Slums The magnitude of the problem of slums is alarming. The Government of India in order to implement the various schemes to urban development has defined a slum area as follows:

“A slum area means any area where such dilapidated dwellings predominate, overcrowding, faulty arrangement of buildings, narrowness and faulty arrangement of street, lack of ventilation, lack of sanitation facilities, inadequacy of open spaces and community facilities or any combination of these factors, are detrimental to safety, health or morals.”

These slum areas are also referred toas the ‘Blighted area’; ‘Renewal area’; ‘deteriorated area’, ‘Gray area’; ‘Lower class neighborhood’; ‘Lower income area’, etc. It is in slums that poor people like industrial workers, casual labourers, hawkers, petty shopkeepers, vegetable-sellers and several others offering useful services to the city find a place to stay.

The National Institute of Urban Affairs, New Delhi, has recorded that the emergence of slums is essentially the product of three forces:

• City life style attracting more people from the rural areas offering greater potential for employment; 
• Its incapacity to meet the rising demand for housing, 
• The existing urban land policies, which prohibit the access of the poor to the urban land market.

It is further observed that the urban poor are left with no choice but to make or take shelter illegally on any available piece of land. Sometimes a slum is the consequence of blight in the old parts of the city. At times, a slum is inherited in the form of an old village or a haphazardly growing locality within the extended territorial limits of a town.

Characteristics of Slums: The physical aspects and general conditions of the slums are by and large the same everywhere. 

The foremost characteristics of slums can be briefly enumerated in the following manner:

1. Dilapidated and in poor condition houses: Slums are made of poor design and scrap materials. These are often raised on unauthorized land.

2. High Density of population and Housing: It leads to over-crowding and congestion; one room is often used for all practical purposes of domestic living. In Mum’bai and in many other big cities, it can be seen that in the slum areas one room tenement with 100 sq.f. to 150 sq.f. of space is occupied by more than 10 persons.

4. Apathy and Social Isolation: Though the slum- dwellers are functionally integrated to the city life, apathy and social isolation characterize a s|um. Under these circumstances, the slum- dwellers find it almost impossible to improve these conditions through their own efforts.