Basic Service Provisioning in Peri-urban India: A Regional Perspective from Kolkata Metropolis

Abstract

In the globalising world, rapid urbanisation and expansion of cities trigger complex interactions with the surrounding rural areas and transform them into peri-urban areas. The peri-urban transitional spaces around cities experience rapid population growth and occupational diversification. However, they suffer from poor infrastructure and service provisions and the living condition has also been deteriorating over time with increasing population pressure. This article tries to explore accessibility to basic services in the transitional interfaces in comparison with the urban core and rural counterparts, taking Kolkata metropolis as a case. Using village level household information obtained from Census 2011, a composite amenity index by principal component analysis and one-way analysis of variance have been used to assess the status of services. The study finds that the condition of basic service provisions in peri-urban areas is unsatisfactory and far behind from the urban areas. It therefore resembles the hypothesis of “degenerated periphery” that the expansion of cities creates peripheries without basic civic amenities and infrastructural facilities necessary for its residents for maintaining the standard of living.