Study on Causes of Poverty among the Slums of Midnapore Municipality, West Bengal

Urbanization is growing rapidly all over India as well as indulged the growth of slums over a time period and surrounds the city from all sides. Slums are more widespread in the metropolitan cities in India, but now are gradually developing in other cities and small towns also. The living conditions in the slums are hazardous with little or no access to public services explicitly worse off than non-slum dwellers. In general, the visual manifestation of poverty is hallmark of slums which is not only a product of material deprivation but of a set of interlocking factors. The study aims to explain the faces of urban poverty in reference to livelihood framework. Data have been collected randomly from two hundred urban poor living in twenty slums (out of 185-slums) of 25-wards in Midnapore Municipality, West Bengal, by using a structured questionnaire. The data are analysed by simple mathematics and cross tabulation using SPSS-20 software.