Slums may actually help 'do away with poverty'

New Delhi: Instead of clearing slums, India should use them for its poverty reduction strategy, says Jeb Brugmann, an urban planning expert from Canada, who also points out that high rises and shopping malls do not cater to the masses.

Brugmann, who has been in the field of corporate and urban strategy consultancy for more than two decades, said cities like Delhi - instead of aping Western city models blindly - should be developed on the basis of their own uniqueness.

"India has not studied city building and how to tailor it in accordance with its needs. It has been looking abroad, like the US, for its city model, which other countries have done," said Brugmann, who has worked in India.

"But one has to understand that things like high rises and shopping malls cater to a small margin of Indians and not the masses," Brugmann said.

"One of the solutions in effective city building is understanding the concept that each slum is unique. People who migrate to a city are risk takers and a creative lot. They find ways of surviving.

"Instead of clearing such unorganised settlements, if they are established, the settlers' savings can be used to develop that part of the city into a lower middle class and later into a middle class society," said the author of Welcome to the Urban Revolution.