Makarand Purohit – Will The Rs. 392 Crore Fund Help Raipur’s Growing Slums?

A woman at Shakti Nagar slum drinking water from a polluted source

indiawaterportal.org. May, 2014. A report on the status of Raipur’s many slums released in February 2014 shows that providing basic amenities to slum dwellers is still a challenging task for the Chhattisgarh government.

“The life of the people living in slums in any part of the country is a curse”, says Rohit Jagat, a 30 year old resident of Shakti Nagar slum in Raipur.
Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh, is regarded as one of the major growth centres in the country. With rapid urbanization and industrialization in and around Raipur, the population of the city increased drastically. Sadly, this also included the slum population, which was 97,264 in 1991 and rose to 5,16,829 in 2011. This growth has led to an increase in the demand for water and better sanitation facilities but the efforts made by the government in this regard seem poor especially around the slums.