In the milieu of the liberalization macro-economic orthodoxy, the Cities of the Developing World have emerged as the engines of economic growth serving as employment bases with rapidly expanding population, a sign of massive urbanization that is continuing unabated. The most visible outcome of the increasing pace of urbanization along with the rise in spate of consumerism in the liberalized economic setup has been the sharp increase in solid waste generation across the urban centres in the developing