Health, Environment, Crime: Where Does Delhi Stand?
Ahead of the polls for the Delhi legislative assembly, our data dive exposes how the capital city fares on key parameters
On February 5, Delhi will elect 70 MLAs for its 8th legislative assembly. The capital city, which is neither a state nor a union territory, has a complicated governance structure. While multiple governing bodies have overarching responsibilities, services such as health and family welfare, industrial development, water supply, food and civil supplies, transport, power generation and revenue administration come under the purview of the state government, while the central government is responsible for law and order, urban planning and land development.
With the political blame game that this system encourages, Delhi’s governance has suffered. Ahead of the polls, we analysed data around the most important public issues and here is where the city stands.
Crimes Against Women
Delhi had the highest rate of reported crimes against women, among all states and union territories. According to the 2022 data (2023 data is yet to be released) from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), there were 144.4 crimes for every one lakh women in the capital city, a number that has steadily risen since 2012 when it recorded 69.75 crimes. It was the year when a 23-year-old physiotherapy student was raped and murdered and since then the public debate around women’s safety, both in the public and private domain, has been quite pronounced. The case led to the creation of a dedicated and non-lapsable Nirbhaya Fund for women’s safety and security.
But because the NCRB data only includes cases where an FIR was filed and is categorised on the basis of the crime that receives the maximum punishment, there is underreporting of crimes against women, as we had reported.
In March 2024, researcher Tanya Rana conducted a rapid survey of 101 women and only 6 of them said they found Delhi safe. Her analysis spoke of how underreporting leads to reduced financial prioritisation for women’s safety measures and how the disproportionate focus of the policies under the Nirbhaya Fund does not help survivors access the help they need.
Since law and order comes in the pile of central government’s responsibilities in the city, AAP has routinely attacked the BJP government in the centre for the city being unsafe for women.
Dip in Sex Ratio
At 860, Delhi’s sex ratio at birth was significantly lower than the national average of 907 girls for 1000 boys, as per the latest Sample Registration System report released in 2020. Over the last decade, this ratio has always been lower than the respective national average.
Between 2009 and 2013, the ratio improved from 880 to 887 but since then it has been worsening and by 2018, it was at its lowest at 844. While the ratio improved by 2020, it is still lower than the 2013 levels.
We analysed this trend in a September 2022 report and we found that the reason is rooted in son preference and Delhi’s proximity to Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and other states with higher prevalence of gender preferential practice.
To improve the sex ratio, the Aam Aadmi Party in 2015 had promised a reward of Rs 1 lakh for providing correct information on sex determination and sex-selective abortion. It also said that ASHA workers will be given an incentive of Rs 1,000 on the birth of the first girl child and Rs 2,000 on the birth of the second girl child.
Access to Healthcare
In Delhi, there are hospitals run by the central government, state government and by its five urban local bodies. But when Afreen’s husband Aamir had a stroke in June 2024, two of the biggest public hospitals in the city which were less than a kilometre away refused to treat him, forcing Afreen to rely on private doctors and quacks.
As per a 2017-18 government survey, 41.6% of ailments in Delhi were treated by private doctors or at private clinics. And this means astronomical expenses for families: while hospitalisation in public hospitals costs Rs 2,285 per case, in private hospitals, it costs Rs 63,500 per case.
When Afreen went to prominent tertiary care centres in the city, one said they only take patients who have a referral and the other paid no attention to Aamir. In April 2024, the Delhi High Court took note of an interim report by a court-appointed committee, which said that the government hospitals in the city are understaffed and lack the required medical infrastructure.
Air Pollution
On November 18, 2024, Delhi reported the worst air quality index of the year and a Swiss-based air quality monitoring group ranked the city as the most polluted capital city in the world. The level of PM2.5 particles (fine particulate matter that easily passes through the body’s protective systems to reach the lungs) was reported to be 92.7 micrograms per cubic metre, over 6 times the safe limit of 12-15 micrograms per cubic metre.
With 41 continuous monitoring stations, Delhi is the most monitored and studied city in India in terms of air pollution. But there has been no significant changes in PM2.5 annual averages between 2019 and 2023, found this paper published in December 2024. “Although interventions targeted emissions reductions across various sectors, these benefits were largely offset by increases in vehicle usage, industrial activity, and waste burning,” said the paper.
Despite PM2.5 being the deadlier pollutant, the National Clear Air Programme, a targeted initiative to tackle air pollution in 130 cities, changed its track to focus only on the larger PM10 particulate matter, as reported by The Plank, a magazine dedicated to civic issues. This led to most of the programme funding being utilised to tackle the more visible but less lethal problem, the report added.
Reducing air pollution was a key focus in the 2020 elections manifesto of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress had said it will allocate a quarter of the annual budget for air pollution.
Clean Water and Sanitation
Among the key promises made by the AAP was also cleaning and rejuvenation of the Yamuna river. In 2017, Uttarakhand High Court declared the river as a living entity but four years later, in 2021, photos of Hindu women taking a dip in the river covered in toxic froth reignited the issue of the river’s pollution. Environmentalists believe that the emptying of untreated sewage into the river and political and administrative apathy were to be blamed for the frequent foaming in the river.
Only 2% (22 km) of the river passes through Delhi but this stretch is responsible for 76% of its pollution. At least 90% of the domestic waste water in the city goes into Yamuna. In the 10 years between 2008 and 2018, the area covered by water and vegetation decreased while bare land and urban built-up area increased, impacting livelihoods and making people poorer.
The river is also the primary source of 70% of the city’s water supply, catering to 57 million people. Irregular and polluted water supply pushes Delhi’s poorest communities to rely on tankers and bottled drinking water, adding to their expenses. As per a national survey report released in 2018, less than half (47.5%) of the households in Delhi rely on piped water inside the house for drinking water. A third rely on bottled water, around 8% on tubewell and 3% on tankers.
Women's Working Conditions
Women’s participation in the labour force in Delhi has always been significantly lower than the national average. As per the annual Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023-24, the participation rate in Delhi was 18.5%, less than half of the nationwide 41.7%.
In the last two years, like the nationwide trend, the participation rate in Delhi has seen an uptick but the increase is more modest than in the country. Women in Delhi have a higher unemployment rate at 16.7%, as compared to the national average of 3.1%.
While most (70.2%) of the women in the labour force in the city are salaried with a regular wage, a majority of them are informal workers with no written job contract (63.4%), no paid leave (48%) and without social security benefits (61.1%). A quarter of the women work in employer’s households.
Many women in the city are also engaged in home-based work where different kinds of specific tasks like sticking plastic sheets on envelopes, shelling almonds or stitching zips on jeans are outsourced to them at low per-piece rates. While estimates say over 17 million women in India do such work, no such data exists for women workers in Delhi.
A September 2023 survey including 86 home-based workers from Delhi found that they earned an average of Rs 1,698 per month, which made for 11% of their household income. The payment was only 9% of the minimum wage rate in Delhi.
While most women work in the unorganised sector, unstable incomes and poor access to healthcare takes away their reproductive autonomy, we had reported in December 2024. The report based on a study illustrated how two 16-year-old home-based workers in Delhi struggled to detect their pregnancy because they did not know what a missed period meant.
The women also struggle to access the legal recourses for workplace violence as illustrated under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act (POSH). As per the act, each district is meant to have a local committee to address sexual harassment complaints of informal workers. Delhi needs 11 such committees but only one is effective, we had reported in June 2023.
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