Context

Odisha was awarded the 2019 World Habitat Award for its ‘Jaga Mission’

About

• Government of Odisha won the 'World Habitat Award' for its ambitious initiative - Jaga Mission.
  • It is the first of its kind project in the country, to give land titles to slum dwellers.
  • Odisha Liveable Habitat Mission "JAGA" is a society under Housing & Urban Development Department.
• Objective: Jaga Mission promises to provide slum dwellers “self-respect and freedom from the perpetual fear of eviction”.
• Tag line of the mission: “Transforming Slums to Liveable Habitats”
• Partners: The Housing and Urban Development Department of Odisha, Tata Trusts, and Norman Foster Foundation.
• Other recognitions: Recently, this project was also awarded the 'India Geospatial Excellence Award' for technological innovation in transforming the lives of urban poor.
• World Habitat: This award is given by World Habitat, a UK-based organization, in partnership with United Nation (UN)-Habitat, every year, in recognition of innovative, outstanding, and revolutionary ideas, projects, and programmes from across the world.

Jaga Mission

• Jaga Mission is the World’s largest slum land titling project, benefiting a million urban-poor living in the slums of Odisha. Under the Mission, 52,682 urban poor families living in slums have been granted land rights certificate.
• Slum land titling project: Jaga Mission is a land titling initiative by the Odisha government that works towards turning slums into liveable habitat with all necessary civic infrastructure and services at par with the better off areas within the same urban local body (ULB).
  • It aims to improve the standards of the infrastructure and services as well as access to livelihood opportunities.
  • The mission also aims at leveraging and converging various schemes, programs, and funding opportunities.
• Implementation: So far, 1725 slums have been surveyed under the project using drones and GIS technology. Besides, transformation of 255 slums into liveable habitat is also under implementation.
  • Use of technology: Adoption of state-of-art technology combined with extensive community participation has resulted in dispute and litigation-free implementation in a time bound manner.
• Stakeholders: The mission aims to strengthen collaboration among various Departments/ Urban Bodies/ Non-Government Organisations/ Financial Institutions/ International Agencies/ Trusts/ Communities and other Stakeholders.
• Policy suggestions: The mission will also provide advisory support to Government of Odisha to examine options for policy reforms required for the sustainable transformation of lives of urban poor.