The Slumdogs Blog

Urban poverty in India is often understood as a function of rural poverty. Poor people move to the cities: ipso facto there is now urban poverty. Such a formula stressed the need to address rural poverty as the essential nexus for all other forms of poverty.

The "India:Urban Poverty Report, 2009" suggests that this view is faulty and that much of the blame for urban poverty results from inadequate urbanisation strategies.

With 24% of India's urban population live in slum style accommodation although not all slum dwellers are living below the poverty line. According to the report they have been marginalised because of the poor city planning and poorer urban land management and legislation. Urban poverty in the context of India is not about only nutritional deficiency but deficiencies in the basic needs of housing water, sanitation, medical care, education, and opportunity for income generation.

As the authors of the report state, it "is not a report on the poor in urban areas but a report on the process of urbanisation in India keeping poverty at the centre of analysis".

The report found that urban workers were increasingly gravitating to the informal economic sector, even as the sector for informal economic activities was shrinking. The profile of the work in urban areas has slowly moved from the typical status of casual employment (which is paid on regular basis) to self-employment, which carries its own uncertainties. The urban poor is increasingly a street vendor, a rickshaw puller, a rag picker, a cleaner, a washerman, a load carrier or a domestic servant. Jobs which offer few extra opportunities, carried few ancillary benefits and from their self-employed status carried a constant risk of further impoverishment in the event of illness or changing economic circumstances.

The Report states that while the these workers contributed to the growth of cities, there was growing trend to marginalise the poor to the urban periphery, as they were increasingly seen as threat to civic existence and as slum clearances were promoted for the purposes of property speculation

 Interestingly, urban poverty was found to be most pronounced in smaller cities and towns rather than the major urban metros like Mumbai and Delhi where rates were typically at 10%. Access to resources and increased mobility benefited the larger metros. Likewise the report warns against emphasising urban strategies on the large urban metros at the expense of smaller and growing cities. Towns of 50000 inhabitants displayed the highest levels of urban poverty.

So, although the share of the urban poor in the wider urban population has fallen. The increasing pace of urbanisation and the changing face of urban employment means that the absolute number of urban poor has risen.

As many 81 million or 25.7 per cent people (latest data: 2004-05) subsist in urban areas on incomes that are below the poverty line. For this group some eighty per cent of their meagre income goes towards paying for food and energy, leaving very little for meeting the cost of living in an increasingly monetised society.

 

 

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Slums and their dwellings don't have many supporters among architects and urban planners, but now they have received the royal seal of approval from Brit ain's Prince Charles who declared that Dharavi's use of local materials, its walkable neighbourhoods, and mix of employment and housing add up to "an underlying intuitive grammar of design that is totally absent from the faceless slab blocks that are still being built around the world to 'warehouse' the poor".

Viewers of Slumdog Millionaire will recall the scene where the boys return to Mumbai and overlook their old slum now swept away and replaced with high rise housing and the vibrant communal fabric is replaced with slabs of high rise buildings.

A number of reports are linking homelessness in developing cities with problems with overall urban planning strategy, a focus on western development styles and the replacement of local housing with often speculative projects funded by international investors building for property investors and the "burgeoning" middle class. 

Prince Charles is more famous for his aesthetic architectural attitude and less for the often sensitive engagement with the community urban approach of Alice Coleman that places more emphasis on overall community structure and less on the discreet building architecture. 

The redevelopment of Delhi and Mumbai has resulted in widespread destruction of pavement and slum dwellings without any concomitant commitment to build new communities. 

Prince Charles strictures will strike a chord with many who would like to see an urban planning paradigm that seeks to integrate slum dwellings into the overall urban plan rather than simply seeing them as stopgap solutions until such time as they can be torn down."I strongly believe that the west has much to learn from societies and places which, while sometimes poorer in material terms are infinitely richer in the ways in which they live and organise themselves as communities, It may be the case that in a few years' time such communities will be perceived as best equipped to face the challenges that confront us because they have a built-in resilience and genuinely durable ways of living."

With 50% of the world's population living in cities and that percentage expected to rise to 70% within 40 years, it is clear that a new approach to planning is going to be required and there is an increasing recognition that big concrete masterplans that strip slum communities from the centre of cities and relocate them to "garden city" peripheries are neither successful or satisfactory. 

Prince Charles comments reported in the Guardian

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What are your basic needs as a child? Answer might be- food, safe water to drink, a house where you are secure enough to live, good clothes to wear and education to learn new things. Now, think for a moment about the children who are deprived of all these basic necessities of life. India has a population of 1 billion with about 35 million orphans, many of whom live on the streets, in railway stations and in filthy areas, taking each day as it comes. Some children have been orphaned or abandoned by their parents or relatives, others have chosen to run away from the harsher realities at home. Yet there are some others who have been born on the streets and knows no other life.
This is a world of 'Street Children' which most of us close our eyes to. These children do not know where they are going. They lead and live an incomplete life. Most of these children might have never experienced the parental care and may never know what care and concern is. Due to various circumstances they are left on the street and survives, if the world they live in shows any mercy on them. Every child has the right to grow up in a family environment- in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding. Millions of street children around the world are denied of this right.
What makes these children homeless? There are many reasons behind this, mainly poverty. The most trecherous disease HIV/ AIDS has a great part in contributing to the number of orphaned children in India. Violence at home or other internal conflicts that in turn creates a mental trauma to the child also add to this cause. Children who are born illegally are also deserted onto the street. All the above stated reasons are what makes them and stigmatize as “The Underprivileged”.

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India is uncomfortable with Slumdog Millionaire. Uncomfortable with the success and awards that the film is garnering. Uncomfortable that it portrays or reveals a side of India that Indians are increasingly out of touch with. Uncomfortable that it is not an Indian film but seems to capture a quality of India and Indian lives that staple bollywood fare largely ignores.

First it was "Big B"  (Amitach Bachan) railing against the film on his blog (how contemporary) then old style Bollywood producer Mahesh Bhatt declaring, "This isn't best or better than any of the cherishing films made by our filmmakers. Why should we get excited when it's not an Indian Film and even if it wins Oscars, it is of no use to India. It is a British Filmmaker's flick and he has accomplished his dreams roping in India's best personalities to work with. There were more films where actors like Anil Kapoor and Irrfan Khan had spelled their best works and yet went unrecognised. Moreover, the Oscars hadn't been plainly nominated for Indian Films for superior quality in the category of Foreign Films."

Some of this is plain jealousy and some of it the continued anxiety between the new go-go India of BMWs and Vogue India Magazine and the reality that for many Indians the economic boom has passed them by. Despite laws to the contrary, poor children remain vulnerable to exploitation and it is in the slums and on the edges of the slums that  such vulnerability if most keenly felt. 

It is not for nothing that a central theme of the film is money - its lack and the impact of its excess. The closing scene reflects three simultaneous images: one brother dying in a bath of money, the celebration of poor Indians at one of their number escaping poverty and the loneliness of the main character in the railway station ( a place where journeys start and stop).

The drivers of homelessness are many, but surely the preeminent among them is Money.

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