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What lessons does COVID-19 offer for India's urban poor policy?
Recently, the coronavirus pandemic has drawn attention to the insecurities that haunt the lives of the urban poor.
- The urban poor are generally less insecure than rural poor partly because fallback work is easier to find in urban areas but still the urban poor are exposed to serious contingencies, both individual and collective.
Statistics of Urban Poor in India
- India’s present urban system includes about 7933 cities and towns of varying population sizes, and many of these cities and towns are included in the massive expansion of urban growth that was registered over the 2001- 2011 decade.
- According to National Sample Survey data for 2019, only 20% of urban women in the age group of 15-59 years spend time in “employment and related activities” on an average day.
- India has one of the lowest rates of female workforce participation in the world.
- The United Nations estimates that most population increase in the future will be reported from the urban areas itself i.e. by 2030, 165 million additional people are expected to be living in urban areas.
- According to National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4, 2015-16) 4.6 per cent, 3.4 per cent and 8.4 per cent of the urban, rural and urban slum populations respectively were using unimproved sanitation facilities.
Causes of Urban Poverty in India
- Migration from rural areas to urban mega-city metropolis: When people without sufficient income migrate from rural areas to the urban megalopolises, it leads to informal settlements in big cities.
- High Birth Rate: A high birth rate remains one of the closely linked factors contributing to urban poverty.
- An uncontrolled and very high birth rate makes it difficult for family to meet their all requirements.
- Lack of quality education: The lack of access to formal education or lack of quality education deprives a person of various economic opportunities.
Lessons for India’s Urban Policy from COVID-19
- Focus on invisible workforce in urban settling: The impact of COVID-19 on informal workers, domestic workers, street-vendors etc. who are often ‘invisible’ during the normal days, will not just be restricted to them, but will have multidimensional risks to the country as a whole.
- Economic Impact: The migrant workers, who are anchors of a slum population, started returning to their native places due to fear, anxiety and hunger because most of them were daily wagers and did not maintain cash liquidity for this kind of uncertain situation.
- According to the latest India 2020 publication, the unorganised sector in India accounts for 97 per cent of the workforce and the majority of them are inter / intra state migrants.
- The reverse migration of these workers will adversely affect sectors, including but not limited, to real estate, manufacturing, milling, textile, travel and tourism, e-commerce delivery, private security and facilities management.
- Social Impact: Nearly eighty five per cent of respondents stated they had lost their primary source of income due to lockdown while half (53 per cent) of those did not receive full salary for the month of March 2020.
- There is support from government in terms of providing free food /ration and direct infusion of cash into bank accounts, but these provisional measures are grossly inadequate to ensure social security.
- Health impact: The healthcare institutions, the government and the World Health Organization have been delivering lessons on hand-washing and social distancing since the start of the pandemic.
- In most slums of the country, where a shared tap is the only source of water, it is unclear as to how this segment of the population will adhere to the preventive guidelines.
Challenges faced by Urban Poor in India
- Lack of opportunities and skills training: The shortage of adequate investment in quality education and basic services like health, sanitation, waste management and skill training has had its consequences.
- It has led to generations of malnourished, uneducated, unaware and unskilled or semi-skilled people who find it difficult to find decent paying jobs.
- Agriculture not being a lucrative option: Millions migrate to the cities every day to take up informal jobs such as domestic help, driving cars for middle-class people, taxi driving, construction site work, etc. which creates overcrowding in the already packed urban infrastructure.
- Lack of affordable housing: The lack of affordable housing leaves migrant population address-less on paper.
- They settle wherever they can, but as more people join, a whole community of undocumented settlers emerges.
- Prevalence of Institutional Corruption: The institutional corruption has played a major role in the slow rate of provision of affordable urban housing.
- The officials at different levels of operation have been known to harass slum dwellers by asking them to pay up for documents they lacked.
- The officials also ignored bureaucratic procedures by “justifying” delays in housing provision, forcing them to permanently settle in these unsustainable settlements.
Measures to be adopted to address the problems of Urban Poor
- Universalization of Public Distribution System: The urban poor needs better social protection in urban areas and universalising the Public Distribution System in urban slums would be a step forward which can be done under the National Food Security Act.
- Support through Employment-based opportunities: The urban poor must be supported by providing employment-based opportunities because it has major advantages of self-regulating and the possibility of generating valuable assets or services.
- Implementation of urban employment guarantee act: There is need for strong political will to introduce and implement a national urban employment guarantee act.
- Introduction of Decentralised Urban Employment and Training (DUET): The government, State or Union, would issue “job stamps”, each standing for one day of work at the minimum wage.
- The job stamps would be liberally distributed to the approved public institutions such as universities, hostels, schools, hospitals, health centres, museums, libraries, shelters, jails, offices, departments, railway stations, transport corporations, public-sector enterprises, neighbourhood associations and urban local bodies.
- These institutions would be free to use the stamps to hire labour for odd jobs and small projects that do not fit easily within their existing budgets and systems.
- Part-time employment opportunities for Urban Women: A part-time employment option would be attractive for many poor women in urban areas because it will facilitate women’s involvement as most of the work could be organised on a part-time basis.
- The wage employment for a few hours a day would be much easier to manage as it would give them some economic independence and bargaining power within the family, and help them to acquire new skills.
- Improving life in rural areas: In order to control large-scale migrations from rural to urban areas, the current state of rural infrastructure must be addressed.
- India is taking the right step in promoting small and medium scale industries in rural areas, as well as promoting other income-generating opportunities.
- Better urban planning & slum rehabilitation: As India ambitiously progresses in line with other rapidly developing cities, informal settlers are increasingly left behind.
Road Ahead
- Many research organisations including World Health Organisation and United Nations are actively involved in helping the urban poor and combating poverty among developing countries which has led to drastic improvements in the recent decades.
- The government is making more contributions in helping the poor by providing subsidies with time and increased awareness among everyone.
- The pandemic raises a pressing need of policy level reform to ensure holistic inclusiveness and preparedness of the country to develop a more responsive framework to mitigate urban inequality during any similar outbreaks in future.
- The government should create a communication strategy that ensures preventive measures such as basic sanitation practices and hygiene get blended into day-to-day culture rather being promoted as a temporary situational treatment.
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