While
the literature on urban facilities and services is vast, only relevant studies
are summarised here. Literature about the role of infrastructure and its
essence in the development of an economy was presented by development economist
like Nurkse Rostow (1954), Hirschman,
A.O. (1958), Haffman (1958), Lewis (1954), who have stated their ideas
about the role of infrastructure. In their view, it is a precondition for
economic development in general. The process of urbanization and increasing
population has triggered various infrastructure technologies and increased its
demand. It is generally observed that development occur unequally owing to
geographical distribution of infrastructure. Hence, geographic incidence and
transmission of economic development form a crucial point to be discussed in
the process of infrastructure development.

The
role and outlook on India’s infrastructure development was stressed by Gowda and Mamatha (1997). They highlighted
that an improved infrastructure brings a positive relationship between GDP and
infrastructure stock per capita. In the investigation of the relationship
between the gross domestic product (GDP) and stock of infrastructural services
in India, Sahoo (2000) discovers
indeed that among all the sectors gas, water supply, sanitation, electricity
and communication sectors play the vital role. The 3i Network (1973),
Infrastructure Development Finance Company Delhi, Indian Institute of
Technology (IIT) Kanpur, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad has supplied
ample information about infrastructure development.

There are, several scholars who gave a shot to
capture the sight of urban development both national and regional level, association
between growth and socioeconomic development and various aspect of urban services.
The relationship between urbanization and socio-economic development in India
in early nineties has been brought out by Banerjee – Guha (2001). The
fact that urbanization and development go hand in hand and has been well
brought out by Krishnanaiah and Ramaiah (2002) for the state of Andhra
Pradesh and Phadke and Mukherjee (2004) for the state of Maharastra. The overtaxed
public amenities and inadequate infrastructure at different hierarchic levels
of urban centres have drawn the attention of scholars to focus on this problem.
Saxena (1972) has applied least square and correlation co-efficient
methods to examine the relationship between population growth and civic
services and observes that civic amenities in Dehradun are lagging behind due
to its explosive population growth.

Chakravarthy
Committee’s (1981)
work in piecing together the identification of backward region is a relative
study of infrastructure backwardness. It has regarded the problem of
backwardness as multidimensional and proposed the criteria to know the backward
regions. The objective was providing appropriate approach towards the
formulation of a plan for each backward area.

Joshi
(1990), delivers an inclusive
account of the development of infrastructure in India. He demonstrates that
interstate disparities in level of development did not decline between 1960-61
and 1985-86. Joshi finds a strong positive relationship between the level of
infrastructure and the level of development.

Anant
(1994) has assembled indices of
infrastructure availability for twenty-five Indian states for the year 1985-90.
He took twenty-four infrastructure variables and classified into eight sectors
namely, agriculture, banking, electricity, communications, transport,
education, health and civil-administration. The first five sectors were grouped
as economic infrastructure and the next two constituted the social
infrastructure, further it was aggregated using principal component analysis.
The indices showed that interstate unevenness in social infrastructure exceeds
that in economic infrastructure.

Joshi,
B.M. (1999), Author highly
focused on study of the plan outlays for infrastructure at the All-India and
the state level. The growth of infrastructure in the country has been traced
meticulously over the planning period. Inter-state disparities in development
have been examined and correlated with disparities in the infrastructural
facilities. The author then examined in detail the growth and regional
imbalances in infrastructure in the state of U.P. A distinctive feature of the
study is the presentation of the composite indices of economic development and
infrastructure at the districts level and the examination of the relationship
between the two. Lastly, the author emphasized the various issues in
infrastructure planning, identifies the various deficiencies in this respect
and presents a policy framework for infrastructure development.

