Slum

Also called: Jhuggi-jhopri · Topic: Geographical Issues: Pollution, Urban Waste, Slums and Land Degradation · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 9 "Geographical Perspective on Selected Issues and Problems"

Meaning

A slum is a residential area of "least choice". People live there because they cannot afford any other home. Its houses are old and broken-down, and it lacks safe drinking water, electricity, toilets and proper drains. Most residents are poor migrants from rural areas. Slums matter because they show how unequal an Indian city is inside. They also produce a chain of disease, poverty and social exclusion (being kept out of mainstream society) that passes from parents to children.

Explanation

How slums form (cause → process → result)

• Cause: people move from villages to cities.
• Rural people come to cities to find work.

• City rents and land prices are too high for them.

• Process: they settle on leftover land.

• They build on any empty land nobody else wants, such as low-lying flood land, the edges of drains and railway lines, and filled-in marshes.

• These sites are environmentally incompatible (unsafe or unsuitable for homes) and degraded (already damaged land).

• Result: crowded settlements without basic services.

• Homes go up fast, without any plan, roads or drains.

• Slums are at one end of the divided Indian city. At the other end are farmhouses and high-income areas with wide roads, street lights, parks, water and sewer lines, and private security.

Forms of slum housing

• Slums: crowded, poorly built residential areas without basic services.
• Jhuggi-jhopri clusters: groups of huts built from mud, tin, plastic and scrap.
• Shanty colonies: rough homes put up on land the residents do not own.

Living conditions

• Houses: dilapidated (old and broken-down), with poor hygiene and little air flow (ventilation).
• Services: no safe drinking water, electricity or toilets.
• Sanitation: open defecation (people have to relieve themselves in the open). Drains are unplanned, so dirty water stands in the lanes.
• Lanes: narrow and overcrowded, which makes fire and disease more likely.

Effects on residents (a chain of effects)

• Work: low-paid, high-risk jobs in the unorganised sector (work with no contract, no fixed wage and no social security), such as rag-picking, construction and domestic help.
• Health:
• Undernourishment (too little food, or the wrong kind of food).

• Frequent illness such as diarrhoea, TB and malaria, spread by dirty water and open defecation.

• Education: families cannot pay for school, so children drop out or start work early.

• Social risks: drug abuse, alcoholism, crime, apathy (losing hope and interest) and social exclusion.

Where it occurs

• Dharavi, Mumbai (Maharashtra): in central Mumbai on the west coast (Arabian Sea), at about 19°N.
• Site: land reclaimed from an arm of the sea, filled in with waste and garbage.
• Size: about 2.4 sq km. It is often called one of Asia's largest slums.
• Source in NCERT: an extract from Jeremy Seabrook's In the Cities of the South (1996).
• Layout: one main "ninety-foot road" that has narrowed to less than half that width. Many side lanes are too narrow even for a bicycle. A family of up to twelve may live in one room, among garbage piles and rats.
• Economy: Dharavi is a busy production hub. It makes ceramics and pottery, embroidery and zari (gold and silver thread work), leather goods, garments, metalwork, jewellery settings, and furniture for rich homes. Leather is tanned (treated) in sheds made of corrugated metal sheets. So Dharavi helps create Mumbai's wealth, even though its people stay poor.

• Redevelopment: a project to rebuild Dharavi was awarded in 2022 and is now under way. It faces disputes over who gets a new home and where people will be rehoused.

• Census 2011 data for India:

• About 6.5 crore people lived in slums in 2,613 towns, which was about one in six urban residents of those towns.
• Maharashtra has the most slum dwellers of any state.

• Greater Mumbai, Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and Kolkata (West Bengal) have high shares of slum population.

• Policy responses:

• PMAY-U (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana–Urban), from 2015, includes in-situ slum redevelopment (rebuilding homes on the same slum land so that people are not moved away).
• PMAY-U 2.0 (Cabinet approval, August 2024) aims to build 1 crore houses over five years. It names slum dwellers and residents of slums and chawls (old one-room tenement blocks, common in Mumbai) as priority groups [2].
• Swachh Bharat Mission (launched 2 October 2014) targets open defecation and waste, which hit urban slums hardest.

Don't confuse with

• Notified vs Recognised vs Identified slum: a notified slum is officially declared by the state or UT government under a law. A recognised slum is accepted by the local authority (for example, the municipality) but not yet notified under law. An identified slum is marked by Census officials themselves. "Declared" or "registered" is not a Census category.
• Chawl: an old block of one-room tenements, common in Mumbai. It is a built housing type that people rent. A slum is an unplanned settlement, often on land the residents do not own. PMAY-U 2.0 names both as priority groups [2].
• In-situ redevelopment vs relocation: in-situ means rebuilding on the same slum land, so people keep their jobs and links. Relocation moves people away, often far from their work.
• ODF vs ODF Plus: ODF (Open Defecation Free) means everyone uses a toilet. ODF Plus adds four things: toilets stay in use, solid waste is managed, liquid waste is managed, and the village looks clean.

Prelims Hooks

• Dharavi is in Mumbai, Maharashtra. It covers about 2.4 sq km on land reclaimed from the sea using waste. NCERT's extract comes from Seabrook (1996).
• The three Census 2011 slum categories are notified, recognised and identified. Trap: "declared" and "registered" are wrong options.
• Census 2011 counted about 6.5 crore slum dwellers in 2,613 towns, about one in six urban residents of those towns. Maharashtra has the most.
• A slum is a residential area of "least choice". Most residents are rural migrants working in the unorganised sector.
• PMAY-U 2.0 (2024) targets 1 crore urban houses. Its four verticals are BLC, AHP, ARH (rental homes for migrants and workers) and ISS [2].
• Zari (gold or silver thread embroidery) is one of Dharavi's crafts. Leather is tanned there in sheds made of corrugated metal.

Mains Points

• Causes: people move from villages to cities, land prices and rents are high, there is too little affordable housing, and migrants settle on unsafe, degraded land such as flood land, drain edges and filled marshes. So slums are a planning failure, not only a poverty problem. Dharavi shows that slums also supply cheap labour and goods to the formal city.
• Effects: open defecation and stagnant water spread diarrhoea, TB and malaria. Unorganised, high-risk work keeps families poor. Children drop out of school. Drug abuse, crime, apathy and social exclusion grow. Together these pass poverty from one generation to the next, which answers NCERT's exercise question on slum problems.
• Policy responses and way forward:
• Housing: PMAY-U with in-situ redevelopment. PMAY-U 2.0 adds rental housing for migrants, the group most likely to end up in slums [2].
• Sanitation: SBM toilets first, then ODF Plus waste management [3]. Swachh Survekshan makes cities compete on cleanliness.
• Limits: disputes over who qualifies for rehousing (Dharavi), toilets falling out of use, and data that still depends on Census 2011.
• Way forward: upgrade slums where they stand instead of evicting people, give secure land rights (pattas [2]), bring ODF Plus waste management into city slums, and count slums afresh in the next Census.

Related concepts

• Dharavi
• Census 2011 slum data
• Swachh Bharat Mission
• Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) Phase II
• Swachh Survekshan

Read more

• Slums, Dharavi and the sanitation missions