Money problems

Children

Sex

Marriage apart

Household responsibilities

Friends

Irritating habits

Families

Expectations

Personality conflicts

Most couples argue over bills, debt, spending, and other financial issues. How they decide to deal with money problems in your marriage will determine whether those problems has a negative or positive effect on their marriage.

Discipline, diet, and other parentingissues can be sources of disagreement between couples. A child is the number one stressor in a marriage and can accentuate differences in beliefs on issues like how to discipline, who is responsible for most of the child care or what educational options to choose.

Frequency,

quantity, quality, and infidelity are all common sources of stresand disharmony in a marriage.

Time apart and a lack of quality time together serves to get people out of sync with each other.

Household Responsibilities. –

Many couples argue over equitable distribution of household work, and how to do it. Instead of sitting down and dividing household chores fairly they quibble over who did or didn’t do what.

Not all friends are helpful to relationships some of them are toxic. One must know the difference between a friend who will enhance their relationship and one who will break it

Irritating habits.

Many people are married to someone who has one or more habits they find undesirable. My ex never got angry with me.

Family.

In-laws, siblings, children and step-children can all create stress within a marriage. When coping with negative issues because of family step gently. The spouse should come first but there are times when one have to be willing to take a backseat and bite your tongue.

Expectations.

All go into marriage with certain expectations. Most of the time, marriage is the opposite of what they expected. They romanticize marriage and become disillusioned once those romantic expectations aren’t met. Unmet expectations are a major source of conflict in marriages.

Personality conflicts.

There are personality traits that can doom a marriage to failure. If one trys to avoid the conflict or neglect the spouse then there is a chance of conflict in marriage.

Divorce rate in India is one of the lowest across the globe. Out of 1,000 marriages in India, 11 marriages terminates in a divorce.

Children are frightened and confused by the threat to the security.

Young children may react to divorce by becoming more aggressive and uncooperated or withdrawing.

School work of children may also suffer due to marital discord.

Children often exhibit a number of emotional and behavior problems such as –

Sleeping or eating disorder. Fear. Insecurity. Anxiety. ADHD. Oppositional behavior. Separation anxiety. Deep sadness. Loneliness.

Negative effect on growth of children.

Teenager and adult children of divorced parents often have trouble with their own relationship and experience problem with self esteem.

Suicide or depression of one partner.

Social comments on single parent especially female counterpart.

Economic and financial instability.

Change in environment.

The family have to readjust itself in the environment and society after discord.

•Poor sanitary conditions and poor quality of water lead to illnesses like diarrhoea and other water borne diseases, affecting the life expectancy of slum dwellers.

• Among water borne diseases, diarrhoea disproportionately affects children under the age of five. Poor health among children adversely affects the attendance rate at schools.

•In dense, overcrowded urban conditions it is often difficult for people to find space to build latrines. Many have to defecate in the open or share whatever limited facilities are available which tend to offer no privacy, safety or hygiene.

• Because of human waste and refuse collecting in stagnant pools spread disease and contaminate water sources. The problem is made worse during the rainy season when rubbish and excrement are washed into cramped living areas.

• In these conditions it is virtually impossible to remain healthy and clean. Diseases spread rapidly among the crowded conditions and the little money that slum dwellers earn often has to be spent on medicines to help the sick recover.

• Often these settlements are unofficial and so, without any legal tenure, the people living there are not entitled to get connections to basic facilities like water and sanitation. These settlements are also vulnerable to demolition as governments reclaim the illegally occupied land for other usages.

UNEMPLOYMENT - The slum environment is the perfect breeding ground for a wide range of social problems. High unemployment often causes men to stay around the home growing increasingly frustrated with their pathetic situation and the worsening poverty.

DOMESTIC VOILENCE - Cramped conditions mean that there is nowhere to go when tensions rise, a factor that regularly leads to domestic violence. Sometimes the situation goes to the other extreme, where people abandon their homes, lured by the prospect of oblivion through alcohol or drug abuse. Once people develop such problems the prospects of finding work diminish. They fall deeper into poverty and the cycle continues.

RISE OF SLUMLORDS - Some people manage to achieve a high status within slums and establish themselves as slumlords. They are often allies of certain politicians and gain control of sizeable chunks of the community land. By renting out the land, they make huge financial gains while everyone living in the slum struggles to survive on their meager earnings. The slumlords form elaborate links with local politicians, government officials and the police, and slum dwellers become dependent on them for the smallest of amenities. They have little empathy with the slum residents and exploit them by charging highly inflated prices for illegal electricity and water supplies or for constructing huts.

LOW STATUS OF WOMEN - The men do not like to see the women becoming more powerful through forming women's groups as one of their main concerns is keeping the slum dwellers helpless and under their control.

INTERFRENCE OF POLITICIANS - The sheer volume of people living in slums causes them to be obvious targets for politicians wanting to increase their percentage of the vote. Slum inhabitants are often promised all kinds of support and improvements in return for political allegiance, but their trust is regularly abused.

