A study on problems and prospects of slums in India

Slum can be defined as „A residential area where dwellings are unfit for human habitation by reasons of dilapidation, overcrowding, lack of ventilation or sanitation facility and having drinking water facilities in unhygienic conditions‟. So, it is an obvious choice one makes: It is always a better choice to live in cities even if it is a slum than living empty stomachs at their villages. Men easily get into any kind of daily wage labour work. Women get into domestic help or construction works in the cities. The people who live in slums, a large proportion of them are construction labour earning their daily wages from the real estate activity happening across India's large metros. India has really a long way to go to become slum-free. India is good at producing slums because of over population and illiteracy. People are shifting from rural areas to cities and doing small works and settling at slums increasing the slums because they cannot afford at better places. Some people shifting to different states due to unemployment and the companies are offering poor places and even in slums to them. By synthesizing the social and physical constructs, this paper provides a more holistic synthesis of the problem, which can potentially lead to a deeper understanding and, consequently, better approaches for tackling the challenge of slums at the local, national and regional scales.