A slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting of densely packed

housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The
infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily
inhabited by impoverished people. Although slums are usually located in urban
areas, in some countries they can be located in suburban areas where housing
quality is low and living conditions are poor. While slums differ in size and other
characteristics, most lack reliable sanitation services, supply of clean water, reliable
electricity, law enforcement, and other basic services. Slum residences vary
from shanty houses to professionally built dwellings which, because of poor-quality
construction or lack of basic maintenance, have deteriorated.

Due to increasing urbanization of the general populace, slums became common in

the 19th to late 20th centuries in the United States and Europe. Slums are still
predominantly found in urban regions of developing countries, but are also still found
in developed economies.

Slums form and grow in different parts of the world for many different reasons.
Causes include rapid rural-to-urban migration, economic stagnation and depression,
high unemployment, poverty, informal economy, forced or manipulated
ghettoization, poor planning, politics, natural disasters, and social
conflicts. Strategies tried to reduce and transform slums in different countries, with
varying degrees of success, include a combination of slum removal, slum relocation,
slum upgrading, urban planning with citywide infrastructure development, and public
housing.

Factors responsible for growth of slums

• Rapid growth of population:

o Population explosion and poverty force the urban poor to live in slums
and that leads to an increase in the size of slums.
o 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.
o 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.
o With increasingly densified urban population, there exists a huge
demand for land.
 o This shortage of land forces the urban poor to live in increasingly dense
communities creating slums in the process.

1. Poor Urban governance:

1. A major factor for growth of slums use of rigid, often outdated urban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.
2. Another issue is the failure of governments to incorporate slum dwellers
as part of the overall planning process.
3. 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.
2. Administrative failure:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Unavailability of affordable housing:
1. Rising material costs and labour costs resulting from labour shortage is
another reason for the growth of slums as it makes developers unable to
deliver affordable housing to the market.
2. The gap between growing demand for affordable urban housing and
insufficient supply has encouraged the formation of slums.
3. Whenever the demand surplus is not met by formal sectors, this gap is
typically filled by an informal dwelling such as a slum
4. Limited access to financial resources:
1. 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.
2. 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.
5. Rural to Urban Migration:
1. Rural to urban migration is one of the primary drivers of growth of slums
in Indian cities.
 2. 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.
3.
6. Some of the problems faced by the slums dwellers have been discussed
below:
7. Lack of Basic Necessities
8. Lack of basic necessities is one of the most frequently mentioned characteristics of
slum definitions worldwide. Lack of access to improved sanitation facilities and
improved water sources is the most important feature, sometimes supplemented by the
absence of waste collection systems, electricity supply, surfaced roads and footpaths,
street lighting and rainwater drainage.
9. Overcrowding and High Density
10. Overcrowding has been associated with a low space per person living in an area, high
occupancy rates, cohabitation by different families and a high number of single-room
units. Mostly slum-dwelling units are overcrowded, with five to six and more persons
sharing a one-room unit used for cooking, sleeping and living.
11. Substandard Housing or Illegal and Inadequate Building Structures
12. Many cities have building standards that set minimum requirements for residential
buildings. Slum areas have been associated with a high number of substandard
housing structures, often built with non-permanent materials unsuitable for housing
given local conditions of climate and location. Factors contributing to the structure
being considered substandard are, for example, earthen floors, mud-and-wattle walls
or straw roofs. Various space and dwelling placement bylaws may also be extensively
violated.

Unhealthy Living Conditions and Hazardous Locations

Unhealthy living conditions result from a lack of basic services, with visible, open sewers, lack of
pathways, uncontrolled dumping of waste, polluted environments, etc. their houses can be built on
hazardous locations or land unsuitable for settlement, such as floodplains, in proximity to industrial
plants with toxic emissions or waste disposal sites, and on the areas subject to a landslip. The
settlement layout may be hazardous because of a lack of access ways and high densities of
dilapidated structures.

Insecure Tenure, Irregular or Informal Settlements

A number of slums have considered lack of security of tenure as a central characteristic of slums and
regard lack of formal document entitling the occupant to occupy the land or structure as prima facie
evidence of illegality and slum occupation. Informal or unplanned settlements are often regarded as
synonymous with slums. Mostly emphasise both informality of occupation and the non-compliance
of settlements with land-use plans. The factors contributing to non-compliance are settlements built
on land reserved for non-residential purposes or invasions of non-urban land.

