Essay About Slum

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

A slum is a compact area of 60-70% of the households having poorly congested rooms with inadequate infrastructure, lack of proper sanitation and drinking water facilities (Slum Survey, 2001). Slum includes dwellings which on account of overcrowding and lack of ventilation are detrimental to the safety, health and social morale (Census of India, 1961). India is a developing economy and slum population is growing at an alarming rate. It is now reported that one third of the total slum population lives in cities like Kanpur, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Nagpur, Chennai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad etc. In India, cities with million plus population nearly have one fourth of their population living in slums (Census, 2011). Slums have become an inevitable part of the major Indian metropolitan cities. Water is one of the most important natural resources and is the essence of life on earth. The availability of safe water and adequate sanitation is critical not merely for health reasons, but also

Unlike in rural settings where young children are allowed to defecate in the yard or on land surrounding the household, in urban slums, the lack of improved sanitation leaves parents with limited options for disposal of children’s faeces, which are, in turn, left in common alleyways or drainage ditches. A number of researchers have documented that inadequate access to sanitation compels slum residents to use unhygienic pit latrines, polythene bags or discharging into nearby open storm drains, creating significant disease-related hazards and environmental pollution. Pollution loads from slum areas are closely associated with settlement density, number of people using each pit, and geological conditions,and have high potential to cause eutrophication of downstream water sources(Isunju et al.,