Living in Indian Slums - Report Example

Indian Slums During the weeks predating the financial crisis that hit the globe between 2007 and there appeared to be aninexorable increase in the price of basic food that threatened to starve poor population around the world. The then US president George Bush claimed that one of the reasons for the situation was India’s extremely populous middle class which he claimed was larger than the entire US population and their demand for better nutrition and food was one of the main reasons food prices had increased globally. This opened up a great deal of controversy as Indian journalists and politicians responded accusing the US causing the problem by using grain for Ethanol and subsidizing farmers to reduce their total produce, despite the opposition, a part of his statement is indisputable. The Indian middle class is growing at high rate and has been doing so for the last few decades and this is feared by many within and without India to be one of the courses of economic imbalance against the extremely impoverished lower classes (Edelman and Arup 25). Slum life impacts greatly on health and education; Indian cities have experienced exponential growth; today there are more than 60 cities with populations greater than one million people, the expansion has resulted in growth of unplanned localities with a high numbers of the poor in slums. Dharabi is one of the major slum settlements which exist just outside the city of Mumbai where some of the millions of middle class Indians live in superlative luxury as compared to the abject poverty experienced by the “slumdogs” (Cash). This paper discourses on the slum dwelling Indian population which is the embodiment of the underlying problem of extreme poverty characterized by a high level of insecurity and deprivation of social amenities such as health and social welfare in a background of the affluent upper and middle classes that ironically comprise some of the world’s wealthiest individuals. An explosion of population in India was kick-started after the infamous influenza epidemic between 1918 and 1919 (Murray et al 2115), the subsequent decades were characterized by a steady growth rate up to the 1961 census after which it seemed to level off. Retrospectively, India’s population, precluding territories that are now Pakistan and Bangladesh was slightly over quarter a billion people, by the time of its independence in 1947, this had risen to around 340 million. Between the 1981 and the 2001 census the population doubled making it only second to china in population density globally (Dyson 345). Today, there has been a notable drop in the birth rate, however a drop in the death rate owing to improvements in the health sector is considered to be the main reason for the current rise in population density. The fail of the monsoon rain in 1965 was one of the landmark events that pitted the population of India against its food security and the new Prime Minister Indira Gandhi appealed to the US for food AID. While the US had food, President Lyndon Jonson was reluctant at first and insisted that India must take steps to curb their population growth, a condition the prime minister acquiescence to. It was however argued by future leaders like Jawalhal Nehru that the problem in India was not overpopulation but underproduction, to this end capital intensive agriculture was effected and the problem of population appeared to have been solved by increasing the level of food production. In the 70’s Mrs. Gandhi used population control as the main way of bringing about economic development and her government declared a state of emergency suspending the constitution to adopt an integrated approach to family planning (Blair 234). Incentive were used to encourage people to submit to sterilization and numerous and a sterilization certificate was made a requirement for numerous resources including land allocation for slum dwellers. While these methods worked, they were opposed for being in breach of human rights especially since there were allegations of youths being forced into sterilization camps. After Gandhi’s government lost the election in 1977, the government sponsored family planning measures fell out of favor with the people and once again the issue of whether India was over populated or underproductive emerged (Blair 237). From this perspective, the attention has once again shifted more to the production and less to population; today the primary concern is how to produce enough resources to provide enough resources for a population that is expected to keep growing and possible be the largest in the world by the end of the next 3 decades. In India, living alongside some of the world’s richest people are those in the lowest end of the economic spectrum; over 25% of the urban population in India live in slums under conditions of extreme poverty and which are considered unfit for human habitation (Cash). Every day, thousands arrive from rural areas with the hopes of making a life for themselves in the city but most ends up becoming desperate and get entrapped in the helplessness and desperation. The slums are characterized with open sewerage; polluted water lack of healthcare and the resident are plagued with diseases such as HIV tuberculosis; it is approximated that only 47.2 per cent of the urban poor can access sufficient sanitation facilities while over 95.5% of the non-poor middle class have them (Chaplin 58). Many of them resort to begging prostitution and an assortment of social vices which makes their lives increasingly harder and more desperate with every passing day. When they are too sick or old to work, there is no social security to help them and majority simply waste away in their shanty housed and die from ill health and in some cases starvation. Ironically the net