QUESTION

Discuss the legislation related to Slum Development in India highlighting the evolution of
laws.

ANSWER

DEFINITION OF LAW
Law contains rules for the well governing of civil society, to give every man that which both
belong to him and rules of action to which men are obliged to make their moral conduct
conformable.

LEGISLATION
To legislate is to make or enact laws, rules etc. legislations means to exercise powers or
function of making law and other rules binding on those to whom they are made parliament
and state legislatures in India authorized to make legislation.

NEED FOR LAW

Law is an instrument of society and its objects are achievement of justice, stability and
peaceful change. Law is meant for regulating human conduct and for subduing the
individual ego to the social ego.

SLUM
There is no general agreement on the definition of term slum because there are varieties of
slums. However, the prime characteristic of a slum is substandard housing.
The Central Government in its Slum Areas Improvement and Clearance Act, 1956 has
adopted the definition of slum as any predominantly residential area where the dwellings
which by reason of dilapidation, overcrowding, faulty arrangement of design, lack of
ventilation, light or sanitary facilities or any combination of these factors are detrimental to
safety, health and morals.
A scholar has rightly observed that “God made the world, man made the town but evil
made the slum”.
EVOLUTION OF SLUM CLEARANCE ACT
The movement towards town planning as we know it today was born after widespread
realization of the intolerable conditions which life in industrial and commercial towns
imposed on the poorer inhabitants.
CAUSES OF SLUMS
1. DECENTRALIZATION: When decentralization takes place, the rich and middle class
people move out to the extended portions of the town and thus, the poor people are left
unattended in the overcrowded central area of the town.
2. ECONOMIC CONDITIONS: The unemployment and growth of population may force
the affected persons to stay even in unhealthy atmosphere.
3. EDUCATION: If the inhabitants are lacking in education, they may easily dragged into
social evils without evils without any attention to improvement of the living conditions.
4. IMPROPER USE OF LAND: If land fits for residence are used for industries or vice-
versa, the slums may be formed.
5. INDUSTRAILIZATION: The slums may be said to be the direct evil result from
industrialization which in early stages which in the early stages never took care of
planning houses for laborers. Those that were built near the factories were cheap
structures with rent as the only motive.
6. LACK OF ZONING: If the town is not divided into suitable zones and development is
allowed to take place at random, the slums may be created.
7. MIGRANTS: The persons migrating from the surrounding areas may occupy, usually
illegally, the vacant or empty places in or outside the city.
8. POWERS OF LOCAL AUTHORITY: If the local authority concerned does not possess
adequate powers to control the development of town, the slums may be formed.
9. REPAIRS AND MAINTAINANCE: If the cheap houses, constructed by the land
owner for the purpose of collecting rents, are not properly maintained, the conditions
favoring formation of slums may develop.

CHARACTERISTICS OF SLUMS
1. APPERANCE: This is rather the universal mark of the slum and its unpleasant
appearance offends the eyes, nose and conscience. The structure appears to be deteriorated
and to be of over age.
2. FIRE HAZARDS: The slum area is often exposed to fire accidents and consequent
damages. One stick of matches may prove to be sufficient to reduce the whole slum to
ashes in no time.
3. HEALTH AND SANITATION: The slum is characterized by low standards of
sanitation and is often neglected most by the public services for sanitation. It also refers
an area of high sickness and death rates.
 4. INCOME CRITERIA: The slum is a poverty area and it is occupied by people of the
lowest income group of the society.
5. MORALS: The socially disorganized slum may prove to be an area of delinquency, crime
and vice.
6. OVERCROWDING: The slum is overcrowded with buildings or the buildings are
overcrowded with people or in the worst condition, both the conditions prevail in the
slums.
7. POPULATION: If the slum population is racial or cultural, it grants a degree of social
organization even though the area looks poverty-stricken slum area. For a heterogeneous
occupancy, the inhabitants are of different categories which are not welcome in other
localities or they cannot afford to live elsewhere.
8. SOCIAL ISOLATION: The slum area is of the lowest social status and it is usually
linked up with the rest of the community through its labor force. In a democratic society,
the slum dwellers can identify themselves with certain political groups because of their
equality of voting and other legal rights with the rest of the community.
9. WAY OF LIFE: Depending upon the manner in which the slum has come up, the way of
life of the inhabitants may be such that they are strangers to one another or they form a
family with thick acquaintance with one another.

