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Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions · Model answer

Do you agree with the view that slums are areas of darkness and despair? Give reasons in support of your answer.

  • UPSC 2000
  • Industrialization and Urbanisation in India

Census 2011 counted 65.5 million slum dwellers in 2,613 of India's 4,041 statutory towns — about a sixth of the urban population. A. R. Desai and S. Devadas Pillai, in Slums and Urbanization (1970), read this not as a residue of backwardness but as the housing form that capitalist urban growth manufactures for the labour…

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions.

What the full answer covers

  • The case for "darkness": deprivation that can be counted
  • Where "despair" comes from, and why it fails
  • The counter-case: enterprise, density and agency
  • Conclusion

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