Addressing Urban Poverty and Reformed Urban Governance – National Campaign

The Political Strength of urban population can’t be ignored. Urban voter’s percentage is significantly high. According to Google India Survey 94% of urban voters would vote in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. In the upcoming Lok Sabha election 2014 urban poor will play a decisive role in shaping the destiny of any political party contesting in their constituency. According to the reports of Planning Commission of India, cities contribute about 63% of country’s GDP and ironically one-third of population of an average city lives in slums. PRIA’s study (released on 15th October, 2013) also finds out that economic contribution of urban poor to GDPs of cities is much higher than the usual perceptions. It is strange that in most cities though the voting  percentages of the urban poor sections is higher than the middle and the upper-middle classes,  unfortunately their issues and problems largely remain politically and administratively neglected.

In the light of upcoming Lok Sabha Election – 2014, Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) and Forum for Informal Urban Poor Workers (FIUPW) have collectively made an attempt to highlight the key issues of the urban informal workforce and raise some critical demands for their betterment in the form of an election manifesto. This is a sincere effort to put forth and highlight the community needs for the consideration of political parties with a request to include them in their respective election manifestos. All the recommendations in this document have been made after multilevel in-depth discussions and in close collaboration with the representatives and groups of informal workers.

In light of the above, PRIA and FIUPW is organizing ‘Urban Poverty and Reformed Urban Governance – National Campaign’ at ‘The Speaker Hall, Constitution Club of India’, New Delhi, on 28^th March, 2013. The objective of the National Campaign is to present the manifesto to Political Parties contesting the Lok Sabha Election – 2014 and discuss their responses.