Revisiting construction methods

Earthquakes don’t kill people, the collapse of buildings do. Similarly, coronavirus will not kill as many people as the collapse of the economic structure will. Just like we build earthquake-resistant buildings, we need to build more resilient economies. The pandemic has offered us that chance.

Consider what has happened to the construction sector. Millions of workers depending on it for their livelihood were disposed of. They made their long walks to freedom, many dying on the way. One shudders to see those pictures. Could this have been avoided?

Consider what have we done with our construction techniques to damage our resilience irreparably. India’s climate and geography does not need cement and glass construction. In fact, for thousands of years, we had been living in perfectly ecological connectedness making our houses with locally available materials--stone, lime, wood, mud and so on. These houses are climatically more responsive and far more resilient. While cement or a glass house becomes hot during summers and cold during winters, regionally sourced materials do the opposite. Building houses is an art we had perfected for thousands of years. The architectural wisdom, even of small huts, was invaluable. The designs were human-centric, not building centric.

Cement and glass entered our society because they were useful in making tall towers quickly. None of these two factors was important for small towns and rural India. Yet, they were imposed on us. This imposition was an epistemic attack on our way of life. It was done by designing a new vocabulary to alter our aspirations. Remember our primary school textbooks in schools, and the drawing of ‘pucca’ and a ‘kutcha’ house? Cement houses were termed as pucca houses, and the value judgment was created.

Ashis Nandy says that colonisation does not happen when a society territorially dominates the other. He says colonisation happens when the colonised start thinking like the coloniser. Values of coloniser become value of colonised. This unplugs the colonised from their own roots, heritage, culture and wisdom. This marks the beginning of a long period of violence, which over time manifests in short horrific instances.

Something similar is happening in rural construction. For instance, the kitchen in most households traditionally is a space allocated on the outside, an open verandah. The spatial organization allowed for more gatherings to take place in a village. People would eat, sleep and spend time together outside the house. New constructions have drawn people inside, disconnecting them from each other and their environment. This room-centric rather than community-centric design of rural households that prevents people from accessing their own social fabric. Women remain inside, and men create walls.

A more horrific result is the loss of rural jobs and deterioration in the life of construction workers in cities. Decades of alienation from their own wisdom pushes them to depravity. A good part of India has been a craft-centric society. People would build their own homes and decorate them with hand. Cement and glass are western expressions. In our obsession to embrace modernisation, we threw away all that we had, irreversibly. Government laws exacerbated this further. I am helping design a small, community school in a village in western UP. The government does not recognise a structure unless a ‘pucca’ slab is cast for the roof. All our donation fund was spent on buying and making cement. This knocks out any possibility of creativity and local knowledge to flourish. Government housing schemes often do not allow for bamboo or local-material construction in many parts of India. The skill to make these ingenious houses is dying.

Ours is a 5000-year old, unbroken history. This continuity was possible because it was a decentralized culture. Monopolies of ideas and products damage vast, sustainable ways of living. The entire discipline of agricultural science in India is designed with an aim to achieve scale and growth. Indian agriculture has historically relied on small farms and innovative techniques of manure, crop-rotation and irrigation. Albert Howard’s book Agriculture Testament reminds us of agricultural wisdom of this country existing barely a hundred years ago. Right now, as Vandana Shiva will tell you, how we have become alien to it and are importing the concept of ‘organic’ foods.

Large scale agriculture was a western expression that assumed a monopoly. Just like it has led to exodus of millions of farmers to spend lives of destitution in cities, so has the western expression of cement and glass. Let us recognize there is a sea of difference between economic mobility and uprooting. And the first step towards setting our house in order is to find ways to prevent such uprooting. Post-pandemic world needs to recognize this; that people need to find their livelihoods in and around their roots.

This can be achieved by decentralizing construction sector. Imagine if we localise construction techniques. It will suddenly infuse new life in creative employment in villages. Masons and contractors, who are losing their native skills and wisdom will go back to it. They will be better able to source the material available around them in plenty rather than depend on cement and glass companies. They will build ecologically sustainable houses which are not only climatically more comfortable, but also which enable co-creation. A new vocabulary of dwelling creativity can be unlocked. Village and small town construction must encourage and celebrate local material construction. It will revive prospects for jobs

More importantly, we can recalibrate their inferiority against cities. Growing up without a sense of pride with one’s own identity is one of the worst inflicted violence, and most fundamental causes for long run decline in economy and culture.

One of the principal disagreements of Gandhi and Nehru had been on their views of Indian villages. We have taken up Nehru’s view uncritically. It may be the time to listen to what Gandhi said. His ideas grew under the wake of British rule. For us, it may be under the wake of coronavirus’ rule.

(The writer is a practising, community architect in Ahmedabad and Delhi)