PEOPLES’ PARTICIPATION AND PERCEPTION TOWARDS URBAN GOVERNANCE: A STUDY OF BARDDHAMAN MUNICIPALITY, WEST BENGAL
In urban areas the gap between the resources and expenditure has increased every year. As a result, urban amenities and services have started deteriorating in their standard. Civic life in urban areas has become, on many occasions, painfully intolerable and people have become relatively less involved in matters of urban governance. As a result, the unfulfilled aspirations have kept the citizens and the municipal governments as alien entities to each other in some cases. All-round development of urban space is not possible in such a socio-political situation. So it is essential for urban geographers to study the state-people interrelationship in urban areas to help both the policy-makers and the city-dwellers in a comprehensive way. The municipal government may be viewed as an instrument of institutional interference upon the selectivity of the citizen and also a logical necessity emerging from the incapability of individual citizen to regulate the affairs of the large community. The main focus of this study is to analyse the awareness of the citizens regarding their urban governance as well as to enquire the perception of the city dwellers regarding their municipal governance. This paper is based on the empirical survey done with the help of both qualitative and quantitative methods. The data used in this paper are collected from both the primary and the secondary sources. KEY WORDS: Urban governance, Perception, Transparency, Awareness, Efficiency