Corruption in Developing countries

Offcourse we have all heard about the rampant corruption in developing countries at lower leves as well as higher. This piece which concentrates on corruption to see the new born baby in Bangalore sheds light on the fact that how corruption affects the poor most and serves as a tax ranging from 7-15% on them.

Public Affairs Center in India has done household surveys and come out with report cards on level of corruption. This and various other factors have helped reduce the corruption level over three years as seen from these report cards in Bangalore according to the article. A very interesting way to look and do things.

Report card on Bangalore

Its pathetic and humiliating that a mother or a new born has to pay $11 (in case of a boy) and $7 (in case of a girl) to see the face of her newborn. Absoultely disgusting ..

How to deal with corruption, specially the one rampant in day-to-day life. Sunil had a series related to this here.

Counting people

Most of us have many different ideas or models or beliefs of how India should develop. Most of us will agree on some things (clean water, clean air, sanitation, paved roads, electricity, schooling for all), but might differ on whether you need more or less flyovers, more or less public transport, more or less state intervention in various areas…the list is endless.

We also have different various ideas on India’s population (how can this large population be made an asset to the nation? How can population growth be reduced? Do we need to reduce it, and if so, by how much? What should the government do? Do we compare ourselves with China?). Another endless list of possibilities.

People, and their worth.

Ashwin Mahesh has an excellent Op-Ed in Indiatogether. Some excerpts:

” I was reminded of this reading an article in the Indian Express earlier this summer by one of India's best-known CEOs. Coming home to Bangalore from Beijing, Nandan Nilekani despaired of the crumbling state of his hometown, and wondered if it would be too much to wish for an eight lane highway from the airport, and a special safe passage for bicycles, instead of the years-late flyovers holding us up without end. Certainly, that's doable, and knowing this is doable must make his despair all the more striking. I endure the years-late flyover he referred to daily myself, and am certain that Bangalore is years away from having a safe path for alternate commuters.

But what, really, is the problem? Is it infrastructure? Or could it be that there's something else to be answered along the way to getting there from here? The more compelling question, it seems to me, is not whether India can achieve the standards of prosperity - and accompanying comfort in public spaces - seen in the West, but whether this transformation is to be achieved by the application of technological and scientific capability, or by diligently tackling the great social and economic divides of our society…..” (emphasis mine).

Risks and skepticism:

” The risk, as we are seeing daily, is that various theories of how such progress can be attained tend to distract us from such a straightforward consideration. Such distractions are inevitable, but how we respond to them need not be. So, if the government proposes a grand housing plan with Rs 17,000 allocated for each new house, we can be skeptical enough to ask if that's really workable. If the government builds one high school for every six primary schools, we can ask ourselves if that's really going to put all the children in school up to graduation. If water is to be privatised, we can ask ourselves how those who cannot afford to pay fit into our dreams of progress…..”

Basic education:
” Decades of pursuing policies to ‘uplift’ the weaker sections have produced the world’s most illiterate democracy. This was always predictable, because the education of the poor was separated at birth from the education of the middle and upper classes. From that founding mistake, the rest of the litany was assured………….If, instead, we had set out to ask how every Indian child could be educated by a system equally accessible to all, we might have done a lot better. Indeed, the experience of most East Asian nations – whose economic gains we yearn for, but whose social policies in pursuit of those gains we rarely examine – proves just this.”

Read the full piece here.

The article does stop and make you think beyond the usual dreams, and about what kind of progress India needs.

Ban on plastic bans in Maharastra

The reason for the ban apparently is because "for choking drains and causing the calamitous flooding of Mumbai during last month's torrential downpour". An escape goat for the lack of working drainage system in Mumbai or elsewhere in Maharastra.
The Hindu: Maharashtra bans plastic bags; serial offenders may be jailed

Overall plastic bags are bad as they are tough to recycle and are enviornmentally harmful. But I dont know whether ban will really help. Banning anything usually creates a black market or is not possable to impose the ban or some people benefit out of it and masses suffer.

Better solution would be to better inform people, incentivize other bags (paper etc). For the Harry potter fans Dumbeldore said "One has to chose between what is right and what is easy" and our policy makers usually make the choice of - easy.

