The modern state has, as one of its primary responsibilities, the delivery of essential public services like water, sanitation, primary health care, electricity, garbage disposal, and so on in urban centres. Rapid and unfettered urbanization poses a severe threat to sustainable development goals and leads to the depletion of natural resources and governance failure. In the early days, the debate focused on public versus private before moving on to the PPP models. In recent years, especially after the 2015 Paris Agreement in December 2015, sustainability has become a mainstay in service delivery discussions and planning. However, in the Indian context, achieving sustainability in urban public service delivery is still a far cry from the current situation of the built environment and living conditions. For this to be possible, residents and citizens must be not only aware of sustainability but also willing to choose the more sustainable option available to them. This study is an early-stage analysis, in the Indian context, for identifying user opinion on essential public services and tracking progress on the path to sustainable urban public services delivery. The three essential public services studied are water supply, waste management, and public transport, and the four major metropolitan cities are Delhi/NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Bangalore. Primary data was collected through a public opinion survey to assess satisfaction and dissatisfaction scores and measure sustainability and willingness to pay for better services. Results indicate the significance of public participation, communication, and collaboration for better public services delivery and a pressing need to re-look at the three services. The sustainability scores also indicate an urgent need to take actions in all four metropolitan cities that were parts of this study. Furthermore, the data reveals that citizens of all four metropolitan cities were willing to pay more for better delivery of public services.
