Assessment of wellbeing of slum communities post-implementation of slum development schemes

Abstract

The recent history of slums in India is full of bureaucratic ignorance, improper planning, insufficient political will power and inadequate measures to control the ever growing issue. Rapid pace of urbanization in recent years has led to a tremendous housing deficit in India. The excess population, which come to city in search of job opportunities, generally, cannot afford the formal housing in its current state. The extra pressure due to rural to urban migration on cities is absorbed by the slums. But these slums do not provide the minimum standard of living and hence, there have been numerous attempts to solve the problems of slums. But to solve this problem, it is very important to first understand it holistically, rather than just quantitatively, and to look into certain qualitative aspects of life of the dwellers. The current development schemes for slums focus on either rehabilitation of dwellers into low cost government housing or providing them with land pattas. Both these approaches have their merits but a comparative study of the two in context of Bhopal city needs to be performed to evaluate their performances. The requirements and aspirations of the dwellers need to be understood before proposing development schemes. Many experts throughout the latter half of the 20th century worked around the world to look for possible solutions to this global issue. But as the pioneer of this field, John FC Turner rightly pointed out, that the people are the solution. Giving them the freedom to build on their own and supporting them with proper infrastructure and finance will reduce the impact of this problem. Slums, up till a certain degree, can provide solution for affordable housing crisis. But to achieve this goal, a thorough contextual study of slums on the social structure and intangible aspects should be performed. The slum rehabilitation approach in India has become a common practice as a method of slum development. This study is important to avoid making them vertical slums of future. This thesis is aimed at establishing a diminished level of satisfaction in the rehabilitated communities to people living in slums and to find the causes for it. The findings will shed light on the ground reality and gives insight into the life of slum dwellers to help in improving the process of slum rehabilitation and development. In this research, certain indicators of subjective well-being are identified and data is collected on them in two areas; a notified slum and a government rehabilitation scheme in Bhopal. The comparison of the data is intended to give a clear picture of existing gaps in the ground scenario of slum development schemes.