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Assessing the urban sustainability of the slum settlements in the hill resorts of India: a case study of Darjeeling town

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Abstract

The urban population of India is expected to reach 416 million by 2050. As more and more people shift from rural to urban areas, the urban centers will be facing serious sustainability challenges to meet the requirements of ever increasing population. One of the key problem areas will be the shortages of the affordable housings for the urban poor and the growth of slums. However, these slums are important component of urban ecosystem as they not only provide affordable shelters to the urban poor but also supply the urban area with its cheap labour force, therefore slums and slum dwellers should be treated as an integral part of urban ecosystem and should be included in the policy frameworks to make urban areas more inclusive and sustainable. This paper examines the sustainability of urban development through livelihood indicators of the slum dwellers of Darjeeling town. This empirical study was carried out in 8 different slum pockets of the town. The data was collected through questionnaires and were subsequently analyzed. The results shows that the slum pockets of Darjeeling town have higher literacy rates (including female literacy rate) as compared to both the national and the state averages, yet its performance in other livelihood indicators is very dismal. The attainment of the lower educational levels by slum dwellers indicates prevalence of very high dropout rates within the community. The slum dwellers face serious levels of deprivation as related to wellbeing indicator and environmental hygiene indicator in regard to access of safe drinking water and sanitation facilities respectively. The slum dwellers of Darjeeling town are forced to live in overcrowded substandard housing conditions with almost no municipal services and are situated on steep slopes which are often prone to the natural disasters. The mixed performance of the slum pockets in regard to the livelihood indicators suggests that the town of Darjeeling has been experiencing unbalanced growth in terms of sustainable development. Therefore a more holistic approach in policy framing is needed to address such multi-faceted problems.

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Data availability

Data is derived from Primary Census Abstract (PCA) 2011 and House listing Primary Census Abstract (HLPCA) 2011 of the Census of India Report, 2011.

Code availability

IBM-SPSS 16 has been used for calculations and ArcGis 10.2.1 for mapping purpose.

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The author would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions and the editor in chief Berney Warf for giving the opportunity to publish the paper in the esteemed journal.

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    Bishal Chhetri

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Chhetri, B. Assessing the urban sustainability of the slum settlements in the hill resorts of India: a case study of Darjeeling town. GeoJournal 88, 1807–1828 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10728-y

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