Tata Trusts

Cadasta, partnered with Tata Trusts, to support the Odisha Liveable Habitat Mission “JAGA”—an innovative project designed to improve the living conditions of informal settlements. 

Project Location Odisha State, India

Their Mission

Since its inception, Tata Trusts have played a pioneering role in catalysing social development and philanthropy to make a real difference to communities. Through grant-making, direct implementation and co-partnership strategies, the Trusts support and drive innovation in the areas of healthcare and nutrition; water and sanitation; energy; education; rural livelihoods; natural resource management; urban poverty alleviation; enhancing civil society and governance; media, arts, crafts and culture; and diversified employment. The Trusts engage with competent individuals and government bodies, international agencies and like-minded private sector organisations to nurture a self-sustaining ecosystem that collectively works across all these areas.

Project with Cadasta

Cadasta partnered with Tata Trusts and the Odisha State Government on the Odisha Liveable Habitat Mission— an innovative project designed to improve the living conditions of informal settlements in Odisha state. Through the use of Cadasta’s fit-for-purpose technology and services, more than 700 community data collectors were trained, and with the use of Cadasta’s Esri-powered technology and services, were able to quickly document and map 1,725 slum communities and 173,162 households (to date) to create an official data set of slum dwellings in Odisha. Once documented, the state government issued nearly 58,000 Land Rights Certificates and 105,000 Land Entitlement Certificates, benefiting an estimated one million people. 

Not only has the data been used to issue formal land rights certificates, but the data has empowered the local communities, Slum Dwellers Associations, and the Odisha state government to make critical urban development and planning decisions, bringing new fish processing facilities to the settlements and making the settlements more safe, resilient, and sustainable. Decisions around essential civic urban infrastructure such as housing, road, drain, individual household toilets, public toilets, street lights, constant piped water supply up to the households, common work sheds, parks and playgrounds, among other amenities, are now being informed by the data collected on Cadasta’s tools.

In 2019, the JAGA Mission won the Bronze World Habitat Award and is already being publicized by the media as the “world’s largest slum titling initiative”. The mission has also inspired other Indian states to develop similar programs.

Cadasta Review

Cadasta’s tools have helped the Odisha Liveable Habitat Mission by making it easier to collect a huge amount of data accurately. Cadasta’s tools also bring transparency to the process, removes discrepancies, reduces the dependency on human interventions and brings in speed in execution.”

Shikha Srivastva
Urban Habitat Head of Tata Trusts

The Cadasta team has worked closely with the Tata Trusts field team in addressing day-to-day challenges of data collection and technological improvement. Consistent support from Cadasta team has encouraged the field team to improve the process on regular intervals, as per the requirement. It was a great help when the team visited the field and collaborated to address critical issues faced by data collection team.”

Shishir Ranjan Dash
Urban Habitat Lead of Tata Trusts