Poverty and Social Exclusion

Income or capability poverty is considered, with some exceptions, as a central characteristic of slum
areas. It is not seen as an inherent characteristic of slums, but as a cause (and, to a large extent, a
consequence) of slum conditions. Slum conditions are physical and statutory manifestations that
create barriers to human and social development. Furthermore, slums are social exclusion areas that
are often perceived to have high levels of crime and other social dislocation measures. In some
definitions, such areas are associated with certain vulnerable groups of the population, such as
recent immigrants, internally displaced persons or ethnic minorities.

Minimum Settlement Size

Many slums also require some minimum settlement size for an area to be considered a slum, so that
the slum constitutes a distinct precinct and is not a single dwelling. Examples are the municipal slum
definition of Delhi that requires a minimum of 700 square meters to be occupied by huts, or the
Indian census definition, which requires at least 300 population or 60 households living in a
settlement cluster.

Recommendations for Improving Conditions of Slum Dwellers in India

• Developing Countries like India need to recognise that the slum dwellers
and not just beneficiaries of development. Developing cities requires local
solutions. Local authorities need to be empowered with financial and
human resources to deliver services and infrastructure to the slum dwellers
in India. Cities must draw up local long-term strategies for improving the
lives of slum dwellers in India.
• State governments have to develop strategies to prevent the formation of
new slums. These should include access to affordable land, reasonably
priced materials, employment opportunities, and basic infrastructure and
social services.
• Public investments must focus on providing access to basic services and
infrastructure. The cities need to invest in housing, water, sanitation,
energy, and urban services, such as garbage disposal. These services and
infrastructure must reach the poor living in informal settlements.
• The transportation needs and safety concerns of a city’s poorest residents
should be a high priority in planning urban transportation systems, which
can expand the choices people have regarding where to live and work.
• Building codes and regulations should be realistic and enforceable and
reflect the local community’s lifestyle and needs. For example, this means
that they may have to be flexible enough to allow housing that is built
incrementally, out of low-cost materials and on small plots of land.

POOR SANITATION

Poor sanitation is one of the most accurate indicators of urban poverty

and health problems According to the World Health Organization (WHO),
over 600 million urbanites live in low quality shelters or other areas
plagued by overcrowding and inadequate provision of sanitation services,
including potable water and safe waste disposal The number of people
 without access to these services is still increasing, despite general
improvements in urban sanitation programs. In the last twenty years,
sanitation coverage has made great strides, but it continues to be less
accessible to the urban poor. According to the UNDP-World Bank Water
and Sanitation Program, in 1990, 453 million urbanites “had no sanitation
services,” and despite efforts to ameliorate this crisis, in 1994, this number
had increased to 589 million people The challenge of sanitation
intervention is to keep up with the growing population. Currently, the rate
at which sanitation programs are being introduced to communities is far
lower than the rate of overall population growth, resulting in more
underserved people, despite these attempts to increase
coverage. Furthermore, the population growth results in overcrowding,
exacerbating sanitation issues.

In many instances, the urban poor live illegally in areas “deemed unfit for
habitation,” making the residents “officially invisible Without permission
to live on the land, they have no access to government support for
sanitation or health care programs. These conditions do not only affect
the people who live in them; their effects influence the rest of the city as
well. Public health officials regard slums and encampments as threats to
the health and safety of people who live or work nearby In this way, the
plight of the “invisible” spills into the visible sector, producing recognized
health outcomes.

Sanitation issues (such as a lack of proper waste disposal methods) are at

the root of dozens of fatal contagious diseases, many of which are
particularly prevalent among children Diarrhea is one of the most
common of these illnesses, and is often prevalent in populations with
limited access to clean water Other prominent diseases spread by
improper sanitation include dengue fever, cholera, and tuberculosis.

Benefits of improving sanitation

Benefits of improved sanitation extend well beyond reducing the risk of diarrhoea. These
include:

• reducing the spread of intestinal worms, schistosomiasis and trachoma, which are
neglected tropical diseases that cause suffering for millions;
• reducing the severity and impact of malnutrition;
• promoting dignity and boosting safety, particularly among women and girls;
• promoting school attendance: girls’ school attendance is particularly boosted by the
provision of separate sanitary facilities;
• reducing the spread of antimicrobial resistance;
• potential recovery of water, renewable energy and nutrients from faecal waste; and
• potential to mitigate water scarcity through safe use of wastewater for irrigation
especially in areas most affected by climate change.

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