National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill

This is a very significant bill providing guarneteed employment for 100 days to villagers needing jobs. Very ambitious the scheme is.
UPA plays its CMP trump card: job Bill
I am very sceptical on how much impact this will have. There are many govt. schemes providing money for various tasks but none have really effected. This has been due to many reasons. Policies which have defined loopholes, no accountability, corruption and lack of good opposition which raises voice or rather lack of organized public which raises these issues are some of the reasons.

If the current govt can combine several different schemes under te employment guarantee scheme and delegate authority to panchayat (give money to it to carry out these tasks) then this can have great impact. Past experiences havent being good though.

Other point to think about is the economic costs of such a scheme. Economists and "experts" have pointed out that this might increase the fiscal deficit and govt might not have the funds for this. Blah ..blah.. Lets consider this as a part of social security net which the governement provides. By better management of current schemes and correct job allocation this scheme can create lot of resources/wealth for the nation. Just consider using the scheme for road work, infrastructure work, cleaning traditional water structures, creating water harvesting structures, improving/creating physical infrastructure for govt. schools/hospitals/health care centers, ... This will create so much benefit in the long term that this scheme would prove proftable. Need to read more on analysis of this.

Lets face it, even if we grow at 7% per year it will take decades for the benefit to trickle down and above that just GDP growth will create severe disparities as seen but less publicized in the western world. Its a right scheme. But I will reserve judgement on how its structured policy wise and obviously the way its implemented.

Maharastra state has a very similar scheme and some NGO's have organized people and used the scheme for their benefit effectively. Not sure what level of success it has been but its positive. Lets hope that nation wide scheme is also good. I will write further on this once I read up more on this. Feel free to comment and post links to sources.

The draft Bill:
http://nac.nic.in/communication/draft_rega.pdf

An initial analysis of the bill is here:
http://www.righttofoodindia.org/rtowork/rtw_articles.htm
http://www.indiatogether.org/direct/2005/cdr-000070.html
http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/sep/pov-nrega.htm
www.cuts-international.org/pdf/Bill-Blowup-2-2005.pdf
http://www.righttofoodindia.org/rtowork/ourcritiques.html

Once the bill is passed with all its ammendments, I will try to summarize the various analysis.

News Story: Bhutan puts farms before markets

Bhutan has been a closed economy focussing not on industrialization or urbanization but on farms, ruralization. It has tried hard to protect its farmers/industry from external competition. But now they seem to be at crossroads.

BBC NEWS |Bhutan puts farms before markets

This experiment deserves notice & further study as to how in this urbanized/gloablized/elitisitc world can such a nation survive.

Independence day - Time for reflection

Today marks the 58th Independence day for India ... ya its also a holiday in India (long weekend). But its also time for leaders, citizens to look back and contemplate for some time on the nation's achivements, its problems. Reflect on what our national leaders who got us independence wanted the nation to be and what we are today. As a nation we have achieved a lot .... (you can get a list from any ruling party political leader's speech). But did we want to be this way ....

India as a nation is a nuclear power (still >50% of urban population lives in slums in major cities). We are among the fastest growing economic power in the world ( still 50% of our children suffer from mal-nutritution). We are the biggest democracy in the world (still in a single day thousands of families are forcefully evicted out of theie houses -- slums -- by the government). Our GDP is growing at rate of 5-7% for last decade ( still amount our govt spends on social sector - health & education - is dismal as compared to any country in the world 3% & 4%). The software sector is creating millionaries in our country (still around 70% of popuation lives in single room houses). The list goes on .....

So whose responsible?. No I dont think its only the government (an easy escape goat). A nation's success shouldnt be counted just by these economic numbers or state of 2-3% of the population. The real picture emerges when you look at the 90% of the population and in what condition they are. We as a nation should think what we want and set our priorities. I think personally we need public movements on a far larger scale than we have today. This needs public organization and will take time but this is the only right way.

