URBAN POOR

"Many people from villages across Tamil Nadu came to Chennai to make a living. They moved here with the hope of improving the standard of living for their families and providing good education to their children. These people, who migrated in small groups from rural parts, eventually settled along the banks of rivers or water bodies. They built small huts to reside. The huts were prone to catching fire suddenly at any time and so the area came to be called Thideer Nagar," says S Kathirvelan, a 60-year-old resident of Thideer Nagar in Saidapet. But L Vijaya, a resident of…

"At midnight on August 30th, we woke up to thigh-high water flooding our homes," recalls Bheemesh, a resident of an informal settlement located in Tigalarpalya, adjacent to Brookefield's BEML Layout. "We rushed outside, barely having had the time to collect our things. When we came out, we found out that the entire settlement had been submerged". The last few weeks have been difficult for citizens across various regions in the city. Several bouts of heavy rainfall has inundated roads and flooded residential layouts. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said this was Bengaluru's second wettest August with 369.9mm of rainfall. The…

On August 24th, deputy chief minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis announced that about 17,000 slum dwellers residing around the Mumbai airport would soon be rehabilitated in the Premier Colony buildings at Vidyavihar. The Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) would repair and improve the existing tenements to make them habitable for people to live in, he added. The Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) would later allocate it to slum dwellers occupying the 276 acres of the airport. The purpose was to clear 100 acres of airport land for the expansion of the airport, he explained in his statement in the legislative…

Several years have passed since the Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) was launched to rehabilitate slum dwellers of Mumbai, and promises of free housing and proper water and sanitation facilities remain unfulfilled.  After facing eviction from their own homes, residents are stuck in rented houses with developers neither completing the project nor paying rent - owed to them - to slum dwellers. Some projects have failed to take off the ground due to reasons such as disputes between co-developers. In other cases, people are stuck in transit camps for years together.  Those who have managed to get houses, claim poor living…

The youth in Bengaluru’s many slums are caught in a vicious cycle. Of poverty, of lack of access to education and skill development resulting in their inability to get decent employment. These are key factors that lead to substance abuse issues among these youngsters as they grow up in one of the most unequal 'global' cities of India. The trajectory of young people in Bengaluru’s Rajendra Nagar slum, located in the vicinity of the high-income Koramangala neighbourhood, and the choices they make in the midst of the high-alcoholism issue in this informal settlement is not uncommon. The presence of a…

In 2017, the Gambhir Committee's National Urban Livelihood Mission Shelter Inspection Report submitted to the Supreme Court observed that homeless shelters in the country were in a dismal condition. (The committee was comprised of three members and headed by Justice (retd) Kailash Gambhir.) Many states did not comply with the guidelines of the National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM).  Five years later, the homeless are even worse off due to the pandemic, loss of livelihoods and unusual weather events triggered by climate change. The NULM is now aiming to provide, in a phased manner, permanent shelters to the urban homeless under…

It has been six years since the launch of the Smart City Mission in 2016. Yet its core idea, of creating a participatory model for urban governance, remains elusive. Especially for the urban poor. If people had hoped for a better managed, inclusive city with sustainable and resilient infrastructure, that hope has been cruelly belied. Plenty of projects under the Smart City mission are underway in many cities. But few have achieved the objectives they set out for themselves. Which raises the question, what does the smart city mission provide for the urban poor? Have their lives changed at all…

Fun fact: Cooking oil, especially the widely used Sunflower oil, has seen a big jump in price because of the Russian-Ukraine war. Why? India consumes roughly 2.5mt of sunflower oil annually. And much of this is imported from Ukraine. India only produces 50,000 tonnes of it. The war has disrupted that entire trade. So here’s a thought. Incentivise urban communities and farmers to take to growing sunflower. That could lead to being more ‘atma nirbhar’ and a big ‘vote for local’. And who knows, the process may even create jobs. A commodity desperately needed by millions of urban workers across…

On a typical summer day in Mumbai, crowds of workers from different professions descend onto local train platforms in the city, waiting for the next train to fight their way into. Some of them are street vendors who are headed for the area where they will set up shop, on the streets, under large umbrellas or under the shades of trees. But there are also others — construction workers among them, who have no choice but to work while being directly exposed to the sun and hence face uniquely challenging conditions.  Gopal Ahlawat, one such worker, has to meet his…

Lakshmi, a resident of Chikka Banaswadi in Bangalore, and the 30 other families who live there, have no access to water. Lakshmi buys nine plastic pots of water every day from shops nearby paying Rs 2 per pot. Even if each pot holds 20 litres, nine pots give Lakshmi, her husband and two children, just 180 litres of water per day for drinking, bathing, washing dishes, etc., whereas the Centre's Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs recommends daily water supply of 135 litres per capita in urban areas. Lakshmi, who lives in a slum in Chikka Banaswadi, spends Rs 18…