Planet of Slums written by the American writer, historian, activist Mike Davis a book of heart touching sad reality of the current and perhaps the future world about the large number of people living in the slums of the cities. The book is a dystopian view of the future world which explores the short and long term effects of the slums and the poor people living in them. It also draws an emotional picture of the living condition of those slum dwellers who were forced by the social, political, and economic factors to migrate to the cities and choose this kind of harsh lifestyle. Child abuse, ill-treat of woman, hunger, disease, death are the forever ongoing issues of the slums as described through a strong language in the book. Yet, this
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The given promises were broken by the World Bank and “Third World’s financial watchdog,” IMF which helped the rich to get richer and the poors to get poorer especially in the third world countries as Davis explains in the book. According to Davis, the IMF and the World Bank had put some efforts on slum upgrading by aiding the third world governments to refurbish the slums of their territories. But their idea of self-help loans came out as a mythos after Datta and Jones had shown their eagle vision by breaking down the statistics. “30 to 60 percent of the population were unable to meet the financial obligations of loans for upgrading”. The minimum savings range was so high for the poors that it literally kicked them out of the market and welcomed the middle class and state employees to take advantage of the site and service. In Mumbai, the slum upgrading project promised to provide 1 toilet seat for every 20 residents, but the reality of the upgraded ratio was only 1 per 100 (Davis 73-74). In Marcos’ dictatorial Philippines, the project that was modeled for poor families, had lost all its’ dwellers in five years because, “their lots had been sold to wealthy families.” After a great failure of the World Bank and IMF’s slum upgrading project, now they (WB and UN) decided to put NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) in charge of poverty reduction zone. But, P.K Das and Verma oppose the idea of NGOs …show more content…
These are some of the major effects of rapid growth of the urban poors. Besides, this rapid growth makes landowners the ‘landlords’. Much of the middle class in Brazil are landlords. As stated in the statistics of the German researchers, “53 percent of the land in Southeast Asian cities was owned by the top 5 percent of landlords” and in Mumbai, “just 91 people control the majority of all vacant land” (Davis 84). As the vacant lands are disappearing, the land prices are rising higher than ever. In Quezon City, land prices rose 35 to 40 times, in Diliman, 250 to 400 times and in Dhaka, 40% to 60% faster than other goods (Davis 92). This negatively affected the poor by leaving hundreds of thousands of them inaccessible to formal
The given promises were broken by the World Bank and “Third World’s financial watchdog,” IMF which helped the rich to get richer and the poors to get poorer especially in the third world countries as Davis explains in the book. According to Davis, the IMF and the World Bank had put some efforts on slum upgrading by aiding the third world governments to refurbish the slums of their territories. But their idea of self-help loans came out as a mythos after Datta and Jones had shown their eagle vision by breaking down the statistics. “30 to 60 percent of the population were unable to meet the financial obligations of loans for upgrading”. The minimum savings range was so high for the poors that it literally kicked them out of the market and welcomed the middle class and state employees to take advantage of the site and service. In Mumbai, the slum upgrading project promised to provide 1 toilet seat for every 20 residents, but the reality of the upgraded ratio was only 1 per 100 (Davis 73-74). In Marcos’ dictatorial Philippines, the project that was modeled for poor families, had lost all its’ dwellers in five years because, “their lots had been sold to wealthy families.” After a great failure of the World Bank and IMF’s slum upgrading project, now they (WB and UN) decided to put NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) in charge of poverty reduction zone. But, P.K Das and Verma oppose the idea of NGOs …show more content…
These are some of the major effects of rapid growth of the urban poors. Besides, this rapid growth makes landowners the ‘landlords’. Much of the middle class in Brazil are landlords. As stated in the statistics of the German researchers, “53 percent of the land in Southeast Asian cities was owned by the top 5 percent of landlords” and in Mumbai, “just 91 people control the majority of all vacant land” (Davis 84). As the vacant lands are disappearing, the land prices are rising higher than ever. In Quezon City, land prices rose 35 to 40 times, in Diliman, 250 to 400 times and in Dhaka, 40% to 60% faster than other goods (Davis 92). This negatively affected the poor by leaving hundreds of thousands of them inaccessible to formal