Onkar Singh
Just as slums need cities to survive, so do cities need slums to thrive – UN-Habitat Advisor.
A city is a dynamic entity. It is an organic whole and truly Friedrich Ratzel’s lebensraum that assimilates areas and people as it grows. City space supports diverse communities and varied trades. It is a magnet for the educated and the illiterate, the skilled and the unskilled alike. It is an enchantress that bewitches the new comer and is a place for dreams to be realized. It is a source of umpteen job opportunities and a vast canvas for individual freedom and growth. It is also hope and despair lived simultaneously.
Cities in India as elsewhere in developing countries have grown with streams of migrants from rural peripheries through both push and pull factors. And first stop for the country folks are the city slums that provide the new comer a breathing space and a foot hold in an alien territory. A slum has been defined as a thickly populated, rundown, squalid part of a city, characterized by inadequate access to safe drinking water and sanitation, poor structural quality of housing, insecure residential tenure and low socio-economic status of its residence. Slums are a conspicuous feature of urban landscape all over India. Be it a small town or a metro city, one cannot miss slums.
Significantly, growth of urban areas and slums appear to be coterminous. Kathua, a small yet fast expanding town is a case in point. Located 90 kilometers South of the winter capital city of Jammu on the Southern most border of the state adjoining Punjab, the town has a population of 55000 persons (Census 2011). This excludes population of the vibrant industrial area that is separated from the town administratively only but is organically an integral part of its economic, social and cultural landscape. Together the urban industrial space has a population of more than 65000 persons that is fast adding up with each passing year. Besides housing the district headquarters, scores of educational and professional institutions and being an important business and trade centre for its rural periphery, Kathua is fast emerging as an important industrial town on the manufacturing map of India. The state government’s plan to make the town a textiles city and provision of a slew of concessions for industry including tax holidays have made industrialists flock to the town to amass the spoils. All these factors have attracted people to the town from different parts of the region as well as from outside the State which have resulted in the rapid expansion of its urban industrial landscape as also phenomenal rise in its population and cultural diversity, especially since post libralisation era. Slums and slum population form a conspicuous part of such landscape.
Although no exact figures are available yet slum population might roughly account for 1/3rd of urban population of the town. Of these, slum migrants from outside the State form the most active and visible part. A recent survey has put such population in the town at 5% (2800 persons). These figures do not include a sizeable slum population residing in industrial areas. Roughly therefore migrant slum population varies between 7-10% (3800-5800 persons).
Slums have come up everywhere in the town but their presence is more conspicuous in the central and northern part of the town alongside the National Highway 1A that separates the industrial areas from the town. These are to be found on the marginal spaces alongside sewerage on the State land, on the vacant plots amidst residential colonies and alongside the National Highway and link roads as also in rented accommodation of houses under construction. Altogether 2/5th of the town segments have presence of slums. There are a total of 65 clusters of slums in the town having almost 900 Jhuggis housing a total of 750 families. These exclude scores of others located in the industrial areas. Migrants are primarily from Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Udisha, Best Bengal, Punjab and UP, but Chhatisgarh alone accounts for more than 4/5th (81%) of them.
A predominant majority of migrants is engaged in construction related work and supply masons as well as workers for all construction activities ranging from building of a house to factory sheds. They have gained monopoly over construction work in the area. Such is the hold of migrant labour that construction activity would come to a halt if ever they migrated enmass from the town on permanent basis as there is no substitute for this labour. In fact, slums and slum population have become synonymous with urban and industrial development. Industry thrives on their labour, house owners on their need for shelter, retailers on their daily needs and public transport owners on their mobility.
While importance of slums and slum migrants cannot be underestimated, the problems they pose cannot be overlooked either. First, slums are antithesis of urban landscape that it invokes in one’s mind. Second is the problem of sanitation they are associated with. Slums in the town have no proper drainage system, nor any proper place for disposal of household waste. The problem is compounded as such areas do not enter planning frame work of the Municipality Administration. Third is the law and order issue. There are no information on their exact number and addresses. They have a floating population the composition and location of which keep changing quite often.
However, there are more serious issues often overlooked. One is the dominance of migrant labour in all economic spheres and consequently relegation of local labour to marginal work spaces. Second is the gradual settlement of these migrants. As horizontal movement of labour continues unchecked in response to vertical shift in economy of the town, a significantly higher wage rate, regular availability of work, conducive work environment and a low cost of living are reasons enough for them to seek a permanent foot hold in the land. Already migrant enclaves have come up in the town where all retail business is owned and operated by them. Culturally too, migrant labour has established a firm identity by implanting their religious festivals of durga puja, ganesh chaturathi, chhath puja and the like hitherto unknown in the area. Such a trend surely points towards demographic and cultural marginalization as well of the locals in not so distant a future. This seems all so real as migrant labour come with their families and not alone. Political ramifications of this phenomenon are equally worrisome as today’s migrant labour is tomorrow’s owner of house and land for sure, the Article 370 notwithstanding..
Urban industrial growth of Kathua is primarily migrant labour driven who are also the principal beneficiary of development. Contrary to the established notion therefore, not only the town but its slums as well are thriving; thriving on local resources. Those finding it hard to survive are the local labour. Policy makers need correction in their perception on slums and slum migrants and revisit urban – industry led development paradigm that instead of putting the local labour and poor at the centre, marginalizes them.
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