worth of India’s billionaire community is estimated to have soured over 12-fold in the last 15 years and estimates by the IMF indicate that their wealth is enough to eliminate the poverty twice over. That one of the richest men in the world Mukesh Ambani who was worth $43 billion in 2008, (Koybaeva 161) is evidence of the chasm that lies between the poor slum dwellers and the upper classes in the same country. It is estimated that the wealth held that has been amassed by India’s billionaire class is enough to solve the poverty issue without external donors or even government contribution. Other tycoons such as Lakshim N, Azim Premji and Pallonji Mistry are among the members of the billionaires club and some parts of India such as the western province of Maharashtra is home to some of the wealthiest people in India. All this wealth is framed on the backdrop of some of the world’s poorest and destitute people living in slums that are frequently without water power or sanitation. Many of the slum dwellers are being evicted as their “homes” are demolished by huge corporates as they strive to extend their empires and putting up modern mansions and sky scrapers (Milbert 300). The population of India stands at around 1.2 billion people, 170 million of these are estimated to be slum dwellers, this means that it is home to 63% of Asia’s and 17% of the world’s slum dwelling communities (“Homeless Facts”). This statistics are sobering given that life in slums as aforementioned is extremely difficult with majority of this living at below 1 dollar a day, without a constant source of food housing or even a guarantee of shelter. Living in slums has a great impact on the education and social potential of millions of Indians most of whom remain trapped in a never ending vicious cycle of poverty and ill health. For a slum to be recognized for even the most basic services by the government, it needs must be notified which is like a process of formal registration, however the process in long and complex and often only occurs on during campaigns as governments try to convert slums into vote banks. Nevertheless even when they are notified they are not immune to the spates of evictions that are a common occurrence in the country. This is especially frequent in big cities that are quickly industrializing as slums are pulled down to make way for developments which can be either infrastructural or private projects. Although the law requires that residents are consulted before such an action, this is rare the slums are often just flattened by bulldozers and the residents are driven away often without allowing them a chance to rescue their meager property. Even those that are lucky enough to be relocating formally are not really that lucky since in most cases they are moved to areas as far away as 30 kilometers from the original settlement (Cash). This presents a serious problem since majority of these are hired as laborious in the towns and moving them to far away villages means they have not means to earn a living and they end up making their way back to the city to eke out a living in a new slum. The congestion of people in tiny spaces as well as the acute scarcity of resources invariably leads to a higher than average crime rate, as result the state of insecurity in the slum areas is extremely high with cases of armed robbery and rape being so common that only a few bother report them to the police. The only time the poor in the slums will encounter laws enforcement officers is when they are being visited by a government dignitary or being evicted which is all too common an event. By keeping the slum dwellers in a state of perpetual worry about their security, or lack of it, the affluent can significantly increase their safety since the security organs are always at their beck and call generally neglecting the slum dwellers. The Gap between the affluent and impoverished is so wide in many cases one will have a hard time reconciling themselves to the fact that these people live in the same country, the poor slum dwellers often have no access to the most basic amenities and majority of them can hardly manage to eke out a meal a day. Their houses are made out of crude material mostly iron sheets discarded from the industrial centers and without a drainage system or adequate sanitation, many of them are forced to relive themselves in the open even further increasing the health hazards and exposing themselves and their children to waterborne diseases. Surprisingly, the police are alleged to be a leading cause of insecurity for slum dwellers since they extort and harass them in myriad ways. For example when they want to build a toilet, a window a door or make any change to the structures in which they live, they must bribe the offices. Refusal to do this often leads in imprisonment on trumped up charges for which the poor have no defense since they lack both understanding and the means with which to navigate the murky judicial system so often used to oppress them. In a glaring contrast, the middle and upper classes live in multimillion dollar houses drive some of the world’s most expensive cars and take their children to the best universities in the country and world. The affluent are however not spared the crime which many view as a reaction by the poor to their inferior circumstances and in some cases necessity given that many of the slum dwellers have no other means of making a living apart from criminal activities. The sense of insecurity appears to haunt the well to do as is evinced by the construction of high boundary wall, electric fences and round the clock private security guards in eh areas they inhabit to protect themselves from incursion of undesirables. These measures are to a large extent motivated by the fact that the police who are supposed to provide public