INTRODUCTION

SLUMS AND PROBLEMS FACED BY THEIR DWELLERS

UN-Habitat defines A slum is a contiguous settlement where the inhabitants are characterized as
having inadequate housing and basic services. A slum is often not recognized and addressed by the
public authorities as an integral or equal part of the city.
Problems faced: People residing in slums face many problems like improper sanitation, unhygienic
environmental conditions, social, economic, health, educational and cultural problems and many more.

A vicious cycle caused by inadequate food intake/ diseases which causes health problems

Why do slums exist? However slums are defined, the question remains why do they exist? Slums
come about because of, and are perpetuated by, a number of forces. Among these are rapid rural-tourban migration, increasing urban poverty and inequality, insecure tenure, and globalisation all
contribute to the creation and continuation of slums.
Rapid rural-urban migration Since 1950, the proportion of people working in developing country
agriculture has declined by 20 to 30 per cent. The immigrant urban poor have largely moved from the
countryside to the cities voluntarily, in order to exploit actual or perceived economic opportunities.
Opportunities manifest in part, due to the growing urban informal sector, which is most spectacularly
visible in the many growing and large-sale informal and squatter settlements in urban centres. In many
cities the informal sector accounts for as much as 60 per cent of employment of the urban population
and may well serve the needs of an equally high proportion of citizens through the provision of goods
and services.
The explosive growth in the informal sector in many developing countries has been accompanied by
poverty and the rapid growth of slums.

Political conflict also drives urban migration, not only within countries, but across borders as well. In
Angola and Mozambique, urbanization has been driven largely by civil conflict which forced many rural
residents to flee to relatively safe urban areas.
The rapidity and enormous volume of this rural-to-urban migration intensifies slum formation. City
planning and management systems are unable to adequately cope with the massive population influx.
Insecure tenure The lack of secure tenure is a primary reason why slums persist. Without secure
tenure, slum dwellers have few ways and little incentive to improve their surroundings. Secure tenure
is often a precondition for access to other economic and social opportunities, including credit, public
services, and livelihood opportunities.
Study after study confirms that, in slums where residents enjoy secure tenure to land and housing
whether formal or informal community-led slum improvement initiatives are much more likely to be
undertaken and, in fact, succeed.
Globalisation Slum formation is closely linked to economic cycles, trends in national income
distribution, and in more recent years, to national economic development policies. The Report finds
that the cyclical nature of capitalism, increased demand for skilled versus unskilled labour, and the
negative effects of globalisation in particular, global economic booms and busts that ratchet up
inequality and distribute new wealth unevenly contribute to the enormous growth of slums.
It is generally presumed that there is currently less poverty in urban areas than in rural areas. However,
the rate of growth of the worlds urban population living in poverty is now considerably higher than
that in rural areas. Urban poverty has been increasing in most developing countries subjected to
structural adjustment programmes programmes that often have had a negative impact on urban
economic growth and formal employment opportunities. The absolute number of poor and
undernourished in urban areas is increasing, as is the share of urban areas in overall poverty and
malnutrition. In general, the locus of poverty is moving to cities, a process now recognised as the
urbanization of poverty.

ENGINEERS AND SLUMS:

An engineer may have a significant role to play in poverty alleviation and development. Engineering
could address the huge lack of infrastructure and basic services that exacerbate global poverty and
hold back sustainable development. Globally, many nations lack the basic requirements to survive and
develop; safe drinking water, basic sanitation, shelter and infrastructure, aggravated by an increasing
population putting even more strain on the earths resources. Engineering has the potential to deliver
solutions to these problems. A major historical engineering contribution to development was Joseph
Bazalgettes design and implementation of an efficient sewerage system in 19 th century London.

STATISTICS ON SLUMS:

Population living in Urban Area

The proportion of the worlds urban population living in slums has fallen from nearly 40% a decade ago
to less than a third today. China and India have together lifted 125m people out of slum conditions in
recent years. North Africas slum population has shrunk by a fifth.

At the same time, the absolute number of slum dwellers around the world is still rising.

