As a result of rapid urbanisation, majority of migrated population is forced to settle in places which are not legally recognised by state authorities. These areas thus lack in basic services like water supply and sewerage. Consequently, the slum dwellers often resort to illegal methods to avail these services. Such practices in these overcrowded slums are not only poor in terms of quantity supplied but the quality is also a major problem.
The paper in its background states that in Mumbai only notified slums are ensured security of residential tenure and access to water, sanitation, and electricity. In non-notified slums there exists a complex informal system for procuring, distributing and storing water. The authors define non-notified slums as “community-created or private systems that are outside of the purview of government regulation”. Such distribution systems adversely affect health and social equity of the people.
The authors evaluate such a distribution system using commonly accepted health and social equity indicators: cost of water, quantity of water consumed at the household level, microbiological and chemical quality of water, and residents’ opinions of hardships associated with water access. For this purpose the authors have used data from the 2008 KB Baseline Needs Assessment (BNA) and the 2011 KB Seasonal Water Assessment (SWA).
The paper after setting the background of the study goes on to describe the study area where:
An analysis on this system shows:
The paper then goes on to elaborate on the study design for the 2008 Baseline Needs Assessment (BNA) and study design for the 2011 Seasonal Water Assessment. The findings of these studies are as follows:
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