A study of accessibility of health and education services : case of Bhopal city

Abstract

Cities subsume wide disparities in the access to key infrastructure and services like water, sanitation, health and education. Health and education are the foundations for human development. This research aims to assess the barriers to health and education services in urban areas and to develop a plan for improved access. The study focuses on three barriers to accessibility – Availability, which assesses the availability of health and education services, Geographic Accessibility, which assesses the physical accessibility to services and infrastructure like road density, access to water and sanitation and finally Affordability, which assesses the socio economic conditions of the people and share of public and private institutes for the city of Bhopal .The study develops a measure of accessibility based on the three barriers of accessibility. The measure is computed using an index developed on 22 criteria which are the input indicators to compute health and education indices. The criteria are categorized according to the three barriers of accessibility. The data collected for the indicators is compared with benchmarks and standards, and the resulting gap is normalized using a scoring technique and then aggregated. The study also focuses on the role of physical infrastructure in the accessibility of health and education services. The accessibility is measured for all the 14 zones of Bhopal using secondary data. To understand the ground level qualitative and perceptual scenario, primary survey is also conducted in seven zones which represent all the zone typologies. The findings from this research illustrate inter zonal variations in the city due to imbalanced distribution of schools, hospitals and basic services in the city. The empirical findings ascertain that in Bhopal affordability has the most impact on accessibility. The study highlights the role of private sector in service provisioning of healthcare and education and it proposes a methodology to locate and allocate health and education services. The measure of accessibility developed by the study can be used to compute accessibility to health and education services in other urban areas.