ABSTRACT
Jawaharlal Nehru made it clear indeed in a variety of oral and written statements that slums had to disappear from the Indian towns and cities and that the central government had to play a role in their disappearance. Deliberate sub-standard housing will defeat the very purpose of housing as it will lead to the creation of future slums; the basic standards must be adhered to at all costs. Attention to environmental aspects of the attempts to replace huts and chawls by ‘decent houses’ is hardly explicitly available in the literature on slum clearance after independence. In an overview of the relevant policies in a number of Five Year Plans, O.P. Sisodia mentions the slum clearance and re-housing schemes that were developed during the Second Plan. Slum upgrading and site-and-service projects came strongly forward in the 1970s and were supported by international financial agencies such as the World Bank and many other development oriented organizations.
