Households in Chennai face the biggest challenges in accessing water, with 17% depending on hand pumps and 14% depending on other sources, such as tanker trucks, which are by far the highest numbers in any city, according to a study conducted in 14 cities across India.
Presenting and discussing the results of the Citizenship, Urban Governance and Inequality (CIUG) project, based on a comparative study of 14 Indian cities, including Chennai, and survey results from 31,803 households, Brown University Professor Patrick Heller said Chennai ranked low in basic service delivery while a large number of people rely on intermediaries for service delivery. The project examined the quality and coverage of basic services and how urban Indian citizens used their civil, political, and social rights in cities and found significant variation in the quality of basic services delivered across cities. “Bhavnagar, Kochi and Vadodara had the best services, and Chennai and Mumbai had the worst.”