Situation in Mumbai Slums & State Policy

Till now in my posts on Urban Slums I have looked at the extent of the problem at various levels. It should be evident reading these that urban slums are a huge problem which cannot be ignored. Almost quater of urban India lives in slums and >40-45% of the population in major metropiltion areas in India live in slums in very poor conditions. Now in the posts to come on slums I will look at government policy towards slums/housing in urban areas. The purpose of this is to analyze/evaluate/understand govt. policy. This will help in getting a feel of why has the situation worsened and what are the solutions?.

As per the Indian constitution housing, urban land policies are in the functional domain of the state governments. So center can only issue directives, guiding principles but actual legislation has to be drafted/passed by the state governements. The center can influence policy through conditions on resource allocations for these policies. As per the 74th ammendment of the constitution of India most of the housing/slum improvement related policies fall under the domain of the municiplaity (local city government). But due to lack of resources these tend to be looked after by the various state governement offices. Due to these reasons policies towards slums vary across states and sometimes across cities. We will thus first look at policies related to Mumbai slums. I have used several sources, listed at the end, for this blog. None of the numbers listed below are from first hand study, but i have tried to cross reference and the numbers are mostly from govt./UN studies.

Types of housing options for Poor in Mumbai
Before going deep into policy lets look at type of housing options for poor in Mumbai. These include Chawls, Patra chawls (consisting mainly of semi-permanent structures, which can be both authorised and unauthorised); Zopadpattis (squatter housing); and pavement dwellings. Although pavement dwellings and chawls have poor slum-like conditions, these do not fall under
the legal definition of ‘slum’. Pavement dwellings are houses built on foothpaths and a large number of their occupants include street children. As these are not recognized as slums by goverment, they do not have security of tenure and face the constant threat of evictions. Also they are not eligible for any improvements under the slum policies.

Conditions in Mumbai Slums
Acoording to various studies in Greater Mumbai there are 1,959 slum settlements with a total population of 6.25 million, which forms 54 per cent of the total population of the city (Census of India, 2001). Average household size is 4.5 and the sex ratio is much better (842 females per thousand males) than in the rest of the city. 62% of slums have predominantly "pakka structures", 27% have semi-permanant strucutures. Houses are very small with 42 per cent dwellings having an area of less than 10 m2 and 38 per cent having an area between 15 to 20 m2, and only 9 per cent had area more than 20m2. About 49 per cent of slums have access to water supply from shared standpipes, while 38.3 per cent have a supply from more than one source. Remaining slums get their water from tube wells or community standpipes. Only 5 per cent of slums have individual taps whereas 17 slums with approximately 0.1 million inhabitants (0.87 per cent of the total) have no water supply and have to depend on adjoining settlements. Slum communities are clearly in favour of individual water connections. Women and children daily spend a lot of time and have to make several trips to collect water. Sanitation in slums is very poor as 73 per cent of slums depend on community toilets provided by the government, 28 per cent defecate in the open, 0.7 per cent slums have pay to use toilets managed by NGOs and only 1 per cent of slums have individual toilets. Others have mixed provisions or use toilets in other slums or mobile toilets. Inadequate numbers of toilets lead to long waiting times. Overuse and poor maintenance makes them unhygienic. Inadequate numbers of garbage bins/receptacles, lack of awareness amongst people about ill effects of indiscriminate dumping and inefficiency of local bodies are some of the reasons for poor solid waste management in slums.

Occupations & Income
30 per cent of workers were self-employed, 44 per cent were working in private establishments, 9 per cent were in government service and only 17 per cent were casual workers. Average monthly household incomes were Rs. 2,978 and 40 per cent of households were considered to be below the poverty line. Recycling of waste including plastics is very common in
many slums. Many women work as maids in surrounding residential areas.


The majority of slum dwellers identified themselves with the city rather than with their native place and plan to settle permanently in the city. In spite of poor conditions in slums, most residents felt that life in slum is tolerable and city life was certainly better than rural life. Almost 60 per cent felt that their houses were tolerable (Gill, 1994 p 60-85). Slum dwellers were also aware that traditional social safety nets do not exist in today’s slums. They greatly value improving their working situation through getting a better job, yet have, again by middle class standards, low aspirations and have a very optimistic view of their chances of upward social mobility. All of them, irrespective of age, gender, wealth and educational attainment express their high regard for education and foresaw upward social mobility for their children by educating their offspring as much as possible. They confessed, however, that there was not an atmosphere conducive to study.

