Assessment status of amenities and service delivery in class-I town in India (Case study of Berhampore Town, Murshidabad)

In recent era, rapid rate of urbanization and population explosion in developing countries like India have its direct and negative impact on existing urban infrastructure as well as public service delivery, which deteriorate the living standard of city dwellers. It is evinced that there is a wide gap between minimum entitlements of the service provisions delivered and the ever increasing demand of stakeholders. This situation is more critical in case of small urban areas and Berhampore Municipal town is no exception. This study seeks to discover an alternative way-out through analyzing the cognitive pattern of stakeholders’ response regarding status of urban amenity and service delivery and also the choice of suggestion for improvement. Perception pattern are analyzed through the basic understanding of the people in terms of their choices of suggestions and the parameters are taken as proxy elements as of sign, signal and expressions as to how they are thinking about the status and development of urban amenity and service delivery. The perceptual data are obtained by stratified random sample survey, covering all the wards of Berhampore town, and the collected data are analyzed applying statistical tools. Finally, it is evident that among various criterion garbage management followed by management of drains and sewerage are the preferable performance of Urban Local Body (ULB). On the other hand, among eight suggestions the most popular suggestion are investment and allocation of funds for the development of amenity should be on priority basis or regional demand, followed by increasing plan allocation by state and central government for the urban infrastructural development.   Key words: Amenity, service delivery, citizens’ perception, Berhampore Town, Urban Local Body (ULB).