Bangladesh's cities are growing at a rapid pace. Reportedly, about one-fourths of population, as per the Census of 2011, reside in cities. The most recent 'guesstimates' say that urban population constitutes roughly one-thirds of the total population.  Dhaka alone accounts for 14 million residents who are poised to exceed 27 million by 2030. The Bangladesh capital is now termed as the densest city in the world. Doubtlessly, one of the main reasons of growth in urban slum population has been rural-urban migration. A survey found that majority of slum-dwelling household heads in Sirajganj and Barisal had always lived in those cities whereas just 15 per cent of Dhaka slum-dwelling household heads were born in the capital. This indicates that four-fifths of the surveyed household heads living in Dhaka's slums were migrants; albeit, half had lived there more than 10 years. Dhaka's slum people generally came from elsewhere in the city (48 per cent), rural areas (34 per cent) and other cities (17 per cent). In 1997, the ADB reported that 60 per cent of migrants in Dhaka city came from four of the 19 greater districts Faridpur, Dhaka, Comilla and Barisal.
Most of the above-mentioned information (and information to follow) come from a study undertaken by the World Food Programme (WFP) in collaboration with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The observations and analyses resulted from a report titled 'Food Insecurity and Under-nutrition in the Urban Slums of Bangladesh' based on two surveys in 2006 and 2013.  The follow-up study in 2013, with a fund from the Spanish government, revisited slums of Dhaka, Sirajganj and Barisal with a focus on under-nutrition of women and children. We shall heavily draw on that report, may be without any sequential arrangements.
Urban-rural migration is the result of a combination of rural push factors such as poverty and family influence, and urban pull factors such as better economic opportunities, job availability and presence of migrant relatives. Earlier, studies mostly found economic reasons for migration followed by river erosion and local-level conflicts but later studies (especially during 1990s) came up with additional factors such as economic shocks and natural disasters. In 2013, it was observed that about three-fourths of household heads in Dhaka and Barisal slums adduced their coming to cities to their search for employment. By contrast, in Sirajganj, the main reasons were reported to be loss of property due to river erosion and floods, and employment opportunities.
One important observation is that those who were staying for more than 10 years were more likely to be in the higher expenditure quintile. "This suggests that it may take migrant households a while to get established but that those who migrate most likely in search of work are better able to improve their economic wellbeing, while people, who are born in urban slums, are seemingly less able to dig themselves out of the cycle of poverty".
Households, headed by women, are found to be more food insecure by all indicators except that they tend to provide their families with more kilo-calories. Nearly 70 per cent of female-headed households reported that they were worried about food sufficiency in the previous month compared to only half of male-headed households. Education levels are particularly pitiful with high school drop-out rates. Majority of migrants in slums never attended schools.
In the 2013 Bangladesh Slum Survey, 60 per cent of slum-dwellers reported that they had faced at least one type of shocks in the preceding years compared to 37 per cent in the 2006 study. This means that over time, frequency and recurrence of shocks for slum-dwellers have increased. The main shocks are economic such as price hike, loss of employment and salary and business failure. In 2006 study, households reported damage to houses, major illness of household members and loss of employment as shocks. In the 2013 survey, households in all three cities were affected by one specific shock than previous year - price hike affecting one-thirds in Dhaka and Barisal and over 60 per cent in Sirajganj. Obviously, political unrest led to increase in prices. Besides that, political unrest also robbed households of jobs.
A major adaptation mechanism has been to increase income by sending young members to work. The urban workforce has a larger share of females than in the rural workforce. Urban slums have three times more child labour than the national average which leads to higher rates of drop-out from schools. The 2013 Bangladesh Slum Survey found that 22 per cent the urban slum-dwelling workforce was under 15 years of age. "Sending children and adolescent out to work is likely to jeopardise their education, physical and emotional health and longer-term personal and economic development. From a human capital perspective, it is a negative strategy". Social network also helps cope with food insecurity. The major coping strategies are reducing both quantity and quality of food consumed, borrowing from friends and relatives.
"Overall, the 2013 Bangladesh Slum Survey findings suggest that the food security situation in the Dhaka slums has not materially improved over the intervening seven years. Half of the slum households in Dhaka and nearly two-thirds in Barisal were consuming less than 2,122 kcal/capita/day. Slum households in Barisal and Sirajganj were directing nearly 60 per cent of their expenditures towards food….The food insecurity peaked during May and June 2013, suggesting that urban slum households are particularly vulnerable to shocks including the volatile economic and political climate which prevailed in Bangladesh during the first half of 2013."  Worse still is the news that nearly half of all children under five in the urban slums were stunted. The proportion of women considered undernourished was also high.
The writer is Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University. abdulbayes@yahoo.com
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Source: The Financial Express