Slums

City of Shadows: Slums and Informal Work in Bangalore by S RoyChowdhury, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; pp 231, ₹895 (hardcover).

Despite the efforts of successive governments, sanitation coverage remains low in India. While several studies have explored the impact of user financing on the improvement of sanitation facilities, this article looks at the conditions of housing, infrastructure and the surroundings of slums, under which different sanitation arrangements are made. The sanitation arrangements considered are of various types of ownership and cost-sharing arrangements. The findings provide useful insights that challenge one of the basic motivations for user financing: increased accountability in service delivery.

This paper presents and discusses primary data from a survey of 1,070 households in four poor settlements in Mumbai comprising slum-and pavement-dwellers and squatters on the living environment and health conditions. The study attempts to examine the consequences of socio-economic and environmental factors in terms of income, literacy, sanitation and hygiene for morbidity. The needs of the urban poor and their priorities are seen to be hierarchial. They need first assurance of being allowed to stay where they are and then provision of basic amenities of toilets, water supply, sewerage and drainage.

In India, the 'urban bias' in public spending on healthcare services has been pointed out by a number of studies. Even within urban areas, especially in the big cities, the slum population is particularly underprivileged. This study examines the patterns of morbidity and healthcare utilisation by the urban poor living in slums and resettlement colonies in Delhi and Chennai, and compares the health status of the two segments.