HRIP 423: INDIAN SOCIAL

INSTITUTIONS AND THE

MARGINALIZED

TOPIC: SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, INFRASTRUCTURAL

BARRIERS FACED BY MARGINALIZED SECTIONS IN
URBAN AREAS

Name: Krupa Samuel

Reg No.: 19408008
INTRODUCTION
Urban inequality is a blight experienced by many cities, even in the developed world.
In developing countries like India, these social and economic inequalities become
even more pronounced, with living conditions in certain populations crossing the line
to the abysmal. In these cities, agencies responsible for addressing welfare concerns
are unable to do so, as they themselves grapple with a host of challenges

Cities anywhere in the world show tremendous diversity: in architecture, heritage,

economic activities, transportation modes, languages, and a variety of social, cultural
and religious customs and practices. Such diversity makes a city an interesting place
to live in. And more than villages and small towns, a city provides its citizens with
opportunity not only in employment, but also in their overall pursuit to rise above
what they had been born into and achieve progress. Unfortunately, many city
residents are unable to relish the full benefits of the diversity and opportunities that
cities offer as, to begin with, they earn little income. Government support is also
insufficient, leaving these significant populations to constantly grapple with
difficulties in their daily living.

The city is a strong magnet in attracting the masses. Masses in rural areas are victims
who cannot escape the snare of offering a better life in the city. Some of the masses
who "failed" in the city, like it or not, must be trapped in the marginal circle of urban
society.

Marginalization is a phenomenon of imbalance in obtaining opportunities, both in

economic, social and infrastructural aspects. Marginalization comes from various
interrelated and complex factors. As a result of this marginalization, people become
poor and have narrow views. These marginalized communities have limited
opportunities due to lack of ability in several aspects.

The forms of marginalization may vary—generally linked to the level of development

of society; culturally, and as (if not more) importantly, with relation to economics. For
example, it would generally be true, that there would exist more “marginalized”
groups in the Third World”, and developing nations, that in the Developed/First-
World nations
Indeed, there can be a distinction made, on the basis of the “choice” that one has
within this context—those in the Third World who live under impoverished
conditions, through no choice of their own (being far removed from the protectionism
that exists for people in the First World,) are often left to die due to hunger, disease,
and war. One can also add to this various minority, as well as women… Within the
First World, low-income drug addicts stand out as being the most marginalized.

To further clarify the meaning and concept let us discuss certain characteristics of
marginalized groups:

Usually, a minority group has the following characteristics:

1) It suffers from discrimination and subordination.

2) They have physical and/or cultural traits that set them apart, and which are
disapproved of, by a dominant group.

3) They share a sense of collective identity and common burdens.

4) They have shared social rules about who belongs, and who does not.

5) They have a tendency to marry within the group.

Thus, marginalization is complex as well as a shifting phenomenon linked to social

status.

SOCIAL BARRIERS
Urban poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon with both income and non-income
dimensions. Poverty is defined by a lack of access to essential goods, services, assets,
and opportunities. In the urban context, poverty is often a combination of income and
non-income dimensions, with a focus on the latter.

Segregation between social groups is an increasing challenge for cities and is caused
both by actual (physical) and perceived (psychological) barriers within a city. The
urban poor are especially exposed to social and institutional exclusion.
Many urban poor live in informal settlements and are likely to be engaged in casual
and informal sector work. The policy and regulatory frameworks regarding service
provision, housing, land, labor rights, and safety nets do not address them. That is,
they are institutionally and socially excluded in two of the most important areas of
their life: work and residence.

The urban poor do not have sufficient access to information about many essential
matters, such as jobs or their legal right to services. They are not given the rights and
responsibilities that go with being citizens. They are often assumed to be passive
consumers rather than active participants with something to contribute. Simply asking
the poor to express their needs and demands is insufficient to empower them. They
must also assume the responsibilities that go with being citizens. The urban poor are
not given the rights and responsibilities that go with being citizens. They are often
assumed to be passive consumers rather than active participants with something to
contribute. Simply asking the poor to express their needs and demands is insufficient
to empower them. They must also assume the responsibilities that go with being
citizens.

