As a consequence of population increase, not only in small and medium towns, but also in mega cities in India, the urban amenities and service delivery system are under severe pressure (Chada, 1988; Gilbert, 1993; Singh et.al., 2005; Mohanty et.al., 2007). Effective and time-bound delivery of various types of urban amenities or urban public services like water supply and sewerage, urban roads and transport,  police  and  judiciary, general administration, fire protection, parks and green belts, environmental improvement of slums and slum dwellers relocation, street lighting, sanitation, primary education, public health etc., are the preconditions for ensuring normal civic life of urbanites and promoting their social welfare. Since urban amenities are both tangible and intangible in nature their delivery entails some problems (Heggade, 1992). For the present study tangible urban amenities are concerned with the authenticated information provided by urban authorities. While the intangible are concerned with the satisfactory level of the citizens according their own perception regarding the availability of amenities. It is also worthwhile to mention that, some empirical studies quoted a strong, direct link between economic growth and the presence of amenities, and economic growth ensures development of any micro or macro region (Paul, 1994).

The pattern of urban government in India during the colonial period being entirely responsible for all types of present day urban amenities existed in a town or city. But it may not be acceptable politically at the present stage of political development. Contemporarily it is possible to device a single agency approach to produce and deliver at least the local urban amenities by reorganizing the municipal government and integrating the other machinery of the ULB (water supply and sewerage boards, Construction Industry Training Board (CITB’s), metro authorities, medical etc.) with it. Such a revitalized urban government would take care of the efficiency and equity issues of delivery of urban amenities. The higher level governments can provide incentives, loans and grants and devise policy guidelines. This view point has gained attention of the policy-makers and academicians (Heggade, 1992). So this present study being in search of the status of urban amenities and service delivery, future function of ULB in class-I town like Berhampore (Murshidabad), based on the citizens’ perception. 

Chada. (1988), made a study on urbanization and pro-vision of amenities in Punjab and in this article he discussed the growth of urban population, land use pattern and urban amenities and the impact of municipal expenditure on urban amenities. Heggade. (1992), made a case study on coproduction approach to urban amenities delivery in Karnataka and he scientifically judge the coproduction approach to urban amenities delivery. Paul. (1994), explored the evidences regarding whether availability of amenities may be considered as a tool of economic development and from the study he concluded that, positively availability of civic amenities is a tool of economic development. Akhtar, (1997), studied the amenity pattern of Hyderabad with the help of remote sensing and Geographic Information System  (GIS)  as  a tool for urban studies. Rahman and Hardie (2004), worked on subdivision of specific amenities and residential property values. Sekhar et. al. (2005), prepared a report on public services for the peri-urban areas of Bangalore based on citizen’s view. Wang et. al. (2006) made a case study on opportunities and challenges of shopping centre development in China. Shaw. (2007), worked on basic amenities in urban India and the analysis was made on state and town level. Carlino. (2008), worked on leisure amenities and urban growth as a beautiful city. On the other hand, Sutton (2008) made case study on urban open space of Msunduzi municipality of South Africa. Bhagat. (2011), worked on urbanization and access to basic amenities in India and he gave detailed information but in broad manner. Ahluwalia. (2011), made a report on Indian urban infrastructure and services and also recommended some path-ways for development. 

This study seeks to achieve some specific objectives, which are as follows:

1. To find out the background of class-I town like Berhampore, Murshidabad, West Bengal and India.

2. To analyze the status of urban amenities and service delivery system in Berhampore town.

3. To explore the patterns of citizens’ perception for the development of urban amenities and service delivery system.

4. To formulate the ways by which resulting data base are to be used for future regional planning, based on the stake holders’ requirement. 

In order to trace the views and perceptions about the sector-wise status of urban amenities and also how individuals have expressed their choices between pair of suggestions for the improvement of the foresaid aspect. In case of assessment status of amenities and service delivery, against 8 selective criterion (health facility, water supply, construction and maintenance of roads, sewerage management, street lighting, traffic control, parks and gardens management, security aspect and town beautification), four parameters have been chosen with different weightage value, that is, very good (0.5), good (0.3), not satisfactory (0.1), unknown (0.001). In this regard simple statistical techniques were applied using statistical software (SPSS 10.0). As the researcher adopted the method of paired comparison, it should be noted that the paired comparison provides ordinal data, so it has been converted into interval scale by Composite Standard Method of J.P. Guilford (1954). This technique involves the conversion of frequencies of preferences into a table of proportions which are then transformed into Z matrix by referring the table area under normal curve and this detail is given in Annexure I. The maps were prepared by GIS software. After all these scientific data input, tabulation, calculation and analyzing the same the research work was completed.

Study area

Berhampore is the District Head Quarter as well as core town of Murshidabad, West Bengal sited at eastern part of India and gaze at as developing urban area under backward region. This town is situated between 24⁰ 38’ N (latitude) and 88⁰ 16’ E (longitude). According to Census of India (2011), Berhampore town categorized as class-I Municipal town with an area of 16.67 km² and with an overall population density of 18,332 persons per sq. km. The location of this town is shown on Figure 1.

What is meant by class-I town?

According to the Census of India (2011), town and cities can broadly be classified into six categories and class-I town refers to the Municipal town or Urban Local Body (ULB) which have the total population of 100,000. The examples of class-I town or Municipal town of West Bengal, other than Berhampore Town, are Asansol, Balurghat,  Bangaon,  Bankura,  Barduwan,  Basirhat,  Birnagar, Chakdaha, English Bazar, Haldia, Jalpaiguri, Nabadwip, Raiganj, Santipur etc.