Policy affecting avability of land/housing:

Two long term policies have affected the avability of housing in Mumbai.
The Mumbai Rent Control Act (1947):
Rental control act was introduced to freeze rents at 1940 levels and the rights of tenants against evictions. This was meant to protect rights of people living in chawls, but chawl owners never invested in chawl maintaineance and the living conditions in chawls have detoritated since. These provisions had a negative impact on private investments in rental housing elsewhere also. The Rent Control Act was subsequently revised in 1986 and later in 1993, but the revisions are applicable only to new properties.

The Urban Land (Ceiling & Regulation) Act of 1976:
This act was sought to control land speculation and to achieve a more equitable distribution of land by putting a ceiling of 500 m2 on vacant urban land in Mumbai that could be held in private ownership. All the land in excess of this ceiling was supposed to be returned to the government which could use it for housing the poor. Some of the major owners of vast stretches of vacant land in Mumbai are charitable trusts of big industrialists and businessmen. The Act was often by-passed by using the ‘exemption clause’ by manipulation and getting permission from the Corporation to build, leading to a total defeat of the stated objectives of the Act. These restrictions actually reduced the supply of formal land. Also the land which was acquired by goverment under the law was never used for housing.

There are many more policies to look into and understand before we can get a sense of whats wrong ??. But its too late now and the blog entry is already too big so lets cover it later. What do you think are the reasons that we have so many people living in abject conditions ?.

Sources:
1. Book: Holding their ground - Alian Durand et al
2. IPT's report on Mumbai slum evictions.
3. UN case study on Mumbai slums.
4. Enviornemental situation of slums in India

On the US economic "recovery"

"Economic Expansion grows as Unemployment Shrinks", says the NYTimes headline. What are the signs of this growth? Higher retail purchases, especially of cars, reduction in inventory, and lowering unemployment. The author laments that "rising energy prices" is one of the concerns in this "otherwise bright economic picture".

How bright is the economic picture in reality? Let's look at the lowering unemployment. It's true that new jobs are being created - 207,000 new jobs were created in July. But what you don't hear is what the breakdown of these jobs is. Well, 26000 are in the government. Of the remaining 181000, 98% are in the domestic service sector, in categories such as food tenders and bar servers. In other words, hardly any productive activity. Indeed, the US is getting closer and closer to a third-world style service oriented economy. For example, 70% of Wal Mart's goods are manufactured in China.

What about the increased purchasing? A lot of it comes from the real estate boom, which has all signs of being a bubble. That is, people are investing in real estate not because they want an improvement in lifestyle, but because they expect the prices to increase even further if they don't invest now. This can be easily seen in the contrast between house prices and rental prices - house prices are increasing at a much higher pace than rental prices. The low interest rates set by the federal government are responsible for this bubble. What sustains this low interest rate? Huge borrowing from China.

In other words, the US is borrowing money from China not for productive activity, but for lowering interest rates, creating a huge increase in house purchases. In this process, low-end service sector jobs are opening up.

That's some economic recovery!

Learning to aid III: choices, choices, and choices

This is the third and final post oh Ravi Kucchimanchi’s conversations with us. The first two can be found here and here.

***********

This was a widely free flowing discussion, where a situation was presented and we were asked for possible solutions or ways to tackle the problem. Though it was based on snippets from real life incidents, we'll assume that this is hypothetical. A simple situation of corruption being the primary obstacle to basic progress.

Now, let’s take the example of a village with around 200 houses. 150 of them don't have electricity, though the village is officially "electrified". You investigate, and find out from the villagers that the only way to obtain an electricity connection would be to pay a fairly large bribe, say some 1500 rupees. This may not seem too exorbitant, but we're talking about very poor villagers, who spend about 40 rupees per month on kerosene for their lanterns. Many of them want electricity so that they can have a couple of light bulbs at home, their kids can stay back and study in the evenings, and perhaps they can afford a fan to use in the summer months. Seems very basic, but this small change means a lot to them. And they cannot afford to pay the bribe, and remain powerless (pardon the pun). The situation was thrown open to us, and we were asked for possible solutions. Here are some that were voiced.

