Disaster in slums (A case study of slum area, Preventive measures in community level)

Slums : A case study

India is urbanising very fast and along with this, the slum population is also increasing. India's urban population is increasing at a faster rate than its total population. With over 575 million people, India will have 41% of its population living in cities and towns by 2030 from the present level of 286 million and 28%. However, most of them do not have access to basic facilities like drinking water and sanitation. Urban areas such as these are known as slums. A slum, as defined by the United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterised by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. The term has traditionally referred to housing areas that were once relatively affluent but which deteriorated as the original dwellers moved on to newer and better parts of the city, but has come to include the vast informal settlements found in cities in the developing world. Although their characteristics vary between geographic regions, they are usually inhabited by the very poor or socially disadvantaged. Slum buildings vary from simple shacks to permanent and well-maintained structures. Most slums lack clean water, electricity, sanitation and other basic services.

Causes of slum formation: It is vicious cycle of a number of factors like population growth, opportunities in the cities (leading to migration to the cities), poverty with low incomes, tendency to be closer to work hence occupying any land in the vicinity etc. The key reason out of all is the slow economic progress. After independence in 1947, commercial and industrial activity needed cheap labour in the cities. Plentiful was available in the rural area. They were encouraged to come to cities and work. People, who migrated to the cities and found work, brought their cousins and rest of the families to the cities. Unable to find housing and afford it, they decided to build their shelter closer to work. First, one shelter was built, then two and then two thousand and then ten thousand and on and on. Conniving government provided electricity and drinking water. Politicians looked at the slums as vote bank. They organized these unauthorized dwellers into a political force; hence slums took a bit of a permanent shape. More slums developed as more population moved to the cities. By mid sixties Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, and all other large cities were dotted with slums. Very poor people live in slums. They are not the only one dwelling there. Fairly wellto-do people also reside there. They are either offspring of the slum dwellers that found education and an occupation. They have prospered but are unable to find affordable housing, hence have continued to stay in that area. Others are avoiding paying rent and property taxes. The latter is more often the case. It is not unusual that in the dirtiest of slums, where misery prevails that TV sets, refrigerators and

radios are also blaring music. This is quite a contrast from the image which one gets in the media or from the opportunist politicians. U.S. Slums: US had its share of poverty and slums in around the immigrant dominated cities. New York and Boston had great amount of poverty and slums at the turn of the twentieth century. These slums worsened further with the arrival of newly liberated African-American population from Deep South. The era pictures give a glimpse of everyday life and it is not pretty. People without jobs and with no prospects crowded cities in the North. A new word, Ghetto was coined, which described these places. Immigrant from different background or race crowded together and gave rise to Ghettos. At that time US did not have control over its economy and Civil War debt and additional monies borrowed to rehabilitate agriculture and commerce after the Civil War was unpaid. As twentieth century progressed a concerted effort was made to clean up the Ghettos and push people inland with free grant of land and promise of prosperity. Industrial Revolution, which was slow in reaching America from Europe, finally arrived. And it made the difference. It provided the much-needed jobs to the immigrants and coloured. Also, free land in the West gave rise to food selfsufficiency and paying off of all Civil War and post Civil War debts. First World War gave US economy a boost and America joined the select group of countries of Europe in prosperity. Poverty by the end of the Second World War was a thing of the past. In just fifty years, i.e. by 1950, US were nation of 160 million souls, all prosperous and all well employed (forget the habitual lazy). That does not mean that all the Ghettos disappeared. They continued to exist. They exist today, but on a much lower scale. These are not eyesores. There is a parallel here. Poverty and slums in India are at the same level as they were in beginning of the twentieth century in America. Economic growth over fifty years eliminated them. It is possible in India too if the economy sustains the 8% growth trajectory. Britain slums: Great Britain was a great big slum before they became a colonial power in the nineteenth century. For eight hundred years prior, until 1800s, Great Britain was an agrarian society, where the lord lived happily in his Manor and Castles and the masses lived in a great squalor. Slums were everywhere. London had the biggest slums. Colonization brought prosperity and prosperity brought in a huge effort to improve the lot of the people and clean up of the cities. That is when the unemployed and slum dwellers were pushed to newly developing industrial hubs of Sheffield, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. Compared to that Delhi, Kolkata were heavens. First slums in Kolkata appeared in 1850-70 as a result of systematic destruction of textile industry in Bengal and destruction of trading infrastructure in and around Kolkata. Slums elsewhere followed. It took all the Victorian age from 1825 to 1900 to vanish poverty and slums in England. Their GDP multiplied 8 times over this period. British factories produced

goods and services which were sold at profit in the in the colonies. Work for everybody in England was the cornerstone of building well-serviced cities.

