Housing, Slums and Urban Poverty in North-Western India: Sustainability in Question?

This paper seeks to examine the status of vulnerable sections in Urban India in General and the interlinkage of Housing, Slums and Urban Poverty in particular. It also attempts to focus these issues in the Regional Indian perspective and its comparative position in the northwest region and its states. In the housing condition it explores definition of houseless households, and the houselessness of the vulnerable Scheduled Castes population. The dimension of housing shortage of the vulnerable categories like the economically weaker section, low income groups has also been explored. The description is based on the secondary data, report of the various technical groups and empirical studies. The housing shortage for 2012 at All India level for the vulnerable section is placed at 18.78 million; the ingredients of housing shortage include the non-serviceable Kaccha houses, Obsolescent houses and Congested houses. The major focus on the housing condition is also analysed with respect to the weaker section located in slums in different regions, Northwest Region and its different states. A comparative picture is presented of the acute situation of slums in different regions and their accessibility to the various social amenities. The area of concern of slum dwellers is based on the vulnerability assessment of slums in metropolitan cities like Ludhiana, Faridabad and Srinagar. In the discussion of poverty situation in different regions the sociological dimension of Culture of Poverty, conditions of vulnerability and its perpetuation has been specially examined. Finally, the sustainability issues with respect to the interlinkage of housing, slums and urban poverty have been raised with the possible solutions.