Increasing industrialization and urbanization have created slums in the cities. Slums consist of substandard, ill ventilate, insanitary and poorly lighted houses. They consist of houses which are unfit for human habitation. Slum dwellers live in horrible areas. Their living conditions are really horrible. The low-paid workers normally live in these slum areas. The facilities that are generally found in the cities are not found in the slums. The Ahatas of Kanpur, Bastis of Delhi, Chawls of Mumbai, Cheries of Chennai, and Kolegeri of Bangalore are stigmas on the face of India. In the thousand slums of India's industrial centres manhood is unquestionably brutalised, women dishonoured and childhood is poisoned at its very source. Slums are a black spot on our cities. Their number and the number of people living in them are consistently increasing. All the major cities such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Nagpur, Kanpur, Lucknow, Jaipur are faced with the problem of slums. Slums are often called "living dustbins" have also become the centers of filth, immorality, alcoholism, gambling, crime, beggary, prostitution, juvenile delinquency and so on. They have also become the space for many of the hazardous diseases like, T.B, AIDS, and many other vulnerable physical ailments.
