Executive Summary

Until India’s independence, Bhavnagar was a small-size princely state.  In 1948, it joined the undivided Bombay province. In 1960, when the Bombay province was split into Maharashtra and Gujarat, Bhavnagar became part of the newly created Gujarat state.  Even after becoming a new state, Gujarat’s eight municipal corporations, including Bhavnagar, continued to be, and still are, governed by the Bombay Municipal Corporation Act (1949).

According to the 2011 census, Bhavnagar city’s population was 643,365.  For a medium-sized city, it is quite industrialised.  It has always been known for its diamond-polishing, salt making and ship breaking industries.  It has a port, which has been involved in maritime trade for a long time.

The city can be divided into two parts: the richer part, which is also newer and has the shopping malls and hotels, and – as in much of urban India – the older part, which is denser.  Nonetheless, the overall density is not such that urban expansion is forced to take a vertical form.  The city is still expanding horizontally.

Speaking in terms of social groups, the city does not have many Adivasis.  But it has a substantial Dalit presence.   There is a huge OBC population in the city.  OBC MLAs or MPs have often won assembly and parliamentary elections.  The city also has a substantial Muslim population, but unlike several other cities of Gujarat, the Hindu-Muslim divide is not deep. During our research, the city’s highest police official described Bhavnagar as “communally not hyper sensitive”.

Well over half of Forward Castes are upper-middle or upper class, with only 3% in slums.  By contrast, nearly 28% of the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) reside in slums, and only 11% in upper class housing.  In terms of class, OBCs in the city are nearly as badly off as the Scheduled Castes (SCs).

As for citizen participation in voting, the lower classes vote more than the upper classes, Muslims more than the Hindus, OBCs more than the upper castes and the SCs.  Beyond voting, civic participation generates the most important results.  Consistent with other Gujarati cities, Bhavnagar citizens participate much more in identity-based organisations than in professional ones (NGOs, labor unions, professional organizations).   Slum dwellers have the highest participation rates in organisations that are mostly religion- or caste-based.

On overall availability of public services, Bhavnagar does well, and is just behind Kochi and Vadodara, but well above Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Mumbai. But the distribution of basic public services across social categories varies considerably.  The Forward Castes enjoy the best services followed by OBCs and Dalits. The gap between OBCs and SCs is, however, not huge.

Though the Hindu-Muslim divide is not deep, Bhavnagar is also a city where Muslims get a lower level of service delivery.  Some Muslims are substantial businessmen, but for all practical purposes, Muslims are split into two halves – slums and lower middle class.  In cross-city terms, Bhavnagar’s SCs and Muslims appear to be poorer than in other cities, but the poverty of OBCs is much more striking.

The most pronounced pattern of differentiated access to services emerges along class lines – i.e., by housing types.  Shack dwellers are worst off in Bhavnagar, as in all cities, and as expected, the service delivery score increases gradually as we move up the class categories.  However, in comparative terms, those living in informal shack settlements are doing better than those living in informal shacks in the other two Gujarati cities in our project.  The level of service delivery in Bhavnagar’s informal slum settlements is also much better, compared  to all bigger cities in our study, though it is not as good as in the two other smaller cities, Kochi and Vadodara.

As elsewhere in Gujarat, water is only available for up to two hours a day in Bhavnagar.  But, along with Hyderabad, Bhavnagar has the highest proportion of households having the source of water inside the house, including in the slums.

On sanitation, Bhavnagar is among the best performers across our cities. Though many more Muslims than Hindus have what we call compromised sanitation, only 5% of citizens overall do.  On the quality of sanitation, the difference between upper castes and Dalits is the lowest among all cities.

Social life of the city is dominated by caste and religion. Most friendships are intra-caste and intra-religious, more the latter than the former and more so than in most other cities.  And marriage outside caste and religion is essentially nonexistent.