Resilience at the margins: informal housing recovery in Bachhau, India, after the 2001 Gujarat quake

Abstract

This paper examines informal housing recovery in Bachhau, an urban centre in Kutch district close to the epicentre of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake. Unlike other impacted urban areas, an informal housing recovery programme crafted to meet land tenure and housing needs of squatter households within the town’s municipal limits was planned and implemented in Bachhau. The study employs a qualitative case study approach based upon in-depth informant interviews. It examines whether the current urban housing policy paradigm of enabling governance extends to post-disaster housing recovery. The paper argues that a centralised approach to post-disaster governance was put in place after the Gujarat earthquake with State appointed local authorities leading urban reconstruction and inviting select local NGOs to work on housing recovery. In Bachhau, the selected NGO became a de facto informal consultant to the Bachhau Authority, a State appointed local body to implement urban reconstruction in the town, and eventually gatekeepers to the informal housing recovery programme. The paper concludes that although an enabling paradigm might in general dominate housing policy it can be thrown into contestation in the context of an urban disaster.