Tarps, Sticks and Broken bricks
When you drive by certain areas of your city, you might notice some settlements in deplorable conditions countering the essence of the rest of the city. Tent-like houses held up by sticks, or maybe rundown cement and brick houses that are cramped together in little space. These are slums, one of the biggest consequences of urbanisation.
As of 2018, about 35.2% of the urban population in India consist of slum-dwellers, that’s roughly 16.5 crore people living in unhygienic, temporary settlements.
The growth of cities makes life increasingly difficult for those left behind. Rural development in India, though improved, is still slow, this creates a lack of job opportunities, amenities, education and ruins prospects of a good life for village dwellers. As a result, these semi-skilled, uneducated individuals seek out jobs in the mega-cities.
Metropolitan cities offer a range of low-skill informal jobs ranging from house helpers and drivers to factory and construction workers. This is the honey trap that rural settlers fall for and migrate to an unfamiliar city for. Little do they know that the poor housing planning of such a city doesn’t provide any accommodation for them, as mega-cities are more focused on developing expensive real estate rather than affordable housing.
The average rent for a 1BHk apartment in Mumbai is Rs.25,000-Rs.35,000, and that for Bangalore, Delhi and Kolkata is Rs.8000-Rs.20,000. These exorbitant rent prices force the low-paid workers to start living in temporary settlements on any land they find, public or private. With the fear of being evicted looming over their heads, they never think to build concrete homes.
They live in unsanitary environments and face a constant shortage of basic utilities such as water and electricity. This occurs mainly for two reasons: firstly, the multitude of migrants adds pressure to the urban population. Hence, the growth rate of civic amenities can seldom keep up with that of the urban population. Secondly, undocumented migrants lack the required paperwork to make appeals to authorities for the provision of utilities, as the authorities only serve people registered on paper.
This form of neglect and improper urban development planning has kept slums around for decades.
One of the major obstacles in the rehabilitation of the slum population is vote politics. Local politicians find the slum crowd to be easy targets for collecting votes. Upliftment of such communities would largely hurt their election prospects and so, only limited effort is put into their alleviation.
What can be done about this?
The improvement of rural infrastructure and development is a long-term solution. This would provide job opportunities to the village dwellers who would’ve otherwise migrated. Apart from that, better education and training programmes would equip individuals with advanced skills that they can use to grow self-employment opportunities.
Furthermore, better housing planning and urban infrastructure can make rent cheaper for migrants who do choose to live in mega-cities. Many cities in India have a restriction on building height. Allowing the construction of higher buildings with more accommodations could drive down rent prices for the low-income earners.
Corruption and government inefficiency are also some of the prominent causes that compel slum-dwellers to live in unsanitary conditions with scarce resources. A research study shows that slum-dwellers in Delhi claimed that the food they received under the food subsidy system was often less than the entitlements. The same study states that the local politicians often ignore the pleas of slum-dwellers who voted for them.
Hence, frequent auditing of government officials at lower levels and progress reports are immensely important. This, coupled with more awareness programs, will ensure that the slum-dwellers are aware of both their entitlements and the funds available for local-level development projects which they can put to efficient use.
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