slums in India: A focus on metropolitan cities

Rapid urbanization and increasing migration from rural areas has led to growth of slums in every city/town, not only in India, but elsewhere in the world. Nearly world’s 1/3rd urban population were lived in slums in 2001. Majority of them were in the developing regions accounting for 43 percent contrast to 6 percent in more developed regions. India alone accounted for 17 percent of the world’s slum dwellers. In 2001, 42.6 million persons were living in slums spread over 640 cities/towns. In metropolitan cities every fifth person was living in slums area in 2001. The pattern of slums in each city has resulted from its environment, stage of development and characteristics of location. Analysis of slumming in these cities reveals that the slum proportion decreases with the decrease in population size as well as industrial status of a city. Highly industrialized cities have highest area of slum localities.