The Nature and Causes of Growing Slum Problems in the Metropolitan Cities
The Nature and Causes of Growing Slum Problems in the Metropolitan Cities of India!
A slum can be defined as a “compact settlement with a collection of poorly built tenements, mostly of temporary nature, crowded together usually with inadequate sanitary and drinking water facilities in unhygienic conditions.” The growth of metropolitan cities in India has been largely unplanned and haphazard and this can be seen from the fact that one-fourth of total urban population lives in slum and squaller settlements.

Slum Population in India - Slum Population simply refers to people living in slum areas below the poverty line. As India is still on the path of development, there is large number of people living below the poverty line. These people usually live in slum areas connected to the city. According to Government sources, the Slum Population of India have exceeds the population of Britain. It has doubled in last two decades. According to last census in 2001, the slum-dwelling population of India had risen from 27.9 million in 1981 to 61.8 million in 2001. Indian economy has achieved a significant growth of 8 percent annually in last four years, but there is still large number of people nearly 1.1 billion still survives on less than 1 $ (around 46 INR) in a day.

Increase in Indian Population over a period of time has also resulted in slum population growth. Despite of Government efforts to build new houses and other basic infrastructure, most of the people living in slum areas do not have electricity, water supply and cooking gas.

Slum Population in Mumbai - The financial capital of India known as Mumbai is home to estimated 6.5 million slum people. Nearly half of Mumbai's Population lives in small shacks surrounded by open sewers. Nearly 55% of Mumbai's population lives in Slum areas.

Slum Population in Delhi - After Mumbai, Delhi has the second largest slum Population in India. Nearly 1.8 million people lives in slum areas in capital of India - New Delhi. These people are mostly unemployed or daily wage workers who cannot even afford basic necessities of life.

Future Slum Population in India
According to recent estimates, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh will be having largest share of slum population in India by 2017. These states are already home to a large number of slum populations which mostly lives in and around urban areas. By 2017, Maharashtra will be home to more than 20 million of slum population in India followed by Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. It is estimated that by 2017, India's total Slum population will be 104 million. More

Total Slum Population in India | S No. | State / UT | Total Slum population | | | Persons | Males | Females | 1 | India | 42,578,150 | 22,697,218 | 19,880,932 | 2 | Andaman & Nicobar Is. | 16,244 | 8,855 | 7,389 | 3 | Andhra Pradesh | 5,187,493 | 2,625,745 | 2,561,748 | 4 | Assam | 82,289 | 43,472 | 38,817 | 5 | Bihar | 531,481 | 282,772 | 248,709 | 6 | Chandigarh | 107,125 | 62,762 | 44,363 | 7 | Chhatisgarh | 817,908 | 422,096 | 395,812 | 8 | Delhi | 2,029,755 | 1,140,334 | 889,421 | 9 | Goa | 14,482 | 7,469 | 7,013 | 10 | Gujarat | 1,866,797 | 1,020,288 | 846,509 | 11 | Haryana | 1,420,407 | 778,734 | 641,673 | 12 | Jammu & Kashmir | 268,513 | 143,416 | 125,097 | 13 | Jharkhand | 301,569 | 158,532 | 143,037 | 14 | Karnataka | 1,402,971 | 714,413 | 688,558 | 15 | Kerala | 64,556 | 31,699 | 32,857 | 16 | Madhya Pradesh | 2,417,091 | 1,269,757 | 1,147,334 | 17 | Maharashtra | 11,202,762 | 6,137,624 | 5,065,138 | 18 | Meghalaya | 86,304 | 43,078 | 43,226 | 19 | Orissa | 629,999 | 330,054 | 299,945 | 20 | Pondicherry | 73,169 | 36,012 | 37,157 | 21 | Punjab | 1,159,561 | 629,326 | 530,235 | 22 | Rajasthan | 1,294,106 | 681,541 | 612,565 | 23 | Tamil Nadu | 2,866,893 | 1,441,437 | 1,425,456 | 24 | Tripura | 29,949 | 15,093 | 14,856 | 25 | Uttar Pradesh | 4,395,276 | 2,348,679 | 2,046,597 | 26 | Uttranchal | 195,470 | 103,895 | 91,575 | 27 | West Bengal | 4,115,980 | 2,220,135 | 1,895,845 | Source: Census of India 2001 |

