ECONOMICS PROJECT

NAME - VIKAS MOHAN

ROLL NO. - 2K17/ME/251

 ABSTRACT
Slums are created mainly because of poverty, social backwardness
and unemployment of the people living in the countryside. Slums are
usually considered to be low-cost habitants of the marginalized
people, mostly made up of make shift shelters, in overcrowded and
unhealthy conditions on land “encroached” upon and worsened
further by the lack of basic civic amenities. Slums are also temporal
and material space for the poor rural masses in India. The outgrowth
of slums in India is the fall out of poverty and deprivation. Majority
of the slum dwellers are engaged in informal sector. While
unemployment across households is not significantly high, it is its
concentrated distribution among the young adults and women that
brings the household income below the poverty line in two thirds of
the households, this has some obvious implications. The purpose of
this study is to examine the factors which attract slum dwellers to
settle in slums and to know their economic activities as well as their
socio economic profiles. The study is based upon the compilation
and critical analysis of a board spectrum of information. Primary data
is collected from 500 household of slum dweller on a sample basis
through a structured questionnaire. The sources of secondary data
are report/document etc. of government of Odisha, Bhubaneswar
Municipal Corporation, NACs of Jatni and Khurdha.
 ISSUES
In fact, there can be no doubt that dire poverty compels people to be
slum dwellers but it is not true that all the slum dwellers are poor.
Except the poverty, there are also various factors that govern the
growth of slums. To explore these, various issues/questions will be
raised such as:
(i) What are the economic activities, slum dwellers engaged most?
How they operate in their economic activities?
(ii) Are they necessarily poor?
(iii) What are the government programs for slum dwellers?
(iv) Are they natives or migrants? If they are migrants what are their
origins?
 Why this study
According to the 2011 census, almost 65.5 million Indians live in slums, and
population growth in major Indian cities is increasingly happening in the
urban peripheries. As urbanization intensifies—India’s urban population is
projected to grow by 250 million between 2008 and 2030, taking the total to
590 million—it is increasingly important to understand governance and
communal life in these informal settlements so as to refine policy solutions
to improve quality of life.

Broad objectives of the project:

 Improve understanding of the policy impact of slum notification and

rehabilitation on all stakeholders, including government,
landowners, squatters, and renters;
 Build more nuanced understanding of governance and collective
action processes in slums through interdisciplinary research;
 Develop cutting-edge methodologies for studying slums to bolster
research across international academic communities;
 Share research findings with policy-makers as well as public and
academic audiences, through publications and presentations in
policy, public, and academic fora

Survey data collected in Mumbai slums will examine the effects of

slum notification on wealth distribution in slums. The research team
will also conduct surveys in rural villages to understand why people
do or do not decide to migrate to cities. A team of Research
Assistants will conduct ethnographic research in slums across
several cities to provide fine-grained understandings of the economic
life of slums, revealing dynamics that are difficult to capture in
quantitative surveys.

Additionally, drone imaging across slums and rural villages will

generate insights on what metrics such remotely collected data can
measure. Together, these research components will produce a multi-
faceted understanding of social and economic development in slums.
 Approach
The project uses municipal census on slums and site visits to assign
slums into three categories: slums where homes are largely made of
concrete; slums where homes are largely made of temporary
materials like tarp, mud or tin (even walls); slums that have a mix of
these two types of construction. Additionally, for each city, a memo is
written on the history of and the law and policy governing slums.
From each category, researchers choose one slum, which is
representative of some dimensions other than housing quality.

In each type of slum, researchers conduct 20 household-level

interviews of residents and interviews of about 10 other stakeholders
like community leaders, politicians, bureaucrats, NGOs, or activists.
These interviews are guided by a list of questions on each of the four
topics listed below.

1. How do slums emerge? Why do millions of people live in housing

without formal legal rights to land or structures? The project is trying
to understand the factors that create the demand and supply of
informal housing.
2. How do slums function? Or, more specifically, how are public goods
and common resources like sanitation, electricity networks, and
water produced in India’s slums?
3. How do slums affect economic welfare of residents? To address
this question, the project will move beyond simply documenting
whether people make more money after moving to slums. It will also
work to understand how life in slums affects development of human
capital, financial inclusion, social mobility, and inequality.
4. What are the current reform policies? The project will explore four
broad kinds of reforms targeted at slums in India.