Revision summary
Slums lack water, sanitation, drains, light, and tenure, not only legal title. Planning must upgrade in place and connect last-mile civic networks. PMAY-U, RAY’s slum-free idea, SBM-U, and NULM are the scheme layer. The 74th Amendment makes this a municipal duty, not only a state housing project. Distant resettlement without jobs is not amenity development.
Model answer
Introduction
Slums are dense informal neighbourhoods short of water, toilets, drains, light, and secure tenure, not merely illegal huts. Urban planning is the public decision about where those services go, whether the settlement is upgraded in place, or whether families are shifted to a distant plot without a livelihood.
Body
Tenure, layout, and in-situ services
- Basic civic amenities — piped water, household or community toilets, storm drains, paved lanes, street lighting, solid-waste collection, and a clinic or anganwadi — fail when a slum is treated as a blank on the master plan rather than as a lived ward.
- In-situ slum redevelopment and incremental upgrading keep people near work; distant resettlement without transport and jobs only relocates poverty, as many Indian city projects have shown.
- Secure tenure or occupancy rights, even if short of freehold, unlock household investment in toilets and wiring; the Rajiv Awas Yojana idea of a slum-free city and PMAY-Urban in-situ slum redevelopment rest on that planning logic.
- Plot layout, fire gaps, and last-mile drains are engineering; they still need a notified layout or a Town Planning Scheme so municipal crews can enter legally.
Institutions and limits
- The 74th Constitutional Amendment (1992) puts water, sanitation, and slum improvement on the municipal list; State town-planning Acts, building byelaws, and the Street Vendors Act (2014) decide whether informal work is planned for or swept away.
- National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM) and Swachh Bharat Mission–Urban add toilets, sewers, and livelihoods, but planning fails where land is captured, contractors skip drains, or ‘rehabilitation’ is only a high-rise without rental supply for the poorest.
- Climate-ready slum planning now includes raised plinths, heat shelters, and drainage outfalls, because civic amenity is also flood and heat safety in Ganga-plain cities of Uttar Pradesh.
- A note must therefore treat planning as mapping, tenure, finance, and maintenance together, not as a colourful zonal map that ignores the basti.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD P[Urban planning] --> T[Tenure layout rights] P --> A[Water toilet drain light waste] T --> I[In-situ upgrade] A --> I I --> L[Livelihoods stay] R[Distant dump resettlement] --> F[Amenity failure]
Conclusion
Urban planning develops slum amenities when it regularises space, funds in-situ water-sanitation-drainage, and keeps livelihoods intact. Without tenure and municipal maintenance, schemes become one-time concrete, not civic life.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Evaluate the population growth and the role of women in population control in Uttar Pradesh.
Next question in the 2019 paper (Q5). View answer →
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Is demolition-and-rebuild the only planning tool?
No. Incremental in-situ upgrading of water, toilets, and drains often serves the poorest better than a distant high-rise without rent support.
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Does a master plan by itself improve slums?
Not if the basti is left as ‘unauthorised’ and unserviced. Amenities need a legal path for pipes, plus maintenance budgets.
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