Slum Population in India by States | State | 2011 | 2017
(Projected) | Maharashtra | 1.81 | 2.05 | Uttar Pradesh | 1.1 | 1.2 | Andhra Pradesh | 0.81 | 0.86 | Madhya Pradesh | 0.64 | 0.71 | Gujarat | 0.46 | 0.52 | Delhi | 0.31 | 0.37 | Source: Census of India 2011 | All figures in crores |

Total and Slum Population of Million Plus Cities in India, Census 2001 | Million Plus cities | T. Popn.(in ’000) | Slum Popn. (in ’000) | %of Slum to T. Popn. | Sex Ratio in
Non-Slum areas | Sex Ratio in Slum areas | Greater Mumbai | 11,978 | 6,475 | 54.06 | 859 | 770 | Delhi M. Corp. | 9,879 | 1,851 | 18.74 | 836 | 780 | Kolkata | 4,573 | 1,485 | 32.48 | 841 | 805 | Banglore * | 4,301 | 431 | 10.02 | 915 | 947 | Chennai * | 4,344 | 820 | 18.88 | 953 | 974 | Ahmedabad | 3,637 | 474 | 13.46 | 891 | 850 | Hyderabad * | 3,520 | 627 | 17.23 | 930 | 938 | Kanpur | 2,551 | 368 | 14.42 | 857 | 857 | Pune | 2,538 | 492 | 19.39 | 920 | 928 | Surat | 2,433 | 508 | 20.89 | 794 | 701 | All India | 73,346 | 17,697 | 24.13 | 874 | 820 |

*Million Cities of South India

*Reader,Dept. of Research Methodology,Tata Institute of Social Sciences,Mumbai – 400 088

Newly released census data shows families living in slums have a far better child sex ratio than the urban Indian average. Over a third of India’s slum dwellers live in unrecognised slums.
Over 65 million people live in slums, up from 52 million in 2001, but slum populations have grown slower than the average urban population over the last decade. The average household living in a slum is no larger than an average urban Indian household, with 4.7 family members. The child sex ratio (0-6 years) of an average slum household is 922 girls for every 1,000 boys, compared to 905 for urban India.
Scheduled Castes (SCs) are over-represented in slums, with 1 out of every five slums residents belonging to SC, compared to just over one out of 10 for urban India as a whole. The proportion of SCs living in slums has risen over the last decade. Scheduled Castes in slums have far better sex ratios than other urban communities.
The literacy rate in slums is now up to 77.7% but still lags behind the urban average. Both men and women living in slums participate at a higher rate in the workforce than the urban average, even though fewer have employment through the year.
The census defines a slum as “residential areas where dwellings are unfit for human habitation” because they are dilapidated, cramped, poorly ventilated, unclean, or “any combination of these factors which are detrimental to the safety and health” and covers all 4,041 statutory towns in India.
For the latest round, the census designated slums in three different ways — notified, recognised and identified. While the first two are designated as slums by some official authority, identified slums do not have legal status as a slum, but must consist of at least 60-70 tenements with at least 300 people.
The data shows that of the three types, identified slums have the largest sub-set of slum population, indicating that over a third of India’s official slum population does not have official status as a slum, or access to legal protection and municipal services.
With over 11 million of its residents in slums, Maharashtra has the highest slum population; 4.6 million of them in ‘identified’ slums. Andhra Pradesh follows with over 10 million in slums, and West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh have over 6 million slum residents each. Over 1 million of Delhi’s 1.7 million slum residents live in ‘identified’ slums.
These families have a far better child sex ratio than the urban Indian average

In these clean and green city of India, Due to rising population, the number of slum dwellers rising in Indian cities. Slums area always lack by some basic necessities of Life clean water, electricity and sanitation. The inhabitants are mostly rickshaw puller,sex workers, seasonal small vendors, house maid servants with a family income ranging from a meager Rs.1500 to Rs.3000. After a hard and low-earning working day, most of the men spend their daily earnings on homemade illicit liquor. Status of woman’s in slum is not respectful, they used to do prostitution to full fill their basic needs to survive. The slum population is constantly increasing: it has doubled in the past two decades. The current population living in slums in the country is more than the population of Britain.
List Of Top Indian Cities Living In Slums:

Dharavi Slum Mumbai: Mumbai “The Dream city” hold the biggest slum area in India known as Dharavi. Asia’s largest slum, Dharavi, is spread over an area of 1.75 km along the Mahim river in central Mumbai. Dharavi is just one of many slum areas in city of Mumbai.Bhalswa Slum
Delhi:
In”The Heart of India” the Slum population was considered as 20% of the total population of Delhi, It also has largest child labours. These slum tend to bank of river yamuna. Slum dwellers from various parts of Delhi have been resettled to Bhalswa. Delhi Government is thinking to launch a survey to prepare a data base of slum dwellers in the city to help them. Delhi has become one of the most unsafe Indian city for women, due to the large population and crime.

Nochikuppam Slum Chennai: “The city of flyovers” has Nochikuppam slum with 1,300 huts where around 5 thousand people live below poverty level and they don’t have enough money for two meals a day.Basanti Slum kolkata:
“The City of Joy” Kolkata has slum area known as Basanti slum, it is one of the major slum areas in kolkata. One third of Kolkata’s population, lived in 2011 registered and 3500 unregistered slums.

Rajendra Nagar Slum Bangalore: “The garden city” Bangalore alone hold 570 slums form total of around 2000 slums in State. It is estimated that about 20% of Bangalore population reside in slums. The families living in the slum are not ready to move into the temporary shelters, saying it is unjust and risky to live under a flyover. As per the latest comments from people of Bangalore,this slum doesn’t exist in the recent days as the slums dwellers are believed to be rehabilated. . I
Indiramma Nagar Hyderabad: “The City of Nizam” Around 624689 peoples live in slums area of Hyderabad. There is very little land available for all the people’s live in.
Saroj Nagar Slum Nagpur: “The Orange city” Nagpur has 424 legal slum area’s, Sarojnagar is just one of the 424 slums in the city. In Nagpur, approximately 40 % of the population live in slums. These slums are home to over 1,42,000 people and cover about 1,600 hectares of prime land.Due to struggle for land in Maharashtra, it was making second largest slum area in Nagpur after Dharavi Mumbai.
Mehbullahpur
Slum Lucknow: “The City of Nawabs” Lucknow’s population includes large numbers of poor people, many of who live in slums. 20000 persons living in 22 of the 460 slums in Lucknow city. Many people are migrated Lucknow from the different part of the nearest district for daily wages.

Satnami Nagar Slum Bhopal: “The City of Lakes” Bhopal has many slums area, Satnami Nagar is one of the oldest slums in Bhopal. Ruhal Nagar and Shanti Nagar are first two slums area in bhopal to be declared open-defecation. Peoples of bhopal live on streets and these slum provide them shelter and other facility to survive.

Parivartan Slum Ahmadabad: Approximately 440000 people live in slums within the city. Ahmadabad is home to a large population of poor peoples living on the river banks. River side slums in Ahmadabad are about 40 yr old.

