Sanjha Prayas Ajeevika Karyakram Svada Ghevra Resettlement Colony

Savda Ghevra provides a marginal civic experience. Families that were resettled here were provided with a small plot of land of either twelve square meters or eightreen square meters size. Water arrives by tankers, which are irregular. The general health is compromised by the lack of any holistic sanitation strategy, and the site is so far from the city that commuting to work is both difficult and expensive. When the original residents from Yamuna Pusta, Nagla Machi, Khan Market and Airport arrived here in 2006, they found just barren land. It is difficult to imagine how these families managed to create a township in this far-flung place where nothing existed – no bus connectivity, no water supply, no drains and sewers, and most importantly, no livelihood opportunity (Figure 1). Home to around eight thousand families in 2008, it is likely to hold some twenty thousand families in the coming years, making it the biggest resettlement colony in Delhi. Faced with these conditions, residents were compelled to continue to commute to their old jobs in the city, at considerable cost. The insufficient economic opportunities affected the residents, particularly the womenfolk, who lost their jobs as domestic workers. Housing in Savda Ghevra is characterized by self-built poor quality housing ranging from chattai houses and onestoreyed chadar houses to consolidated simple two-level-and-roof-terrace lintel constructions built over time (Pictures 1 and 2).