Across India’s bustling cities, a crisis of staggering proportions is unfolding, largely unseen and uncared for by those who don’t wish to notice. As India strides toward modernization and globalization, it is leaving behind millions of people living in slums for whom the promise of development has no meaning.
The rapid growth of slums across India’s cities represents not just an urban planning challenge but a humanitarian crisis thwarting the nation’s social and economic progress.
The lack of census data – the last one was conducted in 2011 – has compounded the problem, raising questions on the government’s “commitment” to subka saath, subka vikas or “everybody’s contribution, everybody’s growth.”
India is one of the fastest-urbanizing countries in the world. The United Nations estimates its urban population is expected to nearly double from 461 million in 2018 to 877 million by 2050.
The massive influx of migrants from rural areas, combined with inadequacy in urban planning and governance and shortage of affordable housing, has led to the exponential growth of slums, which have become the default housing options for millions of migrants. They may offer proximity to work but at the cost of dignity and safety of the inhabitants.
Living conditions in slums are often characterized by overcrowding, poor housing structures, as well as lack of sanitation, clean drinking water, and proper waste management. The living conditions expose residents to a multitude of physical and mental health risks.
Yet, the alternative of returning to lack of opportunity in their rural hometowns is unthinkable for many. Slum-dwellers therefore persist with the hope of improving their situation and climbing the social ladder.
The Indian government has been aware of this issue for a while. Multiple interventions and programs such as the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) and the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) have been implemented in the past.
While these initiatives aimed to provide affordable housing and improve living conditions, their success at the ground level has been questionable because of the one-size-fits-all approach coming from a top-down nature of design and implementations that fails to capture the realities at the ground level.
A primary reason behind the limited success of these interventions has been a lack of fundamental understanding of the scale of the issue. The last comprehensive slum census in India was conducted in 2011. It showed 65 million people lived in slums across urban areas. While India’s urban landscape has changed dramatically over the last 13 years, policymakers continue to rely on outdated data to devise interventions.
The very understanding of how a slum is defined varies widely across organizations, leading to drastically varying estimates. There are four different definitions of slums in the Indian context alone, formulated by government and development agencies that provide differing numbers on the total slum population.
Such vast differences pose a critical challenge for policymakers when the perceived size of the problem varies drastically.
A government cannot plan for housing, sanitation, education, and healthcare when it does not have precise information on the location of slums, number of slum dwellers, their demographic profiles, and the challenges communities face.
The lack of proper information results in half-baked interventions that fail to address the root causes of slum growth and provide solutions to the challenges dwellers face daily. The implications of this data vacuum are huge and profound.
The most significant issue facing slum dwellers, highlighting the precariousness of their existence, is the constant threat of evictions.
In the absence of formalized land titles or tenancy rights, millions live in the perpetual fear of having their houses demolished at any moment. This insecurity not only takes a tremendous psychological toll but also discourages residents from investing in their living conditions when people know their houses could be razed to the ground any day.
The scale of this issue is staggering. A recent report highlights how more than half a million people were evicted from Indian urban slums in 2013. While evictions in cities such as Delhi capture global attention, particularly when linked to events like the G-20 Summit, the majority of displacements in non-metropolitan cities go unnoticed.
Even when such incidents are reported, accurate data on the number of affected households is often missing, obscuring the true extent of the crisis. Evictions are not just numbers on a page – families find themselves suddenly homeless, possessions vandalized, children’s health disrupted, and pushed into deeper poverty. Such outcomes snap their connections to employment and social capital.
The first and the most critical step is to undertake a comprehensive, nationwide survey of slum households that goes beyond mere headcounts. The nuanced realities of people living in slums – the diverse challenges they face, the varying degrees of available services, and the specific needs of vulnerable groups such as women, children and the elderly – need to be understood.
Such efforts must incorporate technology in the data collection process to ensure accuracy and comprehensiveness. Also important is involving the slum communities themselves in the process, not as subjects but as active participants in building an understanding of their lived reality.
The existence of such data will allow policymakers to design targeted, evidence-based interventions to address specific yet varying needs of slum communities.
In addition, a clear, comprehensive and universally accepted definition of a slum will hopefully put an end to conflicting data and misaligned interventions. At the same time, the definition needs to be flexible enough to account for regional variations while providing a consistent and standard framework for interventions.
As India aspires to be a global economic powerhouse, it cannot afford to leave millions of its population in abject poverty and insecurity. Resolving this urban crisis means recognizing slum dwellers not as encroachers or a problem, but as citizens with rights, and a potential to contribute to India’s growth story.
A bold, data-driven and compassionate approach that sees slum rehabilitation not as a burden, but as an investment in India’s economic growth is a huge challenge. But the potential reward is even bigger – an urban India that works for everyone and not just a privileged few.
Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.