Two cities, two continents, 1980s – the same solution to the same problem.
By Paresh Chhajed-Picha, Associate (Wash Specialist) IRC, Mumbai, India, on SuSana Forum.
In 1980, Karachi’s Orangi Town; home to nearly a million migrants and refugees, with no sewerage — was drowning in its own wastewater. Households had invested in latrines and soak-pits, but not sewers: that felt like the state’s job, and the state had no plan for informal settlements. Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan and the Orangi Pilot Project saw the gap, and helped residents finance and build their own underground sewers lane by lane, with OPP-RTI providing technical guidance.
At the same time, engineer José Carlos Melo was developing condominial sewerage in Natal, Brazil — shallower pipes, shorter routes, and reliance on community labour to cut costs.
𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗶𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱: both cities faced the same bind — urbanisation outpacing state capacity to serve informal settlements. Both answered with a different model of who plans and pays.
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼: Condominial sewerage became Brazil’s policy via the World Bank-backed PROSANEAR programme (1985), cutting costs to as little as 60% of conventional systems. OPP’s model spread to other Pakistani cities and became a sector reference case.
𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁: replication was uneven. Condominial systems often went to poorer neighbourhoods while wealthier areas kept subsidised conventional sewerage — reproducing the gap the model meant to close. Community-financed models depend on the organisers and trust that built them; the method didn’t always travel with the conditions that made it work.
𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗪𝗔𝗦𝗛: both reframed sanitation as an institutional and financing problem before an engineering one — the logic behind today’s “systems strengthening.” The logic of planning for co-existence of networked and non-networked solutions is an important principle of CWIS.
Both examples also echo an older planning argument: that residents of informal settlements plan and build effectively within the resources they have. B.V. Doshi’s Aranya Housing in Indore (1983–89) followed the same logic. A sites-and-services scheme giving families a plot, core services, and room to build incrementally. These cases show that real autonomy, that is, control over financing, design, and implementation lets communities solve problems states can’t, and at a fraction of the cost.
Orangi and Natal happened outside formal planning systems, not because of them. What structural conditions had to be in place? And which other community-led initiatives have you seen successful and scale — in WASH or beyond?
References:
📄 Case study of the Orangi Pilot Project, Pakistan. IIED
https://www.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/migrate/7037IIED.pdf
📄 Melo, J.C. (2005) — Condominial Water and Sewerage Systems in Brazil, World Bank/WSP (via SuSanA)
https://www.susana.org/knowledge-hub/resources?id=441
🎥 Orangi Pilot Project | A role model for realizing your Social Responsibility https://youtu.be/nWkhiWr1Mu4?si=SbR9OeVvWwQhxlNg
🎥 Case study – Condominial sewers in Brazil https://youtu.be/II5WyzRw9gg?si=XTrA_F-FrM1pamNg