security often show neither sincerity nor diligence when dealing with criminal and in some cases they are in cohorts with them. China Declared a month of celebration when the population hit the 1 billion mark in 1980, however, even as they were celebrating the leaders were well aware that their rapidly growing power of the global arena was not exclusively a result of their high numbers (Chen and Adrienne 578). The country put a great deal of emphasize on birth control through one child one family policies as well as popularizing abortion and imposing penalties for those who broke the set policies. Without the many strict and to some extent draconian measures, it is possible that the Chines population would be easily headed for the 3 billion mark today. India on the other hand appears to have neglected their emphasis on population control and it is approximated that around 20 million children are born each year. While policy makes choose to focus on the economic growth that has India ranked among the top 10 biggest economies in the world, the reality for millions of slum dwellers gradually worsen. Comparing the statistic on the GDP with the reality of destitution substantially diminishes the former and the nations, which are currently considered a middle-income economy, may end up regressing to a third world one under the weight to the high poverty levels. While the Indian government receives over $200 million dollars for family planning and the federal government allocates twice the amount, little progress is being achieved (Gupte 1). This is because there is an absence of a serious structure through which family planning can be affected especially with the negative associations from the 70s where family planning by the government was highly controversial and was one of the factors that cost Mrs. Gandhi the 1977 elections. Apparently governments find it easier to keep the money unused and preach underproduction as the main challenge rather than risk offending the poor who the family planning efforts would effect since before anything else, the numerous poor are vote banks. The situation in India is however only unique in terms of numerical supremacy, millions of poor in the world today live in slums and to a significant extent they have contributed to the social and economic problems of the 21st century. In despite the fact that India is one of the leading industrial powerhouses and ranked only second after the US in manufacturing computers, it per capita income remains very low because of the high number of destitute. The government is forced to spend a lot of money and resources in the attempts to rehabilitate the slums and build modern housing a process that often takes time and results in conflict even from the very people targeted in this benevolence. The growing population of slum dwellers has little access to education health and family planning or indeed any social amenity. Consequently, they are likely to increase the burden on the state in dealing with ill health unemployment and ultimately high crime rate in posterity. The inequality is underlined by the fact that the number of billionaires in the same country is growing at a remarkable rate, this can be attributed in part to the fact that India is a highly stratified society in terms of social class and given that most of the poor are in the lower castes, the situation is generally accepted by many in the public who view this as the norm. At the end of the day, the government must come to terms with the fact that under production and overproduction are both serious issue and not mutually exclusive, so pursuing one does not preclude them from the responsibly of addressing the other. The Indian people need to be provided with family planning information and resources as long as it is done in accordance to the human rights and with respect to their individual autonomy. Therefore as the country works at becoming more productive in the industrial front it can also benefit from a slowly growing population that can be provided for and the per capital will inevitably improve reducing and hopefully in the not too distant future eliminating entirely the problem of destitution and slum dwelling. Works Cited “Homeless Facts at". Slumdogs.org. 2014. Web. 11 June 2014 Blair, Harry W. "Mrs. Gandhi‟ s Emergency, The Indian Elections of 1977, Pluralism and Marxism: Problems with Paradigms." Modern Asian Studies 14.2 (1980): 237-271. Cash Bill. “Plight of the real slumdogs”. The Guardian. 2009. Web. 11 June 2014 Chaplin, Susan E. “Indian cities, sanitation and the state: the politics of the failure to provide” International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).2011. 57 Vol 23(1): 57–70. Chen, Pi-chao, and Adrienne Kols. "Population and birth planning in the Peoples Republic of China." Population Reports. Series J: Family Planning Programs 25 (1982): 577-619. Dyson, Tim. "The preliminary demography of the 2001 census of India."Population and Development Review 27.2 (2001): 341-356. Edelman, Brent, and Arup Mitra. "SLUM DWELLERSACCESS TO BASIC AMENITIES: THE ROLE OF POLITICAL CONTACT, ITS DETERMINANTS AND ADVERSE EFFECTS." Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies 18.1 (2006): 25-40. Gupte, Pranay. "Indias Population Breaks through the 1 Billion Mark but thats Nothing to Brag about; when Bigger Isnt Better." Newsweek Aug 16 1999: 2. ProQuest. Web. 10 June 2014 . Koybaeva, Taira. "Including the Global Context: Enlarging Our Horizons through Cultural Training." Business Administration Education: Changes in Management and Leadership Strategies (2012): 161. Milbert, Isabelle. "Slums, slum dwellers and multilevel governance." The European Journal of Development Research 18.2 (2006): 299-318. Murray, Christopher JL, et al. 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