1. Urban Poverty and
Development
Gayathri Krishna
Vineetha Venugopal
Pooja Chavan
Shibili Shahadathi
M.A. in social Work in Community Organisation & Development
Practice (2nd Year)
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
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3. Introduction To Mumbai
• Entertainment, Fashion and Commercial Center of India
• Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) is the richest
municipal corporation in the country- GDP- $ 278 billion as of 2015
• Population Density- Mumbai- 53,000/sq mi (21,000/km2)
Chicago- 1,318/sq mi (509/km2)
• Religion demographics:
– Hindus: 67.39%
– Muslims: 18.56%
– Buddhists: 5.22%, Jains: 3.99%, Christians: 4.2%. Sikhs: 0.58%
Parsis and Jews account for the rest of the population
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4. • 42%- Maharashtrians;19%- Gujaratis, while people from other areas of the
country account for the rest (39%) of the population (Mumbai
Population(2016, October 26)).
• Crucial events that shaped the city:
– 1992 riots- After the Babri Masjid incident- political gains
– 1993- Underworld involvement- Mumbai blast- Muslims started feeling
insecure and moved to the peripheries from the centre of the city-
Ghettoisation
– Great Bombay Textile strike
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5. • India’s development- characterised by geographical inequality (Jagdale
2014)
• Inclusive development?
• Overall Income growth and income gap growth
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Development in Urban Centres
6. Low Income Settlement- Slums
• Low economic settlements- thrown out of the formal housing sector because it is
expensive and much beyond their income levels (not only BPL).
• percentage of people living in slums is estimated to be as high as 41.3% in
Greater Mumbai (Mumbai Population(2016, October 26))- occupying about
2500 hectares of area, which constitutes a mere 6% of the total land area (Jagdale
2014).
• .
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7. • Conditions of these slum occupations are
– dangerously unhygienic
– defined unfit for human- overcrowding, lack of ventilation, electricity or
sanitary facilities
by the Census of India.
• Slum population- Highly vulnerable and displaced to outskirts during “urban
development”
– Area made liveable by slum dwellers are taken up for “redevelopment”
– Political and economic factors play an important role in the sustaining the
slums- privatisation of slum rehabilitation after 1991(Jagdale 2014).
– slum policies have become increasingly reliant on the market and on local
‘self-help’ agencies, a trend in step with the neoliberal turn across the
developing world (Nijman 2008)
• Slum rehabilitation and issues related to it
– creation of vertical slums
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9. Homelessness
• Slum redevelopment in India often results in livelihood loss - vertical slums-
loss of old way of life - desertion - homelessness -
• Homelessness in Chicago - bus stop, train, pavement, bridge.
• Gentrification - Chicago - rent rise - eviction - loss of affordable housing -
Uptown - Homelessness - pavements, under the bridge - Uptown-Pilsen
• Beggary Act - no warrant; no trial; 3-10 years prison term; arrest of
dependents; inadequate shelters - criminalization of landless labourers , old
and people with disabilities and homeless people. (Bombay prevention of
beggary act, 1959)
• Persons in Destitution (Protection Care and Intervention)” Model Bill
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10. Water and Sanitation- Slums
• Notified: 40 lpcd officially - the irregular, erratic timings lead to feminisation
of poverty. E.g. Cheeta Camp . Services inferior quality compared to non
slum areas
• Non-notified slums - established after 2000; eligible for water under 2014
ruling; yet to be fully implemented - changing cut off dates and inequality
• Nearly half of Mumbai’s slum non notified (Subbaraman and Murti,2015)
• Slums on central government land - Illegal slums - not eligible for any
services; no security of tenure
• Water Mafia -illegally tap into city water pipes - cross contamination highly
priced service by private vendors - criminalisation
• Or buy water from far away legal pipe owners or tanker water (Subbaraman
et.al, 2015). 10
11. Sanitation
• Lack of access to clean water -> diarrhoeal illness in children > recurrent
diarrhoeal illness -> increased child mortality and malnutrition
(Subbaraman and Murty,2015)
• Households spend an average of 52 to 206 times more than standard
municipal charge of INR 2.25 (USD 0.04) per 1000 litres of water.
• 95% use less than the WHO minimum of 50 litres per capita per day (
Subbaraman et.al, 2013)
• Notified slums -> shared or community toilets
• Non notified -> less number of toilets - lack of reliable water supply-
excessive use (high population density) - lack of maintenance ; more open
defecation - dysfunctional toilets
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12. • Lack of sewer infrastructure - health concerns - criminalisation of open
defecation ( Subbaraman et al, 2012) .
• High cost and long wait at pay and use toilets
• Inadequate solid waste disposal
• Barriers in accessing Municipal electricity supply- electricity stealing
• Barriers to access municipal schools - time consuming , expensive
transportation ; social stigma
• Difficulty in accessing official documents - no official residence proof -
difficult to access services
• Discrimination in compensation provided after disasters and calamities
• Forced eviction and loss of home - reinforcing poverty
• Different neighbourhood - different facilities - community healthcare -
community college
Inequality in Access to Services
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13. • notified slum- parallel informal economy ;
• $600 million to 1 billion turnover (Yardley, 2011).
