Few months back, many world leaders are coming to India for the G20 meeting, it is truly a proud moment for all of us. It came with consequences, houses in slums were covered and multiple homeless people were asked to find shelter somewhere else. Imagine explaining all these changes to a little kid living in a slum, how horrible he/she must felt about being poor.

People living in slums or people below the poverty line already have so much to deal with and now the country that they live instead of doing something to help them we are hiding it.

'Slum cities' are said to be the largest growing human habitat in the world, where one third of the world's urban poor live in households deprived of basic needs.

In India alone, an estimate 64 million residents, including up to 6 million children live in urban slums.

So today, we will look at some of the struggles of people living in slums:
Risk of man made hazards: usually slums are located in dangerous places such as toxic industries, traffic congestion and collapsing infrastructure. Fire is also really a major risk as the houses are way to slope to each other and if the houses does catch fire it would be really hard to send help as the roads are really not well build and narrow.

Unemployment and informal economy: in this competitive world due to lack of education its really hard for them to find jobs, resulting in high level of unemployment in the slums and it continues to grow. This also results in increasing crime rates in slums such as drugs, weapon trafficking, prostitution and gambaling- all these are such a risk to an individual and also to the families and society.

Violence: empirical data suggests that crime rates are higher in some slums than in non slums, with slum homicides alone reducing life expectancy of a resident in Brazil by 7 years than for a resident in nearby non-slum. This alone increases because of poor law enforcements and inadequate public policing. The state of women in slums are no better as women living in slums are at higher risk of physical and sexual violence. The condition of women would be better if they were employed. Slums are not at all secured for women and even young girls, they are at really high risk of sexual violence when they walk alone in slums late at night.

Insanitary: houses in slums usually don't have a good sewage system resulting in less toilet. Living condition is so bad in slum that only a few have access to clean water and sanitation facilities.

These are few of the many problem faced by slums all over the world. Their life is already hard enough, the only thing we can do is help as much as possible.

Failed solutions:

• Slum removal: this can do nothing good other than making people homeless.
• Slum relocation: it would just overcrowded the other area and move them further away from their work place.

Solutions:
Organized urbanization: planning the cities well can be a huge help in such conditions. It would also help a lot with narrow roads and in sanitation by providing a proper sewage system and waste Management.

Improving job opportunities: one of the main reason for slum is unemployment. if we tackle the root issue that is unemployment or underpaying jobs.

Launch good government schemes: instead of driving people living in slums out of their houses it would truly be great If the government launched some helpful schemes to help such vulnerable parts of our society.

India:

1. Government has launched a scheme called 'national urban health mission':
   
   Goal
   The National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) aims to improve the health status of the urban population in general, but particularly of the poor and other disadvantaged sections, by facilitating equitable access to quality health care through a revamped public health system, partnerships, community based mechanism with the active involvement of the urban local bodies.
   
   Outcome:
   The NUHM would strive to put in place a sustainable urban health delivery system for addressing the health concerns of the urban poor. The NUHM proposes to measure results at different levels with a long term as well as intermediate term view. By the government website.
    
2. India also implemented 'slum upgrading' in few recognized slums. In 2015, Indian government allocated a budget to replace crowded slums with 2 crore homes. This truly could bring a change for slums in India.
    
3. In November 2022, Adani group won the bid for the makeover of Dharavi which is claimed to be the worlds largest slum redevelopment project.

Sources:

• Multiple websites such as Wikipedia, news channels and TV reports.