Distinguish between Slums and Squatte in context of Bangladesh:

Slum:

Slums are squalid sections of a city or town, areas in which most inhabitants are in or near poverty, stores and residences are cheap and dilapidated, and streets are narrow and blighted. Slums have been created in various locations; where they arise depends upon political and economic conditions in a community.

A slum is a densely populated urban area that is characterized by a generally low standard of living. These areas may also be known as shantytowns, barrios, ghettos, or favelas, although some of these terms have specific cultural meanings. In the later part of the 20th century, they exploded worldwide, becoming a cause for serious concern among humanitarian organizations, as an alarmingly high number of people live in regions which could be considered slums; in Mumbai, India, for example, an estimated 60% of the population lives in one.

A slum is a heavily populated urban informal settlement characterized by substandard housing and squalor. While slums differ in size and other characteristics from country to country, most lack reliable sanitation services, supply of clean water, reliable electricity, timely law enforcement and other basic services. Slum residences vary from shanty houses to professionally built dwellings that because of poor-quality construction or provision of services have deteriorated into slums

Squatting:

A squatter settlement therefore, can be defined as a residential area which has developed without legal claims to the land and/or permission from the concerned authorities to build; as a result of their illegal or semi-legal status, infrastructure and services are usually inadequate. There are essentially three defining characteristics that help us understand squatter settlement: the Physical, the Social and the legal with the reasons behind them being interrelated.

1.Physical Characteristics:

A squatter settlement, due to its inherent "non-legal" status, has services and infrastructure below the "adequate" or minimum levels. Such services are both network and social infrastructure, like water supply, sanitation, electricity, roads and drainage; schools, health centers, market places etc. Water supply, for example, to individual households may be absent, or a few public or community stand pipes may have been provided, using either the city networks or a hand pump itself. Informal networks for the supply of water may also be in place. Similar arrangements may be made for electricity, drainage, toilet facilities etc. with little dependence on public authorities or formal channels.

2.Social Characteristics:

Most squatter settlement households belong to the lower income group, either working as wage labour or in various informal sector enterprises. On an average, most earn wages at or near the minimum wage level. But household income levels can also be high due to may income earners and part-time jobs. Squatters are predominantly migrants, either rural-urban or urban-urban. But many are also second or third generation squatters.

3.Legal Characteristics:

The key characteristic that delineates a squatter settlement is its lack of ownership of the land parcel on which they have built their house. These could be vacant government or public land, or marginal land parcels like railway setbacks or "undesirable" marshy land. Thus when the land is not under "productive" use by the owner, it is appropriated by a squatter for building a house. It has to be noted here that in many parts of Asia, a land owner may "rent" out his land for a nominal fee to a family or families, with an informal or quasi-legal arrangement, which is not however valid under law.

Distinguish between Slums and Squatte in context of Bangladesh:

"Slums" are highly congested urban areas marked by deteriorated, unsanitary buildings, poverty, and social disorganization.

"Squatters" settle on land, especially public or unoccupied land, without right or title. Squatters include those who settles on public land under regulation by the government, in order to get title to it.

Simply out, slums refer to the environmental aspects of the area where a community resides, while squatters refer to the legality of the land ownership and other infrastructure provision.

Slum and squatter settlements are not difficult to find in cities such as Dhaka. They are located all over the city. They are found beside five star hotels and small huts made of paper and/or straw are located close to monuments expressing progress and modernity. They are even found beside international organization who are working in Dhaka trying to improve the living conditions of the urban poor. The workers are constantly reminded of the problems of slum and squatter sattlements in Dhaka.

People in these areas live in single rooms with overhanging roofs made of either rusted corrugated metal or plastic that acts as a cover from rainfall .some house of batter quality in the area indicate the income of the of the dwellers differs greatly. The slum settlement are congested and it is obvious that privacy is alleys with distorted channels of waste water and there are open out of order . lack of sanitation and waste disposal leaves bed odours all over the area. Children run around all over the place, playing or looking for “valuable” waste to sell from the garbage piles. The women cook staple food while in the afternoon and evening they do embroidery work. The men are usually absent during the day dau to their work as a rickshaw pullers or day labourer. This general description of slum areas in Dhaka could apply to that of other third world cities. However ,one of the purpose of this study is to go beyond the appearance of proverty and to understand how people survive in such areas.

The existence of slum and squatters settlement in third world cities is due to rapid urbanization. One of the consequence of rapid urbanization in third world countries is that the provision of urban housing and service has not kept pace with the demand. There are acute shortage of housing which the urban poor can afford and lack of adequate basic service facilities, such as water supply and sanitation service, within existing slum and squatter settlement.

After the independence of Bangladesh, the urban areas of the country especially the big cities like Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna and Rajshahi were confronted with the problems of a sudden influx of rootless, landless, poor and unemployed people from across the country in search of their livelihood. Many of these people were jobless, capital-less, homeless and had no other alternative other than to live in the slum areas. Some were so destitute that they lived a floating life being unable to obtain shelter even in the slum areas. By and large they were engaged in jobs with low wages that couldn’t meet their bare necessities. Being economically vulnerable, some became involved in various crimes and anti-social activities. They began to construct unauthorized shanty houses in abandoned or private land, khas or Government land, along the highway sides or along the side of railway tracks and industrial belts. Thus these slums began to grow rapidly in the spaces within and outskirts of the city centers.

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is the largest city in the country. It comprises 34 percent of the overall national urban population and is unrivalled among Bangladeshi cities in terms of its economic, social and political opportunities. Dhaka has been growing very rapidly over the last five decades, particularly due to rural to urban migration and urbanization and incorporation of erstwhile outlying areas. Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) has an area of 145 sq. kilometres and an estimated population of 7.2 million (2005). Dhaka Metropolitan Area (DMA), with an estimated 2005 population of 9.1 million, comprises DCC and adjoining areas totalling 306 sq. kilometres . Slums have existed in Dhaka City for a long time but their growth accelerated after the liberation of the country in 1971, mainly due to mass migration by the rural poor. The first significant survey of the slums and squatter population in Dhaka was conducted by the Centre for Urban Studies in 1974 at the behest of the Government of Bangladesh and UNCHS. The slum population found in that survey was 275,000. Another survey was conducted by CUS in the Dhaka Metropolitan Area in 1991 for ICDDR, B. This study recovered a slum population of 718,143 in some 2,156 slum and squatter clusters. CUS conducted yet another survey in 1996 in the same area (the DMA) for the Asian Development Bank and found the total slum population to be 1.5 million in 3,007 clusters.

In Bangladesh Many people lives in Slum and remain Squatters in their Life .Some 140, 000 people in the developing world are abandoning their rural settlements daily and moving into the towns and cities in search of a new life (UNCHS 1990). Cities are being flooded with people looking for a job and a decent income. A vast majority of these people having no other places to go ends up in the squatter settlements and slums sprawling within the City.

The squatters constitute a distinct class among the slum dwellers who lack all the basic amenities of life but yet provide very essential services to the community.

In Bangladesh, Many people live in Slum and remain Squatters in their Life

Refference:

1.Urban slums of Bangladesh

http://www.thedailystar.net

June 20, 2009

Professor Nazrul Islam

Dr. AQM Mahbub

Dr. Nurul Islam Nazem

2.Slum and Squatter Settlement in Dhaka

A study of consolidation processes in Dhaka’s Low-income settlement areas

Susanne Wendt

3. Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Preliminary Report on Population Census, 1991. Dhaka: July 1991.