Indian Slum Research Articles

Slums in India: making sense of place in urban planning

Cities are the growth engine of national wealth and income production; however large number of city dwellers circumvents from the mainstream, are snubbed dwellers called slum population. Existence of slums in the urban units is a challenging issue in urban planning. India experiences a very sharp growth rate of slum population over the decades. Present work focuses on a conundrum of uninterrupted slum growth in spite of the implementation of many slum removal policies in India. The state-level household amenity status reflects a quite debatable agenda as to whether or not slum up-gradation policies are succeeded and works as a significant planning tool. The up-gradation of individual slum unit through the bottom-up approach of plan may act as effective action. This work finally directs a comprehensive planning tool for slum up-gradation as well as overall urban development, by placing the slum issues in urban planning practice.

Book Review: Tomoyuki Chaya, Life Chances Improved through Dependency: Human Development and “Democratization of Child Care” in Urban Slums in India (in Japanese)

Book Review: Tomoyuki Chaya, <i>Life Chances Improved through Dependency: Human Development and “Democratization of Child Care” in Urban Slums in India</i> (in Japanese)

Hand hygiene innovation for low income households in India

Abstract Our objective was to explore and prototype new products to facilitate improved hand hygiene after defecation by overcoming the constraints associated with soap use in low income settings, specifically urban slums in India. We used a systematic user-centred innovation process which led to the design of two products with user appeal ready for market trials, and one further concept ready for feasibility testing and further product development.

Exposure and Preferences: Evidence from Indian Slums

AbstractHow is physical proximity to ethnic outgroups related to intergroup hostility and coethnic voting? These relationships remain murky despite extensive study, in part because existing measures of heterogeneity are too geographically coarse and provide little insight into interpersonal contact. I introduce a measure of outgroup exposure, the k‐nearest‐neighbors score, which sidesteps fundamental measurement issues by disaggregating to the level of the individual. Using original geocoded network data from eight neighborhoods, I confirm that this metric reflects social contact at the individual level. I then apply this exposure metric to an original, large‐n survey experiment from surveys in 149 neighborhoods in cities across India to test whether individual residential exposure is associated with outgroup hostility and coethnic voting. I find that proximity to an ethnic outgroup is associated with a preference for coethnic candidates, but is not associated with greater hostility toward members of the outgroup.

Navigating the city’s waterscape: gendering everyday dynamics of water access from multiple sources

ABSTRACT Large-scale secondary data show that water access is improving in Indian slums; however, women still need to procure water from multiple sources. Based on field research conducted in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, this paper examines the everyday negotiations that urban women from slums undertake at different water sources. The study finds that women depend on street taps, water vendors, water tankers, and in-house connections in varying degrees. The results show variation in negotiations that women engage in at multiple sites and sources. These variations have emerged as a result of the characteristics of the water sources and household-level water storage capacity.

Challenges, experience and coping of health professionals in delivering healthcare in an urban slum in India during the first 40 days of COVID-19 crisis: a mixed method study

ObjectivesTo describe the initial dilemmas, mental stress, adaptive measures implemented and how the healthcare team collectively coped while providing healthcare services in a large slum in India, during the COVID-19...

To Be Cared For: The Power of Conversion and Foreignness of Belonging in an Indian Slum. By Nathaniel Roberts. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. 286 pp. ISBN: 9780520288829 (paper).

To Be Cared For: The Power of Conversion and Foreignness of Belonging in an Indian Slum. By Nathaniel Roberts. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. 286 pp. ISBN: 9780520288829 (paper).

Development of gender sensitive vulnerability index for urban Indian slums

By using large-scale secondary data collected from 69th round of NSSO, the present study has developed a gender sensitive vulnerability index for the population living in urban slums. A total 21 rational indicators are chosen which cover socio-economic status, demographic settlements, access to basic amenities and access to government health facilities. The study finding reveals that female- headed households have least access to basic amenities and living under extreme poverty and health sensitive settlements. The results also highlight that female-headed households are highly vulnerable in the economic backward states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam and Madhya Pradesh. Hence, it is recommended that resources including health infrastructure, slum up-gradation should be mobilized by addressing demographical settlements of slums.

Reaching out to slum dwellers to address starvation during the 2020 pandemic in India

ABSTRACT The 2020 pandemic has affected people living in almost every part of the earth. The people who dwell in the slums of India are among most vulnerable. Many have faced starvation every day since the nationwide lockdown in India. Four young social workers formed the “Dalit Seva Group”, in an effort to help slum dwellers in their region of India whose livelihoods consisted of rag picking, beggary, domestic work, and daily wage work. The group, in collaboration with non-government organizations, developed a plan to offer relief to this most vulnerable population.

Why Is the New York City COVID Death Rate Four Times that of Mumbai?

