The Challenge of Slum Development in Developing Country India

Abstract

The “Slum” is a black spot and often an unwanted component in urban civilization. The twenty first century is the witness not only high population growth, but also more and more globalization and urbanization. More than a billion in Africa, Asia, and South America are living in housing area that described a slum.

Developing countries like India presently suffer to the enormous growth of urbanization. And the urbanized area similarly carried the problem of slum. Presently, Indian Population is 1/6th of the world population. Accelerating urbanization is forcefully effecting the transformation of Indian society. Slightly more than 28 percent of the country's population is urbanized, but unfortunately 21.68 percent (61.8 million) of the urban population live in slum area. As per Last NBO report total housing shortage was 19.4 million units. In urban are the shortage is 6.6 million unit and 90% of these shortage hits poor and LIG people. It’s become a very common urban scenario that thousands of dwellings made of straw, mud, tin, and cardboard are squeezed into areas of a small city block. In these cramped dwellings, often only an arm-span in width, entire families live without running water, electricity. Few have beds; they sleep on scraps of cloth padding on the dirty floor.

Rapid growth of industrialization creates enormous employment opportunity. It attracts the lower income peoples and the unskilled labours from the rural area. The high rate of migration from rural area to the urban sector formulated slum area, because these men are unskilled labours to industries.

The slum conditions become more pathetic when the poor physical structure is accompanied by overcrowding. This is now a general tendency in most cities in the world. It is a different question how to restrict these slums to a minimum and limit their effects. So necessary effort should be directed for improving the slums and make them habitable in future.