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Quality of Life in the City of Delhi: An Assessment Based on Access to Basic Services

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Abstract

The quality of life is a fundamental aspect of development and advancement of human societies. However, measuring and expressing the quality of life in any given setting has proved difficult because it includes multiple dimensions. Further, methods based on questionnaire surveys have to contend with responses that are inexact and difficult to quantify. Here I estimate the quality of life of people living in the Indian city of Delhi using fuzzy sets theory, an approach that is designed to handle inexact or ‘fuzzy’ outcomes. Using a stratified random sample set of 330 households, I compare different locations in Delhi based on their access to seven basic services that is assumed to depict the quality of life. I found that the majority of services (in particular, the overall maintenance and transport services) are poor in resettlement colonies, unauthorised colonies, and urbanised villages. The quality of services improves in colonies under the jurisdiction of the Delhi Cantonment Board, the New Delhi Municipal Council, and approved colonies of the Delhi Development Authority. The overall patterns suggest that the differences in satisfaction and access are primarily influenced by location, and within each location they are influenced by economic conditions. Over 36 % of Delhi’s households, which are classified as ‘definitely poor’ and ‘extremely vulnerable’, may be deprived of transport services, around 44 % are deprived of overall maintenance services and over 29 % lack well-maintained green spaces in their neighbourhood. The analysis should draw the attention of policymakers on spatial aspects of development planning.

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Notes

  1. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-12-06/india/30481060_1_migrants-upper-castes-urban-population. Accessed on 5 December, 2012.

  2. http://www.census2011.co.in/census/state/delhi.html. Accessed on 10 December, 2012.

  3. Among them are Slottje (1991), Sufian (1993) and Michalos and Zumbo (1997), Bonaiuto et al. (1999), Türksever and Atalik (2001), Rod et al. (2006) and Dissart and Deller (2000).

  4. http://www.delhi.gov.in/wps/wcm/connect/Lib_Development/development/home/units+of+the+department/rural+development. Accessed on 10 December, 2012.

  5. The NCT of Delhi now has five local Municipal Corporations: North Delhi Municipal Corporation, South Delhi Municipal Corporation, East Delhi Municipal Corporation, New Delhi Municipal Council and Delhi Cantonment Board. The former Municipal Corporation of Delhi was recently trifurcated into three smaller Municipal Corporations: North Delhi, South Delhi and East Delhi.

  6. Partial correlations between each pair of variables controlling for the effects of all other variables were first checked and Kaiser’s measure of sampling adequacy was computed. The overall measure for the sample amounted to 0.89 which is well above what is considered as acceptable.

  7. A rule of thumb frequently used in factor analysis, but can be adjusted depending on the number of variables and sample size. In this case with 330 observations, factor loadings of 0.30 are considered significant where significance is based on 5 per cent level of significance and standard errors assumed to be twice those of conventional correlation coefficients.

  8. The area scale has 5 dichotomous variables. The reliability coefficient for this scale is 0.61, which is low when compared to the widely used rule of thumb of 0.70; however, the scale is still retained in the analysis.

  9. Both the dwellings’ scales together have 9 dichotomous indicators. The reliability coefficients for these scales are 0.64 and 0.57, respectively. Though both the values are low, especially the 0.57 is lower when compared to the widely used rule of thumb of 0.70; the scales are still considered acceptable.

  10. Refer to Qizilbash (2002) and Dubois and Rousseau (2008) for detailed discussion on the notion of ‘vulnerability’.

  11. See for instance works of Lelli (2001) and Chiappero-Martinetti (2000) to get an overview of other membership functions.

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Acknowledgments

This work was initiated while I was at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. I thank the Institute for all the support extended during the course of this study. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support extended by SIDA (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) and the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC). I am deeply thankful to Professor Kanchan Chopra for generously sharing her deep insights on the subject and for providing constructive comments that helped me in improving this manuscript. I also thank Shashi Bhushan for assisting me in the field work.

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  1. Department of Business Economics, University of Delhi, South Campus, New Delhi, 110021, India

    Preeti Kapuria

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Kapuria, P. Quality of Life in the City of Delhi: An Assessment Based on Access to Basic Services. Soc Indic Res 117, 459–487 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-013-0355-2

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