statement is merely based on numbers, not on real life.”

The result of her research is a general framework that can inspire governments to implement affordable and sustainable housing for the poor. Not only in Kerala and India, but in many other developing countries as well. In addition, Nair’s research into the use of rice husk ash as a (partial) replacement of cement for building applications, which was also part of her PhD work, offers new insights and opportunities.

“In India, rice is readily available,” she says. “Scientists have been talking about the possible use of rice husk ash for a long time, but it had never been applied in the field.” This is why Nair investigated the practicalities of various self-built ovens to obtain the ashes. “The use of this material will only work, if people can build their own ovens to burn the rice husk.”

Nair found that the ovens were sufficient, and that rice husk ash would indeed be an affordable and sustainable alternative to cement. As rice is available by the bulk load in many developing countries, such as China or Indonesia, these findings certainly open up new possibilities.
Sandwich

Nair, married and a mother of two, has spent the past four years living in two worlds: half of the time she was in India, the other half at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences in Delft. She followed a so-called ‘sandwich programme’, where she was in Delft for six months, then went to India for six, then went back to Delft, and so on.

“I’m really glad I did it like that, because four years without my family would have been much too long,” she says. In this way, Nair was able to use TU Delft’s facilities for her experimental research and at the same time conduct field research in Kerala, where she carried out surveys among the beneficiaries of the government’s housing schemes.

Now that her work at the TU Delft is done, Nair will return to her job as a lecturer at CUSAT. “I will definitely miss living in Holland,” Nair says. “Especially bicycling everywhere, as this is impossible in India.” Apart from looking forward to being with her husband and kids again, Nair is also eager to oversee the Kerala State government’s plans to apply her strategy to one of the ‘panchayats’ (village councils) in the rural areas of Kerala.

“I will most certainly be involved in that,” she says. Furthermore, she’s hoping to carry out practical research into the use of straw bales for constructing walls. “Like rice husk, straw is also an agricultural residue from the paddy fields, which means it’s cheap and accessible,” she explains. “And there is also plenty of it.”

Deepa G. Nair (Photo: Sam Rentmeester/FMAX)