Need for equitable delivery of municipal services for sustainable urban development

Increasing urbanisation is accompanied by demand for more efficient and equitable basic services. Policymakers and local authorities need to focus on innovative ways to achieve quality and sustainability in the service delivery system, which are the essential constituents to achieve Sustainable Urban Development

India in the 21st century has urbanised with the fastest rate than any other time ever.Indian cities are increasing in size and numbers. Urbanisation is critically important not only in terms of economic growth and socio-political evolution but also for international development. Sustainable urban development highlights the need to achieve balance between the environmental, social and economic considerations within a region. Increasing urbanisation however poses a challenge for achieving this balance.About 32 per cent of the Indian population lives in cities. Among the states of India, Maharashtra as a state has relatively high levels of urbanisation of almost over 45 per cent (in top 5 states in India), which isdue to the increasing urban population base of big urban centres like Mumbai and Pune, along with cities like Nagpur and Nashik which are urbanising rapidly too. The levels of increasing urbanisation can be compared at various levels.
As evident from the figure, one can observe that the levels of urbanisation in Nagpur over the period of time have been more than that of Maharashtra (state total) and also that of India (national level). The rate of urbanisation for India has increased very slowly (from 18 per cent in 1961 to 31.20 per cent in 2011), with the overall increase in the rate of urbanisation being of 13.20 per cent since 1961. For the state of Maharashtra, around the same time it is noticed that it was more urbanized (compared to the national level) and the overall increase in urbanisation was recorded as 17.03 per cent from 28.20 per cent in 1961 to 45.23 per cent in 2011. In comparison, Nagpur has experienced a high rise in the level of urbanisation of 16.25 per cent (from52.06 per cent in 1961 to 68.31 per cent in 2011). This increase of 16 per cent is not only the actual number of people which were added to the urban population base but also the increase in number of people demanding efficient Municipal services across the city.When studying the basic services, it can be easily observed that the increase in the number of people in urban areas is unevenly matched with the existing resources and this further affects the provision of basic amenities to all. And with expanding urban base the need for better and efficient municipal services grows ever more.
As accurately put up by the ADB report on sustainable urban development issues, the rapid rate of urbanisation needs to be effectively managed to ensure that the potential economic and social development arising from urbanisation are optimised to reduce poverty, improve the quality of life and protect the environment.Also, increasing urbanisation and the commitment towards the SDG’s put tremendous pressure on the ever increasing demand for equitable and efficient basic services. Specifically in the background of SDG 6 which relates to providing clean water and sanitation to all, the focus is on ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
This is very important in provision of effective and efficient municipal services resulting in building up of an inclusive and sustainable city thus relating it to SDG 11 which advocates about inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities. Urbanisation can contribute to sustainable growth if managed well by increasing productivity, allowing innovation and new ideas to emerge. There exists a massive gap in India between demand for basic services (prominently sanitation and water supply) and investment in urban development which affects the ultimate goal of achieving sustainable development. In the background of above points this paper will address 2 main objectives:
To analyse the levels and distribution of basic services for sanitation and water supply in Nagpur
To find out the adequacy/inadequacy in terms of equitable distribution of selected services.

