WE live at a time when over half the world’s population resides in cities. Across developing countries, cities are experiencing high growth and over 90 per cent of world urban growth is occurring in the developing countries. Over the next 20 years, nearly two billion new urban residents are expected, and the urban population of the world’s two poorest regions – South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa – is likely to be double the present size.¹ Urbanization contributes to sustained economic growth which is critical to poverty reduction. The economies of scale and agglomeration in cities attract investors and entrepreneurs that boost overall economic growth.²

At the same time, cities also provide opportunities of income generation and hope for a better livelihood to many, especially the poor. Urban growth is attributed to both natural population growth, and rural to urban migration. Many of those who migrate to cities benefit from such opportunities in urban areas, while others, often those with low skill levels, may be left behind and find themselves struggling with the day to day challenges of life.

Thus, rapid urbanization has been accompanied by a rise in urban poverty, especially in developing countries. Urban poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon.³ The urban poor live with many deprivations and challenges – limited access to employment and income opportunities, inadequate and insecure housing and services, violent and unhealthy environments, little or no social protection mechanisms, and limited access to adequate health and education opportunities. However, urban poverty is not just a collection of characteristics; it is also a dynamic condition of vulnerability or susceptibility to risk. Different conditions of poverty are experienced by the poor at different stages of their life cycle.

Most of the urban poor live in slums or slum-like settlements. The United Nations (UN) characterizes slums as those sharing one or more of the following features: (i) poor structural quality and durability of housing; (ii) insufficient living areas; (iii) more than three people sharing a room (iv) lack of secure tenure; (v) poor access to water; and (vi) lack of sanitation facilities. Slums also create social and health problems, such as disease, malnutrition, crime, violence, child labour and street children. In fact, a growing slum population with rapid urbanization is a major global concern and one of the targets of the Millennium Development Goals (goal 7, target 11): ‘By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.’

 

The above context is important to remember because even though one-fourth of the total area of Delhi is officially recognized as rural, as many as 97.5 per cent of its population stays in urban areas as per the 2011 Census. Thus when we talk about people in Delhi, we actually refer to those staying in urban areas, except for a tiny share of 2.5 per cent who live in the rural parts of the state. Therefore, all the characteristics and challenges related to urban growth are relevant for Delhi as a whole. To be more precise, urban poverty and deprivation is very much a part of Delhi’s urbanization story. If we want to objectively understand the situation of the poor and underprivileged in Delhi, we first need to understand who these people are and how to identify them.

* Are they the ones located below the poverty line (BPL) benchmark as defined by the government? However, this is a dynamic phenomenon and households keep moving in and out of poverty line thresholds. So far there is no efficient and dynamic mechanism in place to identify and update households as per BPL criteria on a regular basis. Also, at any point in time, all households that qualify as poor as per the BPL criteria, need not necessarily have BPL cards.

* Are they the ones who stay in the slums in urban areas, since Delhi is 98 per cent urban? Many urban development and renewal programmes of the government use this criterion to identify the urban poor. However, there are households located in clusters that are smaller than officially defined criteria of slums and are more mobile in nature. Are they not part of the urban poor?

* There is also a relatively small set of households identified as ‘houseless’. Are they already covered in one of the above definitions of poor?

All the three criteria of identifying the poor are not mutually exclusive and often overlap one another. Therefore, let us first understand the number of ‘poor’ or ‘underprivileged’ in Delhi along with their basic demographic characteristics in terms of each of the above three definitions.

 

Poverty Approach: Poverty is synonymous with poor quality of life, deprivation, malnutrition, low literacy and low human resource development. In India, poverty eradication has been an integral component of the strategy for economic development.⁴ In India, the Planning Commission has estimated the incidence of poverty at the national and state levels using the methodology formulated by different expert groups and applied it to consumption expenditure data from the large sample surveys on consumer expenditure conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) at five-year intervals. The latest poverty estimates in India are available for the year 2011-12.

