Access to basic amenities and services to urban households in West Bengal: Does its location and size of settlements matter?

Abstract

Basic urban services refer to the important civic services required for the citizens of urban areas and for the functioning of cities viz., water supply, sanitation, waste management, drainage, roads, power and shelter etc. This study focuses on the availability and access to basic services and amenities in class I (having population > 1,00,000) and VI (having population < 5000) towns across West Bengal based on census data. To measure the access to basic urban services and amenities, a composite index is devised which is consisting of 3 (three) domains, namely, assets index, basic amenities index and housing quality index and 14 representative indicators. The principal component analysis is used to reduce the dimensions and assign weight to the component domains. The results show that the access to and availability of basic urban services and amenities is relatively better in those towns located in and around Kolkata megacity. There is a huge disparity in terms of availability of basic services and amenities between the towns of North and South Bengal. Kolkata centric development leads to high levels of disparity between KMA (towns included under Kolkata Metropolitan Area) and non-KMA (towns not included under KMA) towns in West Bengal. The research study may assist the urban planners and policy makers to identify the intra-urban as well as well inter-urban spatial disparity in terms of basic urban services and amenities.