Analysis of ground realities
The current study focuses on the provision and level of basic services in Nagpur while comparing the city level data for selected indicators with that of the selected Prabhag level data. While studying the city level data the selection of Prabhags have been done based on the background research, which identifies various Prabhags in terms of their performance in the service delivery.
After identifying the Prabhags in terms of level of services, 4 Prabhags have been selected (2 in both peripheral and core areas of the city). The Prabhags 2 and 12 lie in the periphery of the city and Prabhag 31 and Prabhag 15 are in the core of the city.
At the next step, selection of indicators has been done at 2 levels. First based on the SLB report of Nagpur city (2015), whereby those indicators which are relatively poor, i.e. Sewerage and Solid waste and Watersupply (good performance, but taken further critical analysis as it is a major indicator of basic services) have been selected.Secondly, the indicators have been selected at Prabhag level on the basis of the survey carried out by the Equi-City Project identifying the nature and problems of these services in various Prabhags.
All these indicators were studied in the selected Prabhags at Household level. A questionnaire was prepared for the household survey to understand the on-going practices for the provision of services following a framework formed to measure the quality and efficiency for selected indicators. The survey was limited to four selected Prabhags considering the levels of availability of basic services and geographical location within Nagpur City. A total of nearly 3000 households were surveyed for the study of the selected indicators. The basic hypothesis is that the level of basic services provided are unequal being better in the core areas and not so good in the peripheral areas of the city. The area selection for the survey includes slum, non-slum, core areas and peripheral areas of the city.From the background research on the level of services, the study first identifies the indicators having poor level of services in past.
The study is based on the analysis of the selected indicators of sanitation, under three major services provided by Nagpur Municipal Corporation and the final indicators selected are-Access to individual Toilets, Individual Toilets connected to Sewerage Network, Percentage of Population facing Water logging problems, Coverage of door-to-door waste collection, Segregation of Municipal solid Waste (Dry and Wet), Coverage of Water supply connections, Percentage population with Drinking water supply.
With the help of SLB data, selected indicators at the city level and also for the selected Prabhags, a comparative analysishas been carried out to study the distribution and performance of level of services at both City and Prabhag level. The detailed comparison and analysis for the selected indicators represented in a concise format is described as below.
The provision and access to individual toilets has attracted more attention in India specifically since the initiation of Swachh Bharat Mission launched in 2014. The mission illustrates that every citizen should have access to toilet in order to make the city free from open defecation. Nagpur has been declared to be an open defecation free city in 2017. With regard to the state of individual toilets, it is evident as shown in the figure 2, that 94 per cent of the total households in Nagpur have individual toilet facility. It is also observed that, even though the selected Prabhags are located in different areas of the city geographically, the percentage of availability of individual toilet is very good as not less than 97 per cent of the population has toilets in each Prabhag.
The state of individual toilets connected to sewerage network is also good. Comparing with the city level, only Prabhag 2 and Prabhag 12 (located towards the periphery) have lower values for coverage of individual toilets than the Nagpur average and also that of Prabhag 15 and 31 (core of the city). One point though which needs to be noticed is that although the access to individual toilets is more than 94 per cent in the city households, all the toilets are not covered by sewerage network. Some of the toilets in the city are connected to septic tanks and pit latrines. Hence there is a need to provide sewerage network connection to the rest of the areas to ensure hundred per cent coverage.
According to the MoUD there should be 100 per cent coverage of storm water drains within the city but Nagpur performs fairly acutely in this category. Water logging is one of the major problems faced by the citizens, caused due to absence in the water drainage network for the outlet of water through proper channels. Less than half (47 per cent) of the city has access to storm water drains according to the SLB report, which clearly brings out the reason for water logging problems as reported by the citizens. This underlines the urgency to expand and install the network of storm water drains throughout the city at all the uncovered locations efficiently. Also, drains which are not functioning and/or are chocked should be fixed properly and maintained.
Solid waste management is one of the prominent issues in terms of efficiency in collection and segregation of waste. Before the implementation of door to door garbage collection system, citizens used to throw household waste in their nearby containers which was further collected by the Municipal Corporation and sent to the dumping site. Due to the new door to door collection scheme, citizens are required to store household waste in the dustbins which is then collected by the door to door waste collection vehicle. As per the SWM rules, the garbage collection vehicle has to collect the waste daily from the all the areas of the city. The household level collection of waste in Nagpur is very good whereby waste is collected daily from almost 91 per cent of the households. Analysing at the local level the coverage of waste collection services varies from 20 per cent in Prabhag 2 and 25 per cent in Prabhag 12 (peripheral part of the city)to 55 per cent in Prabhag 15 and 69 per cent in Prabhag 31 (core city). This once again brings out that there is a stark contrast in the provision of these basic services between the core and peripheral areas of the city, and a more equitable approach should be adopted for the overall development of the city.
Waste segregation is important in terms of recycling of solid waste. Effective waste segregation leads to reduced amount of waste to the landfill sites and ultimately better for environment and surrounding areas. Building up a sustainable environment and thus a sustainable city requires that all waste should be recycled and/or reused after segregation, but the amount of segregation of solid waste (dry and wet) in case of Nagpur stands at as low as 32 per cent for the entire city, prominently due to lack of awareness among people as people do not segregate waste at the household level. Comparing the segregation of waste in selected Prabhags, Prabhag 2 and Prabhag 12 (with around 50 per cent segregation) perform worse than the Prabhag 15 and Prabhag 31 (segregation around 67 per cent). There is huge scope for improvement in the segregation of waste in Nagpur and the local authorities should focus on trying to raise awareness regarding the same.
The availability of clean and adequate water supply is the basic need of an individual to have a healthy life. The supply of water through individual or community taps is the key responsibility of the Municipal Corporation in terms of provision of basic services. The privatisation in supply of water is a major initiative towards increasing the effectiveness in delivery and reducing the non-revenue water since 2011 in Nagpur. It is because of which, around 86 per cent households in Nagpur are connected with water supply network (either by individual or community water taps). The condition of water supply in Nagpur when studied at the micro level is again very good with almost 90 per cent coverage of water supply network in all the selected Prabhags, with Prabhag 15 having 99.55 per cent coverage of water supply. As mentioned above this can be attributed to the PPP model of water supply in Nagpur which is also counted as an example of best practices in the country.
As outlined by the SDG 6, it is imperative that every citizen should have access to clean drinking water. According to the Census of India 2011, almost70.62 per cent of the urban population in India has access to tap water, for Maharashtra it is around 89 per cent. In case of Nagpur it is 82.34 per cent, which has increased to 97 per cent as given in the CDP of Nagpur. For the selected households in the selected Prabhags, this figure majorly holds well with more than 80 per cent households having access to drinking water except for Prabhag 2, where it is quite low as 65 per cent. Therefore once again there is a need for providing drinking water facility to the entire population especially in the peripheral areas of the city which are lagging behind than the core areas of the city.

