Slum rehabilitation housing: Secluding people, one floor at a time

Researchers spent six months interviewing 450 ‘household heads’ across six municipal wards spanning Bandra, Dadar and Chembur localities and including high-rise buildings, chawls and slums

Mumbai People residing in Mumbai’s slum rehabilitation housing (SRH) feel significantly lonelier than citizens living in other housing types, suggests a recently published study by researchers at the Mumbai-based International Institute for Population Studies (IIPS). The researchers also found that a significantly higher number of women reported feelings of loneliness as compared to their male counterparts.

Of the people surveyed, 21% of respondents reported recent perceptions of loneliness, while 7% reported feeling chronically lonely (Hindustan Times)

The study -- ‘What causes loneliness among household heads: a study based in a primary setting in Mumbai, India’ -- was published in the April issue of BMC Public Health, a peer-reviewed journal under the Springer Nature group, which focuses on social determinants of health and epidemiology.

Researchers spent six months interviewing 450 ‘household heads’ across six municipal wards spanning Bandra, Dadar and Chembur localities and including high-rise buildings, old colonies, chawls and slums. Due to the defining criteria, 89% of the respondents were male, while 11% were women, all above the age of 25.

Of the people surveyed, 21% of respondents reported recent perceptions of loneliness, while 7% reported feeling chronically lonely. Notably, 60% of all respondents who live in SRH tenements reported feeling lonely, as compared to 14.4% of respondents living in high-rise buildings, 16.7% each in slums and chawls. Researchers also observed a strong correlation between loneliness and gender, with 67.9% of women respondents feeling recently, or chronically lonely, as opposed to 22.9% of men.

“Although loneliness is very much linked to mental health issues, there is practically no quantitative or empirical research which looks at loneliness as an epidemic in Mumbai. We have tried to bridge this gap with our study,” said Vidya Yadav, an assistant professor of geography at Patliputra University, Patna, and former PhD candidate at IIPS who led the study.

Taking from existing research, Yadav and her colleagues defined loneliness as “a natural human feeling triggered by an unpleasant experience of life that occurs when a person’s social relationship network is deficient in some significant way”.

While Yadav emphasised that it is not possible to empirically pinpoint the cause behind the feelings of loneliness, her findings indicate a complex interplay between some definite factors, namely housing typology, age, gender and physical health.

For example, while 42.5% of respondents over the age of 65 reported feeling lonely, only 17.8% of respondents between 25 to 30 years of age reported similar perceptions. Similarly, 59.6% of respondents who suffered from more than one chronic disease reported feeling lonely, while 20.4% of healthy individuals reported similar feelings.

“We found that elderly Parsis and Sindhis living in Dadar Parsi Colony and Sindhi Society in Chembur reported frequent feelings of loneliness. If they had experienced the loss of a spouse or a friend, were dealing with an illness, or were unable to attend social gatherings as they used to, they expressed loneliness.

Among SRH, Yadav found that residents were less lonely living in chawls and slums, because the latter environment promoted a sense of community and kinship, as opposed to tenement buildings, where design limitations closed them off from their neighbours.

“Among women, we realised that many respondents did not have cohesive friend groups as their male counterparts. And because relational connectedness is more important for them, the lack of this tends to accentuate perceptions of loneliness. Among women living in SRH tenements, this feeling was heightened,” Yadav explained.

Independent experts said these findings are plausible. Amita Bhide, dean at the School of Habitat Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, pointed out that shifting individuals from slums and chawls to formalised housing entails subjecting them to cultural changes.

“In a chawl, for example, there is a culture of open door living, where the boundary between house and community is not so rigid. But in tenement housing, there is formalisation of property and ownership, which creates conflict. There are design limitations which can worsen unpleasant feelings. Common areas like passageways are usually small, dark spaces that do not encourage social interaction. Unlike a slum, these housing types do not tend to be vibrant community spaces,” Bhide said.