Alarming rise in urban homeless

As per a Govt report, 23% of people live in slums with no or insufficient facilities, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Dec 24, 2006, 20:16:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India’s economic boom in post-1990 era has shown the fastest growth of urban towns with a rise in the number of homeless and relatively poor in cities, says a report of the ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation.

Released last week by Deputy Chairperson of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the report states that the share of urban population in the country increased from 25.7 per cent in 1991 to 27.9 per cent in 2001, the biggest jump since 1901 when the share was just 10.3 figures.

Not that the existing cities took the extra burden but there was an addition of about 546 new towns between 1991-2001, created by increased migration of people from rural areas to cities.

“The pressure on cities is increasing due to continuous migration in search of better life,” the report said. From just 1,917 cities in 1901, there are 5,161 cities in 2001.

The situation is expected to worsen with the economic growth pegged at over nine per cent and the report contending that the bigger cities would grow at a much higher rate.

“Of the total 5161 towns, 441 towns - classified as class I cities - are expected to grow at a faster rate,” the report states. The class I cities include all metros along with cities like Hyderabad, Kanpur, Pune, Surat, Lucknow, Nagpur and Jaipur.

The trend, if it continues, would result in more congested cities but then it would also reduce the percentage of poor people in the urban and total population.

The figures projected for 2006-07 of poor in urban population is just 15 per cent as compared to 32.6 per cent in 1993-94. Automatically, it will lead to fall in overall poverty rate from 35.97 per cent in 1993-94 to 19.34 per cent at the end of the current financial year, the report indicates.

The attempts to get cities’ rid of slums would remain a challenge for urban planners as most often the migrating population lands in slums or create their own slum clusters.

The enormity of the situation can be gauged from the fact that 23 per cent of the urban population lives in slums with no or insufficient facilities for hygiene, toilets, drinking water and sanitation. “Growth in slums has become a major problem for planners and policy makers,” the report said, adding that the number of homeless is alarming.

While the government has taken several steps and initiated schemes like JawaharLal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, the impact has been limited. Now, the government is studying alternative legal system for land tenure to urban poor with emphasis on rehabilitation in active collaboration of the civil society.

Email ChetanChauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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