Government policies can have an important positive impact on poverty alleviation,

but for many poor, their experience with the state is negative—to many, it is a
complex bureaucracy that attempts to regulate their activities without understanding
their needs. Due to the illegitimacy of their residence and work, the urban poor are
vulnerable to corruption. They may have to bribe police and other public officials to
be allowed to continue their income-generating activities or to maintain their illegal
connections to services.

There is a trade-off for the urban poor between the costs of housing and long
distances from city centers. Communities at the outskirts of cities are disconnected
from job opportunities and urban services.

Women and men experience cities differently due to their gender-based roles and
responsibilities, including the nature of their participation in the labor market and
domestic tasks. Despite the important differences between women’s and men’s needs
and priorities in urban development, women’s priorities are rarely taken into account
in urban policy, settlement planning, or the design of urban programs. In most
countries, women are not well represented in local government.

Crime, violence, and conflicts in urban areas contribute to social vulnerability,

especially of women and marginalized groups. The level of urban safety impacts
participation in public life and limits access in a city. Instead, marginalized
communities that are outside of formal social safety nets often develop their own,
based on mutual agreements. These are important, but fragile, and can easily be
disrupted in cases of urban redevelopment and upgrading.

Another concern is the quality of food to which the urban poor have access. The right
to food as defined above encompasses not just access to sufficient caloric intake but
also to food that is nutritionally adequate. Those chronically deprived of the essential
nutrients suffer from malnutrition, which makes them more vulnerable to diseases.
For those living in urban poverty, inadequate nutrition may be a problem, since food
patterns in urban areas increasingly trend towards prepared or processed foods that are
higher in calories but lower in micronutrients.

INFRASTRUCTURAL BARRIERS
The process of urbanization entails social improvements with the consequential better
quality-of-life for urban residents. However, in many low-income and some middle-
income countries, urbanization conveys inequality and exclusion, creating cities and
dwellings characterized by poverty, overcrowded conditions, poor housing, severe
pollution, and absence of basic services such as water and sanitation. Slums in large
cities often have an absence of schools, transportation, health centers, recreational
facilities, and other such amenities. Additionally, the persistence of certain conditions,
such as poverty, ethnic heterogeneity, and high population turnover, contributes to a
lowered ability of individuals and communities to control crime, vandalism, and
violence. 
Social exclusion of individuals and groups is a major threat to development, whether
to the community social cohesion and economic prosperity or to the individual self-
realization through lack of recognition and acceptance, powerlessness, economic
vulnerability, ill health, diminished life experiences, and limited life prospects.
The ability of cities to provide basic infrastructure and services has not, however, kept
pace with the rate of urbanization. The highly visible inequalities between the urban
poor and higher-income city dwellers are made starker by the effects of globalization
in cities.

The marginalized urban poor sections of the society mostly live directly adjacent to or
amidst expensive high-rise buildings. In developed countries, many industrialized
cities have communities of foreign migrant workers living in poverty.

Globalization has inflicted hardship on the urban poor, often exaggerating stark
inequalities, challenging governance and undermining rule of law, particularly as the
international flow of illicit drugs and goods becomes harder to control.

State authorities fail in their responsibility to “respond effectively to local needs in a

“participatory, transparent and accountable manner”. While cities are geographically
closer to and therefore theoretically offer greater access to the centres of political
power, urban poverty excludes a large majority from participation. Cities and towns
often do not manage growth by providing good governance and delivering services
for households and private- sector enterprises. Policies are not revised, or new policies
not implemented, to counterbalance the pressures of population growth on service
capacities and address the failures of urban governance. In addition to inappropriate
policies at both the central and local level, corruption and cumbersome regulatory
requirements in cities also “lead to a variety of deprivations, such as inadequate
infrastructure and environmental services, limited access to school and health care,
and social exclusion. Better urban governance is therefore a necessary condition for
empowering the urban poor and improving their opportunities and security”.