• Textiles, carpentry; leather;
• recycling; rag picking ;
• domestic help, drivers etc
• Unsafe , congested working conditions; home as workplace; exploitation
• Congested shared housing - Tuberculosis & other diseases
• People unable to move out due to high land price/rent in Mumbai
Dharavi - city within a city
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14. MIGRATION
Comparative perspective: Mumbai and Chicago
1.Who are migrants?
2.Why do people migrate?
3.Push and pull factors of migration
4.What are the effects of migration?
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15. Nature of Migration
MUMBAI
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• Interstate Migration
• Village to city
Migration
• City to city Migration
CHICAGO
• Voluntary Migration
• Forced Migration
• International
Migration
17. Effects of Migration
MUMBAI
• Housing
• Mushrooming of slums
• Water Supply
• Sanitation
• Lack of fundamental needs:
Education, Healthcare, Shelter
• Lack of government scheme benefits
• Poor work conditions
• Inadequate wages
• Issues of secondary citizenship
• Increasing Inequalities
• Social Exclusion
CHICAGO
• Increasing numbers of
Undocumented immigrants
• Difficulty to access basic services for
undocumented immigrants
• Issues of Housing
• Cheap labour force
• Issues of secondary citizenship
• Insecurity and hatred among
residents of the city towards various
racial groups
• Increasing Inequalities
• Social Exclusion
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25. Two aspects of poverty and its relation with
criminalisation
• Economic poverty and criminalisation
The lower standard of living and often high degree of economic compulsion
forces the lower section to indulge in crimes. The deepened social and
economic divide is the primary reasons for the exacerbation of crime and
social conflict in cities such as Mumbai(Shaban, 2008)
Critique : State’s double stand on crime in poor areas and to the big fishes;
• Poverty as multidimensional concept
Abraham Maslow ( Hierarchy of needs) considers food, shelter, cloth,
safety and security as human’s primary needs. The lack of these primary
needs can be called as poverty.
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26. Mumbra: The story of a Muslim ghetto
• A ghetto in the outskirts of Mumbai that thousands of Muslim families
settled in as a result of 1992-93 riots. The population has increased from
45,000(1992) to 9,000,00(2011).
• The government hasn’t set up a single public school or hospital and people
suffer with a 6 hour daily power cut.
• In 2014, 150 policemen searched all the houses in Mumbra during
midnight by shouting “ raid all the safe hubs of terrorists” to find out a
chain snatchers’ group.
• In 2015, private school in Panvel( 34 km away from Mumbra) decided to
ban admission for children from this ghetto by saying “bad behaviour” as a
reason. 26
27. • Many people from Mumbra have been denied job due to the label of
criminal/ terrorists (including women).
• Extra-judicial killings and fake encounters.
• The poor economic condition and backwardness coupled with unique
social circumstances, Muslims forced to live in urban slums. The fear of
‘other’ makes them to live in the ghettoes. Further the overwhelmed
policing makes their lives double insecure (poonawalla, 2014) .
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28. Do Black lives really matter to the state?
• One in four black children in born in 1990 had a father imprisoned. The
expansion of incarceration increased by increase in policing.
• The forms of supervision and policing found in the black neighbourhood
foster a climate of fear and suspicion in which people are pressured to
inform on one another(goffman,2009)
• Imprisoned or formerly imprisoned men have difficulties participating in
sustained ways in the lives of their families, there families become socially
and economically disadvantaged in this process( Mclanahan 2004)
• Thus, criminalisation also contributes to sustenance of poverty.
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29. Conclusion
• Poverty and development juncture- crucial factors that needs to be taken
care are
– Development of low income settlements
– the inequality in access to resources,
– homelessness,
– migration and
– criminalisation of vulnerable communities and its aftermath.
• Role of social workers in advocacy , engagement with community,
community organising, empowerment of communities- both social and
economic of vulnerable communities.
•
• Push for urban development more inclusive and equal.
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30. References
• Mumbai Population. (2016, October 26). Retrieved November 15th, 2016, from
http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/mumbai-population/
• Jagdale, R. H. (2014). An overview of slum rehabilitation schemes in Mumbai,
India (Doctoral dissertation).
• Nijman, J. (2008). Against the odds: Slum rehabilitation in neoliberal
Mumbai.Cities, 25(2), 73-85.
• Shaban, A. (2008). Ghettoisation, crime and punishment in Mumbai. Economic and
Political Weekly, 68-73.
• Goffman, A. (2009). On the run: Wanted men in a Philadelphia ghetto. American
Sociological Review, 74(3), 339-357.
• Subbaraman, R., & Murthy, S. L. (2015). The right to water in the slums of
Mumbai, India. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 93(11), 815-816.
• Subbaraman, R., O’brien, J., Shitole, T., Shitole, S., Sawant, K., Bloom, D. E., &
Patil-Deshmukh, A. (2012). Off the map: the health and social implications of being
a non-notified slum in India. Environment and urbanization, 24(2), 643-663.
• http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/world/asia/in-indian-slum-misery-work-
politics-and-hope.html
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