Urban Poverty

disproportionate impact of COVID-19 pandemic on urban informal workers including their migration from cities to their native places

• India’s urban population increased from 25 million in 1901 to 377 million in 2011 its 31.2% of total population.
• But the urban areas have failed to meet the demands of increasing population pressure resulting in gaps in provisioning of basic amenities of housing, drinking water, sewerage, transportation etc. 

Issues of urban poverty

Urban poverty is multi-dimensional- Tenth Five Year Plan identified several types of vulnerabilities-

• Housing Vulnerability: Majority live in low quality unhygienic areas such as slums. They have no ownership rights and entitlements. They have no access to individual water connection, toilets, electricity, and roads. Census 2011, 17.7% of urban population - 65 million in slums
• Economic Vulnerability: Irregular employment with low wages, no access to formal safety net programmes, and productive assets
• Social Vulnerability: divergence between lower strata of society i.e. poor and middle class. It increases social differences in education and skill development programmes
• Personal Vulnerability: victims of all types of injustice and violence. Particularly, low caste people and minority, especially women, children, the elderly, disabled and destitute have no access to social justice.

Challenges for Urban Poor due to COVID-19 Pandemic

• Increased risk: for contracting infectious diseases such as COVID-19, linked to: Overcrowded living conditions; crowded transport services, working in the informal sector
• Job Losses: In current coronavirus crisis and the lockdown as factories close, supply chains shut down and services freeze.
• Limited alternatives: rural economy is not capable of absorbing such a large number of workers
• Public transfers and other assistance: Ensuring that food items and essential supplies reach the vulnerable sections has been a challenge in this period.
• A large sections of the urban population, including urban informal workers, remain out of scope of government benefits for the want of documents
• Lack of social protection for urban poor: Nearly 70% of social protection beneficiaries are in rural India. The needs of a more mobile and urban India haven’t been addressed.

Government Interventions

• To address Housing Vulnerability: Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) Programme, MoH&UA, in Mission mode provision of Housing for All by 2022.
• Developing of Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHCs) for urban migrants/poor.
• To address Economic Vulnerability: Centrally Sponsored Scheme Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NULM) for reducing the poverty and vulnerability of urban poor households since 2013.
• Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 to protect the rights of urban street vendors and to regulate street vending activities.
• To address Social Vulnerability: Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY), Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY) and Atal Pension Yojana (APY) seek to bring unorganised sector workers and poor across the country (including rural areas) under the safety net of insurance and pension.
• Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan (PM-SYM) pension scheme for unorganised workers

How to tackle the causes of urban poverty?

• Reform the Urban Governance: on pillars of Convergence and accountability; urban populace specific schemes; wider public participation; and use of the latest technologies.
• Build a credible Database of the urban poor and migrants, along with mapping their skills . The national migrant database by the National Disaster Management Authority is a step in this direction.
• Decentralise urban growth: will lessen burden of migrant population on megacities and enhance the livability within the city.
• Strengthening of ULBs
• Change statutes to allow municipal corporations to plan for the entire city
• Enhance municipal budgets, and like South Africa and Brazil, bring in ‘equalisation grants’, which municipal corporations can access for any development works 
• Improving life in rural areas: to control large-scale migrations
• Address Health and social vulnerability: by creating a robust, equitable and sustainable infrastructure that is inclusive and ensure strong grassroots level partnership

Demand for National Urban Employment Guarantee Programme (UEGP) 

Low budgetary provisions, poor human resource and less empowered Urban Local Bodies create challenges in assuring a better living environment and right to decent livelihood for every urban poor. Also, the COVID-19 led to widespread job losses in urban areas.

• Benefits of UEGP
• help to address the Underemployment and low wages in the informal urban workforce by mandating a statutory wage
• help to retain the local workforce in smaller cities and towns by providing work on demand
• centrally funded programme covering the wages of different kinds of workers will allow the ULBs to fulfil tasks they are mandated to perform.
• can generate a new set of ‘green jobs’ that can strengthen the capacity of ULBs as well as promote sustainable urban development.
• Thus, a well-planned UEGP not only directly improves welfare by raising incomes and creating assets, there are many positive spillover effects too, such as
• It increases demand by raising incomes directly, and indirectly in the informal sector, by improving the fallback position (alternatives) of workers.
• It provides a better trained workforce to the private sector by allowing educated young workers to acquire skills and improve their employability.
• The work undertaken will create assets that improve the town’s ecology and quality of public services
• creates a shared sense of public goods in which every resident has a stake
• strengthens the ‘Right to Life’ enshrined under Article 21.

• Challenges
• Rural guarantee scheme (MGNREGA) works on self-selection. All of the work under the scheme is of unskilled manual nature. Whether such a framework be implemented in the urban economy remain the moot question.
• It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for an urban employment guarantee scheme to ensure transfer workers from low-skill and low-productivity professions to high-skill jobs.
• common land- is scarcer in cities than in villages, even an unskilled job guarantee might be difficult to implement in cities.

Progress on Urban employment guarantee programme

• Madhya Pradesh- 100-day urban job guarantee scheme, the Yuva Swabhiman Yojana
• Since 2010, Kerala- Ayyankali Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme 100 days of manual work wage employment to an urban household.
• Odisha Urban Wage Employment Initiative
• Himachal Pradesh Mukhya Mantri Shahri Ajeevika Guarantee Yojana urban poor 120 days’ work.
• Jharkhand Mukhyamantri Shramik Yojana urban workers maximum 100 days of work.