Progress in Delivery of Services: The Case of Rural West Bengal

Objective: The objective of the study is to examine the infrastructural development of rural West Bengal which has direct impact on quality of life of rural people.

Methods/Statistical Analysis: The study has used an array of three service facilities as the parameter of infrastructural development of rural West Bengal. They are: availability of safe drinking water, primary health facility and primary school facility. The selected facility services are having direct consequence on the quality of life of rural people. Progress in delivery of services has been measured through inter-temporal changes in the concerned service facilities. Time points considered are 2001 and 2014. Areas still identified as poor in supply of selected services has been demonstrated accordingly.

Findings: The distribution of selected service facilities in the year of 2001 in rural West Bengal has been meager. However, among these three services, in primary health sub centre facility remarkably poor condition has been found. The same situation persists in the concerned facility till date. Altogether six districts have been found to be poor performing in two or more selected facilities in 2001. They have been termed as major backward districts. These districts are Bankura, Birbhum, South Dinajpur, Murshidabad, South 24 Parganas and East Medinipur. As far as the decadal improvement across districts of rural West Bengal is concerned, it shows a mixed scenario. South Dinajpur district has been identified as consistently major backward (i.e. backward in both selected time points). Few districts such as Bankura, Birbhum, South 24 Parganas and Murshidabad have shown decadal improvements in delivery status of selected facilities while districts such as Maldah and West Medinipur have shown degraded performance. These two districts have been found to be major backward currently although not previously.

Improvements: It is an established fact that performance of any macro unit of observation (e.g. a district) is dependent on the performance of the micro units of observation (i.e. blocks of the concerned district). Hence, the task ahead is to identify the poor delivered blocks responsible for poor performance of the districts hence identified.