Gulshan Ansari’s life in the neighbourhood of Rafiq Nagar reflects the complex and interconnected challenges faced by migrant women and their families living in informal settlements in Mumbai. Located in the M-East Ward, one of Mumbai’s most underserved administrative zones, Rafiq Nagar sits on the edges of the city’s vast dumping ground. In a rapidly urbanising India, Gulshan’s story reveals how gender, migration, poverty, planning failures, and weak state accountability shape everyday access to water, sanitation, health, safety, and dignity.

Gulshan, now 38, moved to Mumbai from Muzaffarpur, Bihar, at the age of fifteen shortly after her marriage. Like many young migrants, she hoped to work hard to build her life in the city. However, she has found herself living at its margins, mostly invisible.

She has two sons and two daughters. Both her sons had to drop out of school to help support the family. Her husband stitched bags and earned about ₹20,000 a month, but after a leg fracture, he is unable to work. Gulshan once volunteered with the NGO Apnalaya but now stays home to care for her family, relying on relatives to borrow money for basic needs.

Settling behind one of Mumbai’s largest dumping grounds meant that Gulshan’s family faced unsafe housing, poor infrastructure, and constant municipal policing. Between 2005 and 2007, large-scale demolitions swept through several parts of the city, including Rafiq Nagar. Thousands of homes were razed under BMC’s anti-encroachment and ‘city beautification’ drives. People were neither given proper notice nor offered rehabilitation. Families slept on rubble for months, rebuilding temporary huts in unplanned, hazardous conditions with severe health and sanitation risks.

Poor sanitation remains one of the most critical infrastructural challenges in Rafiq Nagar. For years, people had no option but open defecation, as community toilets were either too few or too unusable. Living next to the dumping ground has only worsened the people’s health.

Only two community toilet blocks serve nearly 2,500 households. Overcrowding, long queues, poor maintenance, and frequent blockages make them difficult to use, especially for women and the elderly. Each visit costs money: women pay ₹2, men ₹3, and during festivals, the rates often increase. For families living on the edge, these small amounts add up quickly.

The toilets also close after midnight. Women and young girls who need to relieve themselves later at night have no choice but to go outside, where the risk of harassment, violence, and health hazards is frighteningly high. Morning rush hours bring long queues, causing girls to miss school if they cannot access the toilets in time. Sanitation becomes an everyday battle that directly affects education, mobility, and dignity.

“Women and girls living in informal settlements have almost no privacy during their periods. They cannot dry sanitary cloths in the open areas, and cannot access community toilets with privacy and safety when they need it most.” Gulshan shares.

NGO-distributed sanitary pads in schools help, but the knowledge of menstrual health within the community is limited. Shame and stigma keep many girls from discussing their problems, and there are limited spaces to ask questions. Without proper toilets, clean water, or consistent support from health workers or community-based organisations, girls struggle to maintain basic menstrual hygiene, leading to a range of challenges. Anaemia is common among women and girls due to poor nutrition and a lack of consistent health outreach. Girls struggle to manage menstruation safely, often leading to infections, stress, and missed school days.

Determined to improve conditions, Gulshan built a small toilet inside her 10×10 ft house. While it offers safety, it brings new challenges. The cramped structure leaves little space, and the septic tank beneath emits foul odours and creates health concerns. Privacy remains limited in a crowded household, and women struggle to find discreet places to wash and dry sanitary cloths or undergarments often leads to unsafe practices and a heightened risk of infections. 

Yet even with these limitations, toilets within homes offer a safe space to women and girls, especially during menstruation. Gulshan’s experience underscores the daily compromises many women are forced to make between maintaining dignity and living in conditions that lack even the most basic sanitation facilities.

Despite water and electricity connections being officially sanctioned, the housing structures—including home-built toilets—are considered ‘unauthorised’. Anxiety over this legal ambiguity looms over the residents of Rafiq Nagar perpetually. 

Residents live with the fear that a demolition drive will wipe out everything they’ve built. Many families have lost their homes multiple times. Investing in toilets within homes becomes a gamble, something that can be lost in a single morning when bulldozers arrive.

For the elderly and the residents with disabilities, access to sanitation is especially challenging. Most private toilets are not designed for safe and convenient access. Handrails, support bars, or accessible layouts are rare. Families often have to physically carry older adults to toilets, and community toilets are often too dirty or unsafe to use.

Gulshan’s husband, for example, struggles immensely due to the absence of an accessible toilet. This reflects a larger systemic failure: sanitation planning in informal settlements is insufficient and rarely includes the diverse needs of residents.

When Gulshan first arrived, the residents of Rafiq Nagar lacked access to even the most basic amenities. Water was sold at exorbitant rates—₹20 per litre at the source and up to ₹50 if delivered to homes. Families skipped baths or cut down on drinking water. Women and young girls took on the labour of fetching and managing water for the household, at great personal cost and risk.

Interventions like the Pani Haq Samiti helped improve access by enabling communities to tap into municipal lines. Still, supply is irregular and costly: households pay around ₹1,000 per month for water supplied on alternate days. Women must manage, store, and ration 10–12 litres at a time, making water management a labour-intensive part of daily life.

Gulshan’s story reveals how deeply sanitation challenges are woven into the broader realities of insecurity, exclusion, and gender inequality. Poor toilet facilities, irregular water supply, the threat of demolition, and unsafe surroundings make basic hygiene a daily struggle.

For women like Gulshan, the lack of safe and private sanitation is not just a logistical problem—it is a matter of dignity, health, safety, and justice.

These conditions highlight how the promises of the Swachh Bharat Mission remain unfulfilled in many informal settlements. Without secure housing, community engagement, and gender-responsive planning, sanitation systems will continue to exclude the most vulnerable.

Unless urban policies acknowledge informal settlements as legitimate parts of the city and involve residents in decision-making, women like Gulshan will keep facing unequal access to essential services and the persistent insecurity that undermines their right to live with dignity.

— Nisha Rani, Programme Coordinator, CREA