1) Try to unite the poor villagers, and force the local authorities to provide the villagers these basic services by taking legal action against them.

problems with this scenario: This would certainly be a long and difficult struggle. If you as an outsider were doing this, you will have to remain in this village for a long time (probably years) to see this fight through. That would be difficult for you. Secondly, the villagers might have to undergo a lot of other hardships (repercussions) if they start these demands. Thirdly, it is difficult to keep a group already with difficulties to stay united. Legal disputes and cases take a long time for resolution in court (years sometimes), and can be very expensive. Who will bear the expense for that many years? Who will ensure the implementation of the court verdict, even if it is in their favor? Much easier said than done.

2) We know that such corruption exists. But there is some validity of strength in numbers. So, couldn't the villagers unite, and then say that though they can't pay the huge bribe, they will together pool a smaller (but still large, because of scale up) amount each, and give this in bulk. Sort of like a Costco or Sam's club bulk rate pricing, a discounted rate of corruption (yes, a couple of us came up with this idea!)

Problem with this scenario: Come on, if an ethical battle is being fought, you have to take a correct stand. This would absolutely condone corruption. Additionally, it may or may not work, but will make any future in the progress next to impossible.

3) As an NGO, promote alternate energy sources, such as solar or biogas, which can be used in place of electricity.

Problems with this scenario: This one can be viable, but only in certain cases. The costs of solar lightning etc are (still) much higher than conventional electricity sources, and require a lot of funding. It is cheaper for say, solar cookers, but solar lighting is another proposition all together. With biogas etc, it's not enough to have cattle, but there should be a certain number of cattle, as well as sufficient quantities of water to spare. Again, cost factors are fairly high (to build a distribution system etc). However, some groups, like the Barefoot college have managed to solve some problems with this approach. Still, it is difficult for small groups to do this in a large number of villages. Implementation requires a huge grassroots base, which most groups don’t have.

4) Look for sincere officials to help combat this problems. After all, all government officials can't be bad.

Problems with this scenario: It is absolutely true that there are good government and administrative officials, who are not corrupt and work sincerely. However, they are not the rule, and a large section of the officials are not in this category. Often, the good ones are themselves powerless given their surroundings (if say there is a good middle level official, but the immediate superior is corrupt, the good official is unable to act. Sometimes, a junior official who is corrupt might be politically or locally very powerful, and the senior official can't go against him/her). But it certainly is a good idea to find these officials, and take their help whenever possible. However, in say the situation above, this alone will not provide a solution.

5) Gather some villagers, surround (in this case) the linesman and ask him why he accepts bribes (say at a panchayat meeting). Try to publicly question him, and hope that yields results.

Problems with this scenario: Usually, the lowest official will claim that he's being paid too little. Then the villagers will clamor that this is not true, and reveal his (usually rather adequate) salary. He'll backtrack, and then say that his share of the bribe in only 50 rupees, the rest go to superiors. So he might magnanimously forfeit his share. But this gets more and more difficult as you go up the ladder (to say a senior engineer, who's cut is actually heftier). Still, there are merits in this suggestion as well.

6) How about negotiating a settlement with the officials, with a request that they at least consider requests from the poorest applicants without demanding bribes. The list would be provided to the officials by an impartial external group (say the NGO), with the guarantee that each person in the list is too poor to possibly pay the bribe. This person could the be awarded a connection. The carrot to the government officials in this case would be a guarantee not to go to the press, or press charges.

Problems with this scenario: Even if the officials agree to this (due to your constant pressure), they might take a very long time to execute this/clear the files. Additionally, would it not be unfair to the others, who, though they can possibly afford the bribe, should by right not have to pay it. Where do you draw the line? Here you are not really condoning corruption, but you are drawing some line to start your fight. However, it is a possibly viable stance.


These were just some of the ideas we discussed, and include real life situations. But do you have more ideas? Would you choose to do any of these, or come up with something different? I don't think there are any right or wrong answers, just choices. Go on, what would you do?

