16 JAN 2012 PUNE AND SANGLI PRATIMA JOSHI

Having flown from Ahmedabad to Mumbai due to problems with connections I ended up getting a car up into the hills to Pune. On Monday morning I was picked up from my Pune hotel by architect Pratima Joshi to drive 4 hours south to the city of Sangli. Pratima has a regular Monday evening meeting with the commissioner of the Sangli Municipal Corporation to discuss progress of the citywide plan for slum renewal. As we travel Pratima explains the difficulty of making projects happen because of the Indian red tape system. It seems the Sangli project has been on and off a number of times until the chief Commissioner of the state of Maharashtra intervened and used his influence to make the project happen with the Monday meeting as one of the conditions.

Pratima seems to have an endless battle with officials and just keeps going. She established SHELTER ASSOCIATES in 1993 after completing a masters degree in the United Kingdom that inspired her to work with communities. Her key approach is to see slum renewal as an integral part of the planning of the whole city rather than focusing on individual projects alone. While Pratima is an architect she works as a social worker and as a project manager and as an advocate for the poor. Her office includes architects and social workers.

Pratima is driving a number of slum renewal projects that are building new housing in 3 or 4 storey clusters of houses around common shared space. She has got women involved in the design and the construction of the housing. She has also developed work opportunities for women making bags for sale. I spent 4 days with Pratima and she is an incredible role model of how an architect can improve housing for the poor in India. She finds that Indian architectural graduates are not so interested in working in her office but she has a steady stream of international students and graduates who have and are working in her office.