Slum Redevelopment in Cities : Current Approaches and Alternate Models

With the rising levels of urban population and an increasing share of in-coming population, cities are facing the pressure of providing shelter and basic services to the people, particularly to those at the bottom of income level (MGI 2010). This has been giving rise to the formation of slums and squatter settlements, whose share has been found to be on the rise in several cities. The formation of slums and their spread has not been new to States and the approaches to address it have been varying over the time. In particular, there has been a programmatic shift away from the removal of slums to the redevelopment of slums in Andhra Pradesh, thereby an increasing recognition of the rights of slum dwellers to live in city and contribute to its economy. However, developing the right kind of interventions that ensure provision of housing to these groups has come to anvil. Yet, it is well laid down that autonomous action of redevelopment is difficult and would require agency support. Such approach offers some potential that needs to be harnessed through State level policy support and implementation models. In this paper, the varying approaches to slums are discussed first and then a framework is proposed for the redevelopment of slums under public-private partnership (PPP). It also compares the current approach of Government through Rajiv AwasYojana (RAY) to tackle the same