CONSTRAINS IN ECONOMIC

OPPURTUNITIES OF SLUM INFORMAL

SECTOR:
A STUDY OF CHENNAI SLUMS
- 2190400113
SIVA SANKARI S
MURP
 Objectives
• To study the contribution of the urban poor to the urban economy.

• To find the barriers that constrain the income generation and

economic mobility of slum dwellers

• To identify and analyse the root causes of the problem and the
system failures that cause or exacerbate it.

• To study prevailing perspectives on the problem and which groups or

institutions tend to hold them.
 Need for the study
• Most of the urban growth figures like GDP, fail to reflect the full
extent to which slum economies contribute to the growth and
vitality of broader urban economies.
• Informal enterprises face numerous barriers that limit scale,
including unsupportive policies, and lack of access to finance,
markets, and skills.
• The Slum dwellers are engaged in informal wage employment at
formal and informal enterprises, and generally susceptible to low
wages, poor working conditions, and other forms of
exploitation.
 Need for the study
• Urban slum populations will continue to rely heavily on informal slum
economies for employment, as the formal sector will be increasingly
unable to provide sufficient opportunities.
• As slum growth outpaces government ability to expand the provision of
basic services, slum economies may also play a bigger role in filling
this gap. Increasingly insufficient access to basic services can
restrict slum dwellers’ economic productivity and perpetuate the
likelihood of health, economic and environmental crises, threatening
slum and urban resilience
• The lack of coherent policy on urban slum issues in India that
impacts the state’s intervention in the urbanization processes as well
as the policies related to marginalized populations living in cities
 Need for the study
• Regardless of size, these informal enterprises face numerous
barriers that limit scale, including unsupportive policies, and lack
of access to finance, markets, and skills. The remainder are
engaged in informal wage employment at formal and informal
enterprises, and generally susceptible to low wages, poor working
conditions, and other forms of exploitation.
• Most of the urban growth figures fail to reflect the full extent to
which slum economies contribute to the growth and vitality of
broader urban economies.
 Scope and scale of the problem:
• Slum size and location relative to the city center, also affect slum
dwellers’ economic opportunities and slum economy composition.

• The frameworks for slum policies are subject to actors and

arrangements at several scales extending beyond city institutions

• These fluid coalitions between different institutions have the ability

to influence slum policy and practice at city and provincial levels.
 Case Area description - Chennai

• The urban population of Chennai

grew from 2.64 million in 1971 to 4.68
million in 2011; the city boundary
expanded from 68 sq.km in 1901 to 426
sq.km in 2011

• Generally in India, most of the urban

poor are involved in the informal sector
activities in which there is constant
threat of eviction, removal,
confiscation of goods and almost
non-existent social security cover
• There are many slums in chennai which faces this problem especially
Nochikuppam, which is an urban slum situated at the end of the Marina
beach in Chennai, Tamilnadu, which houses more than a thousand
families, most of them belonging to fishing occupation. Fishermen living
along the Marina Loop road are going through hard times with the
authorities planning to demolish their homes and shift them to their new
homes in Perumbakkam, which is 20 kms from where they have been
living all this while. This is a classic example for the top –down
approach in slum redevelopment without considering the economic
base of their daily life. So instead of just changing physical
appearance, it is important for a planner to look into the economic
change in the slum development which is the root cause of this issue.
Preliminary Literature Research.

1. CONTRIBUTION OF THE URBAN POOR: EVIDENCE FROM CHENNAI, INDIA - Kala

Seetharam Sridhar and A.Venugopala Reddy*
The paper discusses mainly about the role of urban poor in the urban economy’s structure
consisting of labour and manufacturing (enterprises in the economy).
The paper also discusses about the contribution of the urban poor to savings and the investment in
their housing and other assets, and impacts on their remittances to the rural areas.
2. Decision Intelligence Document Constrained Opportunities in Slum Economies - Search
Cycle 2 November, 2013
The paper discusses about Slum economies and its critical role in fulfilling slum dwellers’ livelihood
and consumption needs, while also making important contributions to the growing urban economies
in developing countries.
It discusses about the constrains and its root causes , system failures that are exacerbating the
problem,prevailing perspectives on this problem.
3. Shifting approaches to slums in Chennai: Political coalitions, policy discourses and
practices - Tara Saharan, Karin Pfeffer and Isa Baud.
This paper discusses about an analysis of four enumeration reports and a look at the evolving
political contexts and subsequent practices of slum policy approaches in Chennai since the 1970s.