Living with the Unfinished: How Mumbai's Sewage Delays Reshape Urban Life

Mumbai’s sewage infrastructure—marked by chronic delays, systemic inequalities, and enduring incompletion—functions as more than a technical or bureaucratic undertaking. As Purva Dewoolkar (2025) reveals, it is a lived condition, a fluid and adaptive framework that shapes and is shaped by daily urban life. Grand plans such as the Mumbai Sewage Disposal Project (MSDP) and the Mumbai Sewerage Improvement Programme (MSIP) promise comprehensive waste management. Yet, after decades of stalled implementation, many low-income communities continue to lack even the most basic sanitation services.