IMPROVING SANITARY CONDITIONS

Hygienic means of prevention can be by using engineering solutions, simple technologies
Sanitation is the hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the
hazards of wastes as well as the treatment and proper disposal of sewage wastewater. Hazards can be
physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health
problems include human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic wastewater (sewage, sullage and
greywater), industrial wastes and agricultural wastes. Hygienic means of prevention can be by using
engineering solutions (e.g. sewerage and wastewater treatment), simple technologies (e.g. septic
tanks), or even by personal hygiene practices (e.g. simple hand washing with soap).
Sanitation refers to the safe disposal of human excreta. This entails the hygienic disposal and
treatment of human waste to avoid affecting the health of people. Sanitation is an essential part of the
Millennium Development Goals. The most affected countries are in the developing world (Zawahiri,
Sowers, and Weinthal). Population increase in the developing world has posed challenges in the
improvement of sanitation (Konteh). According to Zawari, Sowers, and Weinthal, lack of provisions of
basic sanitation is estimated to have contributed to the deaths of approximately 3.5 million people
annually from water borne diseases.

In the modern era, the Industrial Revolution brought engineerings influence to every niche of life, as
machines supplemented and replaced human labour for countless tasks, improved systems for
sanitation enhanced health, and the steam engine facilitated mining, powered trains and ships, and
provided energy for factories.
One goal of biomedical engineering today is fulfilling the promise of personalized medicine. Doctors
have long recognized that individuals differ in their susceptibility to disease and their response to
treatments, but medical technologies have generally been offered as "one size fits all." Recent
cataloging of the human genetic endowment, and deeper understanding of the bodys complement of
proteins and their biochemical interactions, offer the prospect of identifying the specific factors that
determine sickness and wellness in any individual.
An important way of exploiting such information would be the development of methods that allow
doctors to forecast the benefits and side effects of potential treatments or cures. Reverseengineering the brain, to determine how it performs its magic, should offer the dual benefits of

helping treat diseases while providing clues for new approaches to computerized artificial intelligence.
Advanced computer intelligence, in turn, should enable automated diagnosis and prescriptions for
treatment. And computerized catalogs of health information should enhance the medical systems
ability to track the spread of disease and analyze the comparative effectiveness of different
approaches to prevention and therapy.

Public understanding of engineering and its underlying science will be important to support the calls
for funding, as well as to enhance the prospect for successful adoption of new technologies. The
ultimate users of engineerings products are people with individual and personal concerns, and in
many cases, resistance to new ways of doing things will have to be overcome. Teachers must revamp
their curricula and teaching styles to benefit from electronic methods of personalized learning. Doctors
and hospital personnel will have to alter their methods to make use of health informatics systems and
implement personalized medicine. New systems for drug regulation and approval will be needed when
medicines are designed for small numbers of individuals rather than patient populations as a whole.
Sanitation within the food industry means the adequate treatment of food-contact surfaces by a
process that is effective in destroying vegetative cells of microorganisms of public health significance,
and in substantially reducing numbers of other undesirable microorganisms, but without adversely
affecting the food or its safety for the consumer (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Code of Federal
Regulations, USA). Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures are mandatory for food industries in
United States, which are regulated by 9 CFR parts 416 in conjunction with 21 CFR parts 178.1010.
Similarly, in Japan, food hygiene has to be achieved through compliance with food sanitation law.

IMPROVING THE HEALTH AND LIVES OF PEOPLE LIVING IN SLUMS

Health and improving the lives of people living in slums is at the top of international
development agenda
Urban poverty, ill health, and living in slums are intrinsically interwoven. Poverty is multidimensional
and there is no agreement on a universal denition. UN-HABITAT has introduced an operational
denition of slums that is restricted to legal aspects and excludes the more difcult social dimensions.
The World Health Organization denition is more comprehensive and uses a health and social
determinants approach that is strongly based on the social conditions in which people live and work.
Health and improving the lives of people living in slums is at the top of international development
agenda. Proactive strategies to contain new urban populations and slum upgrading are the two key
approaches. Regarding the latter, participatory upgrading that most often involves the provision of
basic infrastructure is currently the most acceptable intervention in developing countries. In
urbanization of poverty, participatory slum upgrading is a necessary but not sufcient condition to
reduce poverty and improve the lives of slum dwellers. Empowering interventions that target capacity
development and skill transfer of both individuals and community groupsas well as meaningful
negotiations with institutions, such as municipal governments, which can affect slum dwellers lives
appear to be the most promising strategies to improve the slum dwellers asset bases and health. Nongovernmental organizations, training institutions, and international development partners are best
placed to facilitate horizontal relationships between individuals, community groups, and vertical
relationships with more powerful institutions that affect the slum dwellers lives. The main challenge
appears to be lack of commitment from the key stakeholders to upgrade interventions citywide.

