By: Vineet Wal

With a population of well over 1 billion people, India is the second most populous nation in the world.  According to a report, India is home to 63% of all slum dwellers in South Asia.  This amounts to 170 million people, 17% of the world’s slum dwellers and homeless.

As India continues to develop its infrastructure and tries to compete economically with the West, it is important that its poorest citizens are allowed to share the bounty of the promised prosperity.

For some reason, India lends herself rather easily to facile generalizations - the oft quoted one is that she lives largely in her villages. This is not however the truth - rapid industrialization, urbanization, depleting natural resources, biased development priorities, and many other factors have led to massive rural urban migration.

In the year 1900 there were only 11 cities with a population of 1 million, but by 2000 there where 300 of them. The number of cities with more than 15 million populations will be about 50 in 2010 with squatters increasing a thousand fold.

People are regularly coming to the city. They come for many reasons - to find employment, or to escape calamities like floods, famine and drought. Rural poverty is the most fundamental reason for the great migration to the city. They start to draw upon the limited urban resources, and end up with disastrous results.

Homelessness is one of the world’s most serious problems. While there are many reasons why people become homeless, including mental illness, drugs and domestic violence, most people are homeless because they can’t afford a decent place to live. Housing prices have skyrocketed, but wages for lower skilled workers have remained stable and many urban areas continue to be economically depressed.

Homeless shelters and emergency shelters, operated by nonprofit organizations, religious institutions, and local municipalities, can only provide shelter for a fraction of the homeless families in need. Even short periods of homelessness can result in depression and child neglect, but many families are homeless for months or even years.

In order to end homelessness, we have to help those who are homeless find immediate shelter, and affordable housing for the long-term. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the members of the United Nations in 1948, declares that shelter is a basic human right that all are entitled to.

Our economic system needs to change in order to do a better job of ensuring that everyone has a chance to find affordable, decent and stable housing. On December 21 — the first day of winter and the longest night of the year – has been earmarked to help raise awareness about the growing problem of homelessness.

Today give it a thought at home.