Transforming India’s Slums: A Critical Step in Creating the New India

One of India’s biggest challenges today is coping with the wave of urbanisation unleashed by economic liberalisation. An estimated 160 million people have moved to the cities in the last two decades, and another 230 million are projected to move there within the next 20 years[1]. Unfortunately, as any visitor to India can see for themselves, its major metros and tier-II cities are clearly finding it difficult to cope with the inflow of people. It is no surprise that India’s famously poor infrastructure is critically over-strained. In response, the ill-equipped urban systems and the informal housing that are the slums have expanded exponentially in the last few decades without proper access to basic services such as sanitation, healthcare, education, and law and order. While they are often teeming with entrepreneurial activity, they are nevertheless an inefficient use of the city’s human resources and land. In order to truly unleash the productive potential of this dynamic urban population, India will need to build scalable urban systems capable of housing, caring for, employing and integrating large and increasing numbers of new inhabitants. India is not alone in this challenge of course; Mexico, Brazil and Africa have some of the largest slums in the world. It is unclear that there are simple solutions to the problem of slums given their extraordinary organic growth rates– 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in urban centres by 2050[2] – and solving slums requires a rethink of the design of cities and their borders as well as of the role of rural areas. The challenge, like with many such difficult transformations and reformations for India, is whether it can muster the political will and concerted efforts of its stakeholders to implement the level of change required. India’s Struggle to Keep Pace with Urbanisation
India’s growth over the last two decades has resulted in one of the largest human migrations in history – from the Indian countryside to its growing metros. The country’s on-going industrialisation, while stop-start and riddled with missteps, has driven, and will continue to drive, the transformation and relocation of its pre-dominantly (rural) agricultural labour force into urban areas as they become industrial and service workers. The massive influx of people has strained India’s urban systems to the point of breaking, creating massive slums with inadequate housing, sanitation, basic services and security. In India’s financial capital Mumbai, which boasts some of the country’s most expensive real estate, approximately eight to nine million people (or over 40% of its households)[3]currently live in slums, which the Indian Census succinctly defines as “residential areas unfit for human habitation.”[4] Tellingly, Mumbai’s slums, while seemingly ubiquitous, are estimated to occupy only 6-8% of the city’s land mass.[5] Moreover practically every city in India is facing similar challenges. The 2011 census indicates that there are 14 million households (or approximately 70 million people assuming an average household size of five people) living in slums in India’s cities[6]. While slums in India’s large metros such as Mumbai and Kolkata are the most well-known, in many ways, the urban housing situation in India’s smaller cities is worse. Almost two-thirds of India’s slum population is in these smaller cities which have populations of less than one million people. In five cities, the proportion of slum households to total urban households is greater than 40%[7]. Today, 50% of the world’s population lives in cities, a figure that is expected to reach 70% by 20503, implying an almost doubling of the global urban population within less than 40 years. Among global city dwellers today, almost 900m people live in areas considered slums[8]. As cities continue to attract excess rural populations and people looking for economic opportunities, slums’ share of the urban environment will surely continue to grow, particularly in fast developing and low income countries where the rate of urbanisation exceeds urban systems’ ability to scale. With an additional 230 million people2 projected to move to the cities in the next two decades, India is creating the equivalent of a new Mumbai every 18 months. Given this urbanisation phenomenon looks unstoppable, unless the relative size and power of the Indian economy and its distribution of wealth outpaces this shift by a substantial margin, India’s emergence will not result in a better quality of life for the majority of its citizens. If India’s politicians fail to deliver on the economic front, the disparity will grow between those living on the edge and those in the centre. It is widely held among a smug political and business class in India that the religious values of the nation forestall social unrest, but the patience of 230 million people housed in slums might well be tested if the government fails to deliver.
“Slums are litmus tests for innate cultural strengths and weaknesses. Those peoples whose cultures can harbor extensive slum life without decomposing will be, relatively speaking, the future’s winners. Those whose cultures cannot will be the future’s victims.” Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy, 1994 How Slums Develop, India’s Freedom Trap
India’s democracy provides free mobility to its people. Part of the freedom of India’s democratic population is the apparent liberty to pursue their dreams anywhere in the country and India’s aspiring population is dynamic and determined to do so. The great slums of India are predominantly created when large numbers of individuals or families move to the urban centres of their dreams, usually in search of better economic prospects. Mumbai has been the number one choice of generations of Indians for decades. These urban centres are not geared to, nor governed in a manner that can accommodate (or reject) such an influx of people. As a result, the incoming migrants find accommodation in unorganised dwellings. India’s slums have received global attention not just from the global NGOs but also in popular culture through movies like Slumdog Millionaire,which portray them as centres of unmitigated squalor and despair. However poor this quality of life may seem from the outside, from a migrant slum-dweller’s perspective, living there is an entirely rational decision based on three basic factors: 1. A Higher and More Stable Income. The productive employment opportunity in the urban centre will likely generate a higher and more consistent personal disposable income than in the place of origin – likely a rural, farming centre (e.g. being a chauffeur in Mumbai is a more lucrative and sustainable job proposition than being a labourer at a farm, typically a small plot in an un-electrified village with erratic water availability. 2. Social Mobility for the Next Generation. Raising children in an urban environment creates a higher “option value” for the next generation. Typically, cities offers a wider choice of education and employment opportunities, and while no parent wishes their child to grow up in a slum, the chances that the child could rise to a middle class life provides a strong incentive to migrate to one from the countryside. This contrasts to a child growing up in a village dominated by a sub-scale farm with poor education and employment opportunities, who is unlikely to ever have the same social mobility opportunity. 3. No Other Option. Unfortunately, slums are the only way to inhabit the city for the vast majority of migrants. With little available low-cost housing of decent quality near the city centre, a rural migrant would need to go well outside even the suburbs and outskirts of the city to be able to afford real estate. Given the poor transport linkages to the cities, this can create a significant trade-off for migrant in terms of the occupations that are available and their earnings potential. As a result, most are willing to compromise and make the trade-off to slum housing in the city to be closer to the place of work.
The coalescing of this process over decades, with successive waves of migrants and no exodus of the previous waves leads to slums growing in scale and scope (see inset on the phases in slum
Dev elopment). Over time, informal economies develop in these slums as they form their own

