A slum is a heavily populated urban informal settlement characterized by substandard housing and squalor. While slums differ in size and other characteristics from country to country, most lack reliable sanitation services, supply of clean water, reliable electricity, timely law enforcement and other basic services. Slum residences vary from shanty to poorly built, deteriorated buildings.
Poverty:-
Urban poverty encourages the formation and demand for slums. In past, rural areas were typically thought of regions of poverty. With rapid shift from rural to urban life, poverty is migrating to urban areas. The urban poor arrives with hope, and very little of anything else. He or she typically has no access to shelter, basic urban services and social amenities. Slums are often the only option for the urban poor. The incidence rate of slums is strongly correlated to poverty, insufficient social and economic development. The richer the country, the lower is the incidence of slums and, on the contrary, the higher the magnitude of slums in the country the lower is the gross national income (GNI) of that country.
Poor infrastructure, social exclusion and economic stagnation :
Social exclusion and poor infrastructure forces the poor to adapt to conditions beyond his or her control. Poor families that cannot afford transportation, or those who simply lack any form of affordable public transportation, generally end up in squat settlements within walking distance or close enough to the place of their formal or informal employment.
A growing economy that creates jobs at rate faster than population growth, offers people opportunities and incentive to relocate from poor slum to more developed neighborhoods. Economic stagnation, in contrast, creates uncertainties and risks for the poor, encouraging people to stay in the slums. Economic stagnation in a nation with a growing population reduces per ca pita disposal income in urban and rural areas, increasing urban and rural poverty. Rising rural poverty also encourages migration to urban areas. A poorly performing economy, in other words, increases poverty and rural-to-urban migration, thereby increasing slums.
Disease :
Slums have very high population densities, non-existent to poor sanitation facilities, typically no health care, and unreliable public services. Diseases start and spread quickly in slums.
Slums also report abnormally high rates of burns to women from kitchen fires, secondary complications and deaths. Emergency ambulance service and urgent care is typically unavailable in slums.
Education :
Children living in the slums have little or no education as they are not known to the Government as Goan. The local schools will not accept these children and they have to rely on outside charities and organisations to help school them. Any child from the slums who is accepted into school will often choose to work for money instead of attending. Some charities such as Children 's Walking reward slum children’s school attendance with daily meals and points schemes where they can buy clothes, toys or stationary etc.
Slum upgrading :
Governments have begun to approach slums as a possible opportunity to urban development by slum upgrading. The approach seeks to upgrade the slum with basic infrastructure such as sanitation, safe drinking water, safe electricity distribution, paved roads, rain water drainage system, and bus/metro stops. if slums are given basic services and tenure security - that is, the slum will not be destroyed and slum residents will not be evicted.
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