ABSTRACT
This chapter is a critical narrative of how the municipal corporation, private enterprise, and civil society have interacted to create a unique pattern of health services in Mumbai after the 1990s. While the city’s municipal and government health infrastructures are impressive, at least on paper, services have been deteriorating over the last three decades. Mumbai’s private sector in healthcare is dominated by charitable hospitals that are bound by law to provide free or subsidised services to the poor. Civil society interventions have actively engaged with the state to ensure and extend services to the poor and sensitise the system on various issues including gender. The chapter attempts to explore the complex relationship among the state in the form of the municipal corporation, private sector, and civil society, using the COVID-19 pandemic as a point of departure.
