The slums of the City Beautiful have a bitter reality. They have lowest sex ratio and literacy rate in the country.
The Census 2011 data released recently on slums population in India shows that Chandigarh slums have the lowest sex ratio in the country. The city’s slum sex ratio is 784 followed by 832 in NCT Delhi, 841 in Gujarat and 872 in Haryana.
The literacy rate in city’s slums is 66.4 per cent while the highest literacy rate is 98.1 per cent in Mizoram slums.
The urban city of Chandigarh has witnessed decline in slum population in past one decade. According to 2011 census, the total population of slums in Chandigarh is 95,135 including 53,340 males and 41,795 females. As per 2001 census, the slums population in Chandigarh was 1,07,125 including 62,762 males and 44,363 females. The experts attribute the declining slum concentration to slum rehabilitation projects and demolition drives conducted in the Union Territory of Chandigarh in the past.
The census defines a slum as “residential areas where dwellings are unfit for human habitation” because they are dilapidated, cramped, poorly ventilated, unclean, or “any combination of these factors which are detrimental to the safety and health.
In 2011, the slum population registered in neighbouring Haryana is 16,62,305, Himachal Pradesh is 61,312 and Punjab is 14,60,518. According to the data, Haryana slums has the lowest child sex ratio of 850 followed by 860 in Jammu & Kashmir, 860 in Punjab and 863 in Himachal Pradesh.
The data stated that the percentage of schedule caste in Chandigarh slums is 30.7 per cent which is third highest in the country followed by Haryana with 29.9 per cent SCs in slums. The SC population in neighbouring Punjab slums is 39.8 per cent, highest in the country.
“Chandigarh slums have the second highest percentage of main workers at 91.8 per cent and second lowest percentage of marginal workers at 8.2 per cent,” stated the Census 2011. As per the Census Department definition, the main workers are those who had worked for the major part of the year preceding the date of enumeration ie, those who were engaged in any economically productive activity for 183 days (or six months) or more during the year. While marginal workers were those who worked any time at all in the year preceding the enumeration but did not work for a major part of the year, ie, those who worked for less than 183 days (or six months).
As per census 2011, Chandigarh has a total population of 10,55,450 people including 28,991 rural and 10,26,459 urban population.
The 2001 census had found 27.5 per cent of India’s urban population was living in slums while 2011 census had stated that figure has fallen to 17.4
per cent.