Dwellers’ perception toward the Urban services of Panskura Municipality,India: an application of importance-performance models

The provision of urban service and citizens’ satisfaction is an important key issue in urban planning. Importance-performance analysis (IPA) is an effective and widely applicable technique to explore consumer’s satisfaction. IPA helps to prioritize the management strategies for urban services using the IPA. Purpose of the present study is to assess the performance of urban services and citizen’s satisfaction level of Panskura municipality using IPA models and improvement index. A total of 629 valid household responses are collected with the help of the door-to-door primary survey technique. The study reveals that all the selected seven urban services have significant importance-performance gap except water supply. Residents of the Panskura municipality are very much satisfied with the water supply service because of the very minimum improvement score. The combined result of IPA matrices and improvement index suggests residents are dissatisfied to a great extent with the performance of four urban services, i.e. health, economy, transportation and sanitation. These urban services require a problem-solving urgent action for restoration of the performance status. The improvement and prioritization of urban service are also required to fulfil the demand of target groups.

     

Arsenic-contaminated groundwater from parts of Damodar fan-delta and west of Bhagirathi River,West Bengal,India: influence of fluvial geomorphology and Quaternary morphostratigraphy

Arsenic contamination in groundwater affecting West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh is a serious environmental problem. Contamination is extensive in the low-lying areas of Bhagirathi–Ganga delta, located mainly to the east of the Bhagirathi River. A few isolated As-contaminated areas occur west of the Bhagirathi River and over the lower parts of the Damodar river fan-delta. The Damodar being a Peninsular Indian river, the arsenic problem is not restricted to Himalayan rivers alone. Arsenic contamination in the Bengal Delta is confined to the Holocene Younger Delta Plain and the alluvium that was deposited around 10,000–7,000 years bp, under combined influence of the Holocene sea-level rise and rapid erosion in the Himalaya. Further, contaminated areas are often located close to distribution of abandoned or existing channels, swamps, which are areas of surface water and biomass accumulation. Extensive extraction of groundwater mainly from shallow aquifers cause recharge from nearby surface water bodies. Infiltration of recharge water enriched in dissolved organic matter derived either from recently accumulated biomass and/or from sediment organic matter enhanced reductive dissolution of hydrated iron oxide that are present mainly as sediment grain coatings in the aquifers enhancing release of sorbed arsenic to groundwater.