Relocation can prove disastrous for many slum-dwellers if the new localities to which they are shifted are too far from the slums where they had lived earlier. This is clear from the research done by Prof Navdeep Mathur of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA)
and his team, into the relocation of the city’s slum-dwellers carried
out by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC).
Mathur’s study indicates that, before carrying out the relocation, the civic body had done no research into its impact on the slum-dwellers and had, therefore, little understanding of the life and economic structures prevailing in slums.
Talking about the problems created by the AMC’s mindless relocation work, Mathur said that people living in slums tend to work in nearby areas as they cannot afford to travel to distant localities for work.
“That’s why when they are shifted to places several kilometers away from the slums in which they had lived, most of them lose their source of livelihood almost immediately,”
he said. “They are too ill-paid to be able to travel to their old workplaces every day.”
Mathur said people from slums in Khodiyarnagar, Kankaria and Macchipir had been relocated to places as far away as Ganeshnagar (at Piplag-pirana). Moreover, slum-dwellers find it equally difficult to find work immediately on arrival in the new localities as most of them are manual labourers without any special skills.
The research team also found that families which had been staying together like joint families in the slums had been forced to live apart because they were allotted residences in different localities.
“This has created new problems for many families,” Mathur said. “They are very unhappy with the separation forced upon them by the new arrangement and are unwilling to leave the slums.”
