Urban Public Services: Pricing and Subsidy Compnent

Reluctance to raise prices of urban services, notwithstanding the regular increase in expenditure on production, distribution and maintenance in the wake of demographic growth, physical expansion of towns and cities and rising cost of labour and material has been largely responsible for the growing crisis in municipal finances in India. Deterioration in quality of services and the neglect of less empowered social groups and peripheral localities in our towns is the natural outcome of all this. The services, which the people do enjoy, are not adequately paid. Even a half of the cost incurred by municipal bodies on services like water supply is not recovered from the consumers. Obviously, urban services are heavily subsidized. The book makes an in-depth examination of the subsidy component by raising a variety of questions. Important among such questions are: Is there some basis for distribution of subsidies on urban services? Was there any social and or spatial discrimination in their distribution? And what should be the provision of urban services? The book divided in Three Sections and Eight Chapters deals comprehensively with municipal income and expenditure, examines expenditure on and income from various services rendered by municipal bodies to chum out the subsidy component in sequential order. Finally, it subsidy component on urban services before making suggestions on the issue. This well researched and documented book will be of interest to scholarly audience in geography, economics, public administration, urban and regional planning in addition to bureaucrats and policy planners, journalists, activists and an informed general audience.