At the dawn of this millennium when the United Nations initiated the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the policymakers had visualized a new rising picture of humanity in mind. While all the eight MDGs established their focus on eradicating various global inequalities, Target 7.C and 7.D of ‘Ensuring Environmental Sustainability’ emphasized the lives of urban slum dwellers and the facilities of clean drinking water and proper sanitation across the globe. The fact that presently around 1 billion people around the world spend their daily lives in slums indicates the tough realities of a larger population of the world as well as the inadequacy of their respective governments to follow a comprehensive approach while dealing with such urban settlements.

Most of these are located in Sub Saharan Africa and Asia but other regions are no less vulnerable to it –combinedly accounting for around 20% of total slums. This is just a scenario of formal settlements. While taking informal settlements into account the number rises to 1.6 billion indicating around 25% of the world’s population. There is no doubt that the MDGs have had positive impacts and effects and have uplifted lives of a larger proportion of the population. But we have remained a step behind from achieving sustainability for the ‘urban poor’. A lack of full enthusiasm from governments and other stakeholders to work on the issue has also had an undesirable effect on their lives as they are trapped in a vicious cycle of socio-economic inequality.