social infrastructure. However, this is not the case in other types of Census Towns where growth seems to be more related to real estate growth, such as Neral in Maharashtra<sup>8</sup> . This article acknowledged the difficulty that Panchayats face in providing services to a population that almost doubled in ten years.

The research work of Samanta (2017) in the state of West Bengal highlights the existing service gaps in CTs. In Barjora, water supply is provided only partly through the panchayat but people have to rely on their own arrangements because supply is insufficient. Most households have their own well in their courtyard, which raises some quality issues with the increased pollution of the ground water due to polluting industries. The panchayat tries to find solutions to its insufficient supply by relying on tankers. There are no covered drains and no solid waste management services due to paucity of funds. She finds very similar results in Singur (Samanta, 2014). What she also highlights in her work is the difference between the village of Barjora and the other villages in the agglomeration, hinting at the possibility of discrepancies within villages that are located in the periphery of CTs, as is also the case in Singur. She also places this situation within the specific situation of West Bengal where the criteria to become urban is strict (a minimum of 30,000 people and density and employment criteria). This work underlines the difficulty of panchayat to handle service provision for settlements that have urban features and density levels that would require networked services. In a recent op-ed, Debroy (2014) also points to the question of fragmentation of authorities<sup>9</sup> , in particular in CTs located in Delhi, raising the question of the place of CTs in larger metropolitan cities.

Based on this limited literature on the intersection of CTs and urban services, research questions that explore the relationship between governance and access to basic amenities are multifold. Put simply, with the rise in population and spatial expansion, there is a change of scale in terms of service provision. In particular, for water and sanitation services, it might be necessary to develop networks and to shift from on-site sanitation or community or individual water systems. For roads and solid waste management, expansion of services and better organization might be required. One of our questions is as to whether there is a difference between census towns, villages and statutory towns both in terms of the level of services and the manner in which people make demands (or not) on urban services. This will require understanding how services are provided in different types of settlements as well as the level of differentiation in different parts of the town studied, or even beyond its boundaries.

# **_Services_**

The profiles for each settlement based on census data (Table 2) as well as the qualitative interviews carried out in each settlements reveal significant variance in provision and expectation of basic infrastructure, such as water supply. From Table 2, it is clear that among the three settlements in Madhubani, Satghara (CT) is most comparable to the sites in the other states. Jhanjharpur (NP) despite being a statutory town lags behind in most service indicators as compared to the CTs in other states. Indeed, it is similar and often worse than Simri, a village in the same district. In Bihar, therefore, there does not seem to be a major benefit from ST status. Erein’s position as being on

> 8http://www.livemint.com/Politics/364m2CaVtj2HoR88spSpNM/Zero-amenities-yet-census-towns-hit-the-property-jackpot.html

> 9  http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/policypuzzles/an-urban-chaos-issue/

22