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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | 33% of slum population live without basic facilities

33% of slum population live without basic facilities

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published Published on Oct 3, 2013   modified Modified on Oct 3, 2013
-The Economic Times


NEW DELHI: Over a third of the slum population in India lives without any basic facility being provided by the state as the slums are not recognized. In the case of some states like Rajasthan, Gujarat and Bihar, the entire slum population of several lakhs remains unrecognized by the state governments.

For the first time, the census data on slums identified slum dwellers as the people living in compact areas with a population of at least 300, in unhygienic environment with inadequate infrastructure and lacking proper sanitary and drinking water facilities. Earlier, only people in areas notified or recognized as slums by state or local authorities were counted.

With the new method, several states such as Haryana, Delhi, Assam, Jammu & Kashmir and Jharkhand have identified more slum dwellers in such areas than in the notified or recognized slums. In fact, the number of towns having slums has gone up from 1,743 in 2001 to 2,613 in 2011, out of a total of 4,041 towns in India.

The proportion of slum population to urban population has fallen slightly with the slum population growing at a slower pace than urban areas as a whole. There also isn't any difference in the household size of urban areas and slums any more, about 4.7, with slums showing a higher reduction in family size.

The literacy rate in slums too has gone up to 78% compared to the overall urban literacy of over 84%. The jump in female literacy in slums (from 63% to 72%) is higher than the increase in male literacy from 80% to 84%. However, literacy rate is lower than 70% in slums in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir.

About one in five persons in a slum is from the scheduled caste, a share that has increased in the last one decade. However, the proportion of SCs in the overall urban population is just 12.6% or about one in eight persons. The share of scheduled tribes in urban population has increased to about 3% just as it has in slums, where it is a little higher than 3%.

Interestingly, the work participation rate in slums is just slightly higher (36%) compared to the urban rate of 35%. However, the work participation of women in slums is almost two percentage points higher than in the urban population. But more than two out of five women workers living in slums are marginal workers, who do not have employment throughout the year. The southern states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Goa have among the highest work participation rates, about 40%, while Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are among the worst.

Among the states, Maharashtra has the highest slum population of 1.18 crore followed by Andhra Pradesh (one crore plus), West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu (58 lakh). However, as a proportion, the slum population in Maharashtra has shown the biggest reduction from 23% to 18%. A few states like Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Gujarat, too, have shown a marginal reduction in the proportion of slum population, though in most states the proportion has increased.

Marginal rise in child sex ration in slums

India's slums have a far better child sex ratio of 922 girls per 1,000 boys than the non-slum urban population, for which the figure is 902. Also, this figure has shown a marginal improvement in the last decade for the slum population from 921 in 2001, but has worsened slightly for the non-slum urban population from 903.

Even in terms of the overall sex ratio, India's slum population has seen a dramatic improvement compared to the rest of the urban population. The slum population sex ratio jumped from 887 women for every 1,000 men in 2001 to 928 in 2011, a significant improvement compared to the jump in sex ratio for the rest of the urban population sex ratio from 904 in 2001 to 929 in 2011.

The available data does not make it clear whether this sudden increase in the sex ratio of the slum population is because of a change in the ground situation or because several new areas have been included under the category of "identified slums". These are areas with a population of at least 300 people not officially notified or recognized as slums by the state or local governments. In fact, this "identified slum" population is higher than the population of either "recognized slums" or "notified slums" in the country.

It is well known that it is the better off communities and populations with access to sex determination technologies and reproductive services who have the worst sex ratios in India. This pattern holds up even within the slum population, with the scheduled tribes having the best sex ratio of 985, followed by the scheduled castes with a sex ratio of 959, way better than the rest of the population with a sex ratio of 918. This reflects the all-India pattern of STs having the best sex ratio followed by the SCs.


The Economic Times, 3 October, 2013, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/33-of-slum-population-live-without-basic-facilities/articleshow/23440441.cms


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