A Study On Urban Slums and Tribal Migrants: Identification of Problems And An Action Module for Economic Rehabilitation

Abstract

The push and pull factors of urban and industrial areas are responsible for growth of slums. The city with its promise of employment attracts a vast majority of these rural and tribal migrants accompanied by rapid urbanization and industrialization. Gradually these migrants become assimilated to urban system, though they are denied of securities / facilities at par with the urbanites. Slums therefore are pockets of migrants mostly comprising of economically weaker sections of society including tribal communities drawn from rural / tribal pockets having scarce employment opportunities. The Slum dwellers mostly live in insanitary, unhygienic, squalid areas on encroached land and are devoid of basic amenities and earn their livelihood engaging themselves in unorganized sectors characterized by illiteracy, low income, unhygienic living conditions and such other maladies which contribute to the poor as well as sub human living condition of the migrants. The tribal people constitute a sizable chunk of the slum dwellers. The problems faced by these poor migrants are multifarious. The residents of both authorized and unauthorized slums have accepted the problems they encounter as fate accomplished. There are many growth centers in urban pockets of Odisha where slums have come up and the migrant population reside occupying encroached Government land. The slums are found to be in large number in two cities of Odisha, Bhubaneswar (the capital city of the State) and Rourkela (the Industrial City of the State). When Bhubaneswar and Rourkela were planned as capital and industrial city of Odisha, requirement of large number of artisans, construction workers, utility service men, rickshaw pullers and daily workers- were not conceived as a permanent sector of city's growing population. As a matter of fact, the city's growth potential was very much underestimated and planner's obviously did not envision the phenomenal population pressure on city's civic services and space over last seven decades. The municipal boundaries expanded thick and fast.