The population in Delhi was 16.75 million, as per the 2011 Census. According to official poverty estimates calculated on the basis of the Tendulkar Committee method, 9.8% people in urban Delhi and 12.9% people in rural Delhi were below the poverty line in 2011-12 (Table I). Following protests, another committee under the leadership of C. Rangarajan was formed by the Planning Commission to review the existing methodology and its report was published in June 2014.⁵ Based on the new report, the poverty line in Delhi implies a monthly per capita consumption expenditure of Rs 1,492 in rural areas and Rs 1,538 in urban areas at 2011-12 prices.

The report stresses that this expenditure limit needs to be seen in the context of public expenditure that is being incurred in areas like education, health and food security. The actual ‘well-being’ of a household is thus higher than what is indicated by the poverty line. Using this new threshold, 15.7% people in urban Delhi and 11.9% people in rural Delhi were estimated to be living below the poverty line in 2011-12. Thus the share of BPL population in Delhi is estimated to be much higher than if calculated by the earlier method. Even at the all India level, share of BPL population in 2011-12 is estimated to be 29.5%, which is much higher than the earlier estimate of 21.9% for the same year as per the Tendulkar Committee report.

 

Urban Slum Approach: In India, statistics on urban slums are available from two government agencies – the Census Office and the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). However, these two agencies have recently come up with different sets of estimates of India’s slum population. According to Census of India, the figure for India’s slum dwellers was 6.5 crore in 2011. On the contrary, the NSSO report⁶ indicated that the urban slum population was just 4.4 crore in 2012. The difference between the two estimates is a huge 2.1 crore people. This is all the more confusing because the census slum count itself was seen as an underestimate since it had not taken into account slums in 3,894 newly defined urban areas called census towns in 2011.

This led to questions on NSSO’s sampling method used to estimate slum households. But the NSSO strongly defended its methodology, stating that while counting the ‘notified slums’, its estimate of about 50 lakh households was ‘very close’ to the Census estimate of 56 lakh. In fact, according to the NSSO, it is the ‘subjectivity of concepts used in the definition of non-notified slums’ that has led to the difference. The NSSO’s method of counting slums was supposed to be superior to that of the Census since the NSSO took into account smaller slums with as few as 20 households while the Census only counted slums with a minimum of 60-70 households. After large-scale slum clearance in the past few years, such small slums have persisted and spread. The thresholds are, of course, a matter of concern not just for exclusion of households within cities but also exclusion of entire cities and towns that report having no slums. The lower threshold of 20 households in the definition of a slum would also allow us to see the possible emergence of a new spatial form of urban poverty that is not limited to or bound by the ‘slum’ as defined and measured in this Census, but is far more fragmented, mobile and temporary.⁷

Definition of a slum (NSSO): NSSO covers two types of slums – notified and non-notified. Notified slums are areas notified as slums by the concerned municipalities, corporations, local bodies or development authorities. Moreover, any compact settlement with a collection of poorly built tenements, mostly of a temporary nature, crowded together, usually with inadequate sanitary and drinking water facilities in unhygienic conditions, was considered a slum by the survey, provided at least 20 house-holds lived there. Such a settlement, if not a notified slum, was called a non-notified slum. While a non-notified slum had to consist of at least 20 households, no such restriction was imposed in case of notified slums.

 

Definition of slum (Census 2011): Census of India defines slums as those areas that meet any of the following three conditions: (i) All areas in a town or city notified as ‘slum’ by the state, Union Territories administration or local government under any act including a ‘Slum Act’ may be considered as notified slums. (ii) All areas recognized as a ‘slum’ by the state, Union Territories administration or local government, housing and slum boards, which may not have been formally notified as slum under any act may be considered as recognized slums. (iii) A compact area of at least 300 population or about 60-70 households of poorly built congested tenements, in unhygienic environment usually with inadequate infrastructure and lacking in proper sanitary and drinking water facilities. Such areas should be identified personally by the Charge Officer and also inspected by an officer nominated by Directorate of Census Operations. Such areas may be considered as identified slums.