Conclusions
Generally the major issues that influence the sustainable development of cities can be named as weak policies implementation, inadequate funds, and poor performance in providing municipal services. Urban local bodies are most of the times faced with resource crunch which ultimately affect their performance in the service delivery. But this is just one side of the problem. The challenges of increasing urbanisation are not only limited to increasing need for basic services but also to the efficient and effective management of these services.
In the case of Nagpur, as already mentioned the major problems in the provision of basic services particularly relate to solid waste collection and segregation, provision of sewerage network and the quality of drinking water. There is a clear demarcation in the level of services provided in the core and peripheral areas of the city. This needs to be eliminated through equitable distribution of services to all regardless of their geographic location.
There has to be conscious effort to cover the entire city through proper storm water drains which is currently at just 47 per cent. In case of waste collection, services in the peripheral parts of the city have to be made efficient and regular. The condition of segregation of waste during and after collection has to be improved by conscious efforts by the Corporation by increasing awareness in the people and strategizing the process of segregation after collection. While the provision of water supply is very good, the quality of water provided to the citizens in some areas needs to improve so as that everybody has access to drinking water.
The precise notion of development needs to be inclusive and sustainable providing everyone with equitable services so that every citizen becomes a conscious part in the process of development.

References
CDP for Nagpur, 2041 (Final Report), March 2015, MoUD, GoI and The World Bank
Municipal Services in Nagpur Municipal Corporation: A Benchmark Study, A Report by Equicity Project, 2017
A study of urbanisation in Nagpur district (2010), KirtiBhonsle, India Journal, Institute of Town Planners, Vol.7-3, July-Sept. 2010
Census of India, Registrar General of India, 1961, 1971,1981,1991,2001 and 2011
District Census Handbook and Rural Urban Distribution of Population, Census, 2011
Urban Development: Issues, Challenges, and ADB’s Approach
Documentation of Best Practices, Draft Report, Vol. 1, May 2009, NIUA, New Delhi.
Mahalaya Chatterjee, Journal Paper, Centre for Urban Economic Studies, CU