CIUG project shows Chennai as a city of contrasts, outwardly modern, yet still struggling with inequities in water and sanitation.
Published Aug 24, 2025 | 3:52 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 24, 2025 | 3:52 PM
Representational image. Credit: iStock
Synopsis: If there is one city where the cracks in urban service delivery are most visible, it is Chennai. The CIUG report shows that households here face some of the toughest challenges in accessing water across all 14 cities studied. In slums and informal settlements, families must rely on public toilets that are overcrowded, unsafe, and poorly maintained. The burden falls especially on women and children, who face health hazards and safety risks on a daily basis.
In Chennai, the struggle for basic services often begins with something as essential as water. Entire neighborhoods still depend on hand pumps and tanker trucks, while others endure erratic supply that runs for just a couple of hours a day. For many families, securing clean water is not just a routine but a test of endurance.
Apart from water, Chennai also struggles with sanitation and daily services that affect city life. While some Indian cities have set up fair systems for their people, Chennai still lags. Because of this, many residents depend on middlemen and informal networks. The hardest hit are those from small or low-income households, where class, caste, and access are closely linked.
These patterns emerge very clearly in the findings of the Citizenship, Inequality, and Urban Governance (CIUG) Project, a large-scale comparative study of 14 Indian cities.
The project, led by Professor Patrick Heller and team at Brown University’s Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia, surveyed over 31,000 households to examine how citizens navigate the everyday basics of urban life.
The results place Chennai among the cities struggling the most with fair and reliable service delivery, where class and caste continue to shape who gets access, and who is left behind.
If there is one city where the cracks in urban service delivery are most visible, it is Chennai. The CIUG report shows that households here face some of the toughest challenges in accessing water across all 14 cities studied.
No other city depends so heavily on alternative sources like Chennai does. 17 percent of households rely on hand pumps and another 14 percent on tanker trucks or private suppliers in the Tamil Nadu capital.
Even though Chennai residents are among the most active in contacting their local councillors, yet this effort does not translate into better outcomes. The CIUG report noted that while people here reach out frequently, the city still ranks low in service delivery. Instead, “a large number of people rely on intermediaries to access services.” This clearly reflects that the problem lies in the city’s governance structure.
Water supply is not just limited, it is also erratic. While some families receive nearly continuous supply, others barely get a couple of hours. The report mentioned, “Most households either get less than two hours a day or more than 23 hours a day. Overall, 43.4 percent of households only get water for up to two hours daily, and 23 percent get more than 23 hours daily.”
In this mix, Kochi stands out for providing the best services, while Chennai joins Mumbai at the bottom of the rankings.
Sanitation tells a similar story. In cities like Kochi, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, and Delhi, most households enjoy reliable facilities. In Mumbai, the majority lack them. Chennai, meanwhile, lies in between, but what sets it apart is inequality.
Access depends heavily on housing. Families in middle-class neighborhoods may have solid systems, but those in slums or informal settlements are left behind. The report puts it plainly: “Housing type has the strongest effects on basic service delivery. Class determines the availability of public services in India’s cities more than any other variable.”
In effect, class decides daily life in Chennai. Whether a family gets piped water, decent toilets, or steady electricity depends less on citywide systems than on the type of housing they occupy.
Caste and community still matter, but in complex ways. Across most Indian cities, people report friendships largely within their own caste. “With very few exceptions, social life in urban India is still heavily governed by caste,” the report stated.
Here, Chennai emerges as a rare exception, alongside Kochi, with more residents claiming friendships across caste lines. This makes the city socially more open than many others, including Delhi and Mumbai.
Yet, caste continues to shape access to sanitation. The CIUG findings are stark: “Only 12 percent of OBCs have compromised sanitation, that figure rises to 30 percent for SC and 33 percent for STs.”
While this breakdown is for all cities combined, it underscores how caste and class together decide who can count on the basics in Indian cities, including Chennai.
Taken together, the CIUG project shows Chennai as a city of contrasts, outwardly modern and expanding, yet still struggling with inequities in water and sanitation that define daily life for large sections of its residents.
The findings of the CIUG report resonate strongly with the lived realities of Chennai. Advocate and social activist G. Sarath Kumar, founder of Vyasai Tholargal, shares how these challenges play out on the ground, from water scarcity to sanitation gaps, governance failures, and the persistence of caste in urban life.
“There is no perennial river here, the city depends on monsoons, and groundwater is being depleted. With rapid urbanisation, it is only tanker trucks and pumps that fill the gap,” he said.
On governance, he stressed that councillors alone cannot be blamed for weak service delivery. “There is a whole system behind governance, and in between stand intermediaries including brokers, party workers, local strongmen,” he notes.
According to him, the larger problem is that government services are rarely delivered as a matter of duty. Instead, they come as favors, mediated by networks that thrive on lack of transparency.
The inequalities of sanitation in Chennai are, in his words, “most visible when you compare neighbourhoods.” Middle and upper-class residents usually have underground drainage, regular garbage collection, and private toilets.
But in slums and informal settlements, families must rely on public toilets that are overcrowded, unsafe, and poorly maintained. The burden falls especially on women and children, who face health hazards and safety risks on a daily basis.
Caste, Kumar insisted, continues to structure urban life.
“Even in a metropolis like Chennai, caste is alive,” he said, pointing to areas such as North Chennai that remain flood-prone, under-serviced, and disproportionately inhabited by Dalit communities.
This reminds that manual scavenging, drain-cleaning, and garbage collection are still dominated by Dalits, reflecting caste-based occupational continuity.
Looking ahead, Sarath Kumar stressed the urgency of systemic reforms. Chennai’s future, he argues, depends on building proper underground drainage networks in all areas, ensuring transparent governance, and strictly enforcing laws against manual scavenging while creating dignified alternative livelihoods.
Beyond infrastructure, Kumar emphasises education as a tool for change: “We need quality education with a rational approach, so that children grow up understanding equality and fraternity.”
Among sections of the workforce engaged in the hardest and most degrading forms of labour, including manual scavenging, there is often a sense that such work is simply their lot in life.
Many workers say they cannot imagine doing anything else, even when the job involves daily risk, indignity, and health hazards. This outlook is not born out of preference, but from the absence of alternatives and the way generations have been confined to the same occupations.
Breaking this cycle requires more than temporary fixes. It calls for stronger systems that provide proper infrastructure, safe housing, and fair access to services.
Most importantly, it demands investment in quality education that gives the next generation tools to dream beyond survival. When people are given dignity, opportunity, and the belief that they can choose differently, the cycle of inequality can finally begin to change.
(Edited by Amit Vasudev)
