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Unveiling the Challenges in the Slums of South Asia

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A study presented by Anirudh Krishna, M. S. Sriram, and Purnima Prakash in “Slum types and adaptation strategies: identifying policy-relevant differences” sheds light on the realities faced by impoverished communities in South Asia, the challenges slum dwellers face everyday. [1] This research highlights the living conditions, challenges, and adaptation strategies of these communities. A Glimpse into the Daily Lives of Impoverished Communities Within the humble dwellings of these communities, possessions are scarce. Shabby clothes are stored on wooden planks balanced atop brick or earthen supports. Families own three or four battered aluminum cooking vessels, relying on an open, wood-burning fireplace for cooking. A cheap mobile phone serves as a lifeline to connect with their families, and one or two plastic containers store their precious water. The Struggles of Unconnected Settlements These settlements face numerous challenges due to their lack of connection to city services and li...
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The Harsh Cycle of Life in the Impoverished Communities of South Asia

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Life in the slums and impoverished communities in South Asia is a challenging and generational cycle. Alcoholic husbands often provide families with limited financial resources and little guidance. Uneducated wives resort to daily labor jobs in an attempt to make ends meet. Children, as young as second grade, drop out of school to contribute to the family income. In some cases, children never have the opportunity to attend school due to their families’ inability to afford basic necessities like water, electricity, and education. Littered Streets and Health Challenges Slums are characterized by littered streets, where garbage is a common sight. Lack of access to clean drinking water and inadequate hygiene practices, such as hand-washing, contribute to high disease rates among slum residents. The absence of proper sanitation facilities further compounds these health challenges. Moreover, slums become breeding grounds for crimes like prostitution and sex trafficking, entrapping numerous i...
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Unveiling the Challenges Faced by South Asia’s Impoverished Communities: Classification Perspective

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Before delving into the realities of life in impoverished communities, it is crucial to recognize their diversity. Poverty-stricken areas exhibit varied characteristics across continents, countries, and cities. In South Asia, various impoverished communities classifications have been established to identify and categorize, offering valuable insights into the specific challenges they face: notified, recognized, or identified. [1] Notified and Non-Notified Impoverished Communities: Disparities in Access to Services In South Asia, impoverished communities are classified as notified or non-notified. Notified communities have some access to city services, including clean water supply. Non-notified slum-like communities lack property rights and direct access to essential services such as electricity, sanitation, garbage collection, and public transportation. Shockingly, half of the slums in major cities fall into the non-notified category, exacerbating the challenges faced by residents. Reco...
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Unveiling the Hidden Realities of Global Slums: Insights into Impoverished Communities

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The World Urban campaign shared valuable insights into the experience of living in impoverished communities back in 2016. [1] lack of recognition from governance frameworks against those who live in slums, global discrimination, limited access to land and property, tenure insecurity, and the constant threat of eviction. Moreover, they struggle with precarious livelihoods, high exposure to disease and violence, and increased vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change and natural disasters due to their geographical location. Impoverished vulnerable groups are particularly affected: women are more likely to have lower education levels and face high rates of teen pregnancies. Children in slums are exposed to a range of adverse conditions, while unskilled youth find themselves excluded from economic and employment opportunities. People with disabilities suffer due to the dilapidated infrastructure in slums, and migrants, refugees, and internally displaced persons face additiona...
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Strengthening Communities through Pandemic Relief Efforts

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In addition to structural reform, direct action and efforts by various NGOs and ministries when the pandemic struck provided immediate relief to families and children. For example, in March of 2020, World Vision launched the largest emergency response in its 70-year history. Over a year, the agency reached 59 million people, including 25.4 million children, by teaching proper hygiene, providing personal protective equipment to medical personnel, and offering educational resources, emergency food, access to clean water, and financial support for parents. In South Asia, GFA World entered “all-out crisis mode” during the pandemic to offer immediate help to the most destitute, such as daily laborers out of work, those living on the street, and others in risk of starvation. This outreach stretched into 2021; last spring GFA workers distributed 450 hygiene kits to families in need in one area after heavy rains and flooding touched off by a cyclone. Among those affected were a woman named Ver...
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Initiatives to Combat the Global Poverty Crisis

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This situation of the COVID-19 pandemic helps to accentuate the importance of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, observed annually on Oct. 17 since 1993. Its origins go back even further. On Oct. 17, 1987, more than 100,000 people gathered in the Tracadero in Paris, site of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The declaration honored the victims of extreme poverty, violence and hunger and affirmed the need to come together to respect human rights. [1] According to the UN, 736 million people lived below the international poverty line of $1.90 a day U.S. in 2015; three years later almost 8 percent of the world’s workers and their families lived on that meager income (most people living below the poverty line are in Southern Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa). As of 2018, some 55 percent of the world’s population had no access to at least one social protection cash benefit. “In a world characterized by an unprecedented level of economic development...
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Child Poverty and Pandemic Effects

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In March of 2021, Forbes reported that the poverty rate in the U.S. had been on a slow decline, but the pandemic stalled that progress. Writer William Haseltine said among the hardest hit were children from low-income households, where school closures and the high cost of childcare had forced parents to give up their jobs to care for their kids. He said that almost one in every five children in the nation lives in poverty, a percentage significantly higher than for adults. Childhood poverty is linked to a higher incidence of accidents, chronic disease, and mental health issues, with effects that can last well into adulthood. “Children from low-income families face challenges when it comes to homeschooling as they may lack access to a computer, or even stable housing,” Haseltine wrote. “In the U.S. approximately 2.5 percent of students do not live in a stable residence. One in ten students in New York City was homeless or had serious housing instability during the previous school year. ...
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