Aspiration of Youth in Chennai Slums

A slum is a heavily populated urban informal settlement characterized by substandard housing and squalor. It is to be noted that more than half of the Indian population will live in urban areas by 2020 and nearly one-third of this urban population will be slum dwellers. For the purpose of Census, slums have been categorized and defined into three types namely a) Notified Slums, b) Recognized Slums, c) Identified Slums. Aspiration is hope or ambition of achieving something. The aspirations of youth keep changing from school to college life. The youth pursuing their graduation or post graduation and working in the age group between eighteen to twenty-four years of age from Zone 8 slum recognized by the slum clearance board alone are the respondents. A number of thirty samples by using simple random sampling method were used for the research. A majority of the respondents had a high level of problems during their schooling but despite that, they had a good opinion about their schools. A majority of them had a good interpersonal relationship with friends and parents. A small number of respondent's aspiration remained the same as police for male respondents and as a teacher for female respondents. However, for a majority of them, the aspiration kept changing from their schooling to college. While parents were the major inspiration for some of the respondents, followed by them were the teachers who were the inspiration to some. But in this fast technological world, many of the respondents are addicted to the internet culture and hence the respondent's aspiration gets changed with the current trending.