practices and codes in the absence of any effective oversight from the local government. The larger slums often become a zone for small-scale industries by illegally diverting public resources (water, electricity) to meet their requirements. These slums also provide blue-collar labour for construction, manufacturing, and other trades. For example, Dharavi, a large Mumbai slum with a population of over one million people living on 1.7 square kilometres, has 5,000 businesses and 15,000 single room factories which produce pottery and leather and also recycle a large portion of the waste generated in the city. The total output of the Dharavi, most of it part of the informal cash economy, was estimated at US$500-650 million in 2010[9]. Clearly, India’s slums are far from their popular stereotypes as only centres of disease and want. Indeed, an overwhelming number of people in these slums have left their homes in the countryside in the pursuit of opportunities in urban India because of their strong aspirations. Ironically, it is the informal economy which traps many of these slum-dwellers into the vicious cycle of poverty.

Without real options for their children to secure competitive standards of schooling and with the overwhelming number of slum-dwellers not trained for the better jobs, social mobility for this class, though inspiring when it occurs, is still limited. Further, continuing urbanisation and slum growth through fresh arrivals from the countryside increases competition for limited resources and, opportunities further reducing both liveability and individual chances for mobility. The very presence of slums ultimately risks creating a different class of urban citizens who only rarely mix with the other ‘classes’ other than as employees. While India’s slums today are full of ambitious hard workers, lack of opportunity can quickly institutionalise poverty and create an unbridgeable gap between poor and rich. Although global technological innovation and India’s growth provides its slum dwellers with access to some of the modern consumables such as motorcycles, televisions, and mobile phones, their ability to shape their own destiny remains limited – and the productive potential of the young migrants eager to work is under-utilised. However, having established viability and survived attempts to dismantle the slum, India’s largest slums like Dharavi, are now in phase VI, continuous growth through adaptation. This makes them an organic entity that has demonstrated its Darwinian survival status. Indian Slums in a Global and Historic Context
While the Indian subcontinent is home to the largest number of slum-dwellers given its large urban population and (see chart), slums are of course not unique to India; there are large slum cities in developing countries across the world from Mexico City, to Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, to Johannesburg’s Soweto, and Jakarta to name a few.