Many children in the slums start work at a very early age with no prospect of getting any education. They make money by rag picking (trawling through rubbish dumps to retrieve anything that can be sold), selling newspapers in traffic jams, peddling drugs or begging. They are at risk of exploitation as well as all the health problems that accompany their lifestyles. Incest and abuse can occur and child marriages are still encouraged in some areas.

Female babies in the slums of India can face discrimination and poor treatment from their very first moments, if they are given a chance of life at all; although gender specific abortion is illegal in India, it is still practiced in some places.

Male children are seen as a blessing and indulged in many areas of Indian society. Children born into the deprived and harsh environment of the slums may not be as fortunate, but male babies are still given better treatment than the girls. Boys tend to be healthier as they are given better food in greater quantities, and they are also more likely to be sent to school.

In contrast, girls are seen as a drain on precious resources as they will one day get married and their contribution towards the family will end. To make up for this, they are forced to work from an early age and any ambitions regarding schooling or future careers are discouraged.

With that kind of start in life, it's difficult for women within the slums to find a voice. They are used to getting little support from their embers and are not usually considered worth consulting on family matters.

Role of the government and the NGOs. In a usual scenario a migrated laborer secures a job with security agencies, waste management service providers, contractors, householders etc. They usually employ slum dwellers as rag pickers, sweepers, construction labors, masons, carpenters, domestic helps etc. For such migrating labors there should be a centralized labor registration center where they can register themselves and secure their labor ID number. These centers should have direct contact with prospective employers and they should try to find suitable jobs for these workers according to their skills.

Countries need to recognize that the urban poor are active agents and can contribute to national growth.

Local authorities and national governments should collaborate with the organizations of the urban poor in upgrading slums and providing alternatives to slum formation. Whenever a worker migrates to a city for work his employer must ensure that he is provided with appropriate accommodation. This should be the responsibility of all big and small employers.

Managing cities require local solutions. Local authorities need to be empowered with financial and human resources to deliver services and infrastructure to the urban poor. Cities should draw up local long-term strategies for improving the lives of slum dwellers.

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Local governments should develop strategies to prevent the formation of new slums. These should include access to affordable land, reasonably priced materials, employment opportunities, and basic infrastructure and social services.

Public investments must focus on providing access to basic services and infrastructureWorking with the urban poor, cities need to invest in housing, water, sanitation, energy, and urban services, such as garbage disposal. These services and infrastructure must reach the poor living in informal settlements

ESI dispensaries and counseling services should be provided in dwelling areas. All labors should be centrally registered

Strict rules should be formulated to prevent the misuse of funds. Aim for 1 Lakh units of construction every six months. Import high volume construction machinery from China for the speedy

construction. Factories with a workforce of more than 100 labors should have

compulsory dwelling units. The accommodation facilities should be made available before the commencement of any project

NGOs can play a vital role in improving the existing conditions of slums. NGOs should work for the underprivileged in the slums. NGOs should work in close coordination with government and make sure that the following facilities are available to the slum dwellers:

Counselling services to minimize crime and other problems. Basic amenities like schooling, proper sanitation, potable water, health

facilities and common electricity with minimal charges. Free weekly medical and healthcare facilities.

Cause and effect Slums symbolise urban poverty. For the families living in them,

they create hazardous and unsafe conditions that compound the poverty which forced them to set up home there in the first place.

With lack of freely available safe clean water in the cities, families living in slums have often no choice but to buy it at high cost from vendors.

With inadequate sanitation, waste disposal or drainage facilities, open sewers are created by rubbish and human defecation

alongside walkways between the densely packed shelters -disease thrives and people, especially children become ill.

In these conditions simply being ill can have severe implications. It can mean loss of livelihood, leaving families struggling to buy food or water let alone medicines.

With weak ownership rights to the land, residents are vulnerable and cannot build safe, sturdy homes, so they become easy victims of weather conditions fire and crime.

With no voice to change policy decisions or demand essential services, slum dwellers face an enormous challenge in such uncertain and unfair circumstances.

In this environment, with no land, traditional coping mechanisms like relying on extended family or small-holder farming falter. The result is that people's homes and neighbourhoods become both a cause and an effect of poverty and something that can be extremely difficult to break out of.

Recognition of this growing problem culminated in 2000 when the world's richest governments pledged through the Millennium Development Goals to improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.

Cities in the developing world will absorb 95% of the world's expected population growth between 2000 and 2030.According to recent estimates there are now over 900 million who people can be classified as slum dwellers.Based on 2001 estimates, 43% of the urban population in the developing world lives in slums. In the least developed countries, this percentage rises to more than 78%.If present trends continue, 1.5 billion people out of 3.3 billion urban residents will live in sums by the year 2020.

The Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation Government of India , formulated The National Slum Policy in 2011.

The proposed Bihar Slum Policy has been developed within the framework of the National Slum Policy and is to guide the state and local government in addressing slum specific issues .

The key objectives of this policy are –- To integrate slum settlements and guide

the process of slum development .

- To strengthen the legal and policy framework to facilitate the process of slum development and improvement on a sustainable basis .

- To establish a framework for involving all stakeholders for the efficient and smooth implementation of policy objective.

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