But dire water shortages compelled the inmates of Shantigiri Ashram, a spiritual retreat in Pothencode, 25 kms north of Thiruvanantapuram to seek funds and technology-from the central government's Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO).

Not only did HUDCO, the country's premier techno-financing institution for construction respond but, last month, the completed project won a national award for being environment friendly and ecologically appropriate.Said HUDCO's managing director, V Suresh, ``Actually this is just the kind of community benefiting project that we are prepared to take risks for.''For years the quarry was an eye sore in the sprawling, ten hectare compound of Shantigiri Ashram which attracts thousands of visitors seeking spiritual solace or the traditional ayurvedic cures it offers at its hospital.

Theashram (retreat) also had a problem meeting the water requirements of not only its residents and visitors but also for the maintenance of a herbarium of rare medicinal plants which feed an ayurvedic medicine manufacturing unit.

Technology and funds from HUDCO helped the ashram develop a unique, water-harvesting and storage system with the disused granite quarry forming the centre-piece.

The system included a network of a hundred covered pits measuring roughly 3 metres in diameter and 3 metres in depth which not only helped recharge aquifers in the region but also overflowed through pipes into the old quarry.``The results were truly amazing--the wells in the whole region stopped running dry in the summer months and the trees stay lush and green round the year,'' says HUDCO's regional director, Bhaskara Menon.

HUDCO and Shantigiri Ashram now plan to replicate their model, which cost $ 150,000, in other parts of Kerala, a state which though blessed with six months of rain suffers from increasingly severedroughts in the summer season.

The obvious solution, said Menon, is to find ways to trap rain water and prevent it from running down Kerala's hill slopes and into the rivers and lakes from where it drains too readily into the Arabian sea. HUDCO has the avowed aim of promoting environment-friendly and affordable development using local and appropriate resources which include finance, materials, manpower, machinery and technology transfer.

Since 1988, HUDCO has pursued that aim under a lab-to-land technology transfer progrmme channelised through a national network of nearly 600 building centres which help skill upgradation among local work forces.The national movement, said Suresh, actually began in Kerala with the setting up of the Nirmithi Kendra (building centre) at Quilon, 100 kms north of Thiruvanantapuram in 1988 but rapidly grew into a 482-centre national network with central government support. Last year, the UN Centre for Human Settlements (HABITAT) listed HUDCO's building centre movement as amongthe world's best practices and said its appropriate intervention for cost effective housing was worthy of replication in other countries.

``Other than reducing the cost of construction by up to 40 per cent the building centre movement promotes energy efficient, environment friendly and aesthetically pleasing options which address the needs of different groups,'' Suresh said.

A HUDCO showpiece is the collective solar kitchen built for the international community at Auroville near the former French enclave of Pondicherry, 300 kms east of Thiruvanantapuram, which demanded healthy, practical and cost-effective cooking.

``The opportunity was used to demonstrate that a solar concentrator can produce enough steam energy to cook for up to a thousand people on a daily basis,'' Suresh said, adding that the Auroville solar kitchen was probably unique.

The success of the building centre movement has attracted funds from several international agencies including the Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufabu or GermanReconstruction Bank which has provided them supplementary grants through a first tranche of $ 5 million.

According to Suresh, the partnership is helping an ongoing programme to build model villages and urban slums in 25 Indian states with support from concerned state governments.

Each model village or slum would have 200 houses provided with basic infrastructure such as drinking water, solar power, bio-gas cooking stoves and community facilities like schools and health centres set in a simple but aesthetically pleasing layout.

One of HUDCO's best schemes providing low cost housing for the poor happens to be at Koovapally village in Kottayam district, 150 kms north of Thiruvanantapuram executed by SIDA, a leading NGO supported by the Habitat for Humanity International. By March this year the HUDCO-SIDA partnership, begun in 1996, had resulted in 2,327 liveable homesteads at Koovapally with 900 of them brand new homes either interest free or at nominal rates of interest.

``Everywhere the emphasis hasbeen on using local resources and skills,'' Suresh said, indicating HUDCO's efforts to popularise mud construction which, though cheap, has the drawback that it disintegrates rapidly in India' climatic extremes.

HUDCO laboratories soon came up with an improved adobe block faced with thin baked tiles which afforded resistance to the elements such as heat and rain and also imparted a pleasing texture and colour to the huts.

--Inter Press Service