While President Patil’s proposal to make India slum-free in five years needs to be lauded, it does raise questions about the government’s capacity to take such a big leap. The idea of spending over Rs 5000 crore on an effort that has so far yielded no dividends for the poor requires a serious realignment of strategy and purpose. given the shortfall of 25 million urban homes.

How do you create affordable houses at a national scale without resorting to formula solutions? Trivandrum-based architect Laurie Baker was one exception. Concerned that low cost in most minds translates into poor quality, he spent a lifetime creating unique settings for all his varied clients. Whether a fisherman’s house, or one that belonged to cartoonist Abu Abraham the ideal was pursued with strict consistency. What made his work even more remarkable was the way he drew creative sustenance from his client’s requirements, bringing half-forgotten patterns of traditional construction to those dislocated by the unsuitable concrete slab designs of the city. All this was achieved at a fraction of the cost of a conventional house.

As with all good things, the government chose to ignore the enormous potential Baker’s work held for low cost housing. An unimaginative and elephantine bureaucracy, wasteful time frames and budgets, antiquated norms, and the vast array of middlemen involved in construction ensured that low cost housing was a profitable business for all involved. An adoption of Laurie Baker’s iconoclastic and frugal methods by the government would have threatened the very system that made low cost housing, well, low cost. Even government housing in his home state of Kerala accepted none of the principles he incorporated in his buildings.

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