ABSTRACT
According to a UNHABITAT study, 924 million people, or 31.6% of the world’s urban population, lived in slums in 2001 (UN-HABITAT, 2003). The Planning Commission of India estimates that 26.1% of India’s population was living below the poverty line in 2000; the slum population in urban India in 2002 was 61 million (CSO, 2002). However, the United Nations website for the Millennium Development Goals Indicators has higher slum figures based on tenure criteria showing that 55.5% of urban India lived in slums totalling 158 million. Going by the $1 per day (PPP) definition, 43.3% of India’s population falls below the $1 income mark (UN, n.d.a.).