Problems in Slums
The mention of the word slum immediately conjures up a typical image in ones head - an unhygienic, dinghy, uninhabitable area with extremely difficult living conditions. People residing in slums face many problems like improper sanitation, unhygienic environmental conditions, social, economic, health, educational and cultural problems and many more. The basic problems inherent in slums are Health hazards. Lack of basic amenities like safe drinking water, proper housing, drainage and excreta disposal services, make slum population vulnerable to infections. These further compromise the nutrition requirements of those living in slums.

It is projected that more than half of the Indian population will live in urban areas by 2020 and nearly one third of this urban population will be slum dwellers. The ongoing process of rapid urbanization has deleterious repercussions on health and nutrition, especially for children. Malnutrition in young children has long-term negative effects on physical and cognitive development. The major causes of childhood malnutrition in slum population are inappropriate child feeding practices, infections, improper food security and suboptimal childcare besides poor availability and inadequate utilization of health care services. Addressing nutritional problems of urban poor is essential for overall development of the country. The most direct problems of a slum can be divided as follows: 1. Hygiene and sanitation issues: Poor sanitary conditions and poor quality of water lead to illnesses like diarrhoea and other water borne diseases, affecting the life expectancy of slum dwellers. According to a recent case study, water and sanitation diseases are responsible for 60 per cent of environmental health. Among water borne diseases, diarrhoea disproportionately affects children under the age of five. Poor health among children adversely affects the attendance rate at schools. In dense, overcrowded urban conditions it is often difficult for people to find space to build latrines. Many have to defecate in the open or share whatever limited facilities are available which tend to offer no privacy, safety or hygiene. Because of human waste and refuse collecting in stagnant pools spread disease and contaminate water sources. The problem is made worse during the rainy season when rubbish and excrement are washed into cramped living areas. In these conditions it is virtually impossible to remain healthy and clean. Diseases spread rapidly among the crowded conditions and the little money that slum dwellers earn often has to be spent on medicines to help the sick recover.

Often these settlements are unofficial and so, without any legal tenure, the people living there are not entitled to get connections to basic facilities like water and sanitation. These settlements are also vulnerable to demolition as governments reclaim the illegally occupied land for other usages. 2. Health problems: These majorly stem from the fact that there is an acute lack of basic living facilities in a slum like safe drinking water, adequate space to maintain personal hygiene, lack of education etc. Also, lack of knowledge about the various preventive measures in case of communicative as well as acquired diseases and their timely treatment tends to pose even more threat to slum-dwellers. Inadequate nutritional intake due to non-availability of subsid ised ration or availability of poor quality2 ration makes the slum dwellers prone to large number of infections and water borne diseases. Inability to access basic services results from a series of man-made institutional bottlenecks (like legal status of nonnotified settlements or the scattered poor/street (homeless) people) that prevent the poor from accessing services created primarily in their name. Lack of education and information further aggravates the situation as residents depend on unreliable sources for prevention and cure. The demand for basic services is lacking, because there is no agency or institution (state or central) that is willing to assess the needs and on that basis identify and fulfil the demand. Therefore, the urban poor see the futility in expressing their demands to those with the capacity to fulfil them. However, supply-side techniques alone cannot solve infrastructure problems- public sector agencies need to become more responsive to customer needs. Then there is also the problem of malnutrition which faces the offspring of people living in these areas. Large families with low incomes characterises the people living in these areas so much so that there is not sufficient to provide each family member with. 3. Hazardous living conditions: Houses in slums are usually make-shift, with very little or no pucca materials used for their construction. Though with time, slum-dwellers are improving their living standards with increase in income, yet the effect has not seeped in entirely and slums still remain eyesores. Most slum dwellers cannot afford to live in wellconstructed, standard houses and so continue to live in precariously built illegal constructions, which have almost no security against natural calamities like earthquakes and floods. On occurrence of events such as these, slums are usually worst-affected because the area is over-populated and not at all secure. In many cases, electricity and water is also not provided to the people by the Government. This has drastically increased the instances of electricity theft and illegal construction of water pumps, which are not just a menace to people being directly affected (other citizens) but also to the environment in the latter case, where the problem of groundwater table depletion has surfaced.

