Privacy is one of the important factors in settlements to understand the quality of physical space. Despite different cultures, it is also equally important to know how such privacy is maintained and up to what extent these settlers give importance to this issue. From the interviews, it has been noted that privacy was not considered while constructing these barrack type dwellings. According to a lady living in Babupara bustee stated that, privacy was better maintained in the village than in city life (see Figure 3.3). Unfortunately, privacy in the dwellings was neither planned nor provided by the owners. In addition, these people showed their own efforts in maintaining privacy in the respective dwellings.
Among three settlements, the inhabitants of Ershad Nagar camp give more importance to household privacy (44.3%) and Babupara bustee has the lowest level of privacy with 26.6%. Privacy can be described in two ways, one with the neighbors and the other with
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individual family members. Most of the families in both bustees maintained privacy by making divisions inside their rooms (see Appendix P: Figure 17). For them, the most important privacy is to keep a distance while sleeping as everyone shares the same room.
Fence around women’s bathroom is a common practice (see Appendix P: Figure 37);
however, in Badal Mia bustee there are only a few separate bathrooms (see Appendix P:
Figure 9) for both sexes; therefore, privacy is not maintained at all.
In all three settlements, bamboo fence is widely used to maintain privacy and virtually to separate private and semi private spaces in housing units (see Figure 4.17). Making a screen with trees is also another way of keeping privacy from the outside and this can be seen in Ershad Nagar as housing units have defined boundaries.
Precausions taken for Privacy
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
1. Badal Mia Bustee 2. Babupara Bustee 3. Ershad Nagar camp
Different Settlements
% of Different Precausions
bamboo fence fence in entrence screen with trees fence in women bath fence with plastic begs partition inside room
Figure 4.17 The Changes done for keeping privacy
168 4.5.3. Physical Characteristics of Housing Units
To understand quality of physical space in a dwelling, it is important to evaluate the dwelling type, material used, the layout, number of rooms provided, their indoor and outdoor relationships etc (see Appendix A). However, household activities and related spaces are important to evaluate whether domestic activities can be accommodated without obstacles and if such spaces are healthy and properly organized. Since the size and the number of rooms are important criteria to understand dwelling quality and housing type, the comparison between three settlements would tell us the quality of such settlements.
Figure 4.18 shows that the sizes of the dwellings are extremely small in Badal Mia and Babupara bustees. They vary between 9m2 to 36m2 and most of the dwellers live in such small rooms. For the bustees, the lay out of the dwellings is dormitory type; therefore, it is difficult to compare such rooms with Ershad Nagar where the housing type has already taken the shape of individual unit with maximum facilities.
One interesting feature of Babupara bustee is the rent per square meter and it is probably the highest. As Babupara bustee is in the central location, the land price is very high and despite the high rent, the people live in very congested spaces with very limited outdoor spaces and with almost no ventilation system. However, the owner- occupied household possesses higher number of rooms (see Table 4.10).
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In Ershad Nagar, the households have the biggest plot sizes and they have possibilities of increasing rooms in their empty spaces (see Figure 4.5). In addition, the households of this camp do not pay any rent to the government. Therefore, there is an inverse relation in these dwellings; as the people in smaller dwellings pay more rent, people living in bigger plot sizes pay apparently nothing for their occupied dwellings. This implies that
government can play an important role in providing better quality accommodation with better space facilities since it is not a profit making organization.
The question 2.16a in the questionnaire (see Appendix B) is about the size of specific rooms and to evaluate the types of activities done. As far as the room sizes are concerned, in Badal Mia most of the occupiers have rented single rooms. In both bustees, indoor means room for sleeping and outdoor means the path in front of each room. In Badal Mia, 40% of the families have a plot size of 36m2. The rent also depends on the size of the rooms and perhaps that is one reason why families prefer to take small rooms. However, more than 60% of the households live within a space between 17m2 to 25m2 and this size gets even smaller in Babupara where the average size of the room is 9m2 to 16m2 .(see Figure 4.18) There is high imbalance in the room sizes between the tenant and the owner occupied dwellings. The owner occupied families who bought the land and constructed their own houses are the holder of comparatively bigger plots. Only 8.90% of the families live in a room size of 26m2 to 36m2, which is still very small as compared to other
settlements.
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Ershad Nagar camp is the most privileged settlement, since the inhabitants don’t pay rent and they hold larger plots than bustees. 58.20% of the families have two rooms; 16% also have more than two rooms but there is variation in the room sizes. As the room sizes are not equal in all eight sectors, the sizes of the houses are also different unlike the bustees.
However, the majority has a room size of more than 60m2 and of course they include other spaces like veranda, inside courtyard and attached bathrooms within the living spaces (see Table 4.10).
The Figure 4.18 shows the quality of the dwelling types in all three settlements. It is seen that tenants of the bustees do not have certain necessary spaces such as wet core, kitchen, toilets etc. They perform such everyday domestic activities in common spaces in the bustees (see Appendix P: Figure 11). These features of the dwelling type show that the people living in the bustees are the least privileged. In fact, the rooms are meant to be the houses of individual families in the bustees and the characteristics of such dwellings do not fit with the real meaning of home.