Yet within some Indian slums a quiet revolution is taking place. The "Slum Networking Program" was pioneered by Cambridge graduate and civil engineer Himanshu Parikh,whose interest in the environment and habitat led him to challenge conventional "solutions" to slum development.

Parikh's concept of improving slums by starting with the infrastructure was first successfully demonstrated in the Indore Habitat Project. That success has led to the idea spreading to other Indian cities — Ahmedabad, Baroda, Mumbai, Bhopal — and now also to villages and to other countries.

How Slums Develop

In a typical slum in urban India, houses are built of mud and plastic sheets, though occasionally of brick. Streets and alleys are often no more than seven feet (two meters) wide and double as open sewers. Despite these conditions, the slum population of India doubles every ten years.

The inhabitants are often migrants from neighboring villages who come to the cities in search of jobs and a higher standard of living. But the acute housing shortage forces them to be squatters in conditions worse than their home villages. Although many of them are employed — in factories, cottage industries, or their own small businesses — they do not invest in their housing because the squatter settlements are illegal and could be demolished at any moment.   >>>