Coping with urban poverty in India

Abstract

Since the early seventies there have been numerous studies on urban poverty and urban labor both in general and in the Indian context. Nevertheless, very little is as yet known on how urban poor families cope with their poverty and ensure their continued survival. I agree with Jan Breman that “an analysis at the family level is essential for a proper understanding of the living conditions of the urban poor” and how they cope with the vicissitudes of daily existence—of fluctuating incomes and unsteady employments. While the poor families have as a single unit the objective of ensuring their survival, the coping responses to urban poverty of the individual members of the family need not all be the same. It is expected that their spheres of individual activity, age, gender and work status are likely to determine the nature of the coping response. The following pages examine how poor urban families cope with their poverty and in particular how the burdens of ensuring survival are borne by different members of the families. This study was made in the socio-economic-cultural milieu of Madras city, the largest urban center in the second most urbanized state of India, Tamilnadu. Three extremely poor families were identified and through participant-observation their conditions of existence and their mode of survival were recorded. The three case studies highlight those aspects that help to comprehend the survival strategies of the urban poor.