Understanding Mumbai’s Social Indicators Through Ward Maps
Mumbai with the size of its economy and, population makes for a compelling case in being a city-state itself. Above, is an attempt at making a heat map of the various social indicators in Mumbai helping in highlighting the differences across various administrative wards.
The HDI score between 0 to 1 is an index which helps identifying the performance on three vital social indicators of health, education and income (represented in Fig. 1). The darker shades highlight a worse score while the lighter shades identify a better score.
The island city fares better than the suburbs on the HDI ranking with the top two wards being ward D (Grant Road) and C (Marine Lines) respectively. The other top performing wards happen to be R/C (Borivalli) and T (Mulund) which are fairly rich urban pockets.
One of the worst performing administrative wards happens to be both M/W (Chembur, West)and M/E (Chembur, East). It also happens to be the home of the largest dumping ground at Deonar.
There is a close correlation between the HDI score and slum population residing in a certain ward (slum population represented in Fig.2). Here too, the island city fares better when compared with the suburbs in the proportion of slum population out of the total population in an administrative ward. Unsurprisingly, Dharavi comprises of the largest slum population in Mumbai as can be seen from the plot. Kurla, Chembur (both east & west) turn out to be the major poverty belts in the city.
A large component of the local governments responsibilities includes the delivery of healthcare by way of BMC operated hospitals. Fig. 3 represents the distribution of hospitals across various administrative wards in Mumbai. A darker shade on the map reflects fewer available government hospitals while a lighter shade reflects a higher number of government hospitals while some administrative wards are grayed out for the lack of any municipality hospital.
One can argue that the government’s job is to deliver on healthcare especially for the poor. However, in Mumbai this is not the case. The wards with a worse HDI score and a higher slum population also happen to have fewer hospitals. While, a large number of hospitals are centered around the island city once again.
Among the cost of healthcare for the poor in Mumbai, there is an add on cost of making the commute from the sub-urbs to the island city. Both Chembur East and West fail again in providing healthcare to its residents.
Another troublesome ward happens to be the S ward or Bhandup West. The ward has a lower HDI score, a higher slum population and no government hospitals.
Mumbai clearly has a long way to go in improving it’s performance on its social indicators. Urbanization and Mumbai have been synonymous from times immemorial. However, the government has failed in improving and maintaining a decent standard of living for its residents.
Largely, the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) does not have enough autonomy in administering and governing the city. However, healthcare is one department where it gets to use its huge budget coffers. It has failed its residents especially the poor of the city.
