Spatial Inequality in State of Water Supply and Human Health: A Study of Varanasi City

Abstract

Uncontrolled and unplanned urbanization in cities and towns has caused myriad of problems for
livability. Among such problems, inadequacies of piped water supply at home and sanitation form the
crux. It would be hard facts to believe that 35 per cent of urban families i.e. 18.7 million households do
not get drinking water at home (leaving aside duration and/or quality of water supplied) and for about
a third, a house does not include a toilet (2001 census) . In fact, rapid urbanization vis-a-vis unorganized
growth of towns and cities in India has put a severe strain on access to infrastructure services like safe
water supply, sewerage and drainage, solid waste disposal, etc. If the momentum of economic growth is
to be maintained, challenges thrown up by large-scale urbanization will have to be addressed on
priority. The urban water supply and sanitation services, particularly in large cities, suffer from shortage
of man power, increasing gap between demand and supply, little participation by the users, lack of
institutional finance and poor municipal governance. Varanasi - one of the oldest living cities of the
world is located along the holy river Ganga but severely faces the problem of inadequate and _ iniquitous
distribution of clean water supply across the city which in turn resulted to poor state of health of the
people. Keeping the aforesaid fact in background, the present study is designed to examine the inequality
in state of water supply and human health in Varanasi - a million+ city of India.