User:Ritu.seasonflower/Adversity of kolkata slum

Slum
ASlum, as defined by the United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the proportion of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the developing world between 1990 and 2005. However, due to rising population, the number of slum dwellers is rising. One billion people worldwide live in slums and will likely grow to 2 billion by 2030.

Divisions of Slums in Kolkata
The slums of Kolkata can be divided into three groups: the older ones, up to 150 years’ old, in the heart of the city, are associated with early urbanization. The second group dates from the 1940s and 1950s and emerged as an outcome of industrialization-based rural–urban migration, locating themselves around industrial sites and near infra-structural arteries. The third group came into being after the independence of India and took vacant urban lands and areas along roads, canals and on marginal lands. In 2001, 1.5 million people, or one third of Kolkata’s population, lived in 2011 registered and 3500 unregistered slums.

The 1956 Slum Act defines slums as ‘those areas where buildings are in any respect unfit for human habitation’. The Calcutta Municipal Council Act of 1980 defines bustees as ‘an area of land not less than 700 square metres occupied by, or for the purposes of, any collection of huts or other structures used or intended to be used for human habitation’. The Central Statistics Organization defines slums as an area ‘having 25 or more katcha structures, mostly of temporary nature, or 50 or more households residing mostly in katcha structures huddled together or inhabited by persons with practically no private latrine and inadequate public latrine and water facilities’.