Background of Berhampore Town

The town is primarily a service town having a population of 305,609 as per 2011 census, with an overall population density of 18,332 persons per sq. km. The decadal growth rate over the last five decades varies from +26.63 (1971) to +90.81 (2011). The detail population growth rate (Figure 2) of this aforesaid town is shown in Table 1. And there is a phenomenal population growth in a small urban center like Berhampore. The town has developed as a commercial center for an agricultural region—flour milling, rice and oil-seed milling and industries including silk weaving, ivory carving and other type of household industries. This town is also renowned for its manufacture of bell-metal and brass utensils, as well as ivory and wood carving. Berhampore is a famous place for tourists in West Bengal. It gets tourists' flow from local and as well as from foreign, being the first Head Quarter of the East India Company and having a long enriched history  of  the ‘Nawabs’, Kings, ‘zamindars’ (ruler) and other European colonial forces such as Dutch, Portuguese, English and French. Nowadays there is also boom of constructional business—establishment of branches of financial companies, multistoried buildings, apartments, new commercial market areas etc. These are the pull factors for immigrants who are being flourished the town. 

Berhampore municipal town has 5 primary schools (under Berhampore Municipality), 90 primary schools, 4 upper-primary schools and 26 government-aided high schools (under West Bengal Board), 6 private schools, 3 degree colleges, 6 technical colleges, 1 medical college. Approximately 1,000,025 gallon drinking water supplied everyday by this Berhampore municipality. The con-cerned municipality uses 14 tractors, 13 tractor-trailors, 16 tripping-trailors, 1 lorry, 7 water tanks, 300 double-wheels borrows, 50 try-cycles, 11 pump machines, 2 cesspool emptiers, 1 night soil tank for garbage mana-gement. Among other vehicles used for various purposes by the municipality  such as 2 road rollers, 2 ambulances, 1 bire, 1 car, 1 dozer (Berhampore Municipality, 2012; Figure 3).

Choice of citizens’ suggestions regarding amenities and service delivery

Very recently, the views or suggestions of stake holders regarding the solution problems at grass-root level become relevant as well as vital to social scientists, planners, and administrator globally. So the attitudes of citizens of Berhampore town towards choice between pair of suggestions, that is between suggestion one and two or two and four and so on, had been analyzed. A perusal of Table 3 showed that 274 respondents preferred the suggestion in serial number four that is “fixation of user charges to recover the operation and maintenance” to the suggestion serial number three which stated that “provision of monitoring system in case of infrastructural development as well as service delivery through the active participation of stakeholders”. On  the  other  hand, 259 respondents preferred the suggestion number two which stated that “involvement of the private sectors, Non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) used group in the urban service through management contact under the exclusive purview of the public sector to improve urban service delivery” to the suggestion serial number six, that is “increasing plan allocation by state and central Govt. for the urban infrastructural development through a programme or Integrated Urban Infrastructural Development”. In the same way it can be said that, 231 citizens preferred suggestion number six to suggestion number three. Again, 219 citizens preferred suggestion number three to suggestion number six and 170 citizens preferred suggestion number seven to suggestion number three. After that, 152 and 128 inhabitants of Berhampore town respectively preferred the suggestion number one to suggestion number six and suggestion number five to suggestion number six. The figure in case of suggestion eight to suggestion five was 91. A close examination of the response pattern of the citizens between suggestion number four to remaining seven suggestions were 271, 137, 115, 70, 56, 30 respondents preferred suggestion number five, six, two, one, eight, and seven respectively, for   the   development  of  amenities  as  well  as  service delivery in  Berhampore township. On the other hand, the number of respondents preferred suggestion number two to suggestions in serial number four; five, seven, three, eight and one were 118, 100, 82, 63, 39 and 18 respectively. In this way, from the Table 3 it can be realized in detail about the suggestion which was more important to the citizens as compared to other suggestions. But, this description did unable to clarify the picture about the most popular suggestion for the development of urban amenity and service delivery system in the study area properly. Table 4, provides the clear and scientific picture about the most popular suggestion.

1. The grass-root government of urban area at first should evaluate the existed available urban infrastructure and service delivery and discovers the gap at micro-regional scale.

2. The fund allocation for improvement of urban amenities and service delivery system before policy making and implementation should take the views of stake holders who have the real knowledge regarding the problems and possible solutions.

3. The policy makers and planners should explore the ground truth and distributional gaps, regarding the fore-said issue, and the future plans should be made to fulfill the gaps and would be above the reach of socio-political interests.

4. The monitoring system, with active participation of citizens, should also be activate for further improvement of amenities and service delivery system in view of the good quality of urban environment.

At an end, it may be concluded that the existing status and arrangement of urban infrastructure or amenity and provision of public service delivery in India’s class-I town like Berhampore are averagely inadequate, over strained and pitiable structured. So there is an urgent need for the reconsideration of remedial measures for the development of service delivery and urban amenities as well. Although there happened to exist diversity on the comments of quality of urban amenity and service delivery system and also on choice of suggestion for further improvement of this existing situation from town to town, but in Berhampore town grossly most of the respondents feel that the status of urban amenity is good but not up to level of satisfaction. And the most negligible performances of foresaid ULB are water supply, traffic control, town beautification etc. After survey it is proved that the most preferable suggestion is further investment and allocation of funds for the development of amenity should be on priority basis or regional demand. On the opposite side, the least preferable suggestion is provision of allocation of fund for special purpose/cases or zonal demand. Therefore, it is imperative for decision makers and planners to consider stake holders’ perception regarding issue related to development of status of urban amenity and service delivery not only as remedial measure but also at the time of policy making.

The author has not declared any conflict of interests.

Author extends his sincere thanks to the Berhampore Municipality, Murshidabad who cordially assisted by supplying information. Secondly, to all the respondents under Berhampore Municipality, who form the base of this study.