Dr R B Bhagat

The 74th amendment mandates urban local bodies to take up public health issues, sanitation and solid waste management largely on their own. Small urban centres, however, lack financial and technical capabilities to design such projects. Recent interventions cater to big cities resulting in further marginalisation of smaller centres.

The access to civic amenities such as electricity, drinking water, toilet facility, waste water outlet and clean fuel are critical determinants of the urban quality of life. As per the 2001 Census, urban India records about 13 per cent households without access to electricity, 16 per cent without safe drinking water and 27 per cent with no access to toilet facility. By 2005-06, these percentages have significantly declined for electricity and safe drinking water to roughly half of what they were in 2001 (National Family Health Survey-3). The decline has not been as significant for toilet facility as 17 per cent households still has no access to toilet facility in urban area. About one-fifth of urban households are also not covered by any sewer system, an issue that needs far more attention than other civic amenities in view of its close association with infectious and parasitic diseases. This issue has been recognised as one of the serious problems in the recent document of the Planning Commission (2008).
Slightly more than one-fifth of households having no access to toilet facility-in terms of numbers about 60 million urban population-has to resort to open defecation. This aspect is also closely associated with wastewater outlet and the provision of drainage. The proportion of households either with open or closed drainage was 78 per cent in urban areas in 2001. Further, the rural-urban gap in each of civic services is glaring.

City level pattern
India's 286 million urban population, as per the 2001 Census, is distributed across 5000 odd towns and cities with different size classes. It is expected that the provision of civic services is directly related to the size of urban centres. Toilet facilities are astonishingly low (close to 60 per cent) in small and medium size urban centres as are the electricity and supplies of drinking water. As far as the access of LPG is concerned, cities in general have advantage in the use of clean fuel - LPG as four-fifth of the households use LPG. However, there is large variation amongst cities with varying population. The use of LPG is as low as 26 per cent in small urban centres where many households still depend on coal, charcoal and wood as source of fuel having health implications because of indoor pollution.

Mega cities
A further analysis of 2001 Census data for six-mega cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore shows that the toilet facilities are available for as high as 95 per cent households in Kolkata, this percentage drops down to 44 per cent in Mumbai. The dismal performance of Mumbai may be explained in terms of it's nearly half of the population living in slums, which is served mostly by community toilets. Community toilets are often ill- maintained as a result of which, a large number of people resort to open defecation. About one-fourth of slum dwellers-approximately 1.5 million out of the six million slum population in the BMC area as per 2001 Census, defecate in the open (Times of India, March 5, 2008, Mumbai edition, p. 6). Providing toilet facility thus poses a great challenge for Mumbai, a challenge that is rarely recognised in the government circuits. Delhi is not free from this problem either with one-fourth of the households having no access to any type of toilets. About one-fifth of households have no access to drinking water in Chennai, while most of the households (99 per cent) have access to drinking water in Mumbai. Chennai and Kolkata are the two mega cities where one-tenth of households have no access to either closed or open drainage for the outlet of wastewater from the households. In a similar vein, the use of LPG varies from nearly 70 per cent of households having the facility in Delhi to a low of 48 per cent in Hyderabad and Kolkata. In Hyderabad about 46 per cent of the households also use kerosene followed by nearly 40 per cent households in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Kolkata. It seems that LPG is more easily available in Delhi than other mega cities.

End note
Analysis shows that there are huge gaps in terms of access to civic amenities in urban areas. The small and medium size towns have lower access compared to cities. Such disparate situation has to be seen in the context of the 74th amendment to the Indian Constitution introduced in 1992 which mandates the urban local bodies to take up several areas of urban planning and development including public health, sanitation and solid waste management. It is expected that urban local bodies would generate their own funds to meet their needs. This requires enormous investment in infrastructure projects on water, sanitation, recreation and transport. Many small urban centres have no financial capacity, they also lack technical capabilities to design projects and raise funds from the market. On one hand, the state governments have not suitably empowered them to take up urban governance independently including the power to raise money through taxation and market. On the other, several state governments have abolished octroi - a major source of income to the urban local bodies. The central government's urban development policy through Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission is designed to serve a handful of big cities. This is likely to marginalise the small urban centres further despite their playing important roles in the development of trade and commerce in the rural areas.