Slum-dwellers face tough times after being relocated	'According to the estimate made by the Committee on Slum Statistics/Census, the slum population of India constituted 75.26 million (26.31 percent) out of the 286 million urban population of the country in 2001. As per the estimates, the slum population of India is estimated to have reached 93.06 million in 2011. Slums are found to exist in almost all the cities and towns throughout the country. A large proportion of the slum-dwellers live in big cities. In absolute numbers, Mumbai has the highest slum population of around 6.47 million followed by Delhi (1.85 million) and Kolkata (1.48 million). The slum areas of Chennai inhabit almost 18 % (0.84 million ) of the population of 4.68 million dwelled in the slums in Chennai City. The phenomenal growth of slums is a complex product of numerous and varied factors such as rapid population growth, massive influx of rural migrants, lopsided industrial development, lack of employment opportunities, poverty and inequalities, lack of building space and concentration of land in few hands, shortage of housing facilities and high rates of rent, besides inadequate planning and failure of piecemeal and adhoc measures adopted by municipal administrations as well as the government to provide cheap/affordable dwellings to the weaker sections. In a way, slums are the physical manifestation of urban poverty and official apathy. Despite progressive slum improvement and tenure regularization policies and programmes, the local administrations indulge in indiscriminate eviction of slum dwellers in the name of beautification of the cities and infrastructural development, viz. for building roads, flyovers, stadiums, complexes, government offices, housing colonies, etc. In the past two decades the local governments in all the major and minor cities and even towns are on a slum demolition spree. Generally speaking there is no advance notice issued for eviction/demolition, and in several instances evictions are violently carried out and the belongings of slum dwellers (shanty colonies) are damaged. In Chennai (Madras), in earlier days, evictions of slum dwellers and demolition of cherries (slums) took place for the purpose of infrastructural development, particularly for widening of roads, construction of bridges, and for the execution of public housing schemes and construction of slum tenements. Recently Chennai is witnessing such forced evictions and ruthless demolitions of cherries (slums). In the name of beautification (‘Singara Chennai’) and infrastructural development the slums people and the pavement dwellers are moved from the portals of Chennai and rehabilitated in ‘sub-urban ghettos’. More than 3, 00,000 poor people of Chennai are facing displacement. Nearly 2, 00,000 people have already been forcefully moved out to distant outskirts of the city. But after the new government assumed charge the trend in eviction of slums have been slowed, Dr.C.Murukadas, The Times of India, Sep.3,2012