Stunned by state figures, Centre for own slum survey

Patna has only five per cent slums, Lucknow none at all. Mumbai, arguably the slum capital of the country thanks to sheer numbers who flock ...

Patna has only five per cent slums, Lucknow none at all. Mumbai, arguably the slum capital of the country thanks to sheer numbers who flock there in search of a livelihood, has only 32 per cent slums.

These are the “facts” the Centre has come across while trying to improve the living conditions of the urban poor through slum resettlement — a key element of the UPA Government’s ambitious Urban Renewal Mission.

The Ministry of Urban Poverty Alleviation — one of the Central implementing agencies — has discovered there is no specific data on slum

settlement in cities. It has also found that statistics on poverty levels, supplied mostly by states, tend to be distorted. They are either inflated to win more Central funds or reduced, as in the case of urban poverty, to dodge urban reform packages that involve land reform and resettlement of urban poor.

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Bihar made a surprising claim of just 5 per cent slum settlement in Patna during a recent meeting on the Urban Renewal Mission. Lucknow and Mumbai were also guilty of underrepresenting how many slums they have.

Faced with these numbers, which make it difficult to implement the reform package the Renewal Plan contains, the Urban Poverty Ministry has opted to commission its own slum survey. “Deprivation”, not “poverty” alone, will be a parameter for determining living conditions.

The Ministry is unhappy with the calorie-intake measure of poverty that the Planning Commission follows to earmark funds for the BPL (below-poverty-level) population.

“It does not always reflect the right figure or the ground situation. Sometimes people declare less to avail of government schemes. In other cases, we found that people with higher income continue to live in slums (in prime city localities),” officials said.

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A seven-point deprivation scale has thus been formulated. This will take into account land tenure (of the slums), affordable housing, water, sanitation and health, education and social security indicators.

The Ministry has roped in the Registrar-General of India to conduct the Rs 10-crore survey to map the slum settlements across the country. All urban settlements with over 20,000 people would be included.

“We need specific details of where and how to implement the mission. There is no recent data available for us to work on,” Minister of State for Urban Poverty Alleviation, Kumari Selja, says.