The first few days of the monsoon have seen Indian cities inundated by heavy downpours. However, the worst affected are slum dwellers who invariably reside in low-lying areas with minimal drainage and sewerage facilities. While affluent gated communities can swiftly pump out the water, slum dwellers must endure it until the water subsides or the government intervenes.
Just days ago, these same cities reeled under an intense heatwave, which claimed over 100 lives and caused an estimated 40,000 suspected heatstroke cases in India, primarily impacting urban informal workers. This erratic and extreme weather has become a regular occurence and scientists warn it will only intensify in the future.
This necessitates an urgent overhaul of urban planning that addresses both inequality and climate change.
India’s slum population, according to the 2011 census data, is a staggering 65 million. Three states — Maharashtra Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal — house a third of the slum population, at 28.4 million. Even smaller states like Odisha have over 1.5 million slum dwellers, with a city like Bhubaneswar having over 436 slums.
It is this slum population that endures abysmal conditions, with minimal access to water, drainage, and proper housing. They are also disproportionately impacted by climate-related disasters like heatwaves and flooding. With the arrival of the monsoons, their situation worsens as water inundates their homes, disrupting their livelihoods. Needless to say, such adverse events trigger numerous health problems, adding to their existing struggles.
“The drain beside our slum is a breeding ground for waterborne diseases and mosquitoes,” said Nandini Khurti, a resident of Tuihut, a slum located near a large drain in Bhubaneswar. “All year round, someone from our slum suffers from malaria or dengue. Regular fevers, coughs, and colds are commonplace in every household. During the rainy season, prolonged exposure to dirty water leads to skin diseases amongst many of us.”
It is in these settlements that climate-resilient planning is essential to achieve urban climate justice for these communities who contribute the least to pollution and are often referred to as the city's backbone, providing cheap and accessible labour to the urban population.
Even so-called planned cities like Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar, and Delhi have not factored informal settlements, including slums and homeless populations, into their initial planning stages. These very communities are the ones who built these cities.
While everyone is affected by climate change, the brunt of floods, cyclones, heatwaves, and cold waves is borne by the urban poor. The infrastructure has not kept pace with their population growth, even though they have become politically significant due to their voting power.
Time and again, slum dwellers have demanded decent wages, safety regulations, social security benefits, skill development programmes, formal employment opportunities, enforcement of labour laws, and decent living conditions to enable them to continue serving the city and earn a living. The situation has shown gradual improvement, but much more needs to be done to keep pace with rapid climate change.
“We’ve been living in this slum since 1997,” said Dali Sahoo, a 55-year-old resident of Panitanki slum in Bhubaneswar. “Earlier, when the area was relatively empty, we never had waterlogging problems. But with new apartment buildings and hospitals coming up, waterlogging has become even worse. Being a low-lying area, rainwater seeps into my house, sometimes up to waist-deep for one to two days until the water is pumped out. We have yet to be provided with a pucca house [permanent house] as promised under the Jaga Mission.”
City flooding has become a regular occurrence, highlighting the need to assess drainage, sewerage, and drinking water during the monsoon season. Livelihood loss is also highest during monsoons and disasters like cyclones that destroy homes. During Cyclone Fani, the entire city of Bhubaneswar came to a standstill. Slum houses were ripped apart, and there was no subsequent compensation for the damage. This indicates a failure to learn from the devastation of the 1999 super cyclone that ravaged Bhubaneswar.
The most pressing need to tackle climate injustice and inequality in cities is to involve local leaders and establish a participatory approach to urban planning. The communities that build our cities and enable a good quality of life for city dwellers deserve respect and involvement. No successful city planning strategy can be developed without the significant participation of slum communities in each city. Without these participatory processes, inequality and urban climate disasters are likely to worsen in the future.
Visiting individual slums and interacting with residents will reveal low-cost solutions to many problems. Infrastructure improvements like drainage and sewerage can be done in consultation with slum dwellers. Some infrastructure, such as flood/cyclone shelters or homeless shelters, could be planned for the grounds of government schools or other multi-use open spaces.
Regarding individual housing, while some slum dwellers in Bhubaneswar have pucca houses, others have land rights certificates that are not legal patta (registered deeds).
One innovative programme in Odisha is the Aahaar scheme, launched in 2015 across five municipal corporations including Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Sambalpur, Rourkela, and Berhampur. This scheme provides subsidised meals to those in need in urban areas. Such programmes should be continued, as they help the urban poor maintain their nutrition while they work hard.
Similarly, the urban employment guarantee scheme should be reintroduced to support the urban poor during lean seasons, like the monsoon. This scheme could be creatively used to clean drains and assist local authorities during this period.
The government health infrastructure also needs to be revamped to better serve slum dwellers, who require it the most due to the unhygienic conditions they often live in. Finally, children should have access to good, affordable government schools. They also need support to complete their studies and find employment. New skill-building courses can empower them to break free from the cycle of poverty. Government scholarships for wards of those with labour cards through the Building and Other Construction Workers' Welfare Board are a great benefit, but this needs to be extended to the entire slum population.
In conclusion, unequal cities cannot achieve urban climate justice. The urban poor are the ones who build and enable the growth of cities. By involving them in planning, we can create habitable, climate-resilient cities that are prepared to face the increasing intensity of climate change.
Debabrat Patra works as Associate Director and Humanitarian Lead at ActionAid Association India. Sourish Bose works as Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at ActionAid Association.
Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of ActionAid or Down To Earth