6 Factors responsible for the growth of slums in India

A slum, commonly called Jhuggi-Jhopris in India, is a residential area where the dwellings, because of over-crowding, lack of ventilation, light, and sanitary facilities, unhygienic conditions, and other set of factors, are detrimental to safety, health, and morals. According to the estimates of the Town and Country Planning Organization, about 21.2% of the urban population lives in slums. This proportion is even higher in metropolitan cities like Kolkata, Mumbai, etc. The first question that arises here is how slums developed, and what are the requirements for their development? There are a variety of factors that help in the formation of slums.

 Growth rate of population (Urbanization)

First of all, the growth rate of the Indian population is very high, and this growth rate is much higher in the urban areas because of the migration of a large number of people from rural to urban. Due to poverty, unemployment, lack of other amenities, and more importantly, to elevate their status, people migrate to urban areas. Facilities in the cities are a honey trap for the rural. The growth rate of civic amenities in the urban areas does not keep pace with the growing population. This difference in the growth rate provides space for the development of the slums.

Poor housing planning

Lack of affordable low-cost housing and poor planning by the government encourages the supply side of slums. Insufficient financial resources and a lack of coordination in government bureaucracy are two main causes of poor housing planning.

Slow development of Villages

Villages in India are not developed even on a basic requirement level, and even today, people face the scarcity of water, electricity, and many other basic amenities. This lack of facilities in rural areas forces people to migrate to urban areas, which increases pressure on the urban population. Though this is not much pronounced reason for the genesis of slums but it still is one of them.

Vote politics

Voting politics also support the slums. Removal of slums brings conflicts of interest for politicians. Slum population forms a good amount of easy vote bank, and politicians want them to remain as they are, because their upliftment and education will hurt their vote bank.

 High House Rents in Cities

Poor people, most of whom come from rural areas, are not able to pay the high rent for houses in the towns. Hence, wherever they find a land, public or private, they start living there in temporary hutments. As time progresses, more and more people join them, and that area soon develops into a slum.

Refugees

Some of the slum areas in India are also inhabited by refugees. Once an area is marked as a slum, it starts growing because of increasing population pressure in cities.

Slums might not be planned by the government, but its irresponsible attitude towards village development is the root cause of slum formation. Slums are not created intentionally but grow out of chaos, and once they are full-fledged, politics prevent their removal. So the only way to abolish slums is to prevent migration from villages to urban areas. However, this will not eradicate the problem, but other steps, like employment generation in small towns and urban planning, are equally important.

There are many harmful impacts of slums. They give rise to the varieties of problems that we will discuss in the next post.