financial calculations.Today, the Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC), Homeless International, a UK-based charity organisation that supports housing initiatives by slum dwellers, and Citibank India announced an ambitious Rs 3.5-crore financing agreement for a slum rehabilitation project. The project is being undertaken under the state government's Slum Rehabilitation Scheme (SRS) by a people's organisation called Rajiv-Indira Co-operative Housing Society, which is a member of the National Slum Dwellers' Federation (NSDF).The loan, which has been worked out by SPARC and Citibank, has been sanctioned to SPARCand the slum society. It has been structured against a lien on sale proceeds from the saleable area of the project and partly against cash collateral.

The loan will be part guaranteed by œ1,00,000 sterling deposited by the Homeless International in an account with Citibank, London. The deposit that will secure the loan has been provided by Airways Charitable Trust. The loan has a tenor of 30 months, maturing in October 2001.

The project site is at Dharavi on the Sion-Mahim Link Road. It comprises a building with two sections - one a ground-plus-three building containing 84 flats of 225 square feet each, and the other a ground-plus-seven structure containing 46 flats. While the first section will house the slum dwellers, the other part will be sold as apartment blocks. Their sale as well that of unutilised FSI in the form of TDR will finance the project costs. The loan is designed as a pilot and not just a one-time effort, revealed Sheela Patel, director, SPARC. It presents a viable option forcommunities and NGOs to come together and manage the process of rehabilitation, she felt. The slum dwellers, in association with SPARC, began exploring the possibility of moving into their own homes under the SRS. But instead of waiting for a developer, they took the initiative into their own hands. ``The real solution to housing will not come out of construction companies but out of educating common people,'' said Patel. Added Ruth McLeod, chief executive, Homeless International: ``This project can be replicated if it works. In fact, we have plans of trying it out in Bolivia and eastern and southern Africa.''

Work begun on the site in September last year, and according to the contractor, Bhati Naeem, the slum dwellers will get possession of their houses in a year. Already, those who had dreamt of moving out of the filth into homes of their own are glowing at the thought. ``Our children won't fall ill that frequently now, and monsoon will be welcome more than ever before,'' Shanmukhanand, who works on thesite as the chief promoter, said.