One billion slum dwellers

[Swede]

snip

One billion people worldwide live in slums, a number that will likely double by 2030. The characteristics of slum life vary greatly between geographic regions, but they are generally inhabited by the very poor or socially disadvantaged. Slum buildings can be simple shacks or permanent and well-maintained structures but lack clean water, electricity, sanitation and other basic services. In this post, I've included images from several slums including Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, the second largest slum in Africa (and the third largest in the world); New Building slum in central Malabo, Equatorial Guinea; Pinheirinho slum - where residents recently resisted police efforts to forcibly evict them; and slum dwellers from Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi, India. India has about 93 million slum dwellers and as much as 50% of New Delhi's population is thought to live in slums, 60% of Mumbai. -- Paula Nelson (55 photos total)


http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2012/02/slum_life.html?camp=obinsite

[izquierdista]

1. There are poor countries WITHOUT slums

Countries where the average worker brings in $200 a month, but yet he and his family still have four walls with a secure lockable door, a roof to keep off the rain, heat in the winter, drinkable running water and indoor plumbing. If you travel around the former Soviet Union, you see people living in apartment blocks that were built 60 or more years ago during their post-war building boom. Since the fall of Communism 20 years ago, people are now 'owners' of their apartments and although they are aging and not worth a lot, they actually have more than homeowners upside down on their mortgage in a capitalist country. Say what you want about the Soviet Union, but when it came to housing, they really delivered on "to each according to his need".

Notice that what people need is far less than what they want. I think that what did the Soviet Union in was their blindness in not allowing people to get what they wanted once everyone's needs were met. Had they allowed capitalism and markets to take care of people's wants, they could have been in the same position China is in now.

To a communist, the most important picture in the article is the slum dwellers picking through the rubble with the empty apartment complex behind them. Once the capitalist profit motive can be dispensed with, the slum dwellers can be assigned an apartment as their housing, with the state deciding how to make the economics of the transaction clear. The 'free market' is never going to come up with that solution, for it has to make quarterly (or even monthly) profits, never mind what would work out best for 60 years into the future.

[elfin]

2. just read Behind the Beautiful Forevers

By Katherine Boo. AMAZING nonfiction taking place in the Anawaddi slum behind walls at the Mumbai airport.

I think everyone should read it. Her observations are intimate and her take on the effects of income disparities and unhinged global capitalism are trenchant.