A slum is a run-down area of a city, usually with urban decay, high rates of poverty, and unemployment. Slums are all over the world in third world countries. They are usually in back alleys hidden away from the city. They have fences around them to cast them away from the many tourists. People in slums are forced to take up drug dealing, prostitution and many other horrid jobs.
Since they live in such narrow alleys they often suffer brutally from fires, tropical storms, and earthquakes. Plus fire trucks and ambulances can't fit in the alleys lots of people suffer and die because of that. In India there are dalits called untouchables in the slums. Untouchables are outcastes; people of the lowest rank in South Asia. The word dalit means "held under check" historically dalits have been "ritually impure". Dalits do things like pick up human feces and cleaning sewers by hand.
Doing these jobs was considered to be polluting the person who performs the job, this pollution was considered contagious. As a result dalits were banned and segregated from full participation in the Hindu social life ( they couldn't enter temple or a school and stayed outside of the village). Many dalits are bonded workers and work in slave-like conditions to pay off debts. The majority of dalits live in segregation and experience violence, murder, rape and other terrible things to the point where there have been up to 110,000 registered cases a year. They have to eat and drink from separate utensils in a public place
The houses were old, rusted, dirty and flat-roofed. They usually have one temple and a public bathroom that had existed since the beginning of the establishment. If a case of diarrhea or small pox would occur the uneducated women would take a pot of water and sacrifice a chicken at the temple.
There are other horrid conditions they live in. I think this is an important subject concerning world peace.