Biplab
Dasgupta(1993)  in his keynote address delivered at the
Eastern Region Seminar on “Urban Basic Services and local participation”
explained various issues regarding basic services, such as, inadequacy of
services, coverage of the services, planning of the services. He gave some
clues on the solution of the problem regarding the urban services. According to
him quality and quantity of services ultimately depend upon local economy. In
his address M.N.Buch (1973) concluded that there should be a
participatory approach from both end Municipal administration and its citizen.
There should be contribution of its citizen towards the municipal resources. A
report prepared by the Public Affairs Centre (2002), a non-profit think
tank provides an assessment of key public services like education, road and
transportation, drinking water, health, sanitation and also a data base and set
of bench marks to measure the progress and performance of these services over a
period of time. Study shows that a significant portion of users are only
partially satisfied with the provision of these services.

Amitabha
Kundu, Soumen Bugchi and Debolina Kundu (1999) are of opinion that state wise disparities in the
level of urban amenities were extremely high in the nineties. Further authors
say that government and parasitical institutions have not exhibited sensitivity
in favour of backward statistics of infrastructure. Murthy Nirmala, Indira,
Hirway, P.Panch mukhi and I.Satia (1990) found in their paper that India’s
social services were used relatively little by the poor. The health and
education of the poor has improved but not as much for the population as a
whole. Existing capacity and resources are inadequate particularly for
education and health.

Economic literature is rich with studies on
education and health sector in India identifying problem areas, providing
solutions, estimating investment requirements, making recommendations for
policy and institutional changes. PROBE (1999) Survey has been a land
mark study on education in the country. It brings out the inadequacy of school
infrastructure and services. Basic facilities such as furniture, black boards,
toilet, playgrounds and teaching aids are missing if not in most public
schools. World Bank (2002) describes the factors which influence the
completion of primary level of school education of children in the poverty
context. Report comments that enrolment is not a big issue any more; but
attendance, transition, completion and learning outcomes are emerging biggest
challenges in developing countries. Many authors describe the factors
responsible for the lack of primary education in India. Among them Basu
(1995), Dreze and Sen (1995) explained the factors mainly as an
insufficient government commitment. Tan and Mingat (1992) Dreze and Sen
(1995) describe it due to low levels of budget allocation. Dreze and
Garedar (1996) describe the reason behind lack of primary education as
general public’s weak monitoring of education and indifference to education in
general, and primary education in particular and restricted use of fiscal
transfer from the central government. Consequently, basic education has been
largely ignored by some state government. Banerji (2000) has shown that school
is available at short distances. So question is why quite a large number of
slum dwellers are still less educated.

Rathor
(2003) has pointed out that
economic problems were one of the main reasons why children can’t attend school
from slum. Mehrotra (2006) based on UNICEF survey on urban areas in
seven Indian states, monthly Indian Analytics (2005) has prepared a report on
status of private primary schools in India. The report highlights the case for
more rapidly growing private primary schools in India. It also finds that many
parents not only recognize the value of educating their children but also
willing to invest the meagre resources they can afford. De, A., M. Majumdar,
M.Samson and C.Noronha (2000) also found deep and widespread
dissatisfaction with government and public aided schools.

Garg
(1995) in her study documents the
importance of public facilities not so much as a first entry point for the poor
but as facilities that are accessed if ailment continues. Studies have also
found that the lack of a systematic and well-functioning referral system as
affecting the accessibility of the poor. Sahni and Kshirsagar (1993)
elaborated health infrastructure especially in urban slum areas. He discussed
the institutional set up for urban health service in slum areas. Muraleedharan,
VR and Sunil Nandraj (1998) have explained the role of Private Health Care
Sector in India. They highlighted the poor availability and accessibility of
public health system in urban areas due to lack of well organised public health
care system. According to their opinion smaller cities and rural areas are far
from all available evidence, quite underserved both by private and public
sectors.

The World Development
Report of 1993, titled “Investing in Health”, highlighted several points on
importance of infrastructure and the poor state of infrastructure in many
developing countries. In some countries the under-funding of lower facilities
has been aggravated by the creation of multiple levels of outpatient
facilities, none of which functions well. At the same time