4. Social problems: The slum environment is the perfect breeding ground for a wide range of social problems. High unemployment often causes men to stay around the home growing increasingly frustrated with their pathetic situation and the worsening poverty. Cramped conditions mean that there is nowhere to go when tensions rise, a factor that regularly leads to domestic violence. Sometimes the situation goes to the other extreme, where people abandon their homes, lured by the prospect of oblivion through alcohol or drug abuse. Once people develop such problems the prospects of finding work diminish. They fall deeper into poverty and the cycle continues. Child labour

Many children in the slums start work at a very early age with no prospect of getting any education. They make money by rag picking (trawling through rubbish dumps to retrieve anything that can be sold), selling newspapers in traffic jams, peddling drugs or begging. They are at risk of exploitation as well as all the health problems that accompany their lifestyles. Incest and abuse can occur and child marriages are still encouraged in some areas. Internal and external corruption

Some people manage to achieve a high status within slums and establish themselves as slumlords. They are often allies of certain politicians and gain control of sizeable chunks of the community land. By renting out the land, they make huge financial gains while everyone living in the slum struggles to survive on their meager earnings. The slumlords form elaborate links with local politicians, government officials and the police, and slum dwellers become dependent on them for the smallest of amenities. They have little empathy with the slum residents and exploit them by charging highly inflated prices for illegal electricity and water supplies or for constructing huts. The men do not like to see the women becoming more powerful through forming women's groups as one of their main concerns is keeping the slum dwellers helpless and under their control. The sheer volume of people living in slums causes them to be obvious targets for politicians wanting to increase their percentage of the vote. Slum inhabitants are often promised all kinds of support and improvements in return for political allegiance, but their trust is regularly abused. Gender inequality

Female babies in the slums of India can face discrimination and poor treatment from their very first moments, if they are given a chance of life at all; although gender specific abortion is illegal in India, it is still practiced in some places. Male children are seen as a blessing and indulged in many areas of Indian society. Children born into the deprived and harsh environment of the slums may not be as fortunate, but male babies are still given better treatment than the girls. Boys tend to be healthier as they are given better food in greater quantities, and they are also more likely to be sent to school. In contrast, girls are seen as a drain on precious resources as they will one day get married and their contribution towards the family will end. To make up for this, they are forced to work from an early age and any ambitions regarding schooling or future careers are discouraged. With that kind of start in life, it's difficult for women within the slums to find a voice. They are used to getting little support from their embers and are not usually considered worth consulting on family matters.

Solutions/Preventive Measures:
Problems of the slum can be dealt by little initiative taken by the government, NGOs and employers. What puzzles everybody is despite sharp reductions in poverty and rising incomes, slum population is increasing. And it is a truism that slum dwellers are poor. GoI has been initiating targeted schemes and programmes to improve slum conditions since 1960s. But its policy focus has undergone a change over a period of time. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Indian government had a policy of 'no slums cities'. This warranted forceful resettlement and rehabilitation of slum dwellers. However, this didnt help in making cities slums-free. Then the Government started implementing slum upgrade programmes under which infrastructure development was encouraged. Since 1972 the Government of India initiated a programme called Environmental Improvement of Urban Slums under which priority to drinking water and sanitation was given. Again in 1996, Government initiated the National Slum Development Programme with substantial fund allocation. It had a specified focus on providing drinking water and community toilets. After spending close to Rs.3100 crore in nine years, it was discontinued. It was estimated that 46 million slum dwellers benefited from it. In 2005 government started the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), an initiative to encourage reforms and fast-track planned development of certain cities. It has a financial commitment of Rs1,50,000 crore during 2006-12. The larger objective of the mission is to integrated development of infrastructure services; accelerating the flow of investment into urban infrastructure services; planned development of cities including the peri-urban areas and universalisation of urban services to ensure their availability to the urban poor. Some of the possible solutions can be as follows:

Countries need to recognize that the urban poor are active agents and can contribute to national growth: Local authorities and national governments should collaborate with the organizations of the urban poor in upgrading slums and providing alternatives to slum formation. Whenever a worker migrates to a city for work his employer must ensure that he is provided with appropriate accommodation. This should be the responsibility of all big and small employers.

