Slum is a commonly used term for thickly populated urban areas with dilapidated and substandard housing and squalor. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia defines slum as densely populated area of substandard housing, usually in a city, characterized by unsanitary conditions and social disorganization. The Census (2001) of India has defined Slum as “a compact area of at least 300 populations or about 6070 households of poorly built congested tenements, in unhygienic environment usually with inadequate infrastructure and lacking in proper sanitary and drinking water facilities. The slum population in India was counted as 42.58 million during 2001 census spread over 640 cities/ towns, which was 15 per cent of the urban population and 23.1 per cent of the cities/ towns’ population reporting slum. The life in slums is human disaster, yet the slum population is growing with alarming rate all over the world but more so in developing countries.

In a report titled “The Challenge of Slums”, the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-HABITAT 2003) reported that one billion people — approximately one third of the world’s urban dwellers and a sixth of all humanity, live in slums. India alone constitute about one third of the global slum population. The report has warned that the population of the world’s slums will double to two billion people within 30 years. “The Challenge of Slums” argues for intervention by national governments to check the rapid unplanned urban expansion which is already a human disaster. The key reasons behind the growth of slums are migration of disadvantaged rural population to economically more affluent cities in search of jobs and livelihood.