Slums world- over share some common characteristics including a higher incidence of violent crime due to lack of attention from local law enforcement, a higher incidence of disease due to poor sanitation and access to healthcare facilities, the dominance of the informal economy and political bosses, and a higher incidence of child labour, prostitution, and substance abuse. Clearly, the culture of a nation or region plays a large role in determining the degree to which these factors shape the slum. The development of slums appears to be an entirely organic phenomenon which occurs when poorer countries that have under-developed urban management, governance structures and poor infrastructure undergo rapid industrialisation and urbanisation and fail to minimise the disparity of prosperity between the urban and rural population. In history, this was evident in the experience of the ‘great’ global cities such as London, Paris and New York. Each of these cities faced issues during its industrialisation phase in the growth of informal housing, workhouses, exploitation of the poor and disenfranchisement of migrant workers. Over time, however, these cities found ways to expand and make room for the increasing numbers of migrants flowing in and became great cities in part because of their ability to not only gainfully employ these migrants but also to attract and accommodate even more highly skilled immigrants. Each city developed the ability to absorb and assimilate the influx of migrants and was ultimately able to provide low-cost housing, infrastructure and services to its growing populations. However, slums do not seem to fully disappear: they are a phenomenon of disparity and migration that persists in even rich nations. Despite the prosperity of the UK, France and America, in the outskirts of their major city centres, slums have been replaced by housing estates segregating their inhabitants along socio-economic lines, which even today pose a risk to the stability of their nations. Social exclusion and the lack of opportunities leading to disenfranchised populations left the Paris suburbs burning in riots and protests as recently as 2005 and London and major cities of the UK in 2011. Moreover, although the downtown areas of cities like London, Paris and New York have or are being gentrified following decades of development with only pockets of the old poor areas remaining, many others, such as Detroit, continue to suffer from inner city decay that drives the creation of new urban slums.
In that context, India’s slums are perhaps the to-be-expected outcome of the rapid economic changes the country is currently undergoing. However, before classifying them as a “necessary condition” and relegating them to the list of unsolved global phenomenon (and therefore not India’s responsibility to address), India’s leaders will need to recognise three important facts about slums unique to India: 1. Unprecedented Scale. No country has or is facing the issue on the scale at which India is. By 2017, India is expected to have over 100 million people living in slums[10] and another 10 million migrants moving to the cities each year. India cannot afford to pause or be complacent on urban development given the scale of this migration and in fact needs to play some ‘catch-up’ in scaling the infrastructure of its cities to match their populations. 2. Political Clout Cuts Both Ways. India’s slum-dwellers are fully enfranchised and actively vote for national and local leaders who they feel will protect their interests. Slum-dwellers’ today know they represent a strong and highly influential vote and politicians know that delivering things of value to this constituency plays an important part in their ability to win their vote. 3. No Control. Some other developing countries have more effective political tools to control urban migration. However, India’s democracy which assures the free movement of people throughout the country prevents any such controls from being even remotely feasible.
While slums may be born organically, they will not disappear automatically just because cities build more houses. If the slum is a fact of modern urbanisation of India, India’s choice is to decide what is its vision for the slum of the future, the role of the slum, its design and purpose, how it will transform slums to make them assets and thereby put them on the path to transforming into being the waiting room to enter a better life. If this is to happen, the real challenge is to support of the organic process of mutating slums into dynamic city sub-centres in an ever-expanding city boundary.
Strategies for Transforming India’s Slums
As we have said of London, Paris and New York, the history of urbanisation is full of examples of cities which started off by being the hosts (willingly or not) to the economically weaker section of the population who were ultimately graduated from poor living conditions to a combination of affordable housing and basic civic amenities. The solution ultimately lies in better nations, not just better cities, which are scalable and capable of not only absorbing the inflow of people (from within or without), but in fact are economic magnets in attracting the best talent from the country. Five insights provide the basis of the solution. Firstly, slums are a logical response to urbanisation and the relative lack of opportunity outside of major urban centres in predominantly poor countries. They are facilitated by the right to migrate. So, they are a structural phenomenon. Secondly, slums become a system of living perpetuated by economics, politics and societal factors. Therefore, it makes sense to see them as a part of the system of a country and also the global system of trade and distribution of wealth. Thirdly, people accept and adapt to their circumstances without (external) triggers to encourage them to do otherwise. In this sense, slums are adaptive organisms. Fourthly, slum dwellers can improve the slum to a large extent if mobilised to do so. Therefore, they can also be developed as one would any organisational entity through the application of techniques of change management. Finally, slum dwellers cannot transform their slum (into a non-slum) without the support of the environment around them. They lack the critical human and financial resources to make a clean break from their situation. Their transformation requires external impetus and resources. In the absence of this external intervention, they can become disenfranchised rather than citizens in-waiting and have the potential to develop a culture, set of values and behaviours that can threaten the on-slum environment they live in.
