Stuck in Place: Investigating Social Mobility in 14 Bangalore Slums

Abstract

This study of 14 Bangalore slum communities, including detailed interviews with 1,481 residents, represents an initial effort to study social mobility in India's largest cities, where opportunity and inequality have both been rising. The results show that slum dwellers have advanced economically, but the extent of improvement is small in the majority of cases, and there are many reversals of fortune. Sons tend to follow fathers or uncles into informal and mostly low-skilled occupations. The majority have lived in slums for many generations. These restricted-entry low-exit situations are brought about in large part on account of multiple institutional disconnections.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Janalakshmi Financial Services, a non-profit microfinance company, for support with the field investigations. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at seminars organised in Bangalore by Janalakshmi and the Indian Institute of Management, at Yale University, Cornell University, Duke University, and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai. Comments provided by seminar participants and separately by M. S. Sriram, Purnima Mankekar, and Ramesh Ramanathan are gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

1. Author calculations from employment data provided by NSSO surveys of 1993–1994 and 2004–2005.

2. See, for instance, Corak (2004); Erikson and Goldthorpe (2002); Hout and DiPrete (2006); and Solon (2002).

3. See, for example, Buchmann and Hannum (2001); Currie (2001); DiMaggio (1982); Esping-Andersen (2005); Heckmann (2011); and Mayer (1997).

4. See, for example, Birdsall and Graham (2000); Grawe (2004); and Quisumbing (2006).

5. Scheduled Castes (SCs, former untouchables) and Scheduled Tribes (STs, roughly translatable to India's indigenous people) are historically deprived groups, whose representation in institutions of higher learning has remained low despite affirmative action. No more than 1.4 per cent of all SCs and 0.9 per cent of all STs are estimated to have post-graduate or professional degrees, with these tiny percentages falling further among women and poorer segments of these groups (Deshpande & Yadav, 2006).

6. One such story that attracted a great deal of public attention was reported with the provocative title: ‘Your Birthplace, Background Don't Determine Your Success.’ Retrieved June 27, 2012, from http://www.rediff.com/getahead/slide-show/slide-show-1-achievers-vikas-khemani-your-birthplace-background-don-t-determine-your-success/20120626.htm

7. Diverse definitions of ‘slum’ have been adopted by some Indian states, rendering difficult the task of making comparisons across cities. Comparisons over time are limited because the Census of India compiled data for slum populations for the first time in 2001. Additional information is provided by sample surveys conducted among slums by the National Sample Survey Organisation in 1976–1977, 1993, 2002, and 2008–2009. Instead of presenting results for particular cities, only statewide figures are given in these reports. A high-powered committee of the Indian government, noting these (and other) data difficulties has pressed for adopting a unified definition and common methods. See GOI (2010).

8. These processes, often involving transactions of votes for official recognition and public services, are illustrated by Benjamin and Bhuvaneswari (2001).

9. It is hard to tell precisely how long some particular slum settlement has been in existence. Such official records as exist and can be accessed refer usually to the date of official recognition but not to the date of initial establishment. As will be seen below, many of these slums are quite old, having been home to more than one generation.

10. Following Ramachandran and Sastry (2001, p. 56), distances were calculated from each slum community to ‘three major commercial/employment centers: (a) the City Market, (b) the City Railway Station/Bus Stand/Majestic Area, and (c) the Russell Market/Shivaji Nagar area’.

11. Field investigations for this study were partly supported by Janalakshmi Financial Services, a non-profit microfinance company whose clientele in Bangalore is drawn largely from among slum communities (www.janalakshmi.com).

12. SCs, dalits or former untouchables, and STs, roughly translated as India's indigenous people, have suffered historical discrimination and continue to be disproportionately poor, despite affirmative action. OBC – Other Backward Caste – is yet another omnibus administrative category, applied to another group of historically deprived groups.

13. We understood households as being units that live together and share meals (‘eat from the same pot’).

14. See, for example, Kumar and Aggarwal (2003) for Delhi slums; Husain (2005), Gooptu (2011), and Khasnabis and Chatterjee (2007) for Kolkata slums; Bapat (2009) for Pune; and Ramachandran and Subramanian (2001) for Bangalore.

15. Hardly any slum household, no more than than two per cent, saves money to pay for a daughter's marriage or dowry, with a slightly higher share (3%) saving for a son's wedding.

16. See, among others, Heitzman (2004, pp. 172–173) for Bangalore; Dasgupta (2003) and Mitra (2006) for Delhi; and Unni and Rani (2007) for Ahmedabad.

17. Male and female household heads are, respectively, the father and the mother in a nuclear household, the principal household type in these slum neighbourhoods.

18. We identified poor households by making reference to the income poverty line for urban Karnataka, which was established by the Planning Commission of India at Rs.599.66 per capita for the year 2004–2005. See the web site http://planning commission.gov.in/news/prmar07.pdf. On account of price increases, by August 2010 this amount had become equivalent to Rs.875. This correction for inflation was made using the consumer price index for industrial workers.

19. We also constructed alternative asset indices by considering different groups of assets and by weighting each asset by its relative market value. Since all of these indices are closely correlated – all correlation coefficients are higher than 0.9 – we elected to work with the simpler and more intuitive index construction.

20. Space limitations prevent any fuller description here. The interested reader is referred to Krishna (2010), especially Chapter 2.

21. This survey, the Human Development Profile of India – II, covering more than 50,000 households, was administered by the Indian National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in 2004–2005.

22. When preparing for retirement and old age, for instance, 99 per cent of slum dwellers expect to rely only upon immediate family, relatives, and friends. Less than one per cent expected to receive any help from any government agency or NGO.

23. For further explication of this argument, see Krishna and Pieterse (2008).