Globalization & Industrial Ag Driving Millions into City Slums

Powder keg in the slums

Jeremy Seabrook
September 1, 2004
The Guardian (UK)

Poor rural migrants have become like characters in the folk-tales and
fables they no longer tell their children: fleeing the countryside to escape
the evil spirits of want and poverty, they find the old enemies lying in
wait for them in the urban slums which are their destination.

Global poverty is in flight; not because it is being chased away by wealth,
but because it has been evicted from an exhausted, transformed hinterland.
The UN estimates rural populations have reached their peak, but there will
be a further 2 billion urban settlers in the next 30 years. About 70% of
these will live in slums, adding to the 920 million already there.

Poor people have taken their bundles to the unwelcoming cities of Asia,
Africa and Latin America. Few go in search of bright lights or easy
pickings. Most depart in sorrowful resignation, because they have dependants
- children and elderly parents - to sustain and insufficient means to do so.

The earth they farmed, addicted to fertiliser and pesticide, no longer
yields a surplus to sell in the market. Water is contaminated, irrigation
channels are silted up, well water polluted and undrinkable. In any case,
land was sold for a dowry, or to finance a family member in the Gulf, from
where she sent her domestic servant's wages each month until the contract
expired. Land was taken by government for a coastal resort, a golf course,
or under the pressure of structural adjustment plans to export more
agricultural products.

Other aspects of rural life had also decayed. There had been no repairs to
the school building. The health centre had closed. Forests, where people had
always gathered fuel, fruit and bamboo for house repairs, had become
forbidden zones, guarded by men in the livery of some private semi-military
company.

Poverty itself mutates during the journey to the cities. People leave places
where food is produced, paradoxically, to escape hunger. When they see city
markets, it seems they have indeed arrived at a place of plenty. But the
cash required for food always outruns the day's labour. Vegetables dug
freely out of a patch of earth now cost half a day's income.

Neighbours and relatives in the city find a precarious site where a shelter
can be built out of industrial detritus - close to the bubbling black water
of a stagnant canal, on the dangerous scree of a stony slope. In some
cities, factory work is available; others have urbanised without becoming
industrial; and from some industry has already departed. The poorest areas
evoke images of flimsy makeshift settlements: cities have become refugee
camps for the evictees of rural life.

No one gives work. People turn themselves into rickshaw drivers or domestic
servants; buy a handful of bananas and spread them for sale on the pavement;
offer themselves as porters and labourers. This is the informal sector. In
India, less than 10% of people are employed in the formal economy, and this
is being reduced by the privatisation of state enterprises.

In the slums, latrines surrounding polluted ponds are shared by 50
families. The nearest water tap is a 15-minute walk away, and water flows
only in the early hours. Money for illegal electricity connections must be
paid to the prosperous family in a house on the main road. Children suffer
from strange fevers. Money set aside for food must be spent on medicines to
stop the shiverings of dengue and malaria. The remains of the daily meal are
tied in a plastic bag from the roof to keep it from the rats that run
through the night.

Security comes to mean a padlock on the door, rather than the vigilant eyes
of neighbours. Uncertainty redefines itself as insecurity of tenure, the
illegality of what were to have been sanctuaries from eviction.
Insufficiency is structured into the very wages which were to have been the
means of deliverance, but which prove unable to procure the necessities of
life.

In 1950, 18% of people in developing countries lived in cities. This rose
to 40% in 2000. By 2030 it will reach 56%. More than 40% of these are
already living in slums. The urban poor are emblematic of the 21st century.
Neo-liberal policies have quickened the growth of slums, as subsidies for
agriculture and nutrition have been withdrawn, effective health and
education have become marketed commodities, water has been privatised and
sanitation all but abandoned.

The world must learn once more that the minimal state leads to maximum
disturbance. If rural poverty is relatively dispersed and powerless, global
laissez-faire towards an urbanisation without livelihood sets up pathologies
of violence, the consequences of which are not difficult to foresee.

· Jeremy Seabrook's book, Consuming Cultures, Globalisation and Local
Lives, is published by New Internationalist

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