A leading think tank in the United States has appreciated the contribution of a coalition of voluntary organisations based in India, known as the 'Alliance', to the betterment of the lives of Mumbai's slum-dwellers.

The coalition of the National Slum Dwellers Federation, the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres, and Mahila Milan [a collective of women's groups] has been collaborating with social workers, researchers, students, and professionals to engage government officers as partners in the process.

The coalition has organised communities around projects of common interest [like improving working conditions and building toilets] and used them to negotiate with the officers to give local authorities, the central government and international agencies an idea of how much can be accomplished with greater support.

More than 40 per cent of Mumbai's population lives in slums and other forms of degraded housing, while another 10 per cent is homeless, noted the Worldwatch Institute, an environmentally oriented body. Refusing to deliver slums as 'vote bank' to local politicians, the Alliance instead offers to work with the government.

When rail authorities started demolishing shacks in February 2000, the Alliance documented the activity, forcing the bulldozers to stop. The very next month, around 4,000 families had new homes.

In 1996, the NSDF, partner non-governmental organisations and the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights joined forces with the South African Homeless People's Federation to form the Slum Dwellers International.

Now the SDI consists of members from Argentina, Cambodia, Colombia, India, Kenya, Madagascar, Namibia, Nepal, the Philippines, South Africa, Switzerland, Thailand, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Through this network, the communities collect data on their neighbourhoods, set up saving accounts that can eventually be turned into revolving loan funds, and negotiate with officers to change government policies in their favour.