 

During the 65th round of NSSO survey on urban slums in India, conducted in 2008-09, 53 slums in Delhi were sampled and surveyed of which 18 were notified and 35 were non-notified. According to the report,⁸ there were 1,058 notified slums and 2,075 non-notified slums in Delhi in 2008-09. At the all India level, about 49 thousand slums were estimated to be in existence in urban areas in 2008-09.

It is important to mention here that slums in Delhi were not properly captured in the sample design of the latest round of NSSO survey on urban slums in India⁹ even though the city is supposed to be home to 3% of the country’s total slum population. This round of survey, conducted during July to August 2012, covered only twelve major states with the number of slums surveyed in each of these states being greater than or equal to 20, which includes states such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. However, no notified slum and only 12 non-notified slums were surveyed in case of Delhi.

According to the Census of India, of the total slum population in India around 2.7% was accounted for by Delhi in the year 2011. Of the total population in Delhi, 11% lived in slums (Table II). Delhi slum population was estimated to be 1.8 million in 2011, of which around 13% were children below seven years of age. A little more than one third (35%) of the Delhi slum dwellers were workers.

Houseless Population: It was found that extreme poverty in rural India caused many people to leave their homes and migrate to cities. However, in recent times, the nature of migration has also changed with poverty induced migration becoming a less important component of mobility over time.¹⁰ The decline in the share of migrants moving in search of employment and an increase in business and study-related mobility further confirms the proposition. Poor and unskilled male labourers find it difficult to gain a foothold in urban centres, which are less hospitable and accommodating to the poor, restricting their entry and thereby increasing economic rural-urban economic inequality. Many a times, unable to cope with the migratory shift, they end up becoming homeless. Natural disasters also act as a trigger for migration to urban centres as a survival strategy.¹¹ Even though there has been a declining trend in housing shortage, the presence of homeless on the streets of Delhi and the sizeable population living in slums and other poor settlements reflects both inequality and loss of human dignity.

 

The latest statistics on the houseless population and households in India is provided by the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, who define houseless households as ‘Households which do not live in buildings or Census houses, but live in the open or roadside, pavements, in humepipes, under flyovers and staircases, or in the open in places of worship, mandaps, railway platforms, etc.’ On the basis of share of houseless to total population, Delhi is ranked fourth among all Indian states and Union Territories.

As per the Census of India, 0.28% of the total population of Delhi was houseless in the year 2011, which represents a considerable increase from 0.18% in 2001. In absolute numbers, total houseless population of Delhi was 0.05 million, which accounts for 2.7% of the total houseless population in India (Table III). Given that Delhi is largely urban, its houseless population also comes entirely from urban areas. Almost three-fourth (73.4%) of them are part of the work-force, which is significantly higher than the national level average workforce participation rate of 51.9% among the houseless population.

It is important to note that a majority of Delhi’s houseless population (80.4%) comprises of males. Houseless population in India has seen a decline of 8.8% to 1.8 million between 2001 and 2011. The fall came entirely from rural India where house-less population reduced by 28.4%. In contrast, the urban houseless population grew by 20.5% to 0.9 million. Delhi’s houseless population also rose at a much faster rate than its total population. While the total population grew at 1.9% annually, the growth of the houseless population was much higher at 6.5% per annum.

 

One important objective of development planning in India has been to generate employment opportunities, not only to meet the unemployment backlog but also for new additions to the labour force.¹² It has been noticed that poverty and employment are interlinked; the poor cannot afford to remain unemployed. In case of Delhi, it is observed that even though the size of the formal sector is very large as compared to the country as a whole, most employment created is informal in nature. About two-thirds of the workers in the formal sector are informal workers, implying an increasing informalization of the formal sector.¹³

 

For purpose of analysis, let us consider a somewhat broader definition of the so-called ‘poor’ as compared to that set by poverty criteria in Delhi and consider the bottom 20% households in Delhi on the basis of monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) to be underprivileged and look at their employment situation using all India representative large sample surveys such as NSSO. It was observed that during 2011-12, around 23% employment in Delhi was from the bottom 20% households (Table IV), while 16% employment was from the top quintile. Around 41% casual labourers and 30% working as helpers in household enterprises in Delhi were from the bottom quintile, whereas the share of same categories of workers from the top quintile was 1% and 9% respectively. Again, it was observed that during 2011-12, of the total poor workers in Delhi, two-third had studied till elementary school or below, with 21% being illiterates (Table V). Only 5% of the workers with graduation and above education levels fell in the ‘poor’ category while as many as 74% of such workers were rich.

