People in urban slums contribute over 7% of GDP: study

Notwithstanding their poor living conditions, people living in urban slums contribute over 7% of the country's GDP.

"Assuming urban GDP is about 60% of total GDP, the total contribution of informal settlement dwellers to urban GDP of India is 7.53%," said a study released today.

The study was conducted by Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) and Indicus Analytics on "Economic Contributions of Urban Poor" -- on economic contribution of urban informal settlements dwellers to urban economy.

The study stated that in million-plus cities, nearly 40% of the households live in slums. Five metro cities of the country, namely, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kolkata account for more than 50% of total slum households in the country.

Officials said that the objective of the study was to look into the contribution of informal settlement households to urban economy.

The primary reason for looking at this particular question is to determine whether the informal settlement households, who normally form the poor strata of the urban population, do contribute to the urban economy to a significant extent or not, officials added.

In Maharashtra, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Delhi, about 50% of slum dwellers do not have sanitation facilities within house premise.

"At the country level, 36 per cent of slum households do not have three basic facilities -- electricity, tap water and sanitation within the house premises," the study said.

The study also found that the average monthly income of more than 41% of the total urban household is between Rs 5,000 - 10,000 while 25.6% of such households earn less than Rs 5,000.

The study was conducted based on a primary survey of 50 top cities in India. The survey captured various social, economic and demographic dimensions of urban informal settlements dwellers in these cities.

A total of about 5,350 households and about 24,500 individuals were covered in the survey, officials said.