Empowerment: A Promising Strategy to Improve Health in Slums

Dening and Contextualizing Empowerment is a widely debated concept. Over time it has acquired a
variety of meanings and denitions depending on different socioeconomic contexts.
The World Bank provides two related but important denitions. According to them empowerment is
the expansion of assets and capabilities of poor people to participate in, negotiate with, inuence,
control, and hold accountable institutions that affect their lives. The World Bank denes
empowerment as the process of increasing capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to
transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes to build individual and collective assets,
and to improve the efciency and fairness of the organizational and institutional context which govern
the use of these assets.
Evidence to show that empowerment improves health:
Increased community participation in water supply projects is correlated with improved child health
strategies.
Organized youth-to-youth activities and linking them to institutions improves, among other things,
mental health and academic performance.
Empowering HIV/AIDS strategies that are targeted at gender inequities increase condom use and
hence reduce HIV infection.
Improved education for women and empowerment has been associated with improved child health.

ENGINEERS EMPOWERING EDUCATION

To every child in India, we carry this message. Aim for the sky and beyond. There is nothing
holding you back
Human beings are resourceful. Adapting to different situations is the essential human quality, enabled
by self-conscious intelligence. Other animals live only within a relatively narrow, biologically
determined range of conditions, but humans can modify either the conditions or themselves to such an
extent that they can live at the extremes; extreme heat, extreme cold, and extreme poverty. People
adapt and use their ingenuity and inventiveness to survive, but also to find meaning and purpose, and
whatever degree of pleasure, even happiness, that humans may know. Living in the slums, which
means living without many beneficial, even necessary, things, but also with so many threatening, even
dangerous, things, is a great test of human ingenuity, and of the human spirit, which means nothing
less than finding, or creating, a degree of satisfaction in being human.
In the slums, peoples ability to modify the living conditions is minimal, because they do not have the
resources to do so. A few pieces of tin, scrap lumber, cardboard make a house. Clothing and food are
scavenged from the refuse of others with more. Health care is homeopathic, and life expectancy is
short. Education is in the home, but more often in the dirt paths that pass for streets in the slums.
Childhood is truncated; children have to do something useful for the familys survival, as soon as they
are able, ororphaned at any early age, or cast out because they are too expensive to keepfend
entirely for themselves.
Education is one sector which can revolutionize slum life for the better. Primary schooling, through
corporation schools, is a free educational system provided by the Government of India. But still, large
proportions of slum children do not get adequate education. Engineers, using their technical
knowledge can provide innovative and effective solutions to this dragon headed hurdle in the growth
of slum life.
From university classes via YouTube and startups like Udacity to the One Laptop per Child (OLPC)
project, there are more ways than ever for children to educate themselves, even in remote villages and
slum areas. Despite the inevitable criticisms such efforts get both from within the education system
and outside it, it is part of a powerful and growing phenomenon.
One example: At a recent conference on emerging technology at MIT, Nicholas Negroponte the
former head of the MIT Media Lab and founder of the OLPC project - talked about what his group
noticed about the villages in Ethiopia, where some devices were dropped off. The Motorola Xoom
tablets, which were distributed along with a solar-charging system, were delivered in boxes to two
isolated rural villages about 50 miles from the capital of Addis Ababa, where Negroponte said the
children had never before seen printed English words not even packaging or road signs with printed
letters.
Although the OLPC founder says the group expected most of the children to spend their time playing
with the boxes, in a matter of minutes they had powered up the devices and, within days, they were
using a number of apps included with the system. Even more remarkably, within weeks, they had
figured out how to hack their way around restrictions built into the software to change the laptops
display background. Thanks to the tablets, they were singing ABC songs and even spelling words in
English.