“People accept and adapt to their circumstances without (external) triggers to encourage them to do otherwise … slums are adaptive organisms”
Therefore, ultimately, a comprehensive and long-term solution to the problem of India’s slums cannot be about the slums themselves. A viable solution would have to take a holistic view dealing with India’s larger macro challenges and recognise the critical role which cities will have to play if India is to successfully transition into a middle-income country. Such a solution and would include the following strategies: 1. Industrial Revolution and Continued Development. While it was the industrial revolution which led to a wave of rapid urbanisation in the West and gave rise to slums, without the industrial revolution, the West would not have been able to afford to develop housing and infrastructure required for its growing populations. The solution to slums is not to reverse industrialisation or to try and contain urbanisation, but indeed to press forward with it more aggressively so that businesses can afford to provide jobs to slum-dwellers and pay them a proper wage. 2. Knowledge and Freedom Advantage. India is not fully leveraging its “freedom advantage” (see our previous paper on China[12] which highlights the strong link between a society’s freedom and its development potential) which should in theory allow for people to strive to realise their aspirations. In particular, India needs to create an open knowledge economy where the slum-dwellers are empowered to solve their own problems and have the access to financing to do so. This requires scaled charities and NGOs that can apply global best-practices to tackling India’s urban issues and also raise the necessary financing. 3. Slum Architecture. Lesson from other cities indicate that slums are best solved when housing is horizontal not vertical. In order to assimilate slum-dwellers into urban life instead of further ostracizing them, India cannot just bulldoze the slums and pile up the people into apartment blocks. A real solution would involve building high-quality, low-cost, multi-storey, diverse formats in the current areas such that these become integrated with the rest of the city (as we see in London or Paris). This needs the best brains in India and the world to come in and design the solutions. The slum is merely the platform for an urban re-invention. 4. Sustainable Continuous Dynamic Infrastructure Provisioning. The government needs to create a framework for gradual and continuous upgrading of slum infrastructure through innovative public-private models and by leveraging the many dynamic charities and NGOs in India. Such a model would see the slum-dwellers become the driving force of, rather than bystanders to, the improvement of their living conditions by empowering them to identify the solution and then finance and implement it. 5. Rural Re-Visioning and Investment. India cannot solve its slum problem by focusing on the cities alone. Any city which develops the systems to accommodate more people and create economic opportunities will attract a disproportionate number of migrants putting it under further strain unless opportunities in rural areas are sufficiently attractive relative to those in the city. Therefore a comprehensive solution would necessarily have to involve improved infrastructure, schools, employment opportunities and the overall quality of life in India’s small towns and rural centres. India’s countryside has all the potential of a Switzerland (Kashmir and the Himalayas), the Caribbean (the many beaches along its long coast), an African safari (the many wildlife sanctuaries and forests), and a Gulf desert trek (Rajasthan’s deserts and palaces) – however, the country has barely begun to exploit this potential.
Reflections: The Transformation of Slums is Really about the Transformation of India Itself
None of the five strategies described above on their own can transform the slums. However, if implemented together, they could represent a sea change in the way that India’s mass migration and resulting urbanisation is managed. This requires a recognition that the reason why slums in India persist and continue to expand is because of the failure to address fundamental issues of economic opportunity across the country, population growth, urban and rural development and education and skills development. A middle income India will indeed demand world-class cities and conversely, to reach middle income levels, India needs to create opportunity for the population to be gainfully employed. Given India is already in the midst of a rocky economic cycle at the same time as slums are growing at the edge of every major city, the investment in urban infrastructure can create a highly positive multiplier effect for the economy while addressing a major issue. There is no single point in time or crisis which will tell us that India’s cities have suddenly become “un-livable”; however if the status quo prevails for the next 20 years, they will get progressively more chaotic and at some stage in the not-too-distant future, it will be impossible to harness the economic potential of India’s population without even more radical changes than those outlined above. Addressing this issue is one of the key steps in the regeneration of the India story and will have a highly positive impact on the success of the next government. Indeed, solving the issue is about as difficult as putting a man on the moon, but would have massive collateral benefits for the nation as a whole and would be a true indicator that India is truly ready to play its role on the global stage.
“Solving the issue is about as difficult as putting a man on the moon, but would have massive collateral benefits for the nation as a whole and would be a true indicator that India is truly ready to play its role on the global stage.”