If we compare Delhi’s poor and rich in terms of unemployment there is a significant bias in favour of the rich. In 2011-12, the bottom 20% households had an unemployment rate of 7%, as opposed to 1.8% among the top 20% (Figure 1). Unemployment rate for Delhi as a whole was 3.8% during the same year.

Inequality in access to services, housing, land, education, healthcare, and employment opportunity can have socio-economic, environmental and political repercussions. In cities, where modern cosmopolitan zones can be found within a short distance from slums income inequality is particularly stark.¹⁴ In many countries, the gini coefficient within urban areas is substantially higher than in rural areas where standards of living are more homogeneous. Inequality also appears to increase with city size, though this has not been widely tested.

Inequality in earnings in India has doubled over the last two decades, making it the worst performer on this count of all emerging economies. The labour market in Delhi exhibits vulnerability in terms of low coverage of social protection and a high level of inequality in the levels of living and earnings. Due to lack of adequate sample sizes with respect to data on wages and income for the bottom 20% households in Delhi in NSSO’s latest round of survey on employment situation in India, it was not possible to provide a numerical estimate of the level wage rates among the poor in Delhi.

On the basis of NSSO’s latest survey on consumption expenditure of households in India, if we compare average per capita monthly expenditure, it is found that the top quintile in Delhi spent six times more than that spent by the bottom quintile or the poor in 2011-12 (Table VI). The difference in MPCE between the top and bottom quintile of households has increased by more than a thousand rupees in real terms in Delhi between the years 2004-05 and 2011-12, whereas a similar increase in case of all India is around Rs 500. This clearly reflects that inequality between the poor and the rich has widened, both at the all India level as well as in Delhi over the last seven years.

However, what is alarming is that Delhi’s inequality has increased at a relatively faster rate. There is very little change in spending propensity of Delhi’s poor, with an increase of only Rs 163 in MPCE among the poor in Delhi between these two years. There is evidence of growing concentration of wealth among the elite. The consumption of the top 20% of households grew at a faster rate than that of the bottom 20% during the 2000s.

 

Statistics related to status of access of various basic amenities and services by the poor in Delhi is mostly available with respect to the urban slums. However, it is not essential that all the poor in Delhi only live in urban slums, although this is true for a majority. Even though such statistics are available from both NSSO surveys as well as the Census, the latest set of numbers for Delhi is available from the Census for the year 2011. This is because of under-coverage of slums in Delhi by NSSO in its latest round of surveys conducted in 2011-12. However, while using Census numbers we need to keep in mind that arguably a large proportion of slums with less than 60 households was left out and thus their access status is not reflected in these numbers.

During 2008-09, the status of access to basic amenities in the notified slums was considerably better than that in non-notified ones. As many as 95% of notified slums and 68% of the non-notified slums in Delhi had a tap as the major source of drinking water. Almost all the notified slums had electricity connections and latrine facility, whereas among the non-notified slums 86% had electricity connections and 89% had latrine facility in their households. Similarly, all the notified slums in Delhi had some kind of garbage disposal arrangement; however, among the non-notified slums, as many as 20% had no arrangement for garbage disposal.

Around 14% of the notified and 77% of the non-notified slums reported that they faced the problem of water-clogging during the monsoon. The proportion of slums having underground drainage or drainage system built with concrete materials was very high in Delhi (89%) among the notified slums, while it was much lower (23%) among the non-notified slums. Of the total slums in Delhi, 59% had a majority of houses with a concrete structure during 2008-09. In contrast, Maharashtra, despite a staggering 17,019 slums (as against 3133 in Delhi), had ensured that 92% of the houses were pucca/concrete structures.