Urban population growth patterns have resulted in the poor being concentrated in
areas that are undesirable to others, leaving them vulnerable to heightened risk of
disease, disaster and insecurity. In fact, the urban poor face many of the same
challenges in daily life as the rural poor, with the added burden of overcrowded and
often unsanitary living conditions. Around one third of the urban population in
developing countries i.e., nearly 1 billion people, live in slums. The urban poor are
driven to such living conditions due to poorly functioning land and housing markets,
as well as the lack of planning for urban development and growth.
Given that the urban poor very rarely own tenure over their land or housing, they
often face the constant threat of eviction, are vulnerable to mistreatment owing to the
informality of renting agreements, have greater difficulty in obtaining access to credit,
and cannot use their homes for income-generating activities. Much of this
predicament is due to too few pro-poor policies with regard to urbanization as a
permanent pattern that requires acceptance and incorporation into city development
strategies. There is a reluctance to integrate poor communities into the larger city,
particularly in formalizing informal settlements, providing basic infrastructure or
improving land tenure laws.

Poor urban settlements are often characterized by three common patterns. First, they
form at the edge of cities, where inhabitants incur high costs in travel and time in
order to commute to work. Second, they also form in city centers near
environmentally unsafe areas, such as waste dumps or industrial sites, where
inadequate water and sanitation infrastructure combined with highly concentrated
living conditions make them particularly vulnerable to negative health outcomes
(including infectious, respiratory and diarrheal diseases). HIV/AIDS prevalence rates
are also very high in urban areas, exceeding 50 per cent in some cities. Despite better
access to health care in urban areas, morbidity and mortality rates can even be higher
for those living in slums than that of rural residents. The urban poor often settle in
areas at higher risk of floods, landslides and other disasters, where inadequate
resources and safety nets make recovery more difficult.

ECONOMIC BARRIERS
Finance and monetary resources are considered to be extremely crucial in order to
bring about economic empowerment of the marginalized communities. A person who
belongs to marginalized community may not be willing to attend an educational
institution and obtain a degree but he always looks out for a source of income.
Finance, approachable, available and affordable is one of the major restrictions in
voluntary action amongst the marginalized, disadvantaged and economically weaker
sections of the population towards attainment of self-entrepreneurship, empowerment
and self-reliance.
City governments have sometimes exacerbated these risks in their enforcement of
urban development policies, where foreign investments are often introduced.
According to the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, urban development
policies often magnify the risk of flash floods, given that the policies are usually
planned and implemented without the participation of the urban poor and
marginalized, which also results in their displacement.

Unemployment and underemployment are typically higher for the urban poor, and the
majority of them work in the informal sector. Many urban poor therefore face
unemployment, underemployment, low wages, a lack of social insurance and unsafe
working conditions.
For those living in urban poverty, not only is unemployment uniformly much higher
than for the rest of the urban workforce, but there is also very little protection against
unemployment. A 2007 World Bank study found that unemployment among poor
men in Dhaka was twice that of non-poor men. These figures were even higher for
women, with 25 per cent of poor women facing unemployment compared with 12 per
cent of non-poor women. Data from Latin America suggest that the urban poor have
disproportionately low skill levels – 70 per cent of poor urban adults in the workforce,
against 50 per cent in the overall urban workforce are classified as low skilled. As
low-skilled labourers, many of the urban poor must work in unstable jobs for low
wages. These temporary, often-informal jobs can vary from one season to the next,
and pay tends to fluctuate accordingly.

Research shows that limited access to quality education for the urban poor means that
they cannot gain the necessary skills to secure more stable, higher-paying
employment. Limited access to quality education can account for differences in wages
between different groups of varying social marginalization.

