Slums and Associated Problems | Geography Optional for UPSC (Notes) PDF Download

Introduction :- 

A Slum, for the purpose of Census has been defined 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.

Facts from Census 2011 Results and National Sample Survey (NSS) 69th Round on Urban Slums in India, 2012 :-

• A total of 65.49 million population live in slums. The slum population enumerated constitutes 5.4 per cent of the total population of the country and 17.4 percent of the total urban population. An estimated total of 33510 slums existed in the urban areas of India of which only 13761 were notified.Maharashtra, with an estimated 7723 slums, accounted for about 23% of total slums in urban India, followed by Andhra Pradesh (14%) and West Bengal, which had a share of about 12%.
• The proportion of Scheduled Castes was higher in the slum areas (20.4%) compared to the population of Scheduled Castes in the non-slum areas (11.0%), and urban areas of the country (12.6%).About 8.08 million children are living in slums in India. In other words, every fifth urban child in the country in the age group of 0-6 is a slum dweller.
• Maharashtra government recently launched a new initiative to redevelop Dharavi- one of the largest slums in the world.

Problems associated with slums :- 

• Slums manifest deprivation that transcends income poverty. They are characterized by acute over-crowding, insanitary, unhealthy and dehumanizing living conditions.
• They are subject to insecure land tenure, lack of access to basic minimum civic services such as safe drinking water, sanitation, storm drainage, solid waste management, internal and approach roads, street lighting, education and health care, and poor quality of shelter.Many of these habitations are located in environmentally fragile and dangerous zones prone to landslides, floods and other disasters that make the poor residents highly vulnerable.
• A significant proportion of the slum dwellers also face social burdens and health problems worse than their non-slum & rural counterparts.
• Civic bodies do not provide the required municipal services in slums on the plea that these are located on ‘illegal’ space. 
• Moreover, the scale of the problem is so colossal that it is beyond the means of Municipalities which lack a buoyant fiscal base.

Among the slum blocks (Census 2011) :-

• 58% have open or no drainage
• 43% must bring water from outside their communities
• 26% do not have access to clean drinking water
• 34% have no public toilets in their communities
• 2 electricity outages occur per day

Reason for development of Slums:-

• Slums are natural by-products of urbanisation, especially in a labour-surplus country like India. Urbanisation requires provision of various kinds of consumer services. In a labour-surplus economy, cheap labour is available to provide these services. 
• Hence, an informal sector develops to complement the formal sector. 
• Wages are low but, at the same time, these jobs require physical proximity to centres of employment (cities). So, slums develop.

Governments Approach towards Slum Re-development :- 

• Development of basic infrastructure around a city (roads, electricity, water, sewerage, security) is state responsibility. Yet, we are increasingly witnessing withdrawal of the state from all kinds of public utilities due to financial constraints and push for privatization.
• Increasingly, governments across the globe have come to recognise the right of people to occupy unutilised land for housing as their livelihood is intrinsically linked with where they live. The right to occupy unused land is guaranteed in Brazil's constitution. 
• But in India, citizens don’t have such rights. In fact, we have the Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorized Occupants) Act, 1971, which prohibits the general public from occupying any public premises.
• Most official policies have looked at slums in isolation — not as part of the larger problem of housing and mass deprivation, rural and urban, that confront a city. 
• The emphasis has been on providing built units to replace the ‘kutcha’ houses of slums. In a high-value real estate market, government-owned lands and places where the slums exist are seen as potential sources of funding infrastructure and mixed residential development.
• Accordingly, when such lands are developed, only a fraction of the built area is dedicated to social housing and an opportunity is lost to accommodate more of the slum population.
• Many State governments have failed to implement the National Urban Housing and Habitat Policy’s recommendation to allocate 15 per cent of land in residential projects for housing the poor.
• Though there are more than 13.7 million households living in abysmal conditions, States have formally notified only about a third of them as slums. 
• This leaves a large number of others in a more vulnerable condition: health and sanitation facilities hardly reach non-notified slums, and they are prone to forced eviction.

Way forward :- 

• To address the growing needs and deficiencies in slums of India, several sustainable models to improve are recommended in four different categories- administrative, infrastructural, financial and architectural.
• Administrative: There is a need to replicate Mumbai’s in-situ Slum Redevelopment Scheme in cities of similar land and population characteristics such as Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune. In these places, a fully subsidized, in-situ slum redevelopment policy, quite similar to the Slum Redevelopment Scheme- Housing for All, would likely see the same success as in Mumbai.
• Infrastructural: Construct and retrofit apartment buildings with decentralized infrastructure such as solar energy and anaerobic digestion sanitation.
• Solar energy proves to be a potential solution for slum redeveloped buildings because of good solar resource in India. Analysts estimate savings up to 2, 35,790 over a twenty five year lifetime of the project.
• On a national policy level : Housing for All, energy analysis resulted in identifying potential of 10 MW worth of solar panel installation across India.
• Decentralized Sanitation can prevent the environmental pollution and health risks associated with open defecation common among slum households. Upgrading existing septic tanks into bio digester facilities, and increasing dependence on resource recovery technologies, can reduce maintenance and costs, produce energy and nutrient resources, and improve water quality.
• Financial: Government needs to ensure long-term ownership rights and improved access to formal financial resources. 
• It is recommended that -The government should grant leasehold rights during the interim period while incentivizing households to work toward an ownership, and encourage innovative lending mechanisms from Housing Finance Companies and Micro-finance Institutions to ensure that housing finance is accessible to large sections of slum population at the end of the transit period. 
• In this way whenever slum dwellers are able to make individual housing choices, the informal economy could truly convert into formal economy, and long-term financial sustainability could be achieved.
• Architectural: It is recommended prioritizing community space and spaces for micro-entrepreneurship within building design to increase social and business opportunities.  
• Through incorporating some existing areas of social interaction in informal settlements, as well as past approaches to public housing and slum redevelopment, we need to maintain the social, semi-public, entrepreneurial atmosphere of the streets in newly developed dense vertical redevelopments.