 

As can be observed from the Census data for the year 2011, the state of basic services available to the 0.4 million households living in Delhi slums was unsatisfactory. Delhi slums lag behind average Delhi in terms of access to most basic amenities except electricity (Table VII). While the gap between slum households and the Delhi average in terms of access to bathroom and latrine facilities within their premises is 38 to 40 percentage points, the gap in the availability of water within the premises is 28 percentage points. It is only with regard to access to electricity that slum dwellers are found to be at level with the rest of Delhi because of the achievement of 97% electrification in urban slums of the city in 2011. However, better access to services need not always mean access to better quality services.

If our interest is in the impact of these services on vulnerability faced by the urban poor, we must both nuance the category of ‘access’ as well as insist on considerations of quality of service delivery.¹⁵ Similarly, even though 47% of slum households had treated tap water within their premises, this was often shared across a number of households as opposed to non-slum households where a significant proportion of households had individual connections.¹⁶

In 2011, a high 70% of slum dweller families in Delhi had their own houses. However, 54% of these households lived in a single room accommodation. The phenomenon of one room congested accommodation in slums in the name of a ‘house’ is well known, with many house owners also lacking tenure security. As compared to 32% households for Delhi as a whole, a significantly larger share of 59% slum households lived in houses with single room accommodation.

 

Summing up, whether it is Delhi or any other state in India, there is no single definition of the ‘poor’ or ‘under-privileged’. Poverty or deprivation is a dynamic phenomenon and households keep moving in and out of this state at different stages of their life-cycle. At present there is no official and universally accepted mechanism in place to identify this dynamism and regularly update the list of the so-called ‘poor’ in Delhi. In the absence of a clear-cut definition, while many welfare schemes and urban development schemes designed for the poor take the BPL approach, others target the slum dwellers as their key beneficiaries. In the process, all schemes do not reach those who need them most.

This is reflected in the state of access to basic amenities by the poor in Delhi, which is not at all satisfactory. Even among those with access to amenities such as electricity tap water, among others, the quality and affordability remains a major issue. Many of the resources which are meant for individual household level usage are shared by a number of slum households, thus affecting quality. The non-notified slums in Delhi are worse off in terms of accessibility to such resources. Moreover, increasing income inequality between the rich and poor in Delhi in recent years adds to the challenges faced by the underprivileged.

 

Footnotes:

1. World Bank, Systems of Cities: Harnessing Urbanization for Growth and Poverty Alleviation. World Bank Working Paper, Washington, D.C., 2009.

2. J. Baker, Urban Poverty: A Global View. Urban Papers, Urban Sector Board, World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2008.

3. UNDP, Human Development Report 2010: The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development. Macmillan, New York, 2010.

4. N. Kumar and S.C. Aggarwal, ‘Patterns of Consumption and Poverty in Delhi Slums’, Economic and Political Weekly 38(50), 13 December 2003, pp. 5294-5300.

5. Planning Commission, Report of the Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Measurement of Poverty. Government of India, June 2014.

6. National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), Key Indicators of Urban Slums in India, 69th Round (July-December 2012). Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, December 2013.

7. Gautam Bhan and Arindam Jana, ‘Of Slums or Poverty: Notes of Caution from Census 2011’, Economic and Political Weekly 48(18), 4 May 2013.

8. National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), Some Characteristics of Urban Slums. 65th Round (July 2008-June 2009), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, 2009.

9. NSSO, op. cit., December 2013.

10. A. Kundu and L.R. Saraswati, ‘Migration and Exclusionary Urbanisation in India: A Perspective for Future Urban Strategy’, Economic and Political Weekly 47(26), 30 June 2012, pp. 219-27.

11. Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi, GNCTD and United Nations Development Programme Homeless Survey (2010), New Delhi, 2010.

12. Kumar and Agarwal, op. cit., 2003.

13. Delhi Human Development Report 2013: Improving Lives, Promoting Inclusion. Institute for Human Development and Government of NCT of Delhi. Academic Foundation, 2013.

14. J. Baker, op. cit., 2008.

15. G. Bhan and A. Jana, op. cit., 2013.

16. Centre for Science and Environment, Excreta Matters, Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, 2011.