Self-sustaining toilets for Indian slums
Kalyan Ray, Nov 02, 2014, Dubendorf (Switzerland), DHNS :

A self-sustaining toilet capable of running without any external water for years in Indian slums is under development at a Swiss laboratory.

The researchers hope to put the toilet under test by 2017-18 in India once they find out ways to overcome two key psycho-social barriers for the users. Preliminary ground tests at Kampala and Nairobi, however, did not bring out those challenges that will surely come up in conservative Indian society.

Being developed with $2 million funding support from the Bill Gates Foundation, the toilet contains 60 litres of water, which is recycled using sophisticated “membrane filtration” technology to perpetually generate safe, hand-wash quality waters for ten users a day. As the toilet is equipped with a small pump for pushing up the water to the storage tank for hand wash and a tiny fan for removing the bad odour, solar panels are fitted on the top for electricity needs.

The researchers have also developed a parallel technology to generate nitrogen fertiliser from the urine.

A 20-member team at Eawag, Switzerland’s premiere institute of aquatic research, created two prototypes at a cost of 12,000 Swiss rranc (about $ 12,400) apiece. Both were tested successfully in the two African cities in the last two years. “For India, overcoming the cultural barriers is more important,” Christoph Luthi, a senior scientist associated with the Eawag division on water and sanitation in developing countries, told a group of visiting Indian journalists. There are two problems – the first one is the mental block in washing the hands in water that comes out after recycling the urine and secondly relieving in the same pit, knowing fully well the presence of somebody else’s poop below. “Because of these factors, we are not projecting it as a public toilet, but as a toilet for a small family living in the slum. Also we aim to bring down the cost to $150-200,” he said.

Asked how the users in Kampala overcame the second bottleneck, Luthi said the users put newspaper pieces inside the pit after every use. Since an NGO was involved in cleaning the prototype toilets twice in a week to remove the faeces, it was not a problem.

Essay on the condition of people living in Slums!
The parts of the cities, where these slums are located, are quite congested, as they are over populated. The conditions of the slum areas in metropolitan cities have deteriorated to such an extent due to the high density of population that the people there hardly enjoy even the basic amenities. The lanes are narrow and the houses are nothing but a single room tenement without the facilities of an open courtyard or an enclosure, thus depriving the people of natural gifts like sunshine and air.
In such areas, people use common latrines and water taps. Some of the slum areas do not even have single rooms, they are thick clusters of small, dilapidated mud huts, the roofs and ceilings of which are made of scraps of wood, gunny sacks, metal or some sort of waste material. Sometimes, 10 to 12 people live, eat and sleep in the same room. The streets are narrow and the sewage water stagnates in open surface drains, which emit bad smell. The children often play in places where the drains are used as open latrines.

Image Courtesy : upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Jakarta_slumhome_2.jpg
Living conditions in many urban slums are worse than those in the poorest rural areas of the country. This can be attributed pardy to the slum’s exceptionally unhealthy environment. Many of the most serious diseases in cities are ‘environmental’ because they are transmitted through air, water, soil and food or through insect or animal vectors.
The concentration of people in areas where the provision of water, sanitation, garbage collection and health care is inadequate creates the conditions where infectious and parasitic diseases thrive and spread. Around half the slum population is suffering from one or more of the diseases associated with inadequate provision of water and sanitation.
Despite the exterior appearance of chaos, slum life is highly structured, with many economic, religious, caste and political interests expressed in the daily activity. Living conditions are extremely difficult, and slum dwellers fear the constant threat of having their homes bulldozed in municipal ‘slum clearance’ efforts. Nonetheless, slum life is animated by a strong sense of joie de vivre. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Jammu & Kashmir | 86 | 40 | 6,62,062 | 1,62,909 | 1,36,649 | 3,62,504 | Himachal Pradesh | 56 | 22 | 61312 | 60201 | 0 | 1111 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |