SLUM LIFE OF BHUBANESWAR, ORISSA : A Study on Food Security Issues of Slum Dwellers

Kumar Das Pradeep Pradhan Gouranga Mohapatra

Study conducted by The Humanity S-55, Maitree Vihar, Post-rail Vihae C.S. Pur, Bhubaneswar

Submitted to: National Foundation of India (NFI) New Delhi

Preface
India has a high rate of child malnutrition. Undernourished women give birth to the malnourished children. Old age is more insecure and many do have neither a full meal nor nutritious food. This is only because of poverty, malnutrition and hunger have brought all age groups including child, women, old age into the field of sickness and untime death. Be it urban or rural, wage earner is subjected to suffering for both end. Reason is less earning and unchecked price rise. It restricts their purchasing power and the paying capacity. And the wage earners have no choice, but to curtail its expenditure on food items. As a result of which they suffer from hunger and malnutrition. They do not have the capacity to take the prescribed calories or required balanced vitaminous food with protein and fat. The schematic approach of the Govt. with subsidizing PDS system spends more and yields with minimum help to the targeted group. Govt. spends at least Rs. 22/- for one kg of rice to make it available at the BPL familys doorstep with increasing subsidy on it every year. The system helps intermediaries than the poor and targeted. The policy of PDS has miserably failed to support the low income group. With small earnings, the wage earner has to take the burden of his old father, mother, sometimes handicapped children. The scheme of NOAP ( National Old Age Pension) and SOAP( State Old Age Pension) must be five hundred rupees per month for each old pension holder above 60 years age. All disabled and handicapped persons must be included in the scheme. So that the burden of earning members will be lessened and old age security will be ensured. There should be single national wage structure for all (minimum wage) on the basis of balanced diet, hygienic accommodation, other minimum necessities( clothing, fuel, electricity). There should be one minimum wage for all with additional percentage of H.R.A. and conveyance allowance for urban wage earners. The first growing city like Bhubaneswar needs a visionary plan to support the slum-dwellers and wage earners. All slums are to be identified with the number of slum-dwellers. Govt. and BMC should organize fair price shop in each slum with free market yard with free or subsidized electricity facilities. The SHGs are to be organized to handle the PDS programme ensuring community participation. There should not be any multiplicity in prices of essential commodities. The rate of rice available under Annapurna scheme is one, the Antodaya scheme rice price is different. The BPL price also differs from these two schemes. It promotes black-marketing and mal-distribution. Hence a single system with single price rate with subsidy will give better result. A single subsidized price of essential commodities such as rice, Atta, Kerosene, Potato, onion, sugar is to be fixed and are to be made available in the fair price shop. The city central store of the Bhubaneswar Municipality Corporation would be the controlling, supporting and wholesaling agency. The fair price shop are to be kept open every day from morning 8.30 to night 9.30. to facilitate the wage earners for daily purchases, since they get their wage either at the day end or week end. The PDS card supplied to the dwellers are to be made up-to-date by the dealer-SHG unit to show the quantity and price of the commodities taken by the consumer. The community shops

are to be allowed to sell grocery and other commodities such as milk, egg, vegetables besides the declared subsidized food materials supplied by the corporation through central store. The quality of such materials are to be checked every alternate day by the Health Inspector. Certificate and verification report should be exhibited for public information in front of the shop. The price list is to be made up-to-date with the certificate of authorized officer. The study made and reported in it though deals with Bhubaneswar Urban areas. It shows the general behavior of the urbanized slum dwellers/urban wage earners. The study is very exhaustive and illustrative one. Position of Food security vis--vis wage earning behaviour have been taken into account. The familys dependence on earning members is a major point of concern as the earning is casual and small one and do not cover the total need of the family. . The health security is also another area of concern due to rising cost of medicine and complicacy of water/ air borne diseases. All the family members are to be insured under a health insurance scheme with 50:50 ratio premium share by the state and Central govt. The Municipality Corporation should take care of all slum-dwellers in providing hygienic water and drainage , road and electricity facilities. So that an assured public health system in the slum areas would be made available to the poverty-stricken dwellers. The study report explicitly speaks of multiple problems of the urban slum-dwellers and the schemes provided for them. The magnitude of impact of these schemes are to be evaluated separately. If it is found in the evaluation that any the schemes is not benefiting the target persons or groups, proper suggestions are to be incorporated along with the evaluation report for amendment or abolition. Can one earning member take the burden of so many dependantschildren, father, mother etc. The old age pension and participation in community activities are the only answer to lessen the family dependence on single income. These are to be addressed by Municipality Corporation/ Municipalities, both Central and State Govt. jointly. The community is the stake-holders in the development process, the study report says. So any activity must be designed to share the benefit by the community members. The study report deals with service sector, daily and casual workers, small businessmen, vendors who are taken as the part of slumdwellers. A micro- finance system suggested to meet the small requirement for business, trading and manufacturing community . With the help of finance institutions, SHG are functioning. The loan/finance should be need-based one and made available at the time of need. and with lower rate of interest and a simplest method. Vending zones with light, water and market yard facilities must be kept in different places of the city. Service rendering places like saloon, laundry, tea/coffee and pan shops , magazine/news paper stall must be made available at different places. Reasonable and subsidized KIOSK and shopping centres are to be constructed at different roadside and community places within or nearer to the community. The service rendered and required has not been assessed with the present growth of urban population The quick expansion of urban area particularly Bhubaneswar needs a visionary plan document on the need of wage earning and service rendering community. One city whatever be big or small always depends on the service of the people who live in slums in and around.

Panchana Kanungo Former Finance Minister Govt. of Orissa

CHAPTER -1 INTRODUCTION

Urbanization is the process associated with the development of civilization. Demographically , the term urbanization denotes redistribution of population from rural to urban settlements. Urbanization is a collateral and organic process of industrial development and economic development. Cities and urban centers are vital and important towards greater economic development. Urban center grows and country achieves economic progress. Large cities provide large number of alternatives for consumers and producers to maximize social welfare. But the source of prosperity of a nation transcends economic dynamics. Human development can no longer be equated with economic progress. The social disadvantages of large cities become more serious as their size increases.. The cities bristle with negative externalities. They are subject to excessive commuting, excessive pollution, excessive congestion.

Urbanization can be planned or organic. Planned urbanization, ie: new town or the garden city movement, is based on an advance plan, which can be prepared for military, aesthetic, economic or urban design reasons. Unplanned (organic) cities are the oldest form of urbanization. Many ancient organic cities experienced redevelopment for military and economic purposes. The urban infrastructure (public parks, urban drainage systems, etc) can be planned before urbanization takes place, or afterward to revitalized an area and create greater livability within the city. Traditional urbanization exhibits a concentration of human activities and settlements around the downtown area. When the residential area shifts outward, this is called suburbanization. A number of researchers and writers suggest that suburbanization has gone so far to form new points of concentration outside the downtown. This networked, poly-centric form of concentration is considered by some an emerging pattern of urbanization.New urbanism is a movement which started in the 1980s. New urbanism believes in shifting design focus from the car centric development of suburbia and business park to concentrated pedestrian and transit-centric, walkable, mixed-use communities. New urbanism is amalgamation of oldworld design patterns, merged with present day demands. It is a backlash to the age of suburban sprawl, which splintered communities, and isolated people from each other, as well as had severe environmental impacts. Concepts for new urbanism include people and destinations into dense, vibrant communities, and decreasing dependency on vehicular transportation as the primary mode of transit. 1.1 Rapid Urbanization: The UN World Urbanization Prospects Report of 2005 describes the 20th century as witnessing "the rapid urbanization of the worlds population", as the global proportion of urban population rose dramatically from 13% (220 million) in 1900, to 29 (732 million) in 1950, to 49% (3.2 billion) in 2005. The same report projected that the figure is likely to

rise to 60% (4.9 billion) by 2030. Urbanization rates vary across the world. The United States and United Kingdom have a far higher urbanization level than China, India, Swaziland or Niger, but a far slower annual urbanization rate, since much less of the population is living in a rural area.In regard to future trends, it is estimated 93% of urban growth will occur in Asia and Africa. By 2050 over 6 billion people, two thirds of humanity, will be living in towns and cities.Developing countries are becoming more urban. The following diagram depicts the share of urban population in different countries.

Urbanization is growing fastest in Sub Saharan Africa and Asian countries. The following bar diagram show the average annual growth rate of urban population..

From the following table, we get a comparative picture of Indias urbanization. It is observed that annual growth rate of urban population in India is 2.5% while it is 1.4 % in US . Population in the largest city is 6% while it is 8% in US .About 58% of urban population in India have the access to improved sanitation facilities.

Country % of Urban Population

India China USA

Annual % Population Growth in urban rate agglomerations of more than 1 million 1990 2003 1990 2005 26 28 2.5 9 11 27 75 39 78 3.6 1.4 14 40 15 42

% Population in the largest city

Access to improved sanitation facilities % of urban % of rural population population

1990 2005 1990 2002 1990 2002 6 6 43 58 1 18 4 9 2 8 64 100 69 100 7 100 29 100

1.2 Indias Urbanism: The urban centers of India are becoming increasingly sick with slums and smells of open drains. Urbanization in India is characterized by the following features: 1. Urban growth in India occurs due to push factors(poverty, unemployment, low productivity, low income) rather than pull factors. For rural people cities are the symbols of success, opportunities ,modernity and comfortable life. People have high propensity to migrate in order to attain success. In addition to the continuous migration of people from rural to urban areas, one of the main reasons for this shift is the rapid growth in the hundreds of towns reclassified as cities in recent years. 2. It is characterized by the phenomenon of primate cities, which are the products of colonialisation (growth before industrial development). 3. There is dysfunctional urbanisation with hyper growth of cities.1 They have out grown into sprawling metropolitan centers, most of which serve as capital cities, centers of political organizations, industrial, commercial and trading enterprises and cultural activities. The pace of urbanization is faster than rate of industrialization and the rate at which other economic activities expand. Supply of labour is more than the demand for it. As a result the wage rate in the informal sector remains abysmally low. 4. Urban life style is relatively modern compared to that of rural hinterlands. Usually the city is shaped best towards the center and worst toward the periphery. 5. There is urban dualism. The inhabitants are divided according to their income, work experience, skill, housing, commuting mode etc. The gap between urban rich and urban poor is ever increasing.

1 . Das Kumar(1980) Cost of City Life in Develoing countries, 5 th Advanced Summer Institute, Vrije University, Amsterdam,Aug

5. The population is increasing at mind-boggling rate. The population density is very high in the central business district, riddled with slumming, congestion, pollution, inadequate housing, sanitation, deficient transport system and crimes. Every one gets affected much the same way and extent. All negative things are endured as part of the cost one bears for having the urban way of life. 6. Cities in India have grown very suddenly and abruptly rather and have reached the sizes comparable to those of London, New York and else where, but unfortunately with lower levels of income. In the rapidity of the process, friction, maladjustments occur which ultimately affect the efficiency and equity outcome adversely. The rapidly changing pattern of urban settlements create major kinds of imbalances between rural urban sector, between skilled and unskilled between intra city social groups. The provisions of urban services especially those relating to education, health, nutrition and family planning is well established practice in India. The cluster of these four services is very impressive for the urban rich and salaried class. These services have their ultimate effect on labour productivity and human welfare. The rich class lives in the self-reinforcing circle of high income, breeding good education, good health, better nutrition and family planning. But the system is so strongly interlocked that the urban poor hardly finds an opportunity to enjoy any of the amenities and facilities of city life. He indeed suffers from the vicious circle of poverty , ill health, poor education, vulnerability and indebtedness. In this system the efficiency and equity concerns over lap very closely. The urban labour supply always expands and exceeds the labour demand of secondary and tertiary sectors. {SL - DL } But >0

demand for goods and services exceeds the supply of goods { Dg Sg } >0

DEMAND FOR LABOUR

SUPPLY OF LABOUR

EMPLOYMENT LOW WAGE SLUMMING POOR

High Prices of Urban Goods SUPPLY OF URBAN GOODS DEMAND FOR URBAN GOODS

Excess migration reduces the urban employment opportunities which depresses the wages of all workers. On the contrary the demand for goods and services expands more rapidly than their supply which eventually leads to ever rising prices for all goods ( especially housing and land etc). This phenomenon is illustrated in the above Figure. It hard hits the urban poor . Therefore they are compelled to live in slums and squatters .
1.3 INFORMAL SECTOR

Indias most important problem is high unemployment ratio. Magnitude of unemployed people is ever increasing both in rural and urban sector. There is growth of informal sector and slums in cities. Bulk of the labour force in Indian cities remain engaged in self-employed works mostly in the informal sector. The term informal refers to a
dichotomy which cuts across all sectors of the economy. Any description of informal sector is inadequate. Any definition is inaccurate. Lack of a comprehensive empirical base is perhaps the reason for the celerity with which the concept has found acceptance. The lack of proper definition is very often, although not satisfactorily compensated by a somewhat arbitrary listing of these activities which meets the eye of anyone who visits and strolls through the streets of a city in the developing countries like India Thus the principal characteristics of the informal sector in India are :i) ii) iii) iv) v) Ease of entry. Reliance on indigenous source of inputs Unregistered family ownership of enterprise Small scale of operation and low productivity Labour-intensive and adapted technology

vi) vii)

Skills acquired outside the formal school system Unprotected and unrecognised by the government.

Urbanization process and Industrialization process have marginalized urban poor in the sense of excluding them from various industrial employments due to lack of skills which industries warrant (Das 1997). Urban poor remain at the bottom of labour market hierarchy. Employment opportunities for unskilled people is ever decreasing. Women
by droves are now being employed in the informal sector, which is largely unregistered and unprotected and which escape all government inspection and control in terms of safety regulations, minimum hygiene standards, ventilation requirements etc. The preference for women worker is most common in the unorganised sector because in such jobs it is relatively easy for the employers to circumvent the labour laws .Their working conditions are very inferior and deplorable.

1.4 LIVELIHOOD SECURITY: Orissa is well known for its natural calamities, unemployment problem, poverty, hunger deaths , child selling etc. Livelihood insecurity is the biggest problem of Orissa, because it has the highest degree of poverty in the entire country. One important peculiarity of the unemployment problem of Orissa is low-income and low-productive jobs. Most of them are very poor because their earnings are very small, which in turn are caused by low productivity of their work. They work because they can hardly afford to remain unemployed and wait for high-paid jobs. They engage themselves in any work that comes their way and at incomes, howsoever low, these may be.2 With labour-force increasing and the productivity remaining almost the same, the average income remains very meager. Desperate attempts by the poor labourers to engage themselves in any activity to stave off hunger gives the impression of high rates of high work participation rates both among male and female .Ironically it indicates low unemployment rate . In reality these employed people ,particularly in Orissa are no better than those unemployed as all of them live with hunger or at subsistence level. The present process of urbanization in India is tending to accentuate the concentration of unskilled workers in domestic works and non-market roles and activities. Each household of urban centers of Orissa has two clear roles to play : producing and consuming. The consumption activity has two components: C = Co + Ch Where Co means goods and services suppplied and consumed from outside the household. And C h represents goods and services supplied from the household itself. The production activity has two components: P = P o + Ph ,where Po stands for the goods and services produced for the outside market and P h means good and services produced for the house. Each household has no control neither over the Co nor P o. In the process of marketisation , the purchasing power of the common man of cities in Orissa is not increasing. The continuous rise in prices inflicts economic strain on the urban poor, which ultimately spells further strain on the poor family only.
2 . Das

The economic strain is partially absorbed and neutralised by living in slums. The urban poor adjusts by curtailing C h and raising P h. It only amounts to spell a heavier pressure on women and housewives. Alternatively if the women attempts to compensate by contributing to enhance the ph then it rebounds on the children and their future potentiality, particularly on the girl child. Therefore the problem of poverty and gender poses a real dilemma between the role of the State and role of the market forces. Food Security of an urban household depends on and is influenced by livelihood security. A person who suffers from livelihood insecurity is bound to be vulnerable to food insecurity. Livelihood security implies the following aspects: Livelihood refers to the means of living or supporting life It involves capabilities, assets(material, non-material ) It implies both generation of income and ownership of productive assets The urban non-poor has the capacity to diversify their livelihood strategies The urban poor suffers and is subjected to high economic strains It leads to economic insecurity of urban poor resulting in distress sale of his labour, products and assets.

There are several factors determining livelihood security of urban poor. Four important factors are : a) Economic factors b) Social Factors c) Demographic factors d) Institutional Factors 1.5 FOOD SECURITY As the economy grows, its demands are outgrowing the earth, exceeding many of the planets natural capacities to provide food, water, and the basic needs of daily living. being or animal. Incidence of poverty and hunger in a civilized human society is highly shameful. Around 815 million people of the world are seriously malnourished or so as to say lives in a highly food insecure environment, where they neither have resource to produce food nor have proper access to available food. Alarmingly around 450 million of them are Indians. In South Asia, about half the children under five were stunted and underweight and one in six was wasted. In East and Southeast Asia, some 35 percent were stunted, 22 percent underweight and 7 percent wasted. The respective figures were 18, 10 and 3 percent for Latin America and the Caribbean, the developing region with the lowest incidence. Asia and the Pacific as a whole had about 70 percent of the worlds severely stunted,

World food security is a far more complex issue today than it was a generation ago, says Brown.3 Undoubtedly food is most important requirement in anyones life be it human

3. Brown,L (2004) Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures , Policy Institute, Washington

underweight and wasted children. South Asia alone accounted for almost half of the worlds underweight and stunted children. 4 The characteristics of a secure food system5 are as follows: The capacity to produce and store or import sufficient food to meet the basic needs of all social groups. Maximum autonomy and self-determination to the people so that vulnerability to international market fluctuations and political pressures are reduced. Reliability in availability of food so that seasonal, cyclical and other variations in access to food are minimized. Sustainability of agriculture so that the ecological system is protected and improved over time. Social equity, meaning a minimum dependable access to adequate food for all social groups. Thus it can be said that food security means availability of food to people whenever required and that too in sufficient quantity and proper quality with required nutritional value, which also should not be alien to their social and cultural system. Oxfam defines food security as When everyone has at all times access to and control over sufficient quantities of good quality food for an active healthy life. Keeping in view the various dimensions, a food secure situation may briefly be summarized as under: People have in their hand sufficient source of food and the food is available in needed quantity. Absence of malnutrition and malnourishment supported by a proper health and care system. Communities have developed sustainable coping strategies to tackle food scarcity situation. The coping strategies adopted by the communities do not have a damaging effect on livelihoods in long term and does incur any immoral cost.

Thus food insecurity refers to three things: non availability, non-accessibility and nonaffordability of food items to the common man. Alarmingly around 35% of our population use to go to bed starving who also happens to live below the poverty line. This issue has been highlighted by the media from time to time through widespread reports of extreme hunger, under nourishment and starvation deaths in various parts of the country

4 Twenty-Fifth FAO Regional Conference For Asia And The Pacific, Yokohama, Japan: Food Insecurity And Vulnerability In Asia And The Pacific: World Food Summit Follow-Up 5 . Before going deep into the matter, we need to develop an agreement on the understanding on the concept of food security. To quote Darshini Mahadevia from her monograph entitled,Moving towards Food Insecurity? The Case of Gujarat

and have received concerns from various categories of people/organisations and government. The gravity of the problem may be well understood from the fact that almost half of all Indian children are under nourished and about half of all adult women suffer from anemia 6. The advent of globalisation and adoption of liberalisation policies by the state has further led to shrinkage of livelihood opportunities for poor and marginalized sections of the society. Import of food grains, subsequent withdrawal of subsidy in agriculture and social sector has virtually ruined the farming community. With multinationals gaining access to every resource there is very little left for the community to build upon. Such fast changes have adversely affected the food sector. This becomes quite apparent by the fact that while the average food production in 1980 was 3.84%, which drastically reduced to 1.85% in the 1990s. Under WTO regime we are shifting from food to non-food production. We may have sufficient food production with food insecurity. But TRIPs and compliance with sui generic options threaten the livelihoods of farmers since it curtails the farmers right to produce and sell seeds. Agriculture in all advanced countries is a purely commercial activity where as in India it is a livelihood of the majority(Das,1992). The consequence of denying the farmers the right to sell seed will lead to impoverishment, food insecurity and dependence of farming communities on MNCs The National Sample Survey data shows that per capita consumption of cereals declined in every state except Kerala in both urban and rural areas. Similarly Nutritional surveys done by the National Nutrition Monitoring Board confirms this inadequacy of food (and cereals) intake by large parts of the population well below the recommended intake of 460 grams. Shetty and James, while using Body Mass Index as indicator of under nourishment, found that 46% of persons chronically deficient in 1991-92. One half of the country is malnourished. Of these 53% of the children were found to be undernourished and 21% severally undernourished. According to Swaminathan report, the proportion of persons suffering deprivations in food and nutrition is higher than those classified as below poverty line. For example, 37% of urban household were BPL in 1993-94 while 80% of household were calorie deficit. Swaminathan has also demolished the myth that the burden of food subsidy is too high pointing out that food subsidy as a percentage of GDP has remained unchanged over the last 31 years at 0.31% of GDP . This compares with Sri Lanka(1.3% in 1984), Mexico(0.63% in 1984) and Tunisia(2% in 1993). Prof. Utsa Pattnaik has demonstrated that if the BPL cut-off line ( fixed in 1979 at an intake of 2400 calories per person per day) were used to day, 80% of the population should be at or below poverty line. Even if the cut-off was taken at 1800 calories, 40% of the population should fall below poverty line. In the post independence period the State has seen major developmental projects like Hirakud Multi-purpose Dam Project, HSL Rourkela, HAL Sunabeda, Balimela River Project, Indravati Project, Paradeep Port, Talcher Thermal Project, NALCO, etc The commonality among these has been their objective of developing the resource base of the 6 .National Family Health Survey, 1998-99.

state and consequently that of the poor. However the present situation reveals that nearly 49% of its population lives below the poverty line. The developmental projects have directly displaced nearly 3 million people and the occupational displacement is to the tune of 10 million alienating the communities from their primary resource base viz. land, water and forests. The western Orissa districts which consist of Kalahandi, Nuapada, Bolangir, Deogarh, Jharsuguda, Sundargar, Bargarh, Sambalpur, Sonepur and happens to have rich natural resource base have mostly bear the burnt of so-called capital intensive developmental projects and represents a dismal food security scenario. This has resulted in large-scale out-migration, diseases and deaths due to starvation and malnutrition.7 A major chunk of these migrating communities have landed up in various slums of Bhubaneswar with a hope to eke out better living and more importantly proper food. It is generally perceived that the problem of food insecurity pertains to the rural parts of the State but the situation of their counterparts living in cities like Bhubaneswar hardly seems to be different. More acute is the situation of slum dwellers who form majority of the urban poor living in the city and live in a high food insecure situation. In this context, it is important to gauge the hidden/ non-perceptible issues related to food security issues of slum/ squatter dwellers. Thus the present study has attempted to develop a holistic understanding on the issue and focus on setting ground for proper developmental intervention, which may be governmental, non-governmental or societal. 1.6 KEY RESEARCH ISSUES The key questions, a probing of which would enlighten our understanding on real and fundamental issues related to food security of slum dwellers are enlisted below: 1. What is the status of state sponsored food security measures in slum areas and how far it has been able to address the issue of food security? 2. Whether any community based food security mechanisms exist under slum conditions and how functional and vibrant they are? 3. How equitable and gender sensitive have been the existing food security mechanisms? 4. What measures can be taken up to gear up the existing food security arrangements/ systems? 5. What community {slum dwellers} initiatives have been taken up in the slum areas in order to tackle the problem of food insecurity and what has been the consequences and why? 6. What alternatives could be found and strategies can be adopted towards ensuring food security of slum dwellers?

7 . Bob Currie(2000) The Politics of Hunger in India, Macmillan, Chenai

1.7 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY The specific objectives of the study were: To examine the magnitude and fundamental causes of food insecurity of slum dwellers. To understand the gender and equity issues in relation to food security under slum conditions. To identify possible strategies and alternatives for ensuring food security of slum dwellers. To understand the social security programmes and its effective implementation in the direction of ensuring food security of slum dwellers. 1.8 SAMPLE FRAME The present study on slum is based on primary survey carried out in Bhubaneswar city. For the purpose of the study the entire city is divided into four zones based on concentration of slum areas and the slums were categorized on the basis of population viz. large, medium and small and representation have been drawn from each category accordingly. However the number of slums per zone have varied with reference to the original plan and actually more slums have been covered as compared to what was planned earlier. The revised sample frame for the study is summarised as under:

Zone

No of selected North 7 East 5 West 7 Central 11 Total 30

slums No. of respondents from each slum 25 25 25 25 100

Total no. of respondents 175 125 175 275 750

The number of slums taken from each zone has varied according to concentration of slums in that particular zone. More number of slums were selected for the study from zones where there is higher concentration of slums i.e. where more slums are located. It has taken into account both registered and unregistered slums within Bhubaneswar Municipality. 1.9 METHODOLOGY A detailed research design is prepared before the commencement of the study. However it has covered the following steps : i. Preparation of detailed checklist for collection of information from the field (slum areas). ii. Field studies: Following tools are used to collect information in the field: a. Questionnaire survey for collection of primary information.

b. Focused group discussions with members of slum committees, women and others. c. Semi-structured interviews of office bearers of slum committees, local leaders, NGO activists, officials of local administration iii. Review of relevant literatures and analysis of related policies and Acts relating to food security. iv. Information compilation and analysis v. Drafting of site-specific reports and compiled report 1.10 Preview : This monograph is organized into five chapters. The first chapter formulates the issue of food security in the age of free marketism. It spells out the main objectives and methodology of the study. The second chapter describes the food insecurity among slum dwellers of Bhubaneswar city. The third chapter analyses the food security programmes of the state government and central government. Fourth chapter analyses the income , education and health status of slum dwellers of Bhubneswar. The last chapter summarizes and gives a set of suggestion for improving the living standard of slum dwellers.

CHAPTER

-2

FOOD INSECURITY OF SLUM DWELLERS OF BHUBANESWAR

Bhubaneswar, the capital of Orissa is considered to be one of the cleanest and planned cities of the country. It was established by the name of Goddess Maa Bhubaneswari, with a Population less than 20,000 thousand taking four Revenue villages, such as Old town, Kapileswar, Kapilaprasad and Samantarapur during the year 1948 ( 1.2.1948). As per the Bihar-Orissa Municipal Act-1922. Notified Area Committee becomes Notified area Council during 1.10.1952 as per the Orissa Municipal Act-1950 and the area of the little town expanded to other Revenue Villages adjacent to Bhubaneswar town such as Nayapalli, Baramunda, Laxmisagar, baragada, Jharapada, etc. During the year 1979, it was seen that the town is growing beyond expectation and the population of the town becomes one lakhs and the prominent National Highway-5, South East Railway etc. were taken major role for expansion of Bhubaneswar town and the Population was more than two lakhs at that time. So that, the then Municipal Development Department vide their Letter No. 1078/11366 dated. 29.3.1979 declared, Bhubaneswar Notified Area Council to Municipality. Simultaneously, the Population becomes more than 8 lakhs and the new revenue villages were included in the city. The tourist spots attracted people from all over the world. And being a capital city of Orissa, it became Municipal Corporation in 1994, vide Housing & Urban Development Department Notification No. 24148/dated. 28.7.1994. Bhubaneswar is also called the temple city with numerous temples of architectural value spread across the area and thus is supposed to be abode of the God. With the growing urbanization, the squatter settlements have been on the rise and the city is fast losing its religious character.The phenomenon of large-scale migration of rural poor to the town is on the rise so is the population in slums which is equally deprived of the basic minimum facilities. The slums in Bhubaneswar are no less than 20-25 years old where the age of these settlements varies from 15 years to 30 years. It is hard for the slum dwellers to recall the actual time when they landed in Bhubaneswar with many dreams . When they came, they didnt know each other with any relatives around. Gradually they settled as if it is their village. After the super cyclone in 1999, a survey was taken up by Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation to identify and assist slum dwellers in Bhubaneswar for providing relief. As per the survey 190 slums were identified, out of which 59 slums are found on own land / land provided by Govt. under resettlement process and 131 slums are situated upon encroached land of about 300 Acre. But as per 2001 census, total population of Bhubaneswar Municipality Corporation is 6,47,302. But the population of slum dwellers is 65,988 which is only 10.19% of the total population. But as per the information collected from some other sources, the total slum population includes 38142 households having 1, 90,865 population. However this really does not reflect the present picture

which is being discussed in the later part of this report. Of the total population, majority belongs to marginalized communities. 2.1 Profile of Surveyed Households Table :2.1 Social Background of Sample Respondents Among the surveyed households, more than Category Respondents % of total 58% belong to ST, SCs and OBC(Table 2.1) ST 188 25.07 communities where STs represented around SC 199 26.53 25.07% of the total respondent, SCs 26.53% OBC 45 6.00 & OBC- 6%. They have mostly migrated from General 303 42.40 Ganjam, Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar, Phulbani, Total 750 100 Nayagarh ,Puri, Khurda, Cuttack, Dhenkanal, Jajpur, Jagatsinghpur, Bhadrak Districts of the State. Apart from this people have also migrated from neighbouring Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh. Out of 750 respondents, interestingly around 53.6% were women and rest were men . Of the respondents around 54.93 % fall in the age group of 15-35 years whereas 39.87% of the respondents fall in the age group of 36-60 years and around 4.93% of the respondents fall above 60 years (See Table 2.2 ). One of the major reasons for migration has been lack of land ownership. Lack of productive assets has over the period of time squeezed their livelihood options forcing them to migrate. Around 72% of the surveyed households have cited landlessness as core reason for migration (See Table 2.1) others reasons being non-remunerative Figure: 2.1 agriculture due to possession of unproductive land, loss of traditional occupation, attraction for urban lifestyle etc. If we see the trend of migration we see that the migration has reached its peak in the year 199091, the year of start of liberalization process. However implications of globalization and its policies on this need a deeper examination (see Figure 2.2). The issue of landlessness is also reflected in terms of lack of ownership on land, which is caused by improper settlement of rights over land, particularly in rural areas, which do require urgent policy intervention. They have no land or homestead land and live a wretched life having got stuck in the vicious cycle of poverty. No respondent under the survey had a legal entitlement over their land even though each of the household has around 1.24 decimals of land in their possession, which is mostly their homestead land. Lack of proper sanitation and unsafe drinking water results in cases of epidemic deaths due to diarrhea, dysentery and other health related problems more so during the rainy season.

Some of the common livelihood avenues of the slum dweller include daily labour, auto driver, mason assistant, street vending, seasonal vending, domestic work, handia making and selling, rickshaw pulling etc. Based on data regarding the majority of income drawn from a particular source collected through the household survey have broadly been categorized in the following table: Table 2.2 Occupational Pattern of Slum Dwellers Sl Category No. % 1 Wage Labour 448 62.48 2 Small/street vendors etc. 170 23.71 3 Domestic Work 69 9.62 4 Govt. Service 18 2.51 5 Other Service 12 1.67 Total 717 100 Wage labourer basically includes persons working in construction sites, earth digging, building construction, assisting the masons, loading and unloading of goods from godowns, rickshaw and Trolley pullers etc. Their job is of highly casual nature and they get an engagement of around 10-15 days a month. Small vendors are found primarily in all kinds of small businesses in the roadside in makeshift/ highly temporary arrangements. Some of the vending business is also of seasonal nature. It consists of wide range of jobs ranging from Gupchup selling, selling low cost clothing and other wears, vegetable selling etc. A large number of tribal women are also involved in making and selling Handia (local rice beer) who sell them on the roadsides. Many work as domestic servants. Domestic work mainly include household chores in colony households and has a major women dominance who are involved in washing utensils, cloths, house cleaning and helping in cooking jobs. Large numbers of girl child are also involved in this occupation. Adults and boys are also involved in similar work in hotels, roadside eateries, restaurants etc. Persons having government jobs include the works like peon, orderlies, office assistant, messenger etc. Many of government engagements are casual in nature. Other services include similar kind of engagement in private establishments. In this context it would be important to mention that unlike rural scenario, incidence and magnitude of poverty does not necessarily fall along the social groupings in slum situations. Keeping this in view categorisation on the basis of core livelihood sources have been attempted which is also been taken as a reference point in subsequent analysis in the report. Discussions with slum dwellers reveal that more than 75% of the slum population belongs to the poor category of which around 40-50% belongs to extremely poor category. By extremely poor category they mean families who are unable to get full square meal a day for at least half of the year. If we refer to the above table, category

under serial no. 1,2 & 3 would fall under the poor. As evident from the surveyed households, most of the slum dwellers are wage labourers and most of time fails to have square meal a day and the number of malnourished children is significantly high. The conventional food security measures adopted by the government has failed to address the problem and has in fact confounded the issue. There exist tremendous lack of development information at the level of slum dwellers and the people hardly have any access to social security measures. 2.2 Food Availability & Affordability Food security implies food availability, food accessibility and food affordability. Even if quality food is available in plenty, one can only have if the person is able to afford it. In this context, intake of food becomes an important indicator of food affordability. Supply of food in the State in general and urban areas in particular not only depends on own production of the State but also on external inflow. But separate data as regards government supply through PDS and private supply are not available. The Indian Council for Medical research norm lays down per capita monthly cereal consumption to the tune of 12.6 kg. In contrast to this, the State of Orissa produces just enough of the requirement i.e. 11.36 kg per capita per month. However the consumption per capita comes to the tune of 14.51kg. The additional requirement is obviously being met through supply from other States and often at a higher price due to added transportation and delivery costs. As mentioned above, if food intake is taken as important indicator of food affordability, situation of food intake of slum dwellers produces a dismal picture. As a part of the study, several categories of food items were taken so as to find out the nature of food intake of the respondents who largely belong to the lower income group, given the fact their expenditure on food constitutes approximately 40% of their total expenditure. The following table 2.3 presents the quantum of food intake of several food items: Table 2.3 Per capita Food consumption (gms/day) Food Wage Others/ven Domestic Govt. Items Labou dors etc. Work Service r Cereals Sugar Pulses Vegetables Fruits Oil (ml) Milk (ml) Egg Meat Fish 330 7 9 18 15 6 8 6 16 17 326 7 11 18 17 8 9 6 16 17 324 8 9 18 17 6 8 6 18 19 300 14 20 60 39 14 33 17 21 24

Sl N 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Other Servic e 300 12 19 65 40 14 30 17 21 22

Average % consump Total tion consp. 316 10 14 36 26 10 18 10 18 20 66.11 2.09 2.93 7.53 5.44 2.09 3.77 2.09 3.77 4.18

From the above table it is seen that, cereals form around 66.11% of the total per capita consumption followed by Vegetables 7.53%; Fruits 5.44%; Fish 4.18%; Milk/Meat 3.77%; Pulses- 2.93% and Sugar/ Fats & Oils/ Egg 2.09%. This clearly reflects the predominance of cereal consumption over other food items. In fact visits to slum and observing their food consumption has shown that people mostly consume rice and potatoes with some salt. Their food basket is largely devoid of any other food items. Due to their low income, they can not afford for nutritious food, though food is available in the market. However the above quantities seem to be grossly inadequate, if ICMR norms are to be taken into account. A brief comparison on this is being attempted in the following table: Table 2.4 Percapita Food consumption vs ICMR Norm Food Per capita ICMR Items consumption (gm/day) Norm 316 420 Cereals 10 30 Sugar 14 40 Pulses 36 125 Vegetables 26 50 Fruits 10 22 Oil * 18 150 Milk* 10 45 Egg 18 25 Meat 20 25 Fish * in milliliters

% of ICMR norm8 75.24 33.33 35.00 28.80 52.00 45.45 12.00 22.22 72.00 80.00

Results from the above table 2.4 raise serious alarm. Except cereals, meat & fish, consumption of other food items is nowhere near to the prescribed quantity levels for normal health prescribed by ICMR. Even cereal consumption, which has predominance, is inadequate and stands at 75.24 % of the prescribed cereal intake level. In case of meat and fish it is 72% and 80% respectively. Even the bare minimum nutritional standards remain untouched in all cases with the range of difference varying from as high as 88% in case of milk to 20% in case of fish. Among the surveyed families, picture of other food items is highly dismal as is shown above. To explain, per capita consumption of sugar is only 33.33% of the ICMR norm whereas other items like pulses it is 35%; Vegetables 28.8%; Fruits 52%; fats & Oil 45.45%; milk 12% and Egg 22.22%. It actually means that calorie and protein intake as important component of food requirement is abysmally low. Even cereal consumption has not been at par. This shows possibilities of hunger looming large. According to Prof. Utsa Pattanaik, In the course of the last five years (1998-2003), the population of the Republic of India has been sliding down towards sharply lowered levels of per capita foodgrains absorption, levels so low in particular years that they have not been seen for the last half century. Between the early 1990s

Food Insecurity Atlas of India, Table 2.3, Pg. 17 (A WFP publication)

when economic reforms began, and at present, taking three years averages, the annual absorption of foodgrains per head has come down from 177 kg to 155 kg.9 2.3 Expenditure Pattern In order to study food security it is necessary to examine the expenditure pattern of Slum dwellers of Bhubanewar. Better calorie consumption is facilitated by situation of lower prices of food items along with higher incomes. The following table 2.5 gives a brief overview of the expenditure pattern of the sample household of the slum inhabitants: Table 2.5 Expenditure Pattern of Slum Dwellers Heads of Amount % of Total Sl.N0 Expenditure ( Rs.) Expenditure 1 Food 14537 37.66 2 Business 6507 16.86 3 Health 1531 3.97 4 Education 1183 3.07 5 Festivals 1732 4.49 6 SHG 2602 6.74 7 Bank Saving 3284 8.51 8 Loan Repayment 3936 10.20 9 Other (alcohol etc) 3288 8.52 10 Total 38601 100.00 From the table above, one can find that annual expenditure on food is around 38% of the total expenditure and as has been explained above, has resulted in gross low consumption of required food. Of the total, expenditure on food occupies the foremost place having a share of around 38% of the total expenditure. If US standards of poor are to be taken which considers any family to be poor or below the poverty line whose one-third expenditure is on food, all surveyed households under the study would come below the poverty line. In fact the overall income of most of the slum dwellers is very low compared to sky-rocketing food prices. Another significant area of expenditure includes business which constitutes around 17% of the total expenditure. On health they spend around 4% of the total expenditure; on education 3.07%; festival 4.49%; SHG 6.74% etc. Two areas of expenditures i.e. loan repayment (10.20%) and other (around 9%)-actually alcohol has a bearing on the capacity to spend sufficiently on food. In fact serious alcoholism has also more to do in adding up the indebtedness burden of the slum dwellers. It is being seen that alcoholism and drug addiction are major problems of the slum area and is inadvertently linked to the food security situation. On an average more than 80% of the slum families are affected by this evil and it is in fact 100% in the case of surveyed households. Mostly male members of the family are involved in drinking and expenditure on this seriously restricts the women from spending on other essentials particularly food.
9 . Right to Food, 2nd Edition, 2005, Human Rights Law Network

Most of the women have been victim of wife beating, violence and extra-marital relationships. Prices of food commodities including cereals have been rising in Bhubaneswar and are presently quite high. This rise has been more phenomenal in the last few years with rapid upsurge in the urbanization process. The shop owners in or near to the slum are also source of credit for the poor slum dwellers. They are also victims of adulterated food and the shop owners who virtually enjoy monopoly in the area resort to unfair weight and measure systems. Apart from this slum dwellers generally purchase inferior quality of vegetables (which are in a near rotten stage) as they are available at lower prices. Thus they had to compromise on the quality front, which also leads to deterioration of nutritive value of food consumed. Thus affordability of poor slum dwellers tends to be minimal which in turn leads to low levels of cereal and calorie consumption. As mentioned earlier, the major source of income of the slum dwellers has been from different kinds of wage labour, which has largely been uncertain and irregular in nature and thereby affects the food security situation. As is also clear that food diversification among slum dwellers is grossly lacking. In fact the situation in this context is actually worse than rural scenario, where jungle food, seasonal vegetable, spinach etc. are available and accessible to the poor. This also results in lack of sufficient micro-nutrients which retards child growth, increases the risk and duration of illness, reduces work output and slows social and mental development. Absence of diet diversification is high among slum dwellers due to very low consumption of vegetables & fruits. Also in slum areas they also do not have any homestead production in terms having small kitchen garden in the backyard. Out of the 750 surveyed families, only four families have some kind of kitchen garden which at times suffices their food requirement. Other methods to improve micronutrient status include capsule/ tablet supplementation or fortification of commonly consumed food, both of which depend on external factors and affordability of poor families to sustain these practices. All these supplements are manufactured by external agents and are not locally available. Many of these are beyond the purchasing power of the poor slum dwellers. In other words, these are rather unsustainable means to ensure food security rather are only means to meet exigency situations. Low levels of cereals consumption as well as very low calorie consumption mark the food intake situation of poor slum dwellers of Bhubaneswar and pose a serious challenge to the issue of food security. Thus improving nutritional status of slum dwellers is the need of the hour which can lead to increased productivity, increased child survival and growth, and reduced maternal morbidity and mortality.

CHAPTER- 3 Food Security Programmes

This chapter attempts to examine the Status of State and Centrally sponsored food security programmes and portray an analytical overview of the food security. There has been numerous instance of State sponsored initiatives in order to tackle the problem of food insecurity in the country. With an aim to provide employment and ensure food security of the poor, the government has, over the period of time undertaken several welfare schemes like Public Distribution System, Antodaya Anna Yojana, Food for Work programme, Annapurna Anna Yojana, Old Age Pension Scheme, National Maternity Benefit Scheme, National Family Benefit Scheme, Integrated Child Development Scheme(ICDS) etc. However these efforts have failed to achieve their stated objectives in Slum Data Highlights (Census 2001) absence of a 640 cities/towns in 26 States/Union territories in 2001 have reported supporting slum population. Andhra Pradesh has the largest number of towns (77) reporting slums followed by Uttar Pradesh (69), Tamil Nadu (63) and environment caused Maharashtra (61). by contradictory 42.6 million population live in slums in 2001. This constitutes 15 per government policies cent of the total urban population of the country and 22.6 per cent of the ie. the subsidy urban population of the states/union territories reporting slums. 11.2 withdrawal policy of million of the total slum population of the country are in Maharashtra followed by Andhra Pradesh 5.2, Uttar Pradesh 4.4 and West Bengal the government has 4.1 million. increased the price of 17.7 million slum population has been reported in the 27 cities with items, which is hardly million plus population in 2001. Greater Mumbai Municipal affordable by the Corporation with 6.5 million slum dwellers has the highest slum poor. Also in many population among all the cities followed by Delhi Municipal cases the poor Corporation (1.9 million), Kolkata (1.5 million) and Chennai (0.8 million). communities are 6 million childern in the age group 0-6 have been enumerated in slums. unaware about their Maharashtra alone accounts for 1.6 million childern in slums. entitlements due to 7.4 million (17.4 per cent) of the total slum population belong to the information blockade. Scheduled Castes and one million (2.4 per cent) to the Scheduled Also the supplies Tribes. received by the Sex ratio (females per thousand males) of the total slum population is 876 which is lower than 905 for the corresponding non slum urban retailers are mostly population. diverted to parallel Child Sex Ratio in the age group 0-6 is 919 in the slum population market for large which is higher than 904 for non slum urban population. profits. Literacy rate in slum areas stands at 73.1 with 80.7 per cent male and The situation in the State of Orissa is no different from the
64.4 per cent female literacy against overall non-slum urban literacy rates of 81.0 for total, 87.2 for males and 74.2 for females in the states reporting slums. 32.9 per cent slum population has been returned as workers. Male work participation rate is 51.3 and female work participation rate is 11.9 per cent in 2001. 91.1 per cent workers in the slum population are Other workers and 5 per cent have been returned as Household Industry workers.

National scenario and is known to be one of the most problem-ridden states. As far as food security is concerned, it holds the dubious distinction of leader with large number of hunger deaths reported from various corners of the State every year. There is almost no food security guaranteed to the most vulnerable, whose number is rapidly increasing. The moment these half-fed, disease-ridden and deprived people raise their voice of discontent the state does every thing possible to suppress the voice. Barraclough in survey of 50000 households in eastern India shows that nearly half the families in West Bengal and one third in Orissa did not produce enough food to feed their families for even one month in the year. Growing urbanization does not necessarily reflect a smooth development rather most of the time it is the contrary situation. A specific outcome of urbanization has been growth of slums where living conditions are extremely poor in terms of unhygienic situation marred by acute unemployment and underemployment. The Census of India defines slum as, (i) All specified areas in a town or city notified as Slum by State/Local Government and UT Administration under any Act including a Slum Act. (ii) All areas recognized as Slum by State/Local Government and UT Administration, Housing and Slum Boards, which may have not been formally notified as slum under any act; (iii) A compact area of at least 300 population or about 60-70 households of poorly built congested tenements, in unhygienic environment usually with inadequate infrastructure and lacking in proper sanitary and drinking water facilities. The above-mentioned criterion is also taken for the purpose of implementation of Valmiki Ambedkar Awas Yojana (VAMBAY). References to slums under Orissa Municipal Corporation Act, 2003 are as follows10: As per the Act, whether the slum is recognized or unrecognized the urban local government has certain responsibilities towards the slum. The corporation may identify and demarcate all under serviced settlements characterized by poor physical and socio-economic conditions, irrespective of land tenure, status and ownership and shall prepare a list of persons residing in such settlements. The list so prepared shall be maintained and updated in a register. The person whose name has been registered shall be eligible to receive basis minimum services and amenities from the Corporation pending implementation of permanent measures to upgrade, rehabilitate or resettle the community. Every slum dwellers residing within the Corporation area, regardless of his/ her land tenure status, shall be entitled to any other special assistance or welfare schemes which are operative within the corporation area and which are not

10

A Handbook on Urban Governance in Orissa, 2006, Institute of Social Sciences, Bhubaneswar Branch

geographically or spatially determined but targeted to specific poverty groups which may include schemes for economic support, credit, pension, insurance and such other services as the corporation may determine. The corporation shall strike off names from the register who has been provided with a sustainable level of basic services and for whom socio-economic indicators have reached definite acceptable norms as fixed by the Corporation. The land status of all listed slum or informal settlements shall be classified by the Corporation with prior approval of the government as either tenable or untenable in order to determine whether or not regular planned service provisions will be undertaken on in-situ or resettlement basis.

The rate of urbanization in Orissa has been low when compared to other cities of the country. While in states like Maharastra, Gujrat and Tamil Nadu, more than one third of the total population livs in urban areas, it is less than one fourth in case of Orissa (Food Insecurity Atlas of Urban India, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation). However this is steadily rising and poses a more disturbing future. 3.1 Food Security Programmes (Entitlement Programmes) With a view to ensuring food security of the poor mostly the people living below poverty line, The Govt. of India as well as State Govt. have undertaken a lot of food security programmers in the state. It is to be mentioned here that the interim order of Supreme Court of India in the case of PUCL vs. Union of India (CWP/196/2001) in the year 2001 have changed the very nature of various welfare and beneficial schemes/ programmes of the government. By virtue of this order, the concerned schemes/ programmes were now to be treated as entitlements and thus they become more fundamental in nature. On the whole eight such schemes were declared by the court as entitlements. They are: 1. Public Distribution System 2. Antodaya Anna Yojana 3. Annapurna Anna Yojana 4. Pension Schemes like (Old Age pension, Widow Pension and Disable pension), 5. Mid Day Meal 6. Integrated Child Development Schemes (ICDS) 7. National Maternity Benefit Scheme .now replaced by Janani Surakhya Yojana, and 8. National Family benefit Scheme As a consequence of this order, the government is bound to ensure these entitlement to the needy persons and in no circumstances can change/ stop/ modify any of the above without prior approval of the Supreme Court. These entitlement are to be seen along with Article 21 (Right to life with human dignity) of the Indian Constitution. In this backdrop, the study attempted to understand the status of few of above and some other schemes in the context of food security situation of slums of Bhubaneswar. The overall findings are quite shocking and demands prompt intervention.

3.1. Public Distribution System The Indian Public Distribution System (PDS) has a network of more than 4.59lakhs of Fair Price Shops which is said to distribute commodities worth more than Rs.15, 000 crore to about 16 crore families with 1.959 ration cards11. The PDS primarily aims at the following: To supply essential commodities at subsidized rates to poor and marginalized families through a network of fair price shops (FPS). To ensure equitable distribution of food grain at reasonable and commonly affordable prices through bringing in stability in prices.

In the name of economic reform and expenditure reduction in 1990s, the process of dismantling PDS started with introduction of Revamped PDS in 1992. The Revamped PDS involved targeting specific areas such as drought-prone, desert, hilly and urban slum areas. In this period, the prices of PDS food grains were increased to such an extent that the cumulative price increase of food grains in the PDS shop was higher that the rise in the general price index. Coupled with this, the Govt. sharply reduced the supply of food grains to the PDS. Under the system, dividing the poor as BPL and APL, the Govt. went on increasing the price of food-grains. The APL prices were increased 85%(wheat) and 61%(rice) and BPL prices by 66% and 62% respectively. Similarly the targeted PDS introduced in 1997 used the poverty line to demarcate the poor and non-poor. The system was so arbitrary and irrational that it resulted in large number of persons being excluded. The income criteria was not followed in most of the states and particularly in rural areas. The survey was undertaken on the basis of visual inspection as to whether the household had a tiled roof or a mud floor. In many tribal areas, poor families were excluded if they stated that they ate meat. 3.2 Public Distribution System in Slums of Bhubaneswar The above measures had impact across the country. Situations in Orissa in general and slums of the capital city in particular has not been any different. A large number of people are excluded from availing PDS meant for them. On the other hand, the whole process of BPL identification has been politically motivated and is laced with nepotism and favouritism where people having clout and influence have managed to get their names registered under BPL and actually large numbers of actual poor are left out. It was also shocking to learn about collection of Rs. 10-30 per household (mostly poor) during BPL survey in the state. The Municipality Corporation has the network of distribution of PDS items covering all the slum areas of the city. As per 1994 survey, the total card holders is 1, 50,420 of which BPL is 13,073 and APL card holder is 1,33,448. The PDS food-grain is distributed by 176 retailers and 5 Maitree Model shop. The food-grains distributed under PDS to BPL families is Rice(25 kg per @ 6.30 per kg , Kerosene( 4 litres kerosene per card @ Rs. 9.30 per litre), Sugar( 2 kg per card@ Rs. 13.50).
11. India-2001, Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India.Pp449- 451 sourced from Public Distribution System and Food Security in Orissa: A Case Study of Kalahandi District by Mr. Bhabani Shankar Nayak.

As per a rough estimate, only 25% of the eligible households in slum have cards. Even the results from the household survey reveal that only 50% of the household have got ration cards when all of the households literally belong to the poor or poorest sections of the slum. Among the card holders, virtually less than half (169 out of 393) of the families who have been able to avail the services of PDS. The chief reasons being irregular availability of food grains in the ration shops are non-opening of shops on appointed dates/ days. In many cases even if a household is included in BPL list, it has not received any card to that effect and is virtually unable to reap the benefit. Even when the dealers open the shops, people do not have enough or no cash to buy the entire quota. Many slum families are mobile in nature (moving from one slum to another whichever is nearer to their workplace consisting mostly of construction labour force) which deprives them from availing PDS as the current mechanism does not have enough scope to accommodate the need of these mobile slum populations. These are some of the factors which makes PDS redundant in its current format, comments Mr. Panchanan Kanungo (Ex-Finance Minister, Govt of Orissa). Thus there is a need to revamp PDS in urban context. License of PDS in most cases is being held by outsiders, who belong to politically influential category. With no peoples control over it, these are largely devoid of accountability or being under scanner. Non-cooperation by ration dealers is common who having clout hardly cares for the plight of the poor and needy people. People who have cards only bring rice and kerosene and sugar is seldom available eg. in the case of Sikharchandi slum, earlier 2 kgs of sugar was given, which has now been reduced to one and half and that too only given once in three to four month. Similar is the case, informs Ms. Sova Debi of Shanti Nagar slum. In many cases, people complained of nonavailability of food grains from rations shops. There have been numerous instances of giving rice free of cost in place of old age pension. In many cases these poor people have been mortgaging their cards for taking loans and the actual benefit is being reaped by well-off people/ mahajans. In addition to this, ration dealers are involved in all kinds of manipulation and misappropriation. A Tata Economic Consultancy Services study has estimated diversion of PDS rice to the tune of 54 percent in Orissa, which is also highest when compared to other States. Thus quantity of rice reaching to poor, which also happens to be the staple food of the State at low & affordable prices, is well imaginable. Thus PDS really did not create any impact on nutritional status of the poor, which it is supposed to address. This presents a highly worrying picture where State promoted food security net virtually becomes non-functional, which also put the food security of the poor and deprived at stake. This situation requires for serious intervention as it is important to make available basic food grain to people at affordable rate. The case of PDS is only an example and part of a larger problem of failure of governments plans and programme for poverty eradication and ensuring food security. There are other projected interventions which have a direct or indirect bearing on the food security situation of the slum dwellers. Some of these have been detailed below:

3. 3. Antyodaya Anna Yojana The scheme was launched in the year 2000 to address food security issues of the most vulnerable and poor group. Under this scheme, 35 kg of grain (Rice/wheat) is to be provided to each identified family at the rate of Rs.2 per kg for wheat and Rs.3 a kg for rice. It involves the identification of destitute households through local household surveys and local governance bodies and special ration cards is given to the identified households. The category of beneficiaries under this includes the following: Land less laborers under BPL. Poorest of the poor in urban areas. Preference would be given to women headed household and handicapped. The families under BPL with no cards shall be given utmost priority under the aforesaid scheme.

As per Govt. report total no. of 4035 beneficiaries have been covered under this scheme in the slums. But during the study it was found that many more families need to be covered under the scheme. Due to financial crisis, 50 % of the beneficiaries could not be able to buy the entire quota from the retailer. Casual opening of retail shops also created hindrance for the people to access the food grains. 3.4. Annapurna Anna Yojana The Annapurna scheme was launched in the year 2001 primarily focusing on persons above the age of 65. Basic eligibility under the scheme is as follows People availing no pension or absence of regular source of income or a family earning less than Rs.24, 200/- per annum are entitled to get 10 kg of food grains free of cost. Eligible senior citizens not being covered under National Old Age Pension Scheme (NOAPS) and entitled to receive a free supply of 10 kg foodgrain on monthly basis. It would also cover indigent senior citizens.

As per Municipality report, 744 beneficiaries are covered under the scheme Distance to avail rice is the biggest problem for the beneficiary as the beneficiaries of Srikharchandi come to Gandhi market( around 10 km) to avail the rice. A beneficiary has to spend one day( Rs. 60/- wage cost ) and transport cost(15/-) to avail 10 kg rice (Rs. 9/-x10=Rs. 90/-).During study it was found that a large number of old and infirm needs to be covered under this scheme. Less than 1% of the people are aware about the scheme 3.5. Pension Schemes (a) State Old Age Pension (SOAP) Widow pension

The old Age pension scheme was lunched by the government to provide financial help to the dependent elderly people and are provided with a monthly pension of Rs.100. To become eligible, the person must be more than 60 years of age and the annual income of the concerned person should not exceed Rs.3200 per annum. Besides, Small Farmer, Marginal Farmer, Land Less, Agricultural Laborers, Widow & Leprosy patients are eligible to get benefit under this scheme. (b) National Old Age Pension (NOAP) The NOAP was launched in the year 1995. Under the scheme, aged and destitute people of 65 years and above are provided pension by Government of India. For this purpose the allocation by the central government is to the tune of 75% while rest is being borne by the concerned State government. (c) Orissa Disability Pension (ODP) This is a older scheme which was launched in 1980 and is meant for people who are totally blind, orthopaedically handicapped, mentally retarded and for those affected by cerebral palsy. Apart from this, the person must be above 5 years of age and their family income is less than Rs. 11000 per annum as a part of eligibility criterion.. 3.7 Mid Day Meal Programme The Mid-Day-Meal Programme was introduced by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (Department of Education) in 1995. It includes provision of noon meal for school children studying in class one to five. It primarily aims at improving nutritional standard of children, encourage increased enrollment and containing dropouts. Food grains (wheat/rice) are supplied free of cost @ 100 gram per child per school day where cooked/processed hot meal is served with a minimum content of 300 calories and 8-12 gms of protein. As per the provision, school should provide a minimum of 200 days and 3 kgs of food-grain per student per month for 9-11 months in a year, where food grains are distributed in raw form. In drought affected areas the mid day meal are supposed to be distributed in summer vacations also. Observing a slow growth of the scheme, the Supreme Court of India has directed all the State governments to introduce cooked mid-day meals in all government and government assisted primary schools within six months of 28 November, 2001.12 To cut down delays in implementation of the scheme, Department of Elementary Education & Literacy has been authorized to make State / UT-wise allocation of food grains under intimation to this Department. Food Corporation of India (FCI) releases food grains to States/ UTs at BPL rates as per allocation made by Department of Elementary Education and Literacy. The scheme is implemnted in urban slum areas in Bhubaneswar Municipality Corporation. As per Govt. record, the state govt. bears 96 paise per head from 1.9.06 which was 69 paise per head earlier. MDM is distributed in 211 primary schools( 111 Govt. run school, 42 Ruchika Centre and 48 SSA centre).
12

Right to Food, 2nd Edition, Human Rights Law Network, 2005

But the tall claims by the State actually fall flat before the findings of the survey. Survey of prominent slums and needy households clearly reveal non-coverage of any in the above-mentioned programme. It was found that more than 90% of the slums do not have primary schools where mid-day meals could have been given to children. Even in slums like Shanti Nagar where there is a primary school, cooked mid-day meal is not being given. In operational cases it was also found that children are given only one kg of rice per month. Mismanagement of MDM programme is found to be a common phenomenon in Orissa. 3.8 I.C.D.S. Integrated Child Development Services (I.C.D.S) was launched in 1975 for the welfare of mother and children. ICDS scheme aims at the holistic development of children in the age group of 0-6 years, pregnant women and lactating mothers from the disadvantaged sections of the population in the rural areas as well as in some urban slums. The objective is to improve the health and nutritional status of this target group through delivery of the package of services like Supplementary Nutrition, Immunization, Health Check-up, Referral Services, Health and Nutrition, Education and Pre-school Education. The programme primarily aims at the following: 1. To develop the health and nutrition of children in the age group of 0-6 years. 2. To lay the foundation for physical, mental and social development in children. 3. To check up mortality, morbidity, malnutrition and school drop outs. 4. To educate the mothers to take care of the health and nutrition of the children through health and nutrition education. Some of the key services under ICDS are as follows: Health-Immunisation, Health Check-ups, Referral services, Treatment of minor illnesses. Nutrition - Supplementary Feeding, Growth Monitoring and Promotion, Nutrition & Health Education. Early Childhood Care and Pre-school Education, Early Care and stimulation for children under three years of age. Convergence - Of other supportive services such as safe drinking water, environmental sanitation, women's empowerment, non-formal education and adult literacy.

The programme is implemented through Aganwadi which is a childcare centre, located within the village or the slum area itself. Anganwadi is the focal point for the delivery of services at the community level to children below six years of age, pregnant and nursing mothers, and adolescent girls. Anganwadi centre also serves as the meeting place for women's groups, mothers' clubs and mahila mandals promoting awareness and joint action for child development and women's

empowerment. There is a team consisting of Ganwadi worker and other sets of government officers to facilitate implementation of the progrmme As far as ICDS is concerned, government records show presence of 123 centres in 190 identified slums (In fact the actual number of slums is much more!). Out of 30 surveyed slums, only 16 (50%) had ANW centres. Interestingly it was found that some slums were having 2-4 centres. Obviously the records does not seem to give a true picture. The average picture shows that more than 50% of the slums do not have ICDS centres. In many cases, children cover more than 2 km to reach to a centre in another slum. This is also a clear violation of Supreme Court orders which speaks of setting up of ICDS centres in every slum area. As problems with PDS is being described in detail in the earlier section, some common problem with other entitlement programmes in the context of studied slums is highlighted below: Under the above target based schemes, most of the potential and eligible beneficiaries have not been covered as the sample survey of households clearly reflects. People do not have the purchase capacity to buy the goods at a time or as and when available. In the absence of any alternative system, even the card holders fail to get their entitlements. There is no supply of food grain under the food-based scheme in many areas for months together e.g. ICDS centres. There is very low level of awareness among the slums population regarding various schemes and entitlement programmes in the absence of suitable publicity mechanisms. There is a lack of vigilance and monitoring of the above mentioned programmes leading to lot of diversions and leakages. Beneficiaries as such have no stake in implementation of these programmes. Beneficiary identification procedures are not followed properly leading to incomplete/ faulty identification.

3.9 Janani Surakhya Yojana The Janani Suraksha Yojana is being implemented since April 1, 2005 and has replaced the National Maternity Benefits Scheme. It is an important component of the National Rural Health Mission. This scheme is sponsored by the Centre. The scheme aims at reduction in maternal and infant mortality and focus on providing benefits to the pregnant women of families below poverty line and to encourage antenatal care, institutional deliveries and provision for post-partum care which is important not only for the health of the mother but has significant effect on the health and survival of the newborn. It is meant for women aged 19 years and above of families below poverty line. Under the scheme, benefit will be given to mother for first two live births. However, in the 10 Low Performing States like Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranachal, Assam and Jammu and Kashmir, the scheme is

applicable up to third birth also, provided the beneficiary opts for sterilization immediately after delivery. The scheme provides monetary incentives to the mother and the health worker (Asha Package) who delivers the baby. In Orissa, a mother of rural area who delivers a child in a hospital will be given Rs.700 and Rs.500 if she delivered somewhere other than the hospital . In urban area it is Rs.600 in case of delivery in Hospital and Rs.500 at some other place than hospital. The financial assistance for the health worker (Asha-who delivers the baby) in rural Orissa is Rs.600/- per delivery and Rs.200 in case of urban area. 3.10 National Family Benefit Scheme This is a fully centrally sponsored scheme. Under this scheme Central assistance of Rs.10, 000/- is provided to household below poverty line on the death of the bread winner/earner of the bereaved family. Eligibility criteria for NFBS are : The breadwinner will be the member of the household whose earning contributes to the total household income. The death of such bread winner should have occurred while he or she is in the age group of 18 years to 64 years, i.e. more than 18 years and less than 65 years. The bereaved household must be below poverty line. With regards to some of the above-mentioned entitlement programmes, the household survey reveals that respondents mostly know about the ICDS scheme whereas less than 1% of the total respondents have any knowledge about schemes like national Maternity Benefit Scheme, National family benefit scheme & Mid-day Meal scheme and there is absolutely no knowledge about schemes like Balika Sammridhi Yojana & Valmiki Ambedkar Malina Basti Awas Yojana (these schemes were focused under the study). Obviously as far as availing benefits is concerned, except in the case of ICDS, less than 2 % respondents have received some benefit. However as per 2001 data available on website the government claims to have done the following: Table 3. 1 Various Schemes Sl.No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Various Schemes National Slum development Programme Valmiki Ambedkar Awas Yojana Swarnajayanti Sahari Rozgar Yojana Training in computer, tailoring & coir product SHG formation Training SJSRY OAP ODP BPL Antodaya Yojana Beneficiary NA 250 * 346 167 11 2650 5143 338 22413

10 Annapurna Yojana 744 * 250 identified, out of which 110 dwelling unit nearing completion On the whole, the case of other food security programmes/ social security schemes like, Annapurna, Antodaya, NMBS, BSY with reference to the sample households it has been found that not a single household has received any benefit/ coverage in the aforesaid programmes/ schemes when it is established that all the surveyed household virtually live below the poverty line. Such a situation also tantamount to direct contravention of Supreme Court directive on matters related to implementation of developmental schemes and social security measures. 3.11 Valmiki Ambedkar Malina Basti Awas Yojana (VAMBAY) It is a centrally sponsored scheme which was initiated in the year 2001. State Urban Development Agency monitors the progress under this scheme. It basically provides minimum shelters to the urban poor and covers not less than 50% of SC/ST population beside covering other weaker or physically challenges sections. Total support under this programe is to the tune of Rs. 40000 with 50% as subsidy component. The case of VAMBAY has been a classic example of failure in case of slums of Bhubaneswar. Mr. Suro Jena, President, Pouranchal Basti Unnyan Mahasangha questions the very basis of implementation of such scheme where most of the slum dwellers have no record of rights over the land they have been living for substantial period of time. In absence of patta, slum dwellers are not in a position to avail benefits of the aforesaid scheme. And Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation is in no mood to give them at least a no objection certificate. Mr. Jena sites examples of other states where the municipality or the corporation have been issuing no objection certificate in case where RoR is not there. However tenurial insecurity has probably been of the key problems facing the slum dwellers of Bhubaneswar. Leave apart government housing schemes, the relatively better slum dwellers are highly apprehensive about putting up anything permanent lest they get uprooted anytime at the sweet will of the government. Infact improper shelter has added to their impoverished condition. Infact these schemes get straight-jacketed in bureaucratic regulation, political interference and corruption13. 3.12 Swarnajayanti Sahari Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY) The programme was launched in the year 1997 for providing gainful employment to the urban poor/ unemployed in terms of establishing self-managed enterprises or provision of wage employment. Three schemes viz. Urban Basic Services for the Poor (UBSP), Nehru Rozgar Yojana (NRY) and Prime Ministers Integrated Urban Poverty Eradication Programme (PMI UPEP) were amalgamated under the programme. Of the total funding for it, the share of Central Government is to the tune of 75%. The key Target groups under the programme include urban poor and there is special focus on women, disabled and ST/SC communities. As per the survey, none of the household member have been covered under SJSRY so far.

13

Making Cities Safe for Women and Children, Sheela Patel, Director, and Sundar Burra, Adviser, Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC). Oct. 1998

There are number of departments like General Administration (GA), PWD, PHED, BDA, Municipal Corporation etc. actions of who has some bearing on life and livelihood of the slum dwellers. There is a Slum Development Council within Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) which is not functioning properly. There has been serious lack of coordination among these departments leading to lot of confusion and non-execution of work. Even proper assessment of slum status has not been carried out. Even though the website of BMC speaks, After the super cyclone in 1999, a survey was taken up by Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation to identify and assist slum dwellers in Bhubaneswar for providing relief. As per the survey 190 slums were identified, out of which 59 slums are found on own land / land provided by Govt. under resettlement process and 131 slums are situated upon encroached land of about 300 Acre. The total slum population includes 38142 households having 1, 90,865 population, Mr. Suro Jena (President, Pouranchal Basti Unnyan Mahasangha) strongly contests this information. According to him, there are 41 properly settled slums where people have RoR on their land and in total there are 212 recognised slums. However this has grown over the period with total number of slum at present being 280 having a total population of around 3 lakh. Mr. Purno Jena, Corporator (Ward No: ---) also seems to agree to this. On the whole there seems to be utter confusion in this regard. Any developmental plan based on incorrect enumeration and assessment would hardly have the desired impact or results. The pace of government intervention has been very slow and lacked the proper approach to tackle the problems. The State has really not come up with a proactive role in finding solution to various problems of slum dwellers and more so to the issue of food insecurity.

CHAPTER-4

INCOME , EDUCATION AND HEALTH STATUS OF SLUM DWELLERS There is a growing infatuation with knowledge based new economy. It tends to ignore the real economy pulsating with life and work of millions, which continuously

intensifies the exclusion of common man. What is saddening is that the market fundamentalists fails to notice the ominous menace inherent in these process and facts. On the contrary they continue to posit its theoretical faith in the imported advice or dictates of the ongoing new economic reforms. The growth fundamentalists have embraced a perverted set of objectives: higher growth of output, investment, profits etc are the highest values in their commodity-centric world. It amounts to dethroning our society and polity in favour of an economy which disempowers the common masses, a large majority of whom subsist not as parts but on the edges of the market economy. There is obvious neglect of the problem of inequality, poverty and unemployment in the country. Obviously overall employment scene with huge backlog and large annual increment of about 8 million labour force remains very bleak. The trends in poverty and other social indicators bear witness to this phenomenon. It is also reflected in the growth rate of employment in the organised sector ,which is negative (-)0.99 % for the public and 1.72 % for the private sector. Development process during planning decades did not give proper employment orientation. And during the reforms period when the GDP growth rate is estimated at 7 %, employment growth rate is negligible 0.46 percent. There is jobless growth. So during liberalisation regime employment growth has become lower than the rate during the eighties. The rate of capital formation i.e., the rate at which capital stock is growing is much higher than the rate of growth of labour absorption in the economy. As a result the reserve army of job seekers is ever increasing. Capital intensity is ever increasing and labour intensity is ever declining. Majority of the rural sector and the unskilled and illiterate section of the urban sector tend to lose their right to livelihood and economic citizenship. With inadequacy of public services carrying unaffordable user charges caused due to inefficient and corrupt bureaucratic mismanagement and inflationary situation the slum dwellers are continuously pushed into vicious circle of vulnerability. Means succeed but ends fail. Optimism of the elite may go haywire. The most significant cause of income inequality is the rise in the income share of capital in India. It is observed that during the phase of development there is a general tendency to have more capital-intensive and labour-displacing technology. Therefore the share of capital rises faster in India than in the developed countries of the world. This tendency has been aggravated by policies adopted by the government. Dual economic structure is the more serious source of income inequality in India today. Labour cost in large enterprises is very high despite an abundant availability of low-wage labourers in the unorganised sector. Therefore there is strong desire of the entrepreneurs in the formal sector to increase capital intensity by adopting labour-displacing technologies. It results in a situation where employment rises less than the rise in productivity and output. There is rapid growth of informal sector, which includes all employees earning their subsistence living as workers in small trading, small enterprises, self-employed manufacturing, casual workers under the contractors etc. All the jobs in the informal sector are contractual or seasonal and highly exploitative. Workers in the informal sector continue on a subsistence level of living. The income gap between these sectors tends to widen cumulatively. There is very heavy population pressure on land resources for agricultural production. Land-man ratio is fast diminishing. The agricultural sector in India has

remained predominantly traditional. The agricultural productivity has remained very low. When modern industries were established productivity in the industrial units increased very fast due to easy technological transfer. Therefore the productivity differential tended to increase. This resulted in widening income disparity between farm and non-farm households. The income differential between the agriculture and nonagricultural population is ever widening. Correspondingly income differential between rural and urban sector is ever increasing. The inter sectoral terms of trade has also worsened. Thus there is precipitous increase in rural urban wage differential. Indias development profile is grossly dominated by the obsession with economic growth. But the country suffers from rising income inequality caused by its dysfunctional urbanisation process. To meet the ever increasing demands of urban population for transport, drainage, housing ,water supply etc public expenditure has risen by leaps and bounds. This worsens the inequality in as much as urbanites are better placed as compared to the rural people in taking advantages of better education ,health, training and various income -earning opportunities. The non agricultural sector, modern industrial sector in particular, which should have become the engine of economic growth and which was expected to provide increasing avenues of employment, is growing at a very slow pace. The transplanted industrial structure has remained regionally concentrated like isolated island of prosperity. Due to slender industrial base diversification and genuine industrialisation in Orissa has not been possible till today. With the development process the income and earning power of different groups rise differently. The income of the upper income class in Orissa rise more rapidly than middle income groups and poor. People with higher education and skill get larger income as the demand for skilled labour rises much faster than that of unskilled labour. Again there is capital intensive nature of development of the modern sector. Since this absorbs less labour, wages form a smaller proportion of total income. Hence the income spread is not wide enough. On the other hand the capital intensive type of growth leads to concentration of income in those few hands, who supply capital. There is continuous growth of capital goods sector but not the wage-goods sector. Thus there is casualisation of jobs and marginalization of common man, who is illiterate or unskilled . In the process the slum dwellers remain outside the vortex of urban development.

4.1 Livelihood Sources and Food Security Urbanisation in Bhubaneswar has been growing at a fast pace. But prosperity of the city does not necessarily reflect a better situation of the urban poor, who live in the slums of the city or in slum like conditions. It seems that with the growth of urban entity, the divide between the rich and poor is widening. Contrary to urban scenario, majority of the slum population belong to the poor category. A rough estimate puts this 75% of the total population and around 40-50% of the total population lives in extreme poverty (the BPL list doesnt really match with this!!). Even if original standards for definition of poor

is taken which says that poor families spend one-third of their expenditure on food, more than 80% of the slum population would fall below the poverty line if we refer to the analysis of the representative household survey which reveals that slum dwellers spend around 38% of their total expenditure on food. From the survey, if we see the expenditure in relation to total income, the situation is far worse as average expenditure per household constitute around 46% of the total income. Urban poverty has another dimension not common to rural poverty. More than one-fifths of the urban population lived in slums as per the 2001 census. There were about 61.58 million persons living in urban slums. The figure is close to the estimated number of poor (Food Insecurity Atlas of Urban India, MSSRF & WFP, 2002). Figures in this context about Bhubaneswar are not available, but the national scenario does give a fair impression that most of the urban poor are those who live in the slums. Logical relationship between poverty and food intake has been inversely proportion and the relationship seems to be established in the case of slum dwellers as has been discussed in he earlier section. Inadequate food intake or restricted access to food has been a function of poverty situation which is also affected by situations of employment and pattern of employment and also the education levels of the slum dwellers as it holds an important reference as far as job opportunities in urban areas are concerned. Nature of job held by the poor actually affects the problem of their food security. A more irregular or casual nature of job would mean more deprivation, malnutrition and unhealthy living conditions. Such nature of job also provokes them to resort to wasteful expenditure in terms of alcohol and drugs. An analysis of the surveyed household presents the following sources of income of slum dwellers in the table below which is more or less representative. Table 4.1Sources of Income of slum Dwellers % to Total S.N.Sources of Income Income 1Wage Labour 64.67 2Service 11.48 3Small business 11.00 4Other (like selling 'Handia) 12.85 5Total 100 The major sources of livelihood of slum dwellers may broadly be categorized in terms of wage labour, small service, small business and others like making and selling handia. Among the surveyed families, wage labours income seems to constitute around 64.67% of their total income; service 11.48%; small business 11% and other sources constitute around 12.85% of the total income. Thus it is clearly reflected that wage labour forms an important component of their source of income. Among the surveyed slums around 61 % primarily depend on wage labour,

casual or contract labour. The minimum wage received by a wage labourer ranges between Rs.60-80/ day. The contract labour (mason) gets around Rs. 120-140 per day. Women labourers get only Rs. 40-60 per day. Other primary engagement of women includes working domestic servants where they earn between Rs.800-1000 per month. However, these wage labour are mostly casual in nature and there are very few other job opportunities. There is mostly single dependence on these wage earners. The expenditure in urban context is more than that of rural poor as they do not have available food options as there is in the countryside. Even the poor manage to survive with what is there in their backyard garden. However there are no food substitutes available in urban areas. Even though people are involved in small businesses like roadside movable/ makeshift eateries, small vegetable vending, these are also marked by high degree of uncertainness. Another important occupation of slum dwellers has been selling handia (local rice beer) in which women are involved. One could see roadside of Bhubaneswar in some pockets dominated by handia sellers particularly nearer to areas where massive construction work is in progress and large numbers of labourers are involved who are also potential customers. In fact handia is consumed in slums heavily itself and has been a major source of problem. Besides casualness of the job, labourers are also paid less than the prescribed limits and the gender discrimination is more acute. The wages of women are much less than their male counterparts and all have to shelve a part of their wage with the appointing agents. Unlike rural situation, scope of economic activities for women living in slums is very limited and is mostly restricted to household works. This has also contributed in weakening the position of women as compared to their situation in rural context and more particularly in the case of tribal women. In Orissa, the minimum wage is same throughout and does not discriminate between urban and rural areas. Even though the State government brought about some hike in the wage rates which became effective from 1st April 2007, they continue to be low particularly in the urban context, pointed out Mr. Panchanan Kanungo, former Finance minister with the Government of Orissa. He further adds that in rural areas, cheaper substitutes are available for example as regards fuel, education etc. However the scene is opposite in urban area. Consequently the food expenditure is high. If one takes the case of Bhubaneswar in particular, prices of basic services and commodities have skyrocketed in the past few years and more so in the past few months. Mr. Kanungo expresses that in urban area, around 67% of the expenditure of slum dwellers is on food whereas in villages it is only 33%. As such pressure of varied expenditure in urban set-up is extremely high. He recollects his experience as a member of Committee on Minimum wage (2001) when he proposed that minimum wage should be Rs. 107. Mr. Suresh Panigrahi of CPM also agrees. He opines that if urban security/ price index are to be taken, the minimum wage should be Rs. 105 particularly for people working in construction sector. As compared to their rural situation, economic participation of women in slums has been low as they are mostly involved in household chores and lack multiple opportunities. This

has further added to their disempowerment process. Also there has been loss of traditional skills over changing generations. Even though the study has not specifically focused, the issue of child labour in slums is appalling. Even though lower income does not automatically results in child labour, but it does create situations for it. The poor slum families being themselves in crisis are not capable of providing genuine care for their child and many times are forced to employ them for contributing towards sustaining their families. Major involvement of these child labours has been in term of collecting plastics and other out of garbage and they are also seen operating in railway stations collecting bottles and also getting used to drugs and other forms of intoxicants. This has really been a painful experience in the course of study, which needs a greater research to develop a deeper understanding of the problem so as to develop proper recourse measures. It is also being observed that very less job avenues are open to slum dwellers, the major reason being very low levels of education which holds importance in urban context. The following table 4.2 briefly presents the educational status of surveyed household: Table- 4.2 Educational Status of the Respondents

Category Sex ST SC OBC General Total Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women

illiterate LP 29 54 21 56 4 6 51 74 295 11 5 10 8 2 1 10 18 65

UP 10 4 9 6 3 5 20 27 84

ME 7 4 5 6 2 2 12 11 49

SEC 22 14 18 14 10 4 26 25 133

HS 2 1 2 0 0 0 7 2 14

Grad Total 6 1 4 3 0 1 1 1 17 101 87 85 114 24 21 138 180 750

The above table 4.2 shows the educational status of the respondent who is also supposedly one of the leading breadwinners of the family. As per the survey, out of 750 respondents around 39.33% are illiterate, and an equal percentage are under-matriculate. Among the rest, only 2.27% are under-graduates and around 1.87% has gone up to the intermediate level. Thus it clearly shows that a whopping 78% have not crossed the first hurdle of educational career and it is quite evident that employers in urban areas seek a minimum of matriculation in the smallest kind of job responsibilities. Also education helps gain confidence in reacting to any kind of adverse situations.

As mentioned above, growing urban development has not really trickled to the benefit of the slum dwellers. But apart from this, the State in its welfare form is supposed to take measures for transferring incomes and make available basic requirement to the slums and also provide other beneficial opportunities. The survey of household had attempted to know the status of such beneficial measures, the results of which are produced in the following table:
Findings of NSSO Survey (2002)

4.2 Health ,Nutrition and Sanitation Food security is just not about taking balanced diet or sufficient food but is also determined by environmental and hygienic factors. A person with poor health is really not in a position to absorb the nutritive value of food one takes owing to sustained or frequent illness. The outcomes of low nutritive assimilation are in the form of various disorders and malformation. Slum dweller suffer from different types of morbidity.

About 205 HH lived in a notified slum & 112 lived in non-notified slum. A little more than half of the slums were notified by the resp. municipalities, corporations, local bodies or development authorities, but they share a relatively larger proportion (65%) of slum HHs. About 65% of slums were built on public land owned mostly by local bodies, state governments, etc. By and large, the major source of drinking water for the slums was either tap or tube well. Electricity was available in almost all the notified slums (99%), but the same was available in about 84% of the nonnotified slums. There were pucca roads inside 71% of the notified slums and 37% of non-notified slums. About 73% of the notified slums and 55% of the nonnotified slums were connected with motorable approach road.

As we have seen in the above sections, the status of nutritional intake of slum dwellers has been 17% of the notified slums and 51% of non-notified slums did not have latrine facility. pathetic and when surrounding environmental conditions are equally bad, the overall food Underground drainage system existed in about 17% of the notified slums and 9% of the non-notified slums. security situation of slum dwellers is definitely not beyond anybodys Underground sewerage existed in about 30% of the imagination. When one enters the notified & 15% of the non-notified slums. temple city of Bhubaneswar by (based on survey carried out in 3538 urban blocks train one could see the appalling selected through sampling technique in the year 2002) conditions of slums if environmental and hygienic parameters are taken into account. Some of the key problems have been open defecation, lack of toilet facilities, lack of proper drinking water, lack of proper drainage, inadequate dwellings, poor garbage disposal (in fact some slums in Bhubaneswar are situated in very close proximity to city garbage dumping grounds) and the problems seems to be end less. Among the surveyed households, more than 92% live in highly temporary sheds, which are a mix of plastic sheets, bamboo frames and mud and an equal number of households also rely on tube wells for meeting their drinking water needs/ other needs. But these tube wells are frequently out of order and it is seen that slum dweller venturing to places where the city water supply line is licking or small water hubs created by the licking pipes. This water is being used for all-purpose and is

visibly dirty. Around 68% of the households have cycles as their only major assets. The city waste normally flows in drains around which these slums have also found a place to settle. Our observation brings out some of the key environmental and hygienic problems. They may be briefly stated as under: Lack of toilet facilities/ public toilets. As per a WFP-MSSRF report, 35.8 % of urban households of Orissa do not have any access to proper toilet facilities. Highly improper drainage causing flooding during rains making living conditions highly inhospitable. Improper garbage disposal. Bhubaneswar has a non-functioning waster water treatment plant but existence of garbage disposal system is not known. In fact it is around these slums that all city garbage including high amount of solid waste is dumped. Inadequate and improper drinking water facilities. According to WFP-MSSRF report, percentage of urban population not having access to safe drinking water in Orissa is around 25%. One of the major prospective problems facing Bhubaneswar is the fast dwindling groundwater reserve and a crisis situation is going to bring hell to the poor slum dwellers. It seems that the authorities have really not considered this problem with long-term strategies and plans to tackle the emerging problems.

Non-availability of proper health facilities is also an important factor affecting the health status of people and particularly the poor slum dwellers. Even though the city of Bhubaneswar is flush with private clinics and hospitals, these hardly hold much meaning to the poor dwellers of slums in terms of affording high treatment expenses. Even the basic health services run by private parties are relatively high priced. As per a WFPMSSRF study report, one hospital bed in urban Orissa is available between 315-541 people. But performance of public health services has been rather poor. Patharbandha Basti is one amongst the surveyed slums, which is only half kilometer away from the city bus stand, but is devoid of PHC, ANM, ICDS facilities. This is only an example to prove the ineffective health care machinery, which has infact, contributed in worsening the health insecurity of urban poor, most of whom live in slums. Health status of slum dwellers also does not provide a comfortable picture. Skin diseases, anemia (mostly among women), genital infections, gastroenteritis are common. Over the time, malaria has emerged as one of the popular diseases even though Bhubaneswar as a place does not have history of malarial disease. All these have resulted due to extreme unhygienic conditions prevailing in the slums and lack of basic amenities. It seems that the slums have become pollution absorption zones of the city. Thus poor nutritional intake coupled with improper sanitation and environmental hygienic conditions increases the acuteness and severity of food insecurity problems of slum dwellers.

4.3 Community Coping Mechanism

The study has also reflected about the coping mechanism adopted by the community at the time of crisis. In almost all surveyed slums, all the respondents are found indebted . With a view to mitigating the financial crisis, they have taken loan from NGOs and private money lenders for survival. While SHG takes 3% of interest, the private money lenders take 5 to 10% interest per month. Mortgaging utensil and asset at the time of crisis is common phenomena in the slum. Every slum has a slum committee, membership base of which varies with the size of the slum. This committee does not form a part of the formal local urban governance system. In the present study it is commonly found that office bearers of these slum committees comprises of local leaders with differing political affiliations. As a result of this it fails to build up proper consensus on any matter or resolve out any conflict. These committees suffers from basic lacunas related to representativeness, absence of democratic processes, equity and gender insensitivity. The women folk of slum beside facing several social vagaries lack multiple livelihood avenues unlike their rural counterparts where at least women get involved in one thing or other for bare minimum sustenance. In all the surveyed slums, SHGs of women exist which have come up due to support from govt. or local NGOs working in the slums. But it is seen that they are mostly limited to thrift and credit activities and have not been empowered enough to positively contribute to social change processes. Besides local NGOs have been running some education centres in these slums. Besides women there are large number of SHGs of men as well.

CHAPTER-5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

With advent of liberalization more than a decade ago, large number of countries (third world countries have indeed been more active!) have started opening up their markets and key cities are gradually becoming the frontrunners in this growth process. The case of Bhubaneswar is hardly different. Of late the city is witnessing rapid influx of multinationals/ companies/ miners eyeing the rich bounty of natural resource reserves of the State. Further with huge inflow of highly qualified professionals to serve this growth, the need for comfortable and lavish homes to house them and company offices is also on rise. This has let unscrupulous property/ land dealers to eye on public lands, a large chunk of which is occupied by slum dwellers. While the city a is all willing to reap the labour and services of these poor slum inhabitants, they have really not put a serious thought of taking proactive steps to improve their overall condition, We have moved them (slum dwellers) to darkness. The need is to move them away from darkness to light. In this context it must be noted that the food security situation is worsened not only by inept state sponsored mechanisms but are affected by larger factors, one of the most important is their living conditions which is appalling. In Bhubaneswar, they live in shanties/ highly temporary shelter most of which bore the burnt of super cyclone in 1999. Adding to this is the constant worry in their mind of being evicted any moment as they are mostly staying on lands over which they have no ownership. Also they are not in a position to buy lands from open markets. Migrants especially poor migrants coming into cities are unable to afford the price of shelter in the open market and end up living in the pavements or in the slums, which is lack of basic services of water, sanitation, drainage, electricity and the like. Municipal and state government rarely treat them as slum dwellers as other citizens and have complicated policies to prevent regularization of these dwellings. 14 5.1 Specific Conclusions Slum dwellers do infact a range of services to cities besides contributing significantly to its building up Bhubaneswar, which is at its peak of growth with innumerable constructions and other activities going on, there has been a rapid rise in slum population over the period. Even they form the most the huge gathering which the political bosses often addresses in the cities and many a times they bundled into trucks to address solidarity with the cause raised by their political leaders. As one of the corporators (name withheld), unconsciously opined that every city should have few slums to cater to its needs. Even though this sounds of a feudal mind, it does indicate significant place of slums in city life. Probably improper shelter and unhealthy living conditions make food security situation worse as they are not in a position to assimilate whatever little / nonnutritive food they eat. Some specific conclusions drawn in this context are as follows: 1. Growing urbanization has not really benefited the slum dwellers and the job opportunities are shrinking with high degree of mechanization. With poor literacy levels, other livelihood opportunities for slum dwellers remain a dream.

14

Making Cities Safe for Women and Children, Sheela Patel, Director, and Sundar Burra, adviser, Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC). Oct. 1998

2. The major source of income of the slum dwellers of Bhubaneswar has been from different kinds of wage labour, which has largely been very irregular. This uncertainty in their earnings affects the food security situation. 3. The calorie and protein intake as important component of food requirement is abysmally low among slum dwellers. The bare minimum nutritional standards remain untouched in all food items. Even cereal consumption, which has predominance, constitutes 75% of the prescribed cereal intake level. 4. The alcoholism and drug addiction are major problems of the slum area and is inadvertently linked to the food security situation. On an average more than 80% of the slum families are affected by this evil .It restricts the women from spending on other essentials particularly food. Most of the women have been victim of wife beating, violence and extra-marital relationships. 5. Prices of food commodities including cereals have been rising in Bhubaneswar . The slum dwellers used to buy low quality good, which leads to deterioration of nutritive value of food consumed. The shop owners in or near to the slum are also source of credit for the poor slum dwellers. They virtually enjoy monopoly in the slum area and resort to unfair weight and measure systems. 6. The slums have become pollution absorption zones of the city. Thus poor nutritional intake coupled with improper sanitation and environmental hygienic conditions increases the severity of food insecurity problem of slum dwellers. 7. The slum committees do not form a part of the formal local urban governance system. They suffer from undemocratic processes, ignorance and gender insensitivity. Women SHGs operate with the support of govt. or local NGOs. But it is seen that they are mostly limited to thrift and credit activities and have not been empowered enough to positively contribute to social change processes 8. The issue of urban food security and especially that of slum dwellers who also belong to the lowest rung of the urban population has been a neglected area for policy intervention. 9. Food insecurity situation of slum dwellers is acute in all respects of food security be it in terms of availability, affordability and assimilation with serious lack in micro-nutrient intake. 10. Selection of BPL is devoid of logic and large number of real poor has actually been left out. Even people having card do not have proper access to PDS which is malfunctioning and unaccountable. The targeted PDS system suffers from serious problems of exclusion and inclusion i.e. excluding people who are actually eligible and including wrong kind of people for receiving benefits.

11. The main source of livelihood of slum dwellers has been wage labour which is casual in nature and is highly uncertain. This has resulted in low income leading to low intake of food. Rainy season when very less or no work is available seems to be the most food insecure period for the slum dwellers. During this period, which normally ranges from 35 months, most of the slum families fail to eat square meal a day. 12. Tenurial insecurity of slum dwellers have been one of the key issues facing the slum communities of Bhubaneswar. The food security situation can only improve when there is enough light, air and space for these people to live in. 13. Gender disparities in employment, access to food are also matters of concern besides other acute social evils like alcoholism and adultery facing women in the slums. 14. Sanitation and environmental hygienic conditions in slums remains seriously ill coupled with ineffective public health care facilities. Health insecurity has further added to the worries of malnourished slum dwellers, especially women and children. 15. There exists serious lack of developmental information at the level of slum dwellers. As evidenced there is serious lack of awareness about various developmental schemes. Also there is no guarantee of employment under any scheme as a matter of right and entitlement. 16. As explained earlier, policy mechanisms have been defective. Particularly the policy on minimum wage in the context of urban area is highly defective and needs a serious and quick reform. 17. The problems of government driven development initiatives have mostly been supply driven and have not been designed with active involvement of target slum communities and naturally does not take into account their aspirations and wishes. The solution has remained confined with top-down approaches. The process is also devoid of better and genuine understanding of the problems of slum dwellers. Besides there exists serious problems related to the issue of transparency and accountability. The urban local governance system is devoid of fundamental democratic processes where poor and marginalized slum dwellers do not have proper or adequate access to mainstream discourses which play a decisive role in affecting their life and livelihood.

5.2 Recommendations

In this backdrop the study attempts to give some broad recommendation which do include some specific action points. It also attempts to throw light on issues which might further require in-depth study and research. Some of the key recommendations are mentioned as follows: A committee involving all stakeholders (slum dwellers, civil society and government) with special preference to genuine representative of slum poor (including women) must be constituted to redefine the urban poverty line which seems irrelevant in the current context keeping in view the inflation over the period of time, price index and several other factors. Given the current scenario, in the urban context, the whole of the slum population may be considered as BPL and the process of categorization may be abandoned as an alternative measure. Thus universalisation of PDS is called for. Politically motivated and elite dominated BPL survey process can only be tackled through constitution of representative slum committees or any existing organization of slum dwellers and entrusting them the responsibility of community based survey. Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation is handicapped with inadequate data on the status of slums and it is virtually an air filled with confusion. A comprehensive survey involving experts and civil society organizations may be undertaken to assess the real and current status of slums for initiating a meaningful development planning process. PDS implemented in slums needs a complete reform with beneficiaries actually managing its affairs. All food-based projects may be integrated into the PDS system managed by beneficiaries through their democratically created institutions. Apart from this local BPL identification process shall be community based with application of more innovative approaches to it, which may be time consuming but would be worth of in the long run. Suggestions on operational procedures in this regard may include setting up mobile PDS units, inclusion of pulses, onion & potato as PDS item etc. The mobile units must visit the slums everyday so as to facilitate purchase of people in quantities as per cash available with them at that particular point of time and they need not have to lift the entire quota available to them due to cash shortages. There should be a mechanism through which other government programmes intended at slum development gets monitored by the local slum community, which may ensure proper implementation and prevention of leakage of resources. People who have lost their traditional occupation as a result of migration to slums should be identified and support services in terms of working capital, credit, raw material arrangement, marketing etc should be provided for the revival of traditional occupations. In line with National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, there is a requirement of policy safeguard for slum dwellers in particular and urban poor in general, whose

employment is highly casual in nature. Thus there is need for some employment guarantee mechanism. Policy intervention in this regard becomes highly urgent. Employment generation schemes should be gender sensitive with proper provisions for small children of mothers on work. Utmost transparency in all the development works and food security programmes should be maintained as per Right to Information Act. The Minimum Wage Act should be amended for the purpose and a committee involving different stakeholders may be appointed for looking into the matter and expedite the process of revision of wages and devising proper implementation mechanisms for the same. Health Insurance should be provided to all wage earners in line with State Employees Insurance Scheme under ESI Act. The government should set up mobile health units which may visit slum areas at regular intervals. This would not only help in addressing health problems but also help in identifying nature and extent of diseases prevalent in slums for which suitable strategies may be formulated. In order to address the critical issue of insecure tenure, the State should bring about policy changes to ensure legal recognition of these settlements or mechanism for dignified relocation and assistance for building houses based on community designs. Any State/ civil society response to this issue may take into account the successful housing experiments facilitated by alliances of SPARC, Mahila Milan and National Slum Dwellers Federation and proactive steps should be taken to link up with these initiatives. If tenurial security is established the municipal corporation may employ mechanism like holding tax which shall also give slum dwellers an opportunity to actively participate in development of the city. Innovative housing solutions may only emerge out of serious community based planning process well facilitated with the help of civil society organization. Also proper safeguards may be incorporated in the law so as to prevent the slum dwellers from re-selling their lands or mortgaging them. The concept of joint patta (Record of Rights) and filling up of promissory bonds may be thought of as one of the safety net. There is need for proper community institutions in slums, which safeguard the rights and access of the poor to various resources. Cooperatives may be considered as one of the alternative institutional framework to secure effective right over their life and livelihood and avail & access to other developmental services. Ultimately food security of slum dwellers should not rest on external aid or support, it is the issue of food self-sufficiency, which should be taken into consideration while planning out comprehensive strategies and programmes. Issues in this may be addressed through ensuring credit for meeting crisis needs, more importantly for

income generation and also finance for building houses. As we have seen, the slum dwellers often takes loans from money lenders at exorbitant rates which puts them in vicious cycle indebtedness. Even though reputed finance institutions may be too skeptical/ reluctant to venture into this hitherto unknown territory which can be tackled through facilitating community savings organizations in the form of SHGs/ cooperatives and their scaled up networks which may emerge as more bankable and creditworthy. Still pro-poor options in the form of Rashtriya Mahila Kosh, RGVN should always be explored. Keeping the low nutritional intake of slums dwellers (as explained in previous chapters), possibilities of individual/ community based kitchen garden could be explored. Some common vegetables like papya, drumstick, spinach etc. which grows very well in climatic conditions of Bhubaneswar may be some of the items which may be considered. Apart from meeting nutritional needs, the surplus can always be marketed given high demand of vegetables in the city. Further this kind of initiative shall foster greater interaction within the community leading to increased unity. Government must ensure setting up primary school in all the slums where MDM programme should implemented and ICDS centres opened as per directives of Supreme Court of India. Community based management of resources within the slums must be encouraged i.e Aganwadi centre, malfunctioning of which has come out clearly through the study. Community based organizations in the slum should be given authority to monitor and manage such resources which can significantly contribute to health improvement of slum dwellers particularly in the case of child and mother. Proper steps in terms of intensive education campaign must be launched through local slum institutions to raise awareness of communities on several entitlement programmes being run by the government and also about existing grievances redressal mechanisms which exists for them. On the education front, it is being observed that there has been high level dropouts particularly as children getting involved in different works to mitigate the family poverty situation. Mr. Prashant Paikray, a noted Social Activist suggests home teacher concept for this and advocates for regular home based teaching. Similar innovative possibilities needs to be explored towards this. The growth of urban population should be moderated by promoting counter magnets in the rural sector. Sustainable agricultural development and genuine comprehensive rural development are indispensable for reversing the rural migration and reducing its pace. The quality of life of urban population should be improved by various public policies. Slum clearance programme has always been inhuman and counter productive since the govt has neither been able to rehouse the slum dwellers nor to control the accelerating migrants to the cities. Therefore the govt should develop

the physical facilities and help the slum dwellers to raise their own capabilities through various economic activities. Thus a need for holistic approach for overall development of slum dwellers is required for addressing their need of basic amenities and exploring opportunities for self-employment. To begin with they must get organized in some form where they have an increased power and collective strength. These institutions might take shape in the form of cooperatives which are probably the best form of institutions where people could find enough space to explore solutions to their problems through collective and voluntary efforts. The essence of cooperation is that individuals come together to achieve as collective group what they cannot achieve as individuals alone. The cooperative movement promotes the principles like self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, solidarity, honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others15. And its a fact that government or for that matter any external agencies cannot solve the problems of slum dwellers alone. The quality of such food materials are to be checked every alternate day by the Health Inspector with certificate and verification report would be hanged for public information. The price list to be up-to-date with the certificate of authorized office. One subsidized price of essential commodities such as rice, Atta, Kerosine, Potato, onion, is to be fixed and placed in the fair price shop every day by the central store of the BMC. The fair price shop are to be kept open every day. Minimum Wage act under National Wage Policy should be followed by the state while formulating the state Minimum Wage. There should not be any discrimination between National Wage and State wage. For unorganized urban labourers, a different two components i.e., house rent allowance and conveyance allowance must be added to the minimum wage. In case of urban worker, the house rent allowance should be at the rate of 15% and conveyance allowance at the rate of 10% per day. The Labour inspector to be authorized to register the wage labours and distribute the work. Though there is provision, it is not practiced there. There should be mobile health covering total slum of BBSR. It should be appointed by Govt. The mobile health would visit regalraly or in days interval to provide health service to the people.

15

Cooperatives An Answer to Housing Problems of the Slums, Dr. M.L. Khurana, Secretary General, ICHFAP

Retailing by dealers should be abolished. The community should select SHGs to handle the PDS. A free cost common shop should be given by BMC to the SHGs. All declared essential commodities should be provided by the Civil Supply Corporation at the door step of the community shop. A good health insurance scheme for the unorganized labourers with cent percent premium deposit by the State Govt. All persons ( men and women) above the age of sixty five should get atleast400/pension per month. All disable and crippled people should be taken under pension scheme. The maternity and child care should be more hygienic, balanced and nutritious with subsidizing food materials like egg, milk and the medicine containing calcium and vitamin.

Thus the grim challenges facing slum dwellers of Bhubaneswar is that they are unorganized, uninformed and are not capacitated/ empowered enough to have access to and negotiate with delivery/ welfare institutions around them which include government, urban planning bodies etc. and have virtually kept them resigned to their fate. For comprehensive slum development, there is a need for in-depth participatory studies on several aspects of slum life and livelihood in Bhubanesawar (although similar studies have been conducted in some other parts of the country) to properly gauge the choices and aspiration of the poor slum dwellers. It is observed that livelihood pattern of slum dwellers is a complex web given its dynamic nature. Deeper research for characterization of livelihood dependence of slum dwellers is required for devising suitable intervention strategies. We may deny the need for such a research by saying that Bhubaneswar is nowhere equal to Mumbai and problems of slums and its dwellers has not compounded to that proportion and whatever small problems are there, that may be easily sorted out . However the current trend of city growth tells the story and foretells a grim future for the slum dwellers. It is probably high time that we become conscious enough, develop adequate sensitiveness to the problems of slum poor, try to learn from the larger community and civil society initiatives and take preemptive steps to face the perceived threats.

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