Crisis Faced by Slum Children: Ballari District
PAKKIRAPPA N
Department of Development Studies
Kannada University Hampi
Vidyaranya-583276
e.mail: abhaipskote@gmail.com
6361922283
Abstract
This proposed study is mainly concerned with the shelter conditions of the majority of the slum children with special reference to the Ballari district in Karnataka. It is about how the poor struggle to survive within urban areas, mainly through informal shelter and informal income-generation strategies, and about the inadequacy of both public and market responses to the plight of the urban poor. But the study is also about hope, building on the foundations of the urban poor's survival strategies, and about what needs to be done by both the public and non-sectors, and by the international community, if the goal of adequate shelter for all is to have any relevance for today's urban poor. Slums are a manifestation of the two main challenges facing human settlement development at the beginning of the new millennium: rapid urbanization and the urbanization of poverty. Slums have the highest concentrations of poor people and the worst shelter and physical environmental conditions. This study wants to explore both the negative and positive aspects of slums. On the negative side, the study shows that slums have the most intolerable urban housing conditions, which include: the insecurity of tenure; lack of basic services, especially water and sanitation; inadequate and unsafe building structures; overcrowding; and location on hazardous land. In addition, slum areas have high concentrations of poverty and of social and economic deprivation, which may include broken families, unemployment, and economic, physical, and social exclusion. Slum dwellers have limited access to credit and formal job markets due to stigmatization, discrimination, and geographic isolation. Slums are often recipients of the city's nuisances, including industrial effluent and noxious waste, and the only land access to slum dwellers is often fragile, dangerous, or polluted land that no one else wants. Slum children are the greatest victims of all.
Keywords: Slum children, stigmatization, discrimination, geographic isolation.
Introduction
Ever since there have been cities there have been poor quarters but only since the 16th century have there been slums, places that are 'squalid, overcrowded and wretched'. Slums have been the only large-scale solution to providing housing for low-income people. It is the only type of housing that is affordable and accessible to the poor in cities where the competition for land and profits is intense, and the places where they must live if they have little income or no other options. A few citations from the case studies prepared for this report provide striking highlights on the diversity of slums and the different ways in which they reflect global and local political and economic trends.
Rapid urbanization, one of the greatest socio-economic changes during the last five decades or so, has caused the burgeoning of new kinds of slums, the growth of squatter and informal housing all around the rapidly expanding cities of the developing world. Urban populations have increased explosively in the past 50 ycars, and will continue to do so for at least the next 30 years as the number of people born in cities increase and as people continue to be displaced from rural areas that are almost at capacity. The rate of creation of formal sector urban jobs is well below the expected growth rate of the urban labor force, so in all probability, the majority of these new residents will cke out an informal living and will live in slums.
Everyone living in or visiting India is aware of the huge income disparities which are more visible in the cities than in the villages. More than before, there is also a vulgar display of wealth by the Rich, and their houses and lifestyles are taken as a yardstick of their wealth. By contrast, in the sweltering heat, monsoon rains, or intense cold, 93 million people are living in slums today, often without any regular power or water connections or a proper roof above their heads. Around 25 percent of the population in any big city lives in slums, and more than half (54 percent) are slum-dwellers.
India is going to have more slums in the future if nothing is done about affordable housing for the poor right now. Around 590 million people or half of the population will be living in cities by 2030. There has to be a big investment in low cost housing for the urban poor from now itself in order to improve their living conditions in the future.
Slums are growing because rural people are migrating to the cities in droves from everyday. In metropolitan cities, thousands arrive daily looking for jobs. Though India is growing at 8.5 per cent, there is pervasive rural poverty in some states and few jobs are there except those under the national rural employment guarantece scheme which has, in fact, stemmed the migration flow slightly. Slum-dwellers neither have basic amenities like toilets in their houses nor regular access to clean drinking water. Around 128 million people do not have access to clean water all over India. As for health care, most of the urban poor have to go to private clinics as government dispensaries are hardly adequate, if at all available. Public hospitals can be a nightmare in case of emergency. One big illness can throw the slum-dwellers into extreme poverty and they can get indebted for life.
Many of the slum children do not go to school as there are few teachers and the classes are big and if the child is absent for a while, it is very difficult for him or her to rejoin because catching up is impossible. They naturally drop out because parents cannot help them with studies and they end up as helpers at home or as child labour. India has the highest number of child labour in the world and it is not surprising that 8 to 9 million children are out of school. We can see many on the roads, begging, performing painful acrobatics or selling cheap tidbits.