Slums - UN Habitat Report

In this blog, just as few before this on slums I am presenting data about the extent of the problem. In this blog I will look at the global scale of the problem. All the data is from UN-Habitat reports.Like before I was shocked by looking at most of the numbers below.

According to UN-Habitat report, Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003, sub-saharan Africa hosts the largest propotion of urban population in slums (71.9 %); 166 million people out of total urban population of 231 million are classified as slum dwellers. Around 43% of urban population of all developing world combined lives in slums.

South Central Asia has the largest slum population, 262 million, accounting for 58% of the total urban slum population worldwide. The report estimates that 924 million people worldwide or 31.6% of global urban population worldwide live in slums. This number has increased 36% during the 1990's. Even more worse is that they estimate that unless there is substantial policy change this population will more than double to 2 billion in next thirty years.

It also notes that 41% of population of Calcutta has lived in slums for more than 30 years.
Slum life entails living in harshest of conditions, in overcrowded or insecure neighborhoods, sharing toilets with hundreds of people and worst of all constantly facing the fear of evictions. Slum dwellers are prone to water-borne diseases and other health risks.

The report makes several important observations about slum dwellers. It notes that slum dwellers are victims of crime rather than they spreading crime which is the common myth. It notes that slum dwellers provide important services which otherwise would be tough to get. Urban life would come to a halt if these services were not present.

It notes that there is a lack of political will at internationl, national and local level to address this issue. The report suggests that in-situ slum upgrading is far more effective solution to improve slum dwellers lifes than resettlement. This is a very important thing to keep in mind when designing policies for slums.

Another intersting thing which shows up in the report is that slum dwellers are not that concerned about ownership (and in many cases may not be able to afford it even if provided with low cost houses), but want the government to come up with a rent-control system to avoid their explotation by goons/politicians.

Slums in India- Census 2001

For the first time in 2001 Census data was collected for slums. Slum data was collected for cities/towns having 50,000 population or more based on 1991 census. Slum population for States/Uts is reported in this table. According to this population of slums all over India is 40,297,341 (40 million) from the 607 cities/towns reporting slums. This comes to ~4% of total Indian population (assuming Indian population of 1000 million). More interestingly it comes to ~22% of the total population of these cities (178,393,941).

This means that almost quater of Indian cities live in slums. And sadly 5,531,062 (5 million) of this population are young children (0-6 age group).

The numbers for the richest state in India, Maharashtra are even worse. Almost 32% of the state's population live in slums. And > 5 million (5,823,510 to be precise) are in the financial capital of India, Mumbai. About 49% of Mumbai's population live in slums. Slums are described by some people as places where the village folks wont even think about keeping their animals. And even then we see such a large urban population in slums. Wonder why??. The answer is simple if you try to think about it. I am not going to tell that here. Rather than people migrating to urban centers shouldnt it be the other way around. Shouldnt we have ruralization ?

Increasing share of GDP from Urban centers

In India , about 29% of GDP was conrtibuted by urban sector in 1950-51 and since then it has increased to 55% in 1990-91 and has passed the 60% mark by 2001. Thus, a little more than quater of the population generates more than half of the country's total GDP. But there is a large inequality of distribution of resources especially income in the urban centers. This is one of the reasons for origin of slums. Figure below shows data of slum population vs total population in the four metros of India.

The moral level of intellectuals

This is my first post here, but it's not about the Mumbai evictions. I will address that later.

I wonder how many activists who live their lives mostly among educated intellectuals reflect on the moral level of this culture is. I am often struck by how abysmally low this moral level is.

Harsh Mander during his visit to Asha Seattle mentioned that the communally most insensitive people he found were the educated ones, IIT'ans being the worst. I think his observations are merited.

