Social and Community Mapping of Inclusivity: A Spatial Analysis of Patna, Bihar

Urbanisation in India has been rapid and largely unplanned. Utilising the GIS and the Census 2011, this paper attempts to visually map the level of urban services and amenities available to the residents of Patna, Bihar. We focus on the key services such as sanitation, drinking water access, health, and housing quality to understand the level of stress on the urban service delivery system. This article also ranks administrative wards in Patna on the basis of availability of urban services using interval ranking scheme. We find huge inequality in the access and availability of services in peripheral areas of the city compared to centrally located wards. We find that areas with low density and higher presence of informal settlements are worse off. Finally, we discuss strategies to reduce the existing inequalities in the urban service delivery system to achieve inclusive development.