There is going to be a huge problem of solid waste disposal and sewage also with an increase in urbanization, and the official reports paint a grim picture of cities being dry, stinking hell-holes. Many urban rich today do not want to see the slums and are opting for gated communities with their own parks, schools, hospitals, malls, security, water and power supply. If the rich think they can wish away the poor in this manner, they won't be successful because the poor are not only aware of their lifestyles through the spread of visual media and mobile phones, but are also very envious and hateful of the rich which manifests itself in increasing crime, sporadic and organised violence against civil socicty. The government, as a recent news report says, is going ahead with cheap housing in a big way, keeping in mind the huge shortfall in supply, and is also going to give preference to women in allotments. This is a laudatory move otherwise the male head of the household can sell, rent or mortgage it for cash for his own consumption purposes. Unless the millions living in the slums are given proper housing and amenities, the glaring rich-poor divide will increase. It is not going to be good for the country's image even as a tourist spot or as a foreign investment destination.
Objectives
The physical environments of slums present many challenges to residents, particularly children. Even so, there are thriving communities in slums with strong social and economic networks. This article looks at the reality of growing up in slums in Delhi, and explores how well-intentioned slum improvement efforts can fail children. It concludes by identifying ways in which India's policy environment could support efforts to make slum improvement programmes more child- friendly. The specific objectives of the study are as follows:
Hypothesis
Generally the social status of the slum dwellers is very poor. They belong to poor build-up households, lack of basic amenities like drinking water, lighting, electricity, latrine facility,
sewerage facility. The social profile of the slums is not good. They are poor and marginalized section of the society. The economic conditions of the slum dwellers are very low. Generally, slum dwellers are engaged in low level of economic activities like rag keeping, cleaning of houses, labourer, auto driver, thela puller, rickshaw pullers etc. Slum dwellers are basically illiterate and they do not read and write. Due to lack of the literacy they are unable to do good job. Thus the economic conditions of the slum dwellers are not good and they earn less amount of money. Due to less income slum dwellers are unable to purchase the basic needs of daily lives. Socio-cconomic status of slum dwellers can be characterized as mainly low income group with inadequate education. Pure water scarcity is everywhere, but slums dwellers are more affected by the unavailability of the water for drinking and bathing facility. Generally slum areas are poor in terms of supply of drinking water. Slum dwellers are generally illiterates. So they are engaged in the low levels of the economic activities. They earn less amount of the money. Generally, due to less income levels they do not consume the nutritive food. Slums children are affected with malnutrition. Economic conditions play major role in the development of the people. Without good income no one can live healthy life. Income improves the good health, better educational facility and living of standard of the slum dwellers. Slum dwellers have been contributing significantly to the economy of any city by providing affordable labour for formal as well informal sectors of the economy. With the help of the skills enhancement programmes we can bust-up the working capacity of the slum dwellers. They can also contribute in the economic growth of the county. Income and health are co-related. If levels of the income increase then health standard also increases.
Review Literature
Following is the brief analysis of the revie literature. Dr H D Prashant in his book Right to Education Act 2009, says that the act has remained only in paper and the actual implementation of the act is far from the satisfactory level. In another book written by the same author it is stated that he growth of cities has always been accompanied by the growth of slums. Ill health conditions due to overcrowding, poor housing and unsanitary environment, coupled with poverty are found in slum dwellers. The relative difference in income and wealth is much starker in urban areas. The higher purchasing power of the rich people drives up the prices of food and healthcare goods, making them unaffordable to the poor. The rich also consume more than their fair share of public goods, for example, water, infrastructure, electricity, which are often subsidized by the state. Poverty and other forms of social disadvantage translate into poorer health status and outcomes for the urban poor.
Dr Shailaja Hiremath in her book Kannadada Arambhada Lekhakiyaralli Shikshanada Chintanegalu says that he literacy rate of slum population is a bridge between the literacy rate ofrural population and literacy rate of urban population. Since the literate people are more mobile than the illiterate people so higher number of literate persons have migrated from rural to urban area and because of unplanned and haphazard way of urbanization these people are forced to live in sub human conditions of slum areas and this resulted into higher rate of literacy in slum areas in comparison to rural areas.