EFFECTS OF SLUMS
The effects of slums on the town life are manifold. They can be briefly mentioned as follows:
1.) ABSENCE OF AMENITIES: The surrounding area of slums is lacking in essential
amenities in required proportions because of over crowding.
2.) HEALTH: The persons residing in slums are easily attacked by various types of diseases. The
climate of slums is such that it easily leads to unhealthy conditions of living.
3.) SURROUNDING LOCALITY: the working of institutions like library, school,
hospital, etc., located conditions of living.
4.) UNDESIRABLE SPOTS: the slums as such on a city plan forms undesirable spots
and in a sense, disturbs the appearance of good features of a city plan.
5.) WORKIG CONDITIONS: it is not possible to work peacefully in slums because the
whole area is full of noise, traffic congestion, smoke, dust and darkness.
It is an accepted fact that if housing conditions are improved, there is considerable
improvement in the community welfare. A good mind becomes a Devil’s workshop in
an unfavorable environment. The above view is also endorsed by social workers,
magistrates, and health authorities and police department. It, is therefore, more
 advisable to spend public money in the slum clearance projects as prevention proves to
be better than cure.

ACTS PERTAINING TO SLUM DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA

Slum improvement and clearance act 1956
THE LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK
The present legislative framework on the subject of slums consists of one central act and
several state acts. But the state acts mostly followed with or without modifications, the
central act. No effort seems to have been made by the states to go deeper into the matter and
to squarely tackle the problem.
The central act has the following substantive parts:
1. Definition of slums
2. Provisions for improvement
3. Provisions for clearance and redevelopment
4. Provisions for acquisition of land
The central act empowers that competent authority (created by the act)
1. To declare “Slum areas” according to the appropriate provisions
2. To declare the “clearance area”
3. To order an owner to make the dwelling habitable

RESTORATION OF THE PREMISES

1. Clearance
2. Improvement
3. Eviction
4. Restoration of the premises (after improvement) to the original dweller
5. Compensation, consequential on eviction
6. Others
Some of the acts relating to slums make provisions for the occupancy for the restoration
of occupancy to previous slum dweller, but not al of them have such provisions. The acts
also provide for acquisition of land in a slum area for carrying out the objectives of the
acts. It may be mentioned that compensation under the slum act is different from the land
acquisition act.

EVICTION
Where the slums act provides for the eviction of the slum dweller, a number of legal
questions arise such as:
Who takes the decisions to evict?
What are the grounds on which eviction can be ordered?
What guidelines, if any, are provided in the law or read into the law before eviction?
The slums act provided that no tenant can be evicted without the prior permission of the
competent authority. Bit no guidelines for making the decisions was embodied.

The Supreme Court pointed out that it was as if the state alone could act to attain the
objective of the legislation but “an individual or a group of individuals owning property in
slum areas can assist the state in attaining the objective of clearing and improving slums.
Indeed, that is why the parliament brought in the amendment to S.19 and S.19(4) was
enacted.

THE ECONOMIC ASPECT

The phenomenon of slums is essentially one of the economic deprivation- deprivation of
finances required to pay the rent determined by the market.
It is poverty which, in the first place, brings such a large population to migrate to the urban
centers and in the second place forces them to from slums and be instrumental in
accelerating the growth of slums.

CLEARANCE AND IMPROVEMENT

A task force was set up and the following recommendations were made as the the
tenants of the lower income group were left to care themselves, there by squatting at
some other place

RECOMMENDATIONS:
1. Slum clearance is not a financially viable programme; therefore it is to be
dropped.
2. Now, it is the slums on the public land and not those on private land which
form the major part of the problem and efforts need to be focused on them
3. In the private slums, if the majority of dwellers live in dwellings, then the
state will assist them.
4. The changed approach reflects the following features:
 5. The financial assistance will be geared to provide civic amenities to slums on
public land
6. Financially if possible the same facilities will be rendered to private slums
7. Improvement of dwellings will not find a major role; however, it is not totally
ruled out
8. Slum improvement of private slums will be carried on the under the
obligatory duty imposed on the competent authority

