-The Business Standard 8.8 million households live in 33,150 urban slums   It might be difficult to believe but there were less numbers of slums in urban India in 2012 than three years earlier. The number came down by 32.3 per cent to 33,150 in urban parts in 2012, compared with 49,000 in 2009, official data issued on Tuesday show. However, at least 12 per cent of the urban population...

-The Hindu Maharashtra accounts for 23 per cent of total slum population, followed by Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal Just under nine million households, or roughly one-eighth of India's urban population lives in a slum, according to data from the latest round of the National Sample Survey Organisation released on Tuesday. The number is significantly lower than the 14 million slum households identified by the Census in 2011. NSSO, like the Census, counted...

-Press Information Bureau (MoSPI) The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has released the key indicators of urban slums in India, generated from the data collected in its 69th round survey during July 2012 to December 2012. The last survey on slums was conducted as part of the 65th round of NSS (July 2008- June 2009). Slums are part of urban environment and they are identified by...

-The Hindustan Times The December 16 gang rape, which rocked the country last year, had raised questions on the loopholes in policing across the country. However, what escaped attention was the crippling lack of infrastructure that leads to insecurity among the city's women. A lot was promised soon after the horrific incident, but very little has been done yet. NGOs working for the welfare of women have highlighted how our urban planning,...

-The Hindu     With the closing of relief camps in Muzaffarnagar, even the meagre food support has disappeared. As the winter cold descends this year on Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts in Western U.P., some 20,000 people will camp in makeshift unofficial camps amidst squalor and official neglect, or survive in small rented tenements or with relatives - exiles from the villages of their birth. Three months after one of the grimmest communal outbreaks...