Urban poor families’ limited access to quality education is owed to several common
factors. First, despite free schooling, indirect costs such as uniforms, textbooks and
supplies often make it prohibitive for households with very limited economic means.
Second, the transition between primary and secondary school is particularly tenuous,
as many children leave school to find work in order to supplement household income,
illustrating the difficult economic decisions that poor urban families must make.
Third, urban poor communities may simply not have access to enough school
facilities. Fourth, even if they are available, there are often dangers associated with
travelling to and from schools, especially in poor urban areas, or at the schools
themselves, including sexual abuse and mistreatment. Finally, the quality of education
available to poor, urban communities is usually far inferior. Door-to-door surveys
conducted in Hyderabad and Secunderabad in India indicated that the poor quality of
school facilities and teaching was a major factor in family decisions to remove their
children from school. It is important to note that these challenges to the right to
education disproportionately affect girls.

The availability of biofuels, fluctuating oil prices and inappropriate policy responses
exert pressure on commodity prices and increase price volatility. Furthermore,
affected households often do not employ coping strategies to mitigate the
deterioration of their food security, food spending and nutrition. Safety-net systems
also remain weak.

High food prices force the poor to turn to alternatives with little or no nutritional
value. Sharp rises in food prices since 2006 have led to an increase in the number of
hungry people to more than 1 billion. In fact, food prices tend to have the largest
direct impact on poverty because many poor households depend on agricultural
income and have larger shares of expenditure on food. The 2010 increase in food
prices may have raised poverty by 43.7 million globally and disproportionately
affected those who are already poor.

The hazards of urban poverty are particularly challenging for a number of other
groups, such as persons with disabilities. It is important to note that data regarding the
dynamics of poverty and disability are relatively limited, particularly in developing
countries. Households with disabled members are more likely to experience poverty
owing to a host of factors. These include the effects on already economically unstable
families that the extra financial burden of catering to the special needs of disabled
members can have, and the relationship between low employment and education rates
for those living with a disability. As the World Programme of Action concerning
Disabled Persons noted, employment is particularly difficult for persons with
disabilities, and the stigma sometimes associated with disabilities results in their
relegation to the margins of society. Thus, while data are scarce and the relationship
requires more research, there appears to be significant links between disability and
extreme poverty.
The elderly living in urban poverty are similarly vulnerable. The social exclusion of
the elderly is context-specific varies across different cultures. While data are once
again scarce, there are indications that, especially for those without the social
protection of a family, the elderly poor are a particularly vulnerable population.

In urban poor communities, groups that are victims of additional stigma or

marginalization are particularly vulnerable to the hazards of urban poverty. This
includes ethnic or religious minorities, migrants and disadvantaged castes. Combined
with even more constrained access to education, employment and health care, the
marginalization due to their minority status can make survival strategies for these
groups much more complex.

CONCLUSION
Different groups experience different types of barriers that prevent their access to
services and opportunities. They are, moreover, different within groups and not least
within households. An acknowledgment of the types of barriers experienced by
different groups is necessary to develop appropriate measures to overcome them. As
the global urban population continues to grow at a rapid pace, the need to focus
attention on ensuring their full enjoyment of basic human rights must become a
priority for the future. In order to ensure that the needs of the urban poor – and
particularly those of vulnerable groups living in urban poverty – are met, various
actions need to be taken at the local, national, regional and international levels. An
approach to alleviating poverty for urban populations that integrates infrastructural
development, social safety nets and investments in empowering and educating poor
communities will prove essential. Equally crucial will be a human rights approach to
development that effectively addresses the ways urban poverty threatens rights to
health, water, shelter, food, education and work. Lastly, improving political
participation for the marginalized urban poor is the linchpin to strategies aimed at
addressing the challenges of growing urban poverty.

REFERENCES

 Guidance note: Poverty and social dimensions in urban projects - Asian

Development Bank

 Identity and the Urban Poor – Matthew Wilson

 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/these-are-the-challenges-faced-by-
india-s-urban-poor-and-how-we-can-solve-them/

 Study on the Promotion of Human Rights of the Urban Poor: Strategies and
Best Practices - Chinsung Chung