I am currently attending a workshop on database technology, and am just shocked by the insensitivity of the people around me. Yesterday there was this conversation on an accusation by some Iraqis back in 2003 when the war had just begun, that a bomb had been dropped by the US in Baghdad. This accusation was covered prominently by Al-Jazeera. There was this guy standing ahead of the shrapnel displaying a hole behind him that, according to him, was caused by the bomb. Apparently, it turned out that the bomb was not one used by the US (it had the words USA, but wasn't used by the US army), and it took a few days for the US military to trace the origin of the bomb (based on it's serial number that was visible in the Al Jazeera coverage). Within these few days, there was a lot of coverage of this incident, and the esteemed people around me were lamenting about what a big public relations disaster it was. You should have been there to see people's reactions. There was virtually unanimous agreement that technical discussions begin with this story. No one was quite saying it loud, but the portrayal of the US army as innocent victims had everyone's sympathy and attention. And this was a crowd consisting of distinguished people with varieties of awards and honors!

I have no doubt the specific facts they are discussing are correct, but it is just shocking to see that they chose to pick these facts to discuss and chose to completely ignore all the monstrous things the US army actually does. The association of support for the US government with patriotism is extremely deep-rooted.

No wonder Victor Klemperer said in his diaries as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps that he would reserve special punishment for intellectuals should the chance for retribution ever come ("I would have all the intellectuals strung up, and the professors three feet higher than the rest.").

No wonder Harsh Mander's observations are merited. This has been true in my experience as well. Among the circles I am part of, the ones with the lowest moral levels tend to have higher educational degrees.

There were a couple of Indians at the workshop as well. For some reason, we got down to discussing education. They were contending that most poorer parents in India don't want to send their children to school, and that they must be sued for this purpose! I have nothing to say about this in polite terms, except that this form of idiocy is far more prevalent than one suspects.

Makes me furious some times that I'm stuck in this horrible culture. And ashamed.....

Slums in India - NSSO survey

National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) conducted a survey during the period of July-December 2002 on the condition of urban slums as part of the 58th round. The survey covered whole of India. A total of 692 slums were covered in the survey.

Before we look into the numbers in more detail, lets go over some terminology.

Non-notified slums: A compact urban area with a collection of poorly built tenements, mostly of temporary nature, crowded together usually with inadequate sanitary and drinking water facilities in unhygienic conditions, if at least 20 households lived in that area.

Notified Slums: Urban areas notified as slums by respective municipalities,
corporations, local bodies or development authorities.

The numbers we are looking are average for all over India. Numbers for indiviual states are covered in the survey, but I don't go in those details here. The numbers vary a lot across states. I have mentioned numbers for both 'notified' as well as 'non-notified' slums below. The purpose of looking at the numbers is to get a feel of slums in urban slums.


Highlights from the survey

* Estimated total number of slums: 52,000
* % of people living in slums in Urban areas: 14% (One in Seven)
* % of notified slums: 51%
* State with Highest number of slums: Maharashtra (32%)
* % of slums are built on public land, owned mostly by local bodies, state government, etc.: 65%
* % of slums with majority as pucca houses: 65% (notified) 30% (non-notified)
* % of slums with tap as drinking water source: 84% (notified) 71% (non-notified)
* % of slums with household & street electricity connection: 84% (notified) 53% (non-notified)
* % of slums with only household electricity connection: 11% (notified) 25% (non-notified)
* % of slums with no electricity connection: 1%(notified) 16% (non-notified)
* % of slums with pucca road within the slums: 71% (notified) 37% (non-notified)
* % of slums with pucca approach road to the slum: 86% (notified) 67% (non-notified)
* % of slums with water-logging during monsoon: 36% (notified) 54% (non-notified)
* % of slums with no latrine facility : 17% (notified) [1993: 54%] 51% (non-notified)
* % of slums with underground sewerage system: 30% (notified) 15% (non-notified)
* % of slums with no drainage system: 15% (notified) 44% (non-notified)
* % of slums having no garbage collection facility: 16% (notified) 47% (non-notified)

There was significant improvement in facilities in the last five years. 78% slums reported improvement due to government, 12% as a result of NGO's.

These numbers though indicative do not show us the complete picture. The report has numbers on how many slums have access to water, but they count access to water even if the whole slum shares a single or a few taps. And in most slums a few toilet facilites are shared by the whole slums. These facilites are also not operational many times. And the garbage collection facilites are poor. I will in blogs to come present facts/figures through case studies to substantiate my points.