In this paper, we examine the surprising fact that the New York City death rate from COVID-19 has been six times that of Mumbai, India. Why in the world would New York City, with its excellent, state-of-the-art hospitals, have a death rate from COVID-19 that is significantly higher than that of Mumbai, with its overcrowded and unsanitary slums that house more than half of its citizens? We argue that this difference is unlikely due to Mumbai dramatically undercounting its COVID-19 fatalities, an especially weak strain of the virus that is only in Southeast Asia, or some unique genetic factors among Indian slum dwellers. Instead, it is likely that socio-economic factors played a non-trivial role in this surprising outcome. In New York City, becoming ill with COVID-19 ill meant a shift in behavior, involving quarantine. In the crowded Mumbai slums, social distancing was impossible, and the lockdown threatened residents with starvation. The stresses in each city were different. In the Mumbai slums, fear of starvation overrode concerns about COVID illness. Doctors know that many COVID-related deaths are due to immune-system overreaction, including “cytokine storms,” but they do not know what causes such overreaction. There is meanwhile a rich medical literature linking immunological dysfunction to certain kinds of stress. These two bodies of medical knowledge have not yet been linked. Could adverse neuropsychoimmunological reactions explain such COVID-related deaths? Further research is encouraged.

Formation of Informal Settlements and the Development of the Idiom Teneke Mahalle in the Late-Ottoman Istanbul

A teneke mahalle, mostly consisting of shacks constructed of collected waste materials, is a late Ottoman and early Republican phenomenon that parallels its global counterparts such as the Corralones in Peru or the Indian slums. Although occasionally mentioned in the pioneer studies, the long history of the teneke mahalles has been overlooked until recent times, and in the mainstream discussions on urban poverty, these neighborhoods have almost wholly been invisible. However, informal settlements came to the agenda of the state and society, right after the massive eviction in 1883 of the refugees of the War of 1877-1878 from the free temporary settlements. They created teneke mahalles, and over time, the local poor also adopted their creative solution for cheap and relatively safe housing. Drawing on both archival and oral records, the author establishes the actual presence of the category and traces the development of the idiom in the late nineteenth century.

Feasibility and Effectiveness of Mobile App for Active Case Finding for Tuberculosis in India

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease with 2.8 million cases and 480,000 deaths each year in India. The city of Indore alone with a population of 3.5 million had 7,839 identified TB cases in 2017. However, about two to three thousand additional cases remain unidentified per district officials. The unidentified cases lead to an endemic TB and hamper the efforts of organizations such as The Collaborative to Eliminate TB from India (CETI) to reduce the incidence of TB with the method of Active Case Finding (ACF).1 Previously, 1,332 mobile apps attempted to use technology to overcome the challenge of unreported TB patients in Indian slum areas due to the inaccurate, lost, or unhelpful data collected in ACF; yet the existing apps for TB prevention and treatment possessed minimal functionality. Over a period of 3 months, the CETI developed a mobile data collection app to generate a TB diagnostic survey and to collect data from patient registration form.&#x0D; Methods: To study the feasibility and effectiveness of the app, a pilot survey was conducted of 163,496 homes covering a population of 828,020 in the slum areas of Indore and Bhopal.&#x0D; Findings: Between the years of 2018 and 2019, 14,349 pulmonary suspected cases and 4,357 extra pulmonary suspected cases of TB were identified. Among the total of 18,706 cases identified, 7,756 patients (48.1%) had low-grade fever for over 2 weeks, 6,331 patients (39.2%) had persistent cough for more than 2 weeks, 7,693 patients (47.7%) had weight loss, and 251 patients (1.6%) had cough with blood.&#x0D; Interpretation: This pilot experience shows that an app is a useful tool for TB case recording and follow-up in the field. Further training of the health workers, and more widespread availability and ease of use of mobile phones will be necessary.

How Does Covid-19 Aggravate the Multidimensional Vulnerability of Slums in India?

The abrupt-hit of Covid-19 pandemic has not only wrecked terrible damage in India’s public health but also plunged the country into a deep socio-economic crisis. The prevalence of pandemic in cities has unquestionably augmented chronic distress among the urban poor living in a slum. Thus the paper strives to examine the contributing physical, social and economic factors that multiply the vulnerability of the slum dwellers due to Covid-19. And it also critically analyses the measures designed by the State to enable the slum dwellers in coping against Covid-19.

The impossibility of social distancing among the urban poor: the case of an Indian slum in the times of COVID-19

ABSTRACT As cases of COVID-19 were rising in India and the country’s political leadership instituted a nationwide lockdown, one of the authors of this article received a timely invitation from a friend – a government official – to make rounds with him and his team to various neighbourhoods within the metropolitan city of Bangalore. The team consisted of members working in healthcare, municipal corporation, and local police, and was tasked with ensuring that the government enacted measures of social distancing were being observed by local residents in public spaces. The author witnessed, in real time, the ways in which residents were engaging with the containment measures that were instituted as part of the political leadership’s attempt to flatten the curve of COVID-19. What was observed in an urban slum was particularly poignant and illuminating. The observations captured how, for residents of the urban slum, social distancing is more an aspiration than an attainable reality. Indeed, social distancing is impossible if such a protocol does not come with concomitant economic support targeted to the most socially vulnerable in society.

