Remedial Measures to Improve the Living Conditions of Slump Dwellers as a Step in the Journey towards a Smart City : An Overview

Cities are the response to social, political or technological transformations. They reflect our aspirations and respond to the challenges of the era. We are becoming a nation of '˜cities and towns'. In India the population ratio between the rural and urban is changing fast. Today 17% of our population is of slum dwellers. Agriculture has become more efficient as also its machinery, and needs far fewer people. Unemployment and even underemployment have become a worrisome phenomenon in Indian villages The attraction of cities with its thousand lights has become irresistible. Can our cities absorb this exodus? In India the whole exodus has been accommodated in the existing structures. This has led to the creation of slums in India. Even basic needs such as accommodation, energy, water, and sanitation are in short supply. Are these remediable?? Can we clean up our cities or build new ones? If we go in for building new cities, can we integrate such initiatives with the answers that new technologies provide??. Slums are an unhappy reality for our country and many others across the world. In India the total number of slum dwellers is about 65 million! Slums are a major urban drawback and a huge hurdle in the country's development at the same time people living there are a part of our working system!! We need to think whether the broad term SMART CITIES is good enough for India or we could have smart cities, smart slums and smart rural sector because the financial hurdles will always keep them on different racks of the ladder. We believe that Smart cities should focus on developing smart techniques of social awareness for the slum dwellers so that they can consciously work for a better living rather than be happy in the dump. S.S. Sisodia | Kamalkant"Remedial Measures to Improve the Living Conditions of Slump Dwellers as a Step in the Journey towards a Smart City : An Overview" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-1 | Issue-6 , October 2017, URL: http://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd3574.pdf http://www.ijtsrd.com/engineering/civil-engineering/3574/remedial-measures-to-improve-the-living-conditions-of-slump-dwellers-as-a-step-in-the-journey-towards-a-smart-city---an-overview/ss-sisodia