Problems of Slums

A slum is not just a cluster of poor-quality houses. It is a residential area of the least choice — a place people end up in because they have no other option. To understand why slums exist, you have to first see how Indian cities are deeply divided.

Indian urban centres are not uniform. At one extreme are high-income localities with farmhouses, wide roads, streetlights, water and sanitation, parks, playgrounds, and security. At the other extreme are the slums, jhuggi-jhopari clusters, and shanty colonies. These two worlds exist side by side, but they are separated by a vast gap in infrastructure, opportunity, and dignity.

Who lives in slums and why

The people who live in slums are mostly rural migrants. They were forced to leave their villages and come to cities in search of a livelihood. But once they arrived, they could not afford proper housing because of two crushing realities: high rent and high cost of land. So they settled on whatever land was available — often environmentally degraded or incompatible areas like low-lying flood-prone land, garbage dumps, or industrial wasteland.

Defining features of a slum

A slum is not just a poor neighbourhood. It has a specific set of characteristics that make it a distinct problem:

• Dilapidated, poorly built houses
• Poor hygienic conditions and poor ventilation
• Lack of basic amenities: drinking water, electricity, toilet facilities
• Open defecation and unregulated drainage
• Overcrowded, narrow street patterns — often so narrow that not even a bicycle can pass
• Serious health and socio-environmental hazards from garbage, stagnant water, and rats

Dharavi — Asia's largest slum

The textbook gives a vivid description of Dharavi in Mumbai to show what a slum is really like. It is worth understanding this example thoroughly because it captures every dimension of the problem.

Dharavi was originally an arm of the sea that was filled with waste — largely produced by the people who came to live there: Scheduled Castes and poor Muslims. Today it is a sprawling maze of temporary buildings, two or three storeys high, with rusty iron stairways. A single room is rented by a whole family, sometimes accommodating twelve or more people. The main road — ironically called the 'ninety-foot road' — has been reduced to less than half that width for most of its length. Side alleys are so narrow that not even a bicycle can pass.

The environment is brutal: shadowless, treeless sunlight, uncollected garbage everywhere, stagnant pools of foul water. The only non-human creatures are shining black crows and long grey rats.

Yet Dharavi is also a place of immense productivity. Inside these cramped, filthy lanes, some of the most beautiful and valuable articles in India are made: delicate ceramics and pottery, exquisite embroidery and zari work, sophisticated leather goods, high-fashion garments, finely-wrought metalwork, delicate jewellery settings, wood carvings, and furniture that ends up in the richest houses in India and abroad. The buildings themselves — rambling structures of corrugated metal, 20 metres high in places — are used for treating hides and tanning.

This paradox is the heart of the slum problem: the people who create enormous wealth for the city live in conditions of extreme deprivation. The revulsion that the rich feel towards Dharavi is in direct proportion to the role it plays in creating Bombay's wealth.

The cycle of poverty and social exclusion

Slum dwellers are trapped in a cycle that is hard to break. They are poverty-stricken and cannot afford proper education for their children. This poverty makes them vulnerable to a cascade of problems:

• Drug abuse and alcoholism
• Crime and vandalism …