How do institutions and infrastructure affect mobilization around public toilets vs. piped water? Examining intra-slum patterns of collective action in Delhi, India

Abstract Why does a slum community mobilize differently around different public services? I use qualitative data derived from ethnographic fieldwork in four urban slum communities in Delhi, India, to examine the strategies they employ for countering everyday problems of access to water and toilets. While literature explains communities’ use of informal arrangements and political engagement to access water, what is less clear is why similar strategies do not emerge in the case of toilets. While collective action literature focuses on community-level factors such as social capital, trust, ethnic heterogeneity, and intermediary organizations, it often ignores how services interact with the slum ecology and the institutional frameworks they are embedded within. Caste, gender, religion, class, and influential slum leaders no doubt mediate everyday social relations in Indian slums, but communities that surmount these obstacles may still not be able to mobilize in a way that improves everyday service delivery. I argue that communities are able to coordinate when they think their efforts will yield success – both locally in terms of inducing reciprocity and reducing free riding as well as when they get appropriate institutional support for their initiatives. Infrastructural characteristics unique to a service determine whether reciprocity and cooperation can be sustained within the built environment of the slum. Bureaucratic complexity determines whether communities will be able to negotiate successfully. In the case of water, easy adaptability within the neighborhood and ease of bureaucratic access allow for sustained coordination within communities. The infrastructural nature of toilets makes it harder to find arrangements that will work within the slum ecology and induce cooperation. The complicated institutional dynamics create obstacles on top of that deter sustained mobilization. What communities experience instead is a sporadic pattern of collective action around poorly functioning public toilets.

Entrepreneurship and Poverty Alleviation: The Importance of Health and Children’s Education for Slum Entrepreneurs

Research has focused on the role of entrepreneurial action in alleviating poverty. However, there is a gap between individuals’ short-term outcomes from entrepreneurship overcoming immediate resource concerns and the large-scale impact of entrepreneurship on institutional and system change. Therefore, in this study, we explore entrepreneurs’ beliefs about how entrepreneurial action can alleviate poverty. To do so, we conducted a qualitative study of entrepreneurs of businesses located in Indian slums and identified the impact of expectations, role models, and the subjective value of their children’s education in attempts to alleviate poverty.

How does Covid-19 aggravate the multidimensional vulnerability of slums in India? A Commentary

The abrupt-hit of Covid-19 pandemic has not only wrecked terrible damage in India’s public health but also plunged the country into a deep socio-economic crisis. The prevalence of pandemic in cities has unquestionably augmented chronic distress among the urban poor living in a slum. Thus the paper strives to examine the contributing physical, social and economic factors that multiply the vulnerability of the slum dwellers due to Covid-19. And it also critically analyses the measures designed by the State to enable the slum dwellers in coping against Covid-19.

Homeownership, Renting and Market Failures: Evidence from Indian Slums

Housing rents are a major part of a slum household’s expenditure. I exploit a large scale ’big-push’ national urban renewal policy reform in India between 2005 and 2012 to empirically evaluate the multi-dimensional effect of rental reforms and housing provisions on home ownership, rental expenditures and quality of dwelling for slum households. One of the main benefits accruing to the affordable housing policy was to provide the entitlement of the land to the female head of the households as a measure of women empowerment.1 Combining a novel pooled cross-sectional household survey data for year 2002, 2008, 2012 and nighttime lights activity data at district level, I find the reform significantly increases the real rents by 18.2% and the probability to transition to homeownership by 16.7 percentage points. Females are 2.4 percentage points more likely to be the head of the household. The findings highlight the role of market failure.

Refugees as Donors: ‘Rich’ Tibetan Refugees, Evicted Indian Slum Dwellers and a Smart City

Refugees as Donors: ‘Rich’ Tibetan Refugees, Evicted Indian Slum Dwellers and a Smart City

Cultivating Clients: Reputation, Responsiveness, and Ethnic Indifference in India's Slums

AbstractStudies of clientelism overwhelmingly focus on how brokers target voters with top‐down benefits during elections. Yet brokers also receive requests from voters for assistance between elections, initiating the processes through which they cultivate clients. Why are brokers responsive to the requests of some voters and not others? We provide the first study of broker preferences when evaluating client appeals. Theories emphasizing brokers as vote monitors anticipate they will prefer co‐partisans and coethnics, whose reciprocity they can best verify. Theories emphasizing brokers as vote mobilizers anticipate they will prefer residents who will maximize their reputations for efficacy. We test these expectations through a conjoint experiment with 629 Indian slum leaders, ethnographic fieldwork, and a survey of 2,199 slum residents. We find evidence of reputational considerations shaping broker responsiveness. We find mixed support for monitoring concerns, highlighted by an absence of the strong ethnic favoritism assumed to dominate distributive politics in many developing countries.