The Rise of Slums (er Squatter)

Land economics, faulty policies and builder driven unusual political understanding is pushing slums to new heights. What used to be a single to double storey squatter settlement has now become/or is in the process of becoming a multi storey slum (6 to 8 storeys). What is good is that the erstwhile squatters, having got ownership of a tenement are no longer squatters but they still live in a slum, or to put it other way the settlement they are given may as well get transformed to a slum later.

Confused with squatters and slums? A lot of people do get so. As per oxford dictionary “squatter” means “a building occupied by people living in it without the legal right to do so”. It may be a building, land or property and it is not necessary that the structure be temporary or permanent and not necessarily a dilapidated one. Similarly “Slum” has been defined as a squalid and overcrowded urban street or district inhabited by very poor people/a house or building unfit for human habitation. It may not necessarily mean an illegal occupation. It relates to the economic conditions of survival and degraded sanitation levels for the people. Different countries have different criterion for identification of slums. Slums may or may not necessarily be a squatter settlement, but generally all squatter settlement happen to be slums because those inhabiting them are poor, have no access to basic civic or sanitation services and are densely populated.

India’s fame or rather its infamy is its large swathe of slums and a large percentage of urban poor. It is recognized for the fact that these slums have a large flourishing economy some of them contributing about a billion dollars to the national economy. The high cost of living, the larger household sizes and suppression from authorities and other powers to be, makes them inventive of new sources of revenue and untapped opportunities. After all necessity is the mother of all inventions.

Now if the slums have such a thriving economy, why have they not been able to improve their conditions to rise above? Is it the security of tenure preventing them or the lack of political will and initiative or is it the slum dwellers greed having squatted on prime land and who do not want to relinquish the location (the land is not theirs after all).