Managing cities require local solutions: Local authorities need to be empowered with financial and human resources to deliver services and infrastructure to the urban poor. Cities should draw up local long-term strategies for improving the lives of slum dwellers. Local governments should develop strategies to prevent the formation of new slums. These should include access to affordable land, reasonably priced materials, employment opportunities, and basic infrastructure and social services. Public investments must focus on providing access to basic services and infrastructureWorking with the urban poor, cities need to invest in housing, water, sanitation, energy, and urban services, such as garbage disposal. These services and infrastructure must reach the poor living in informal settlements.

Role of the government and the NGOs: In a usual scenario a migrated laborer secures a job with security agencies, waste management service providers, contractors, householders etc. They usually employ slum dwellers as rag pickers, sweepers, construction labors, masons, carpenters, domestic helps etc. For such migrating labors there should be a centralized labor registration center where they can register themselves and secure their labor ID number. These centers should have direct contact with prospective employers and they should try to find suitable jobs for these workers according to their skills. These migrated labors should also be allotted dwelling units and the accommodation expenses should be borne by their respective employers. The dwelling units should be located on the outskirts of the town and transport facilities should be made available to the workers in order to make commutation easy for them. Locating proper dwelling units on the outskirts would minimize the proliferation of dingy slums in the city. Along with these arrangements certain regulations should be made by the government: -A minimum wage rate should be created for workers immigrating to town. -Computerized ID numbers should be allotted to the laborers for maintaining records. -ESI dispensaries and counseling services should be provided in dwelling areas. All labors should be centrally registered -Strict rules should be formulated to prevent the misuse of state funds. -Aim for 1 Lakh units of construction every six months. -Import high volume construction machinery from China for the speedy construction.

-Factories with a workforce of more than 100 labors should have compulsory dwelling units. The accommodation facilities should be made available before the commencement of any project. -NGOs can play a vital role in improving the existing conditions of slums. NGOs should work for the underprivileged in the slums. NGOs should work in close coordination with government and make sure that the following facilities are available to the slum dwellers: -Counselling services to minimize crime and other problems. -Basic amenities like schooling, proper sanitation, potable water, health facilities and common electricity with minimal charges. -Free weekly medical and healthcare facilities. Manifestation of income and other gaps in health, education, skills, etc. can be seen in slums and squatter settlements of most urban areas in developing countries. Slums are not 'problems' that have to be 'solved' - but are indeed results of lopsided and vested urban policies covering land ownership, infrastructure provision and maintenance, and other socio-economic issues. And for the poor, they represent a solution. The need of the hour is to find light in the darkest of the dark scenario and infuse life in the lives that are still waiting for the silver lining. The point is that reduction of poverty and slums follow closely with economic development. Faster the economic development, sooner will the poverty vanish and with it, the slums. Poverty, slums and urban squat can be controlled in next couple of decades. Reversal of this phenomenon will begin after sufficient economic progress had been made. Eight percent GDP growths is a good sign. With quadrupled GDP in 25 years, there is a good chance that the new and upcoming generation may stay away from slum dwelling. It may take another 25 years before the slums are vacated. The problems prevailing in slums give us the challenge to rebuild a society that is more equitable where equal opportunities could be provided to all for living with dignity. Many hurdles have to be overcome to achieve this objective. The despair of the underprivileged has to be replaced with hope, their fear with security, and their ignorance with knowledge. Give them the opportunity to secure good health, immunity from curable diseases, employment opportunities, sufficient and nutritious food, clean water and a clean environment, capability to protect their children against exploitation and discrimination. Their children should have the right to get adequate education for becoming responsible citizens of India. Slum dwellers should be empowered to enable them to improve the quality of their own lives. For this, it is very important for them to be educated and moved to better living areas, not just for their sake, but for the countrys betterment as a whole.