Slums and Indian cities are almost synonymous in the Western popular imagination, and with good reason: 52% of Delhi residents live in slums; 1.6 million live in slums in Kolkata; 30 to 40% of Bangalore residents now live in slums; 7.6 million children are living in slums. Sanitation, poverty, employment, affordable housing, disease, and water supply are all major issues for a large proportion of the 340 million or so Indians living in cities.

While municipalities and states lead urban planning and development, the national government plays a role through the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation.  Through various programs and schemes, the ministry channels funds for projects in India’s cities to address residents’ basic needs like housing, sanitation, and clean water.

Today’s Delhi, at nearly 23 million people, has almost as many people as the roughly 25.85 million people who lived in all of India’s cities and towns in 1901. According to the 1901 Census of India, only 11% of Indians lived in the 1,827 cities and towns of the colony. 

In 1951, the first census after independence, the urban population made up 17% of the population, demonstrating the rural character of the newly independent nation. At this time, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation’s forerunner, the Ministry of Works, Housing, and Supply, was established in 1952. 

In its evolution, this ministry became the Ministry of Urban Development in 1985, by which point India had roughly 159 million people living in more than 3,000 cities and towns (1981 Census).  A Department of Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation was created within this ministry in 1995, and in 1999, this became today’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. By 2001’s census, about 28% of Indians lived in cities or towns, making up over 285 million people.

However, the ministry has had a tenuous existence, having been remerged with the Ministry of Urban Development in 2000 only to be giving autonomous existence again in 2004.

Although urban policy is officially a municipal subject by India’s Constitution, the national government plays a hand in the development of India’s cities. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation and its sister ministry, the Ministry of Urban Development, have a role to play in shaping the growth of India’s cities through various schemes and programs. The two ministries together administer the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), a huge multi-year investment in India’s urban infrastructure. 

In addition, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation independently administers a number of other schemes that address employment, sanitation, water supply, and housing among the urban poor. These include the Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY), an employment program, the Integrated Low Cost Sanitation scheme to eliminate dry latrines and the attendant practice of Dalits cleaning them by hand, and Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) for slum redevelopment and affordable housing construction.

Attached Bodies or Autonomous Bodies

Building Material and Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC): 

The BMTPC is an autonomous body supported by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. It works with industry, government, NGOs, industry bodies, and others to promote ecologically friendly, energy efficient and cost effective building materials and building technology.

Central Government Employees Welfare Housing Organization (CGEWHO): 

The CGEWHO is an autonomous body supported by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. It provides housing for central government employees, retired central government employees, and surviving spouses of central government employees.

Hindustan Prefab Limited:

Hindustan Prefab is a construction corporation that is wholly owned by the Indian government under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. It was originally set up in 1950 to manufacture prefabricated houses for displaced people from Pakistan. It now does so for a wider market.

Housing and Development Corporation Limited (HUDCO): 

HUDCO is a corporation wholly owned by the government of India through the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. According to the organization, HUDCO was created in 1970 to provide financing assistance for housing construction for the poor and otherwise addressing housing shortages. Its mission now also includes financing or setting up new towns, financing or setting up factories that produce building material, and providing consulting services on housing and urban development design and planning, among other objectives. As of January 31, 2012, HUDCO had completed 13,865 projects, including over 15 million residential units, since its inception.

National Building Organization (NBO):

The NBO is an attached office of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation.  It was established in 1954 and has been restructured twice to match its present mission.  As stated by the organization, it “is primarily engaged in collection, collation, analysis and dissemination of housing and construction statistics with a view to have an effective country-wide system for this purpose.”

National Cooperative Housing Federation of India (NCHF):

The NCHF is an autonomous organization supported by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation that promotes, develops, and coordinates housing cooperative. The organization was established in 1969.

Of the ministry’s budget of Rs. 1107.60 crore ($223.1 million USD) for 2011-12, 73% goes to the Swarna Jayanti Shahri Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY), an urban employment program for the poor. The SJSRY came into existence in 1997, subsuming three other urban anti-poverty schemes. The remainder of the budget goes to a variety of programs for urban sanitation, water supply, and housing, in addition to administrative expenses for the ministry.

In addition to allocations for the ministry, a Rs. 6854.78 crore ($1.39 billion USD) investment in the public sector undertaking, the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO) appears on its budget. Roughly six times the size of the ministry’s own budget, this investment in HUDCO dwarfs spending on the various schemes and programs of the ministry. According to HUDCO, its objective is to engage in housing and urban infrastructure development programs, provide long-term financing for housing construction, and finance or itself build new and satellite towns.

Corruption at HUDCO

The Housing and Urban Development Corporation has several times come under fire in the past 10 years for corruption in its ranks, including a massive scandal in 2004. The public sector company that comes under the auspices of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation was cited for making Rs. 14,500 crore ($2.9 billion USD) in loans without proper scrutiny. Illustrating that the problems have not all gone away, in 2011, the Central Vigilance Committee (CVC) recommended a government law enforcement investigation into a HUDCO loan that led to a loss of Rs. 50 ($800 USD) crore meant for housing for impoverished people.

The Fiction Factories (by Prashant Bhushan, Tehelka)

CVC Recommends CBI Probe into Alleged Loan Scam by HUDCO (Jagran Post)

Court Orders Probe into HUDCO Scam (by J. Venkatesan, The Hindu)

Slum Redevelopment

While conditions are clearly subpar in many of India’s urban low-income neighborhoods, there is not a universally agreed upon solution to this policy problem. Slum redevelopment has often been marked with forcible relocations of slum dwellers in order to use the land on which they lived for other purposes. There is an ongoing debate over whether or not slum redevelopment is good policy.  

Pro-Redevelopment

Those who support redevelopment of slums have cautioned against the tendency to “romanticize” slum life.  Further, slums such as Dharavi in Mumbai are often on valuable land that could be used otherwise in ways.  Proponents of redevelopment say that slums can be redeveloped in ways that will benefit not just residents but all those that use those parts of the city and the city as a whole. 

What to do about Dharavi? (by Lindsay Clinton, Beyond Profit)

A Quick Take on Slum Redevelopment (by Ashutosh Limaye, Jones Lang LaSalle blog)

Anti-Redevelopment

Critics, however, argue that, when done wrong, slum redevelopment destroys the economic and social ties of residents. In addition, they contend it has also been alleged that slums have been “redeveloped” in ways that leave residents with housing far from sites of employment, deprived of the industries in which they used to work. Many critics have argued that the needs of the government or large corporations are being put ahead of the residents of slums in considering how to improve conditions in low-income neighborhoods in Indian cities.

In Famous Mumbai Slum, Redevelopment Plan Stirs Controversy (by Simon Marks, PBS Newshour)

Battle over Mumbai’s slums (by Nishika Patel, The Guardian)

There are vast differences in the suggested approaches to improving living conditions for slum dwellers and slum redevelopment more generally. Among the approaches that have been employed or considered are slum clearance and relocating residents, slum upgradation on the site itself, and razing the slum and rebuilding a higher density residential complex on the site. Policy choices such as granting residents legal title to their land have been considered in India, taking a cue from Latin American slums. There has also been an emphasis from some on ensuring that slums and their residents are not stigmatized as a blight to be removed as much as they are seen as a community with issues to work out.

The Values of Property (by Gautam Bhan, Kafila.org)

From Home to Estate (by Dunu Roy, Seminar)