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Housing is a verb, said architect John Turner,meaning that for much of the urban poor,dwelling is not a question of mere shelter,but a complex calculus involving housing cost,tenure security,safety and access to work. Whether they are viewed as gigantic concentrations of poverty or hubs of commerce,the point is not what slums are,but what they lack: regular access to water and electricity,sanitation and legal claims to land. An incremental process that grants residents secure property rights and improves services that is,taking the slum out of the slum is a more practical and humane approach,rather than arbitrarily re-housing slum dwellers at the citys peripheries. If the economy aspect is not factored in that is,proximity to employment and services,then the human tendency would be for them to drift back to the centre,where their livelihoods are located.

The prime minister has announced Rajiv Awas Yojana,a radical plan to grant property rights to the urban poor. Property rights,the claim goes,are the pivot of all entrepreneurial activity. Giving the poor the ability to leverage their property titles as collateral would spark a tidal wave of micro-innovation.

Thats a fine thought,but everything lies in the implementation and the details,as and when they are fleshed out. How long will the lease be? Exactly what kind of housing will the poor have title to? It must be remembered that not all of the urban poor lives in slums and not all slum dwellers are strictly poor there is an important distinction between those who have wrested de facto tenure from years of squatting and the more invisible,powerless renters who are not eligible for resettlement or compensation,in the absence of any records. After all,the lack of current,accurate data is one of the big reasons that the slums discourse has been so blatantly hijacked by ideology.