Abstract

The theory of Motivation propounded by Maslow in 1959 states that one of the basic needs of human is shelter. Here, shelter needs does not mean mere occupation of a building only but also other amenities and hygiene which affect the mental and physical health of people. The people living in urban areas face challenges of proper housing, education, health, hygiene etc. The root cause of increase in the slums in the cities is mainly due to modern industrial civilisation and migration from rural to urban areas in search of livelihood, opportunities and growth. They also form a part of cheap labour in the units and a vote bank for the politicians. Hence, providing better housing or accommodation to all citizen irrespective of caste and creed is the integral part of economic development in India. With such increasing ratio it is estimated that slum dwellers will triple in the next 25 years and the cities like Delhi will have four and a half million slum dwellers and the cities like kolkatta and Mumbai will have even big numbers deprived of congenial environment (Bane and Rawal, 2002). There has occurred a need to empower their skills, creativity and resources to make them independent and healthy citizens of India. Here, the study aims at empowerment of the people living in the slum areas through social entrepreneurs. There has arisen a need to develop them to meet with new competitive challenges to foster sustainable development. A model has been designed where the social entrepreneurs would work as facilitators to make the slum people independent and developed through the resources available with them. The study is based on secondary sources to identify the present challenges of the marginalised group especially children and women in metro cities to empower them by providing support and direction. Concluding, the cooperatives here can work on providing shelter, education, health, employment and financial services to the people to make them relatively independent by developing their skills.

Key words: Cooperatives, hygiene, social entrepreneurship, slum development, infrastructure.