Spatializing stigma-power: Mental health impacts of spatial stigma in a legally-excluded settlement in Mumbai, India

In disadvantaged neighborhoods such as informal settlements (or "slums" in the Indian context), infrastructural deficits and social conditions have been associated with residents' poor mental health. Within social determinants of health framework, spatial stigma, or negative portrayal and stereotyping of particular neighborhoods, has been identified as a contributor to health deficits, but remains under-examined in public health research and may adversely impact the mental health of slum residents through pathways including disinvestment in infrastructure, internalization, weakened community relations, and discrimination. Based on analyses of individual interviews (n = 40) and focus groups (n = 6) in Kaula Bandar (KB), an informal settlement in Mumbai with a previously described high rate of probable common mental disorders (CMD), this study investigates the association between spatial stigma and mental health. The findings suggest that KB's high rate of CMDs stems, in part, from residents' internalization of spatial stigma, which negatively impacts their self-perceptions and community relations. Employing the concept of stigma-power, this study also reveals that spatial stigma in KB is produced through willful government neglect and disinvestment, including the denial of basic services (e.g., water and sanitation infrastructure, solid waste removal). These findings expand the scope of stigma-power from an individual-level to a community-level process by revealing its enactment through the actions (and inactions) of bureaucratic agencies. This study provides empirical evidence for the mental health impacts of spatial stigma and contributes to understanding a key symbolic pathway by which living in a disadvantaged neighborhood may adversely affect health.

Divided infrastructure: legal exclusion and water inequality in an urban slum in Mumbai, India

Inadequate water access is central to the experience of urban inequality across low- and middle-income countries and leads to adverse health and social outcomes. Previous literature on water inequality in Mumbai, India's second largest city, offers diverse explanations for water disparities between and within slums.⁽¹⁾ This study provides new insights on water disparities in Mumbai's slums by evaluating the influence of legal status on water access. We analyzed data from 593 households in Mandala, a slum with legally recognized (notified) and unrecognized (non-notified) neighborhoods. Relative to households in a notified neighborhood, households in a non-notified neighborhood suffered disadvantages in water infrastructure, accessibility, reliability, and spending. Non-notified households used significantly fewer liters per capita per day of water, even after controlling for religion and socioeconomic status. Our findings suggest that legal exclusion may be a central driver of water inequality. Extending legal recognition to excluded slum settlements, neighborhoods, and households could be a powerful intervention for reducing urban water inequality.

The psychological toll of slum living in Mumbai, India: a mixed methods study

In India, "non-notified" slums are not officially recognized by city governments; they suffer from insecure tenure and poorer access to basic services than "notified" (government-recognized) slums. We conducted a study in a non-notified slum of about 12,000 people in Mumbai to determine the prevalence of individuals at high risk for having a common mental disorder (i.e., depression and anxiety), to ascertain the impact of mental health on the burden of functional impairment, and to assess the influence of the slum environment on mental health. We gathered qualitative data (six focus group discussions and 40 individual interviews in July-November 2011), with purposively sampled participants, and quantitative data (521 structured surveys in February 2012), with respondents selected using community-level random sampling. For the surveys, we administered the General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ) to screen for common mental disorders (CMDs), the WHO Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 (WHO DAS) to screen for functional impairment, and a slum adversity questionnaire, which we used to create a composite Slum Adversity Index (SAI) score. Twenty-three percent of individuals have a GHQ score≥5, suggesting they are at high risk for having a CMD. Psychological distress is a major contributor to the slum's overall burden of functional impairment. In a multivariable logistic regression model, household income, poverty-related factors, and the SAI score all have strong independent associations with CMD risk. The qualitative findings suggest that non-notified status plays a central role in creating psychological distress-by creating and exacerbating deprivations that serve as sources of stress, by placing slum residents in an inherently antagonistic relationship with the government through the criminalization of basic needs, and by shaping a community identity built on a feeling of social exclusion from the rest of the city.

The social ecology of water in a Mumbai slum: failures in water quality, quantity, and reliability

Background

Urban slums in developing countries that are not recognized by the government often lack legal access to municipal water supplies. This results in the creation of insecure “informal” water distribution systems (i.e., community-run or private systems outside of the government’s purview) that may increase water-borne disease risk. We evaluate an informal water distribution system in a slum in Mumbai, India using commonly accepted health and social equity indicators. We also identify predictors of bacterial contamination of drinking water using logistic regression analysis.

