In 1985, a small group of architects, urban planners and social workers in Pune found themselves troubled by the same question: what happens to a city’s poorest residents when housing, sanitation and livelihood are treated as afterthoughts rather than rights? Out of that shared concern, MASHAL (Maharashtra Social Housing and Action League) was born.
What began as a handful of like-minded professionals has grown, over nearly four decades, into an organisation working across Maharashtra’s slums and informal settlements. Our early work centred on understanding the urban poor before trying to serve them — through socio-economic surveys and poverty mapping that gave shape and evidence to problems that policy had long overlooked. That instinct — to survey, map and understand before we intervene — remains at the heart of how MASHAL works today.
Over the years, our footprint has widened well beyond mapping. Today, our work is organised around five core areas — Housing & Habitat, Survey & GIS Mapping, Community Development, Disaster Risk Reduction & Response, and Research & Advocacy — each feeding into the other, and each still starting from the same socio-economic evidence base we built our name on. We have partnered with local, national and international organisations, government agencies and CSR-supported initiatives, always keeping the same starting point: the lived reality of the communities we serve.
