The UPA government has decided to embark on a rather ambitious project for eradicating urban slums in India in the next 5 years. They have decided to launch the Rajiv Awas Yojana a pilot project for providing affordable housing for the urban poor. The newspaper reports have already talked of how it is rather impossible to achieve this particular objective given that the urban housing shortage is estimated to be around 25 million units with 98% of it being in the low income and economically weaker strata of society.

There is in fact an underlying economic logic which makes the elimination of slums in urban areas a rather difficult proposition. Economists believe that the main factor responsible for the creation of urban slum dwellings is the urban-rural divide. The industrial wages and urban standard of living on the average is considered to be much better than those in rural areas. As a result there is an incentive for some rural workers to migrate to the urban areas looking for higher wages. There is hence a natural exodus from rural parts to urban centers. And this is where the problems begin.

A rural laborer would migrate to urban areas in search of dream jobs having heard of others who have migrated before him. Given that there would a number of such like-minded souls; jobs in the formal sector are hard to come by. He weighs his options and decides that it might be worthwhile to still wait for a job in the formal sector and in the meanwhile work in the informal sector (selling food for instance in makeshift shops or carts on the roadside). Getting work as domestic help in India becomes an easy option for some of them. These rural migrants must find a temporary dwelling as well and thus urban slums come to thrive in India.

Urban slums become a social challenge. There is pressure on the government to improve infrastructure and remove these slums from the middle of cities like Delhi or Mumbai. So what could they possibly do?
One option is that they improve the infrastructure in the urban areas, create more jobs to absorb this labor force in urban areas etc. These well-intentioned policies however in the absence of some supporting policies serve to only enhance the problem. By improving the urban infrastructure and creating more urban jobs, the government would be increasing the incentive for more rural to urban migration. The urban attractiveness tends to increase and people who may earlier have been on the fence and undecided now start to migrate. Additionally given the spate of suicides in the rural areas many a landless laborer would get attracted by the promise of an urban job.

Consequently we see that if the urban absorption rate increases, migration into urban areas would also increase and therefore urban slums would not only continue to survive but also grow rather rapidly. This is what leads to urban decay as predicted by Jay Forrester in his Urban Dynamics of the seventies. In fact the decay tends to accelerate if the urban attractiveness is gradually increased. The only way out then seems to be to stem the flow of migrants from rural areas into the urban ones. And to do this we must increase the incentive for people to remain within the rural areas. Policies with a rural focus then are in order.

But that’s what the economist orders. I personally think that it’s more than just the difference in wages and standard of living. It’s also to do with the psyche of people. We have created this glamorous image of urban living as against rural living. There have been countless movies and books telling the tale of a rural youth dreaming of making it big in life and the key to that dream being in his movement to the urban areas. True, opportunities in the rural areas for development have been rather limited, but then with inclusive growth having figured high on the government agenda since time immemorial it its only to be hoped that not only will we be able to create a better standard of living in the rural areas but also improve the image we associate with the word “rural”.

Therefore, the real panacea to prevent urban decay and avoid creation of slums is to carry out rural improvement plans. The need is to usher in a second green revolution, improve rural infrastructure, bring in electricity to the as yet unreached areas, and make education available to the rural folk as well as other civil amenities like drinking water and proper sanitation. If the attractiveness of the rural villages improves there might very well be a reverse migration of the urban have-nots to the rural areas to become the rural-haves.

On another note, I wonder if it’s possible to ever be totally rid of an “urban slum”. It’s akin to saying we would want to be rid of poverty. Unfortunately, there will always be relative poverty no matter what the standard of living of the poorest in the nation. Maybe then, it’s impossible to rid the urban areas of “slums” so to speak, and all that can probably be done then is to give them a face-lift.

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