Methods

Data were collected through two studies: the 2008 Baseline Needs Assessment survey of 959 households and the 2011 Seasonal Water Assessment, in which 229 samples were collected for water quality testing over three seasons. Water samples were collected in each season from the following points along the distribution system: motors that directly tap the municipal supply (i.e., “point-of-source” water), hoses going to slum lanes, and storage and drinking water containers from 21 households.

Results

Depending on season, households spend an average of 52 to 206 times more than the standard municipal charge of Indian rupees 2.25 (US dollars 0.04) per 1000 liters for water, and, in some seasons, 95% use less than the WHO-recommended minimum of 50 liters per capita per day. During the monsoon season, 50% of point-of-source water samples were contaminated. Despite a lack of point-of-source water contamination in other seasons, stored drinking water was contaminated in all seasons, with rates as high as 43% for E. coli and 76% for coliform bacteria. In the multivariate logistic regression analysis, monsoon and summer seasons were associated with significantly increased odds of drinking water contamination.

Conclusions

Our findings reveal severe deficiencies in water-related health and social equity indicators. All bacterial contamination of drinking water occurred due to post-source contamination during storage in the household, except during the monsoon season, when there was some point-of-source water contamination. This suggests that safe storage and household water treatment interventions may improve water quality in slums. Problems of exorbitant expense, inadequate quantity, and poor point-of-source quality can only be remedied by providing unrecognized slums with equitable access to municipal water supplies.

The high cost of diarrhoeal illness for urban slum households-a cost-recovery approach: a cohort study

OBJECTIVES

Rapid urbanisation has often meant that public infrastructure has not kept pace with growth leading to urban slums with poor access to water and sanitation and high rates of diarrhoea with greater household costs due to illness. This study sought to determine the monetary cost of diarrhoea to urban slum households in Kaula Bandar slum in Mumbai, India. The study also tested the hypotheses that the cost of water and sanitation infrastructure may be surpassed by the cumulative costs of diarrhoea for households in an urban slum community.

DESIGN

A cohort study using a baseline survey of a random sample followed by a systematic longitudinal household survey. The baseline survey was administered to a random sample of households. The systematic longitudinal survey was administered to every available household in the community with a case of diarrhoea for a period of 5 weeks.

PARTICIPANTS

Every household in Kaula Bandar was approached for the longitudinal survey and all available and consenting adults were included.

RESULTS

The direct cost of medical care for having at least one person in the household with diarrhoea was 205 rupees. Other direct costs brought total expenses to 291 rupees. Adding an average loss of 55 rupees per household from lost wages and monetising lost productivity from homemakers gave a total loss of 409 rupees per household. During the 5-week study period, this community lost an estimated 163 600 rupees or 3635 US dollars due to diarrhoeal illness.

CONCLUSIONS

The lack of basic water and sanitation infrastructure is expensive for urban slum households in this community. Financing approaches that transfer that cost to infrastructure development to prevent illness may be feasible. These findings along with the myriad of unmeasured benefits of preventing diarrhoeal illness add to pressing arguments for investment in basic water and sanitation infrastructure.

Off the map: the health and social implications of being a non-notified slum in India

Approximately half of all slums in India are not recognized by the government. Lack of government recognition, also referred to as "non-notified status" in the Indian context, may create entrenched barriers to legal rights and basic services such as water, sanitation, and security of tenure. In this paper, we explore the relationship between non-notified status and health outcomes in Kaula Bandar (KB), a slum in Mumbai, India. We illuminate this relationship using the findings of a four-year series of studies in the community. By comparing KB's statistics to those from other Mumbai slums captured by India's National Family Health Survey-3, we show that KB has relative deficiencies in several health and social outcomes, including those for educational status, child health, and adult nutrition. We then provide an explanatory framework for the role that KB's non-notified status may play in generating poor health outcomes by discussing the health consequences of the absence of basic services and the criminalization of activities required to fulfill fundamental needs such as water access, toileting, and shelter. We argue that the policy vacuum surrounding non-notified slums like KB results in governance failures that lead to poor health outcomes. Our findings highlight the need for cities in India and other developing countries to establish and fulfill minimum humanitarian standards in non-notified slums for the provision of basic services such as water, sanitation, solid waste removal, electricity, and education.