How do slums mushroom? In Bengaluru, this question is usually asked only after bulldozers arrive — once homes are razed, livelihoods disrupted, and families pushed out overnight.Delhi: Demolition drive near PM's residence removes three slum clusters after High Court orderOn December 20, the Bangalore Solid Waste Management Limited (BSWML), acting with the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA), demolished over 160 houses in Kogilu, north Bengaluru. Multiple surveys followed — by government agencies, the Housing Department, and NGOs, but nearly a month later, no rehabilitation or interim housing has been provided. Families remain displaced, living with relatives or on the margins of nearby neighbourhoods.How informal settlements emergeUnlike cities such as Delhi or Mumbai, where nearly half the population lives in informal settlements, Bengaluru has seen a sharp rise in such habitations in recent decades. This, Clifton D’Rozario, advocate and general secretary of the All India Lawyers’ Association for Justice,explained, is directly linked to the failure of successive Union and State governments to provide public housing.Despite repeated promises of “housing for all” and affordable housing policies, the State has consistently failed to ensure dignified housing for the urban poor. With rural distress, agrarian crisis, caste-based exclusion, and lack of livelihood opportunities pushing people out of villages, and cities pulling them in for labour, informal settlements become inevitable, he said. “Nobody wants to live next to a drain, under a tin roof or a tarpaulin sheet. People, their families, are forced into such conditions only when every option is closed off,” he says, stressing that demolitions without addressing public housing and agrarian distress will only perpetuate the cycle.Infrastructure projects require labour over several years. In Bengaluru, where projects are known to miss deadlines, work does not end, but only shifts, overlaps, and expands. Labour stays because work stays. A slum typically begins as a temporary shelter near a worksite.