Mumbai Bottom Up & Top Down Strategies

Question 1

Agora Microfinance

Answer 1

Advantage: A service the urban poor previously had no access to - can invest in their business/upskill.

Disadvantage: High interest rates for loan repayments. Difficult to actually make profit.

Question 2

Mumbai Monorail

Answer 2

Advantages: Designed to alleviate traffic problems. Tickets are cheap.

Disadvantage: HOWEVER only 15,000 people use it bc it goes through industrial sectors rather than into old city.

Question 3

Hamara Foundation

Answer 3

Advantages: Designed to get kids off the street and into education. Directly concentrating funds on a specific problem.

Disadvantage: Has only helped 327 children out of 200,000.

Question 4

SPARC and community toilet blocks

Answer 4

Advantage: Providing safer and better sanitation.

Disadvantage: However, it puts the pressure on the community to sort this, when it should be the government’s responsibility.

Question 5

Gorai Garbage Site Closure project

Answer 5

Advantage: This project had a large budget, the govt is able to access large funds.

Disadvantage: The site had been polluting Mumbai for 35 years, action should have been taken sooner.

Question 6

Bottom Up - Biogas

Answer 6

Advantage: Biogas produce fuel from dung/ waste - sustainable and saves time. Produces less smoke, used for cooking and heat.

Disadvantage: Flammable/unstable dangerous.