Magsaysay Award-winning activist Jockin Arputham died on Saturday at the age of 71. He founded the National Slum Dwellers Federation in India and was the president of the Slum Dwellers International.

“It is with great sadness that we learnt of the death of Jockin Arputham,” said the International Institute for Environment and Development. “He more than anyone has fought for the rights of ‘slum’/shack dwellers – going back to the early 1970s as he tried to stop the bulldozing of the settlement in which he lived.”

Arputham was called the grandfather of the global slum-dwellers movement. For most of his adult life, he built new houses and toilets for slum dwellers, helped them stand up for their rights against the authorities and charted their way out of urban poverty.

Arputham lived in slums and on streets for most of his childhood. In the 1970s, he founded the National Slum Dwellers Federation of India, dealing with the housing, sanitation, resettlement and rehabilitation of people living in slums. He helped found Slum Dwellers International, a network of slum dwellers in more than 20 countries, allowing them to share information on how to organise and participate in planning, how to ensure women’s involvement in community decisions and how to set up systems of savings and credit.

In 2014, Arputham and Slum Dwellers International were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding in 2000 and was honoured with the Padma Shri by the Indian government the following year.

Rajya Sabha MP and Biju Janata Dal leader Achyuta Samanta offered his condolences.