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How does Covid-19 affect urban slums? Evidence from settlement leaders in India

Slum settlements have received significant attention for their vulnerabilities to the spread of Covid-19. To mitigate risks of transmission, and alleviate economic distress associated with containment measures, public health experts and international agencies are calling for community-driven solutio...

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Autores principales: Auerbach, Adam Michael, Thachil, Tariq
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8457827/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34580560
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105304
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author Auerbach, Adam Michael
Thachil, Tariq
author_facet Auerbach, Adam Michael
Thachil, Tariq
author_sort Auerbach, Adam Michael
collection PubMed
description Slum settlements have received significant attention for their vulnerabilities to the spread of Covid-19. To mitigate risks of transmission, and alleviate economic distress associated with containment measures, public health experts and international agencies are calling for community-driven solutions that harness local participation. In slum settlements, such approaches will encounter the informal slum leaders present across cities of the Global South. How are slum leaders positioned to address the health and livelihood threats of the pandemic within their neighborhoods? What problem-solving activities, if any, have they performed for residents during the pandemic? What factors shape success in those efforts? To answer these questions, we conducted a phone survey of 321 slum leaders across 79 slum settlements in two north Indian cities. The survey was conducted in April and May 2020, at the height of India’s stringent national lockdown in response to the virus. Our survey reveals striking continuities with pre-pandemic politics. First, slum leaders persist in their problem-solving roles, even as they shift their efforts towards requesting urgently needed government relief (particularly food rations). Second, slum leaders vary in their reported ability to gather information about relief schemes, make claims, and command government responsiveness. The factors that inform the effectiveness of slum leaders during ‘normal times’, notably their education and degree of embeddedness in party networks, continue to do so during the lockdown. Slum leader reliance on partisan networks raises concerns regarding the inclusiveness of their efforts. Finally, slums are not uniformly challenged in maintaining social distancing. Pre-pandemic disparities in infrastructural development fragment the degree to which residents must depart from social distancing guidelines to secure essential services.
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spelling pubmed-84578272021-09-23 How does Covid-19 affect urban slums? Evidence from settlement leaders in India Auerbach, Adam Michael Thachil, Tariq World Dev Regular Research Article Slum settlements have received significant attention for their vulnerabilities to the spread of Covid-19. To mitigate risks of transmission, and alleviate economic distress associated with containment measures, public health experts and international agencies are calling for community-driven solutions that harness local participation. In slum settlements, such approaches will encounter the informal slum leaders present across cities of the Global South. How are slum leaders positioned to address the health and livelihood threats of the pandemic within their neighborhoods? What problem-solving activities, if any, have they performed for residents during the pandemic? What factors shape success in those efforts? To answer these questions, we conducted a phone survey of 321 slum leaders across 79 slum settlements in two north Indian cities. The survey was conducted in April and May 2020, at the height of India’s stringent national lockdown in response to the virus. Our survey reveals striking continuities with pre-pandemic politics. First, slum leaders persist in their problem-solving roles, even as they shift their efforts towards requesting urgently needed government relief (particularly food rations). Second, slum leaders vary in their reported ability to gather information about relief schemes, make claims, and command government responsiveness. The factors that inform the effectiveness of slum leaders during ‘normal times’, notably their education and degree of embeddedness in party networks, continue to do so during the lockdown. Slum leader reliance on partisan networks raises concerns regarding the inclusiveness of their efforts. Finally, slums are not uniformly challenged in maintaining social distancing. Pre-pandemic disparities in infrastructural development fragment the degree to which residents must depart from social distancing guidelines to secure essential services. Elsevier Ltd. 2021-04 2020-12-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8457827/ /pubmed/34580560 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105304 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Regular Research Article
Auerbach, Adam Michael
Thachil, Tariq
How does Covid-19 affect urban slums? Evidence from settlement leaders in India
title How does Covid-19 affect urban slums? Evidence from settlement leaders in India
title_full How does Covid-19 affect urban slums? Evidence from settlement leaders in India
title_fullStr How does Covid-19 affect urban slums? Evidence from settlement leaders in India
title_full_unstemmed How does Covid-19 affect urban slums? Evidence from settlement leaders in India
title_short How does Covid-19 affect urban slums? Evidence from settlement leaders in India
title_sort how does covid-19 affect urban slums? evidence from settlement leaders in india
topic Regular Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8457827/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34580560
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105304
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