Quality of life in informal settlements: Basic sanitation services a luxury

Synopsis: The study of National Sample Survey (NSS) data on urban slums presents a grim picture of the settlers there, regarding the provisioning of basic amenities.

Introduction

In India, increasing urbanization is pushing disadvantaged populations living in informal settlements into a more poverty-stricken way of life.

Multiple factors influence the quality of life in informal settlements, including access to drinking water, toilets, sanitation and waste management.

What are the challenges faced by people living in informal settlements?

Residents often have no tenancy rights over the place they reside.

According to a National Sample Survey (NSS) study of unit-level data on urban slums:

– Basic amenities- Around 41% households in informal settlements depended on sources of ‘exclusive use’ for basic amenities, followed by ‘unrestricted public sources’ (25.63%) and ‘common use’ (18.04%).

– Water- Rather than being a public good, it is a rival economic good since its access depends on the willingness to pay money and a certain amount of walking to obtain it.

– Toilets- As many as 52.6% households had ‘exclusive use’ toilets. Others used ‘common use’, ‘public toilets without payment’,’public toilets with payment’. 10.3% had no access to any kind of toilets. The SC / ST community had the highest proportion of those who did not have access to a toilet, followed by Muslims and then OBCs.

– Disposal of excreta-The urban local bodies are entrusted with the work of emptying tanks and pits of excreta. But the frequency of the cleaning indicates that they do not complete the task on time. More than half of the households (53%) depend on private agencies to get the excreta emptied and 25% depend on hired labour.

– Waste mismanagement- Around 47% households in these settlements do not have access to daily   garbage collection in their area. Out of that, garbage collection happens just once a week for 23.45%   households.

What are the concerns/issues invovled?

For government– Informal settlements emerge unlawfully, either on government property or private land, thereby breaching government planning requirements.

The fundamental issue in providing services to these informal / illegal settlements is their lack of tenurial security / status.

On dwellers– These informal settlers are frequently in direct contact with garbage lying around, they are highly vulnerable to communicable diseases.

-These informal settlements do not receive the government’s attention because they have been established unlawfully and lie outside government’s jurisdiction.

The issue questions the State’s role in providing access to basic amenities to every citizen, since the state exists to offer its citizens basic human rights.The informal private players fill the gap in providing services, raising serious concern regarding the rights and entitlements of these residents.

Source: This post is based on the article “Quality of life in informal settlements: Basic sanitation services a luxury” published in “Down To Earth” on 27th October 2021.