ADVERSE EFFECTS OF EVICTION

The solution is in displacing a minimum number of people in the whole process. The
following suggestions may be in order.
1. Acquisition of land in a slum area being used exclusively for renting, to
create a favorable security of tenure for the tenants. This will call for an
amendment of the act because the acquisition provisions are only for effecting
improvement and clearance.
2. Reducing the costs of improvement and re-erection by making the spacing
rules and building bye-laws flexible for the slum areas, without compromising
the safety part of it. Ceiling on construction cost and encouraging low cost
housing can also prove fruitful.

LEGALITY
The Slum Acts seem to deal with the whole problem as a physical entity i.e. from the
point of view of structure and environment, and not from the point of view of
economic legal relationships prevailing in the area. This explains their total silence
on the issue of legality. The only expectations are special procedure for eviction and
restoration of tenancy of slum dwellers, provided in some State Acts.
Squatter Settlements are inherently unauthorized and to that extent, have no legal
authority to exist. A squatter is a person who has taken possession of lands, a house,
or a building and occupied it without lawful authority to do so. These settlements
are mostly on public vacant land earmarked for public purposes. A number of State
Governments have, by executive orders, decided a cut off date. The settlements
before the specified dates have been regularized, while the subsequent ones are
expected to be demolished.

CONFLICTING LEGISLATION
A satisfactory solution to the problem of slums lies more in the region of economic
and administrative measures rather than in the region of law. Nevertheless having
regard to the scope of the present study, some observations with a legal angle may
be offered.
It may, for example, be mentioned that some difficulties arise by reason of
conflicting legislation on the some topic. Hutments on public lands offer an
illustration of this anomaly.

SUGGESTIONS
It is possible to make few suggestions for remedying the deficiencies revealed by the
preceding discussion, in so far as they can be dealt with by legislation. The following
suggestions are offered:
1. Slum area on public land should be incorporated in the Slum Law. This will
clear up the situation and authorize acquisition of land, if necessary.
2. The regularized settlements should be given security of tenure, be it for
specified period. This will remove the vulnerability felt at present and
encourage the dwellers to improve their dwellings.
3. If the tenure is a long term one or if there are allotments of plots, the laws
relating to spacing, building materials etc. should be made flexible for these
areas in order to reduce the cost of shelter without compromising essential
safety.
4. Civic amenities to these settlements are provided. (This is being done under
Environment Improvement Scheme.)

The Task Force of the Planning Commission after reviewing eight large scale slum
clearance improvement and resettlement projects has made some points worth
consideration, the various “shelters”. It was observed, show significant change in the
attitude towards the slum problem and a new strategy to housing the urban poor.
Those changes include:
1. A major shift in attitude towards people (not an unproductive burden, but a
productive resource).
2. A new interpretation of an approach to people’s self-initiated housing actions
and self generated housing stock. (even if deficient, approaches to a solution,
not a problem. Not to be demolished, but to be conserved and improved).
3. A new definition of a “house” (not necessarily pucca or permanent, status
symbol, but one shelters adequately).
4. A re-definition of the housing task (not necessarily permanent building, but
livable environment).
5. A new role for the traditional housing agencies (not doers, but facilitators, not
builders, but promoters).
6. A new relationship between housing agencies and clients. (Not donors and
receivers, but partners.)
7. A new economics. (Not charity, but investment).
8. A new definition in terms of scale. (Not a symbolic gesture, but full coverage).
9. For some, a new vision. (Not houses alone, but overall development).

CONCLUSION
This is not to suggest that the clearance programmers be abandoned. The need is for
building tenements to rehabilate the persons ousted (to whatever extent the financial
package permits). The Slum Acts unfortunately do not have any rehabilitation
measures in built in them. Some States have incorporated measures for rehabilitation
in the rules under Act, or given them legal status through other administrative
measures. But it is not legally obligatory to provide alternate accommodation to the
ousted slum dwellers. Again, the allotment rules give preference to the poorest of
the poor and an element of subsidy in the rent while the rest have to pay economic
rents.