Young engineers of India too launched Aakash, a 35 $ tablet computer for rural poor in 2011. It would
deliver modern technology to the poor section of our society to help them lift out of poverty. It is the
latest in a series of "world's cheapest" innovations in India that include a $2,040 compact Nano car, a
$15 water purifier and $2,000 open-heart surgery. Developer Datawind is selling the tablets to the
government for about $45 each, and subsidies will reduce that to $35 for students and teachers.
Despite a burgeoning tech industry and decades of robust economic growth, there are still hundreds of
thousands of Indians with no electricity, let alone access to computers and information that will help
farmers enhance yields, business startups reach clients, or students qualify for university.
"A person learns quite fast when they have a computer at home," said Shashank Kumar, 21, a
computer engineering student from Jodhpur, Bihar, who was one of five people selected in his
northern state to travel to villages and demonstrate the device." In just a few years people can even
become hackers." We believe engineers with more such innovations can eradicate the problem of
illiteracy and education among the poor around the globe. Computer and internet can quicken the
pace of growth by raising the standard and transforming the way education is delivered for the better.
Electronics and Computer engineers have a huge task ahead of them, but they can & will transform the
life of poor and get them out of this deep & dark hole.

The Aakash has a colour screen and provides word processing, Web browsing and video conferencing.
The Android 2.2-based device has two USB ports and 256 megabytes of RAM. Despite hopes for a
solar-powered version important for India's energy-starved hinterlands no such option is
currently available.

ENGINEERS ERADICATING UNEMPLOYMENT

Social entrepreneurship is the process of bringing about social change on a major scale
Unemployment is one of the main causes of poverty. Poor are poor because they dont have money,
they dont have money because they are unemployed.
How we can eradicate it economically?
We cannot eradicate this by just giving money to poor for nothing. This is just another way of taking
their self-respect. One solution to it can be Social Entrepreneurship.
What is Social Entrepreneurship?
Social entrepreneurship is the process of bringing about social change on a major scale. Social
entrepreneurs function as the agents of change, questioning the status quo, grabbing the new yet
overlooked opportunities, and changing the world for the better. Today, they are making up for the
shortcomings of the bureaucracies and government.
What a Social Entrepreneur do?
While business entrepreneurs aim to generate profits, social entrepreneurs aim to improve social
values. But they differ from non-governmental organizations in that they aim to make broad-based,
long-term changes, instead of few immediate small-time results. They recognize when a section of the
society is stuck and offer innovative ways to break out of its stagnant state.
Is this concept realistic or is it an optimistic dream for India?
This concept is realistic for India with an optimism of eradicating the poverty.
Examples
SKS Microfinance Limited- Microfinance is usually understood to entail the provision of financial
services to micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses, which lack access to banking and related
services due to the high transaction costs associated with serving these client categories.
SKS was founded in 1997 by Vikram Akula, the McKinsey alumnus. According to a CRISIL Report on Top
50 Indian Microfinance Institutions (MFIs), SKS Microfinance is the largest MFI in India with more
borrowers, more branches and more loans as of 30 September 2008. SKS was founded in 1997
by Vikram Akula.
SKS charges an annual effective interest rate between 26.7% and 31.4% for core loan products. At the
end of financial year 2010 on 31 March 2011, the company listed a gross loan portfolio of
US$925,844,433 with 6,242,266 female active borrowers.

SEWA (Self Employed Womens Association) - It is a trade union for poor, self-employed women
workers in India. SEWA was founded in 1972 by the noted Gandhian and civil rights leader Dr Ela Bhatt.
SEWA's main office is located in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, and it works in several states of India. SEWA
members are women who earn a living through their own labor or small business. They do not obtain
regular salaried employment with welfare benefits like workers in the organized sector. They are the
unprotected labor force of India. Constituting 93% of the labor force, these are workers of the
unorganized sector. Of the female labor force in India, more than 94% are in the unorganized sector.

However their work is not counted and hence remains invisible. SEWA is strongly supported by
the World Bank which holds it out as a model to be replicated elsewhere
How can we as engineer think of Social Entrepreneurship?
This difficult question can be answered in two words Vocation Education. We as engineers of our
respective field can teach those engineering disciplines to the slum dwellers that can help them earn
some money with dignity.
Realism of the conceptLets take an example of a computer engineer. He/she with a bit of finance can teach How to design to
slum dwellers. They need not know any language for it; its just a matter of mouse and ones
imagination. If taught properly one can actually setup a startup in designing with a noble cause, with a
work force of marginalized but dedicated and needy people.
Is it only about money?
No, except earning money what a person from slum learns is modern way of living and more
importantly modern way of thinking. It is just not the monetary development is what we are looking
for, but the overall personality of a slum dweller so that he can not only survive but can live in this
modern world.
It is different than charity but definitely better than it. We are not obliging them with money but
instead offering them job by letting them learn whatever minimal is require to live with the help of
easy to use and apply technology today.

ENGINEERS WITHOUT BORDERS

Serve the needs of disadvantaged communities and people all over the world through
engineering solutions
The term Engineers Without Borders (EWB) is used by a number of non-governmental organizations in
various countries to describe their activity based on engineering and oriented to international
development work. All of these groups work to serve the needs of disadvantaged communities and
people all over the world through engineering solutions.
EWB-INDIA
EWB-India has been established as a non-profit Society, under the Society's Act, to involve engineers,
and other professionals with special or general skills, in a movement of constructive change. It is
inspired by an urgent concern for accelerating sustainable rural development, assisting in capacity
building in backward rural and urban communities of India, protecting the country's natural resource
base and working across national boundaries for social and economic justice and responsible use of
technology.
Projects On-Going/Completed:
The Briquettes Project: An Alternative cooking fuel for the poor. Cooking fuel is a basic need. Poor
availability and inability to pay for the same has compelled the poor to use wood, crop wastes in
inefficient ways or fossil fuels which are heavily subsidized by the government and cause serious
environmental problems.
EWB-INDIA provides an environment friendly alternative to traditional cooking fuels in rural India. This
fuel is also cheaper than the conventional fuels and makes for an ideal fuel for the poor. EWB-India is
promoting the use of Cooking Fuel Briquettes made from agricultural, industrial and domestic wastes.
It is a cleaner fuel with low emissions.
Solar Lantern Project: It is very important to provide simple, durable, cheap and eco-friendly lighting
solutions to villagers. Solar lighting is a possible solution. In Indian market there are so many solar
lighting solutions available, the best feasible option being solar lanterns. These lanterns are very costly
due to technology and marketing. EWB-India targets to provide cheapest solar lantern to villagers.
Solar lantern is used for illumination purpose in village. It is charged by sunlight and can run for 10 to
12 hours. In rural areas, the high cost of kerosene consumes much of a family's income. One lamp
consumes 0.023 liters per hour. With daily usage of around four hours, it amounts to around 3 liters
per month. Even with government subsidies, a family spends INR 45 per month on average for
kerosene.
Specifications of this lantern are as follows:

Solar Module- 4.5 volts, 0.9 watts.

Power Led Bulbs- 0.25 watts One LED.

Battery- 3.6 V (3 cells each of 1.2 V), 700m Ah. (Needs to be replaced every 3 years and will cost
approx. INR 150)

Emergency Use- 8 to 10 hours

Daily Use- 6 hours charging in sunshine months. In cloudy days, 10 to 12 hours.

Feature-

a) As a table lamp use.

b) 300 degree Lighting.
c) Comfortable and cool light.
d) Can be charging by hand dynamo.
e) Portable and light. (Weight 600gm)

Protections- Keep away from water, & charge according to climatic conditions.

Individual cost of this solar lantern was INR 800-900, but this price can be significantly reduced on a
mass scale production. EWB-India believes that their product will be the cheapest available solar
lantern in India.
Solar Powered Pumping System: The climate of India is decisive influenced by the monsoon. The
monsoon has far-reaching consequences on the rain and the temperature. The southwest monsoon
starts in most parts of India in June and brings economical precipitation until September or October. In
those months is 80 to 90 percent of the annual rainfall. Between October and June the trade wind
rules the climate. India is an agrarian state and agriculture in India is largely dependent on monsoons.
If the monsoon is late, consequences are fatal for the farming community. Starvation, dead cattle and
periods of drought as in 1987 are mostly consequences of the late or premature monsoon India has
high solar isolation. With about 301 clear sunny days in a year, India's theoretical solar power
reception, just on its land area, is about 5 Ph. /year (i.e. = 5000 trillion kWh/year ~ 600 TW). The daily
average solar energy incident over India varies from 4 to 7 kWh/m2 with about 2,3003,200 sunshine.
These facts make Solar Powered Pumping System, even more interesting and important.

BIBLIOGAPHY
The research sources and educational bases used for the purpose of
understanding on the topic are listed herewith:

Online References:
www.economist.com
www.unhabitat.org
www.imf.org
www.sewa.org
www.wikipidea.org
www.filipspagnoli.wordpress.com
www.ewb-india.org
www.thebetterindia.com
www.halfmantr.com
www.ubislate.com

Offline References:
Report of the Committee on slum statistics/census
Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation
Government of India