Slum is a contiguous settlement where the inhabitants are characterized as having inadequate housing and basic services. Cities Alliance Action Plan describes slums as neglected parts of cities where housing and living conditions are appallingly poor.
Census of India 2011 explained slums as residential areas where dwellings are unfit for human habitation by reasons of dilapidation, overcrowding, faulty arrangements and design of such buildings, narrowness or faulty arrangement of street, lack of ventilation, light, or sanitation facilities or any combination of these factors which are detrimental to the safety and health.
The slum is an inevitable part of modern urbanization and the urban poor are active agents serving the non-slum dwellers and contribute to economic growth.
- Out of 4,041 Statutory Towns in Census 2011 Slums reported from 2,543 Towns (63%)
- Largest number of slums reported from Maharashtra (21,359)
- People who are living in slums increased from 52 million in 2001 to 65.5 million 2011
- Rapid growth of population:
- Population explosion and poverty force the urban poor to live in slums and that leads to an increase in the size of slums.
- Also, a regional imbalance in development creates rural to urban migration, thus increasing the overall urban population density which pressurizes the urban poor to move into slums.
- In the past 15 years, India’s urban population density has increased by 45%. It is further estimated that 40% of the population will live in urban areas by 2026.
- With increasingly densified urban population, there exists a huge demand for land.
- This shortage of land forces the urban poor to live in increasingly dense communities creating slums in the process.
- Poor Urban governance:
- A major factor for growth of slums use of rigid, often outdated urban planning regulations, which are typically bypassed by slum dwellers to meet their housing needs.
- Another issue is the failure of governments to incorporate slum dwellers as part of the overall planning process.
- This is often due to the inability of many governments to keep pace with urbanization because of ill-designed policies, lack of resources and corruption.
- Administrative failure:
- City authorities faced with rapid urban development lack the capacity to cope with the diverse demands for infrastructural provision to meet economic and social needs.
- Not only are strategic planning and intervention major issues in agenda to manage rapid urbanization, but city governments are not effectively linking the economic development trajectory to implications for urban growth and, hence, housing needs.
- Unavailability of affordable housing:
- Rising material costs and labor costs resulting from labor shortage is another reason for the growth of slums as it makes developers unable to deliver affordable housing to the market.
- The gap between growing demand for affordable urban housing and insufficient supply has encouraged the formation of slums.
- Whenever the demand surplus is not met by formal sectors, this gap is typically filled by an informal dwelling such as a slum
- Limited access to financial resources:
- slum dwellers typically inhabit marginal locations such as dumping grounds mainly due to the low purchasing power of slum dwellers in formal land markets when compared with high-income groups.
- Further, the urban poor lack the access to formal financial resources to help them purchase new homes or maintain a new life in a new housing unit.
- Rural to Urban Migration:
- Rural to urban migration is one of the primary drivers of growth of slums in Indian cities.
- Urban centres which are not equipped to support additional population, fail to cope up with high influx of people which ultimately causes several problems such as housing shortages, unemployment, and development of slums.
- Social factors:
- Moreover, social backwardness forces people to live in congested areas away from main areas. For example, more Scheduled Castes (SCs) live in slums – with one out of every five residents belonging to the SC category.
- National Slum Development Programme (NSDP): Initiated in 1996, NSDP provided both loans and subsidies to states for slum rehabilitation projects on the basis of their urban slum population.
- Valmiki Ambedkar Malina Basti Awas Yozana (VAMBAY): Introduced in 2001, it focused on shelter for the urban poor, with 20% of total allocation for community sanitation facilities under the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA) program
- Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP): BSUP was an important component of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). BSUP aimed to provide basic services to urban poor in 63 of the largest cities in India by population
- Integrated Housing & Slum Development Programme (IHSDP): Integrated Housing & Slum Development Programme (IHSDP) was launched by GoI by merging the schemes of NSDP and VAMBAY. The objective of the scheme is to provide adequate Shelter and basic infrastructure facilities to the slum dwellers in urban areas.
- Interest Subsidy Scheme for Housing the Urban Poor (ISHUP): The Scheme envisages the provision of interest subsidy to economically weak section and Low income groups to enable them to buy or construct houses.
- Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY): Launched in 2013, the scheme focussed on:
- Bringing existing slums within the formal system and enabling them to avail of the same level of basic amenities as the rest of the town;
- Redressing the failures of the formal system that lie behind the creation of slums; and
- Tackling the shortages of urban land and housing that keep shelter out of reach of the urban poor.
- Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana- “Housing for All (Urban): Launched in 2015, the scheme seeks to provide central assistance to implementing agencies through States and UTs for providing houses to all beneficiaries by 2022. It incorporates the following:
- “In-situ” slum rehabilitation with participation of private developers using land as a resource. This approach aims to leverage the locked potential of land under slums to provide houses to the eligible slum dwellers bringing them into the formal urban settlement.
- Promotion of Affordable Housing for weaker section through credit linked subsidy
- Affordable Housing in Partnership with Public & Private Sectors
- Subsidy for beneficiary-led individual house construction/enhancement
- Slum areas (Improvement and Clearance) Act, in the year 1956:The act aimed at mechanical improvement or complete eradication of slums. It empowers the competent authority to declare any slum area in accordance with the definition, look into possibilities of improvement or eradicate slums.
- Failure of many projects:
- For instance, the World Bank-funded Slum Upgradation Programme, the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme, rolled out in Maharashtra in 1995 under the Slum Rehabilitation Authority, etc none of them have been successful.
- Current slum policies primarily focus on housing, relocation or in-situ development of multi-story complexes, which free up swathes of prime real estate. But in doing so, they miss out on the brewing socio-economic distress in slums. This was revealed in two projects conducted in Bengaluru and which could apply to other Indian cities too.
- The lack of adequate data and land titles in slumsmeant expensive, time-consuming delays were common.
- Failure to take slum dweller representatives on boardmeant that the informal economic networks underlying slum’s economy would be disrupted by the redevelopment.
- Lack of common standards meant that the housing built for slum dwellers was often of execrable quality. As for the problem of slum dwellers selling or leasing the houses and returning to their previous housing, poor quality, unaffordable maintenance costs and disrupted networks often had a role to play here.
- Forced evictions:
- Millions of poor people, or squatters, have been evicted until the late 1980s around the world in the name of Urban Renewal Projects, most of them (tenant) without a share in any benefit. Excluding the already excluded poor from developmental opportunities aggravates the problem.
- Tiers of slums:
- Many cities across India have two tiers of slums those with official government recognition and those without, and the JNNURM did not push cities hard enough to directly intervene in slum areas without recognition.
- The focus should not only on building houses for the slum dwellers but also promoting livelihood options and social and economic infrastructure to develop the livelihood.
- For effective urban planning, housing and population policies based on housing rights and the right to a clean environment must be established at all levels. These policies should be directed at inclusive cities and poverty alleviation
- Attention must be paid to income generation, transport and empowerment of the beneficiaries to redress possible future problems
- A three-pronged approach to Slum Free city should be adopted:
- Provision of clear, free title to the residents, so that they enjoy the privileges of using property as a tangible asset
- To upgrade the infrastructure and services providing water, power, and sewage connections to individual homes, the collection of solid waste, street lighting and neighbourhood security and police support
- The creation of high-density, low income zoning that allows individual property owners to upgrade their homes without risk, rent out their properties to formal commercial establishments