Sabiha Bhumigowda in her book Mahileyara Indiana Savalugalu says that the higher ratio of domestic women workers in both the notified and non-notified slums is attributed to the greater opportunity of women oriented work in nearby localities. Irregular employment causes insecurity and financial problems which may lead to various social evils and crimes. The bad consequences for individual employees extend out to bad effects on families and communities.
Dr TR Chandrashekhar n his study on the devclopment of Vijayapura district opines that there ishigh rate of unemployment among the slum dwellers. The employment pattern of the slum dwellers shows that most of the male slum dwellers in notified and non-notified slums were engaged as daily wage earners. They worked as rickshaw pullers, Tonga pullers, industry Workers and construction workers. The major businesses run by these slum dwellers are street vending, hawking, petty shop kceping and selling handicrafts. A few were engaged in services The higher ratio of domestic women workers in both the notified and non-notified slums is attributed to the greater opportunity of women oriented work in nearby localities. Irregularemployment causes insecurity and financial problems which may lead to various social evils and crimes. The bad consequences for individual employees extend out to bad effects on families and communities.
Methodology
This paper is based on the secondary data sources collected from different published sources. The detailed literatures are consulted and collected from various sources like books, research articles, NSSO reports, Census of India etc. This paper illustrates conceptual background of the slums and their classification. The general social and economic conditions of the slum dwellers are presented with the help of collected literature done by the academician's works on slum dwellers. Chapter Design The present study has eight chapters. The first chapter explains the objectives, problematisation, methodology, study area and scope. The second chapter deals with the environment and the historical background of slums. The third chapter is about caste, gender, age and the reasons for migration to urban slums. The fourth chapter is about the social, economical, religious and cultural aspects of slums. The fifth chapter concentrates on the malnutrition and lack of education facilities for slum children. The sixth chapter concentrates on slum children's enrolment in primary and higher primary education. The seventh chapter discusses the crisis faced by the slum children and offers remedies to overcome the problems. The eighth chapter is conclusion and presents the findings of the study.
Anticipated Outcomes
The future of Indian cities will be good if planning starts now in all earnest. Every big city in the world has gone through the phases that Indian cities are currently experiencing but each managed to come out of that stage and eschewed stark human deprivation, though many still have ghettos.They have done so with good city governance and municipal bodies which are accountable to the public. They have been able to garner enough tax revenue for improving low-cost housing and increasing the quantity and quality of social services for the poor. City management can be better if bureaucratic red tape is reduced and there is greater autonomy given to mayors, municipal councilors and other administrators. Only with better governed cities can there be less sharp inequalities, policy-makers should pay special attention to the heterogeneity that exists within urban slums, which could have profound implications for the effectiveness of targeting government educational investments on a spatial basis. In mixed slum communities, a Considerable portion of the benefits from public educational investments could be captured by the better-off families. The possibility of such "leakages" needs to be factored into decisions about the placement of educational investments. There are also potential benefits stemming from heterogeneity. When they live in mixed-income communities in which other families provide aemonstrations of the payoffs to schooling, poor families may find themselves more motivated to turther their children's education than they would be in uniformly poor communities. Poor families may take note of the role that education has played in the economic and social mobility Strategies of the community's better-off families, and might thereby gain a keener understanding of the importance of schooling for their own children's lives and the ways in which it could figure into long-term strategies for advancement. The poor in such communities might well prove more responsive to new governmental educational investments than they would be in uniformly poor communities where the prospects for advancement seem unrelievedly bleak. The employment pattern of the slum dwellers shows that most of the male slum dwellers in notified and non-notified slums were engaged as daily wage earners. They worked as rickshaw pullers, Tonga pullers, industry workers and construction workers. The major businesses run by these slum dwellers are street vending, hawking, petty shop keeping and selling handicrafts. A few were engaged in services. The higher ratio of domestic women workers in both the notified and non-notified slums is attributed to the greater opportunity of women oriented work in nearby localities. Irregular employment causes insecurity and financial problems which may lead to various social evils and crimes. The bad consequences for individual employees extend out to bad effects on families and communities. Generally we can say that, slum dwellers are engaged in the non formal activities. They are poor in economic conditions. Most of them are working as rickshaw pullers, Tonga pullers, industry workers and construction workers. The major businesses run by these slum dwellers are street vending, hawking, petty shop keeping and selling handicrafts. Lower level of economic conditions degrades the living conditions of the slum dwellers. Slum dwellers can contribute the economic activity of the urban areas and plays major role for the development of nation. Thus there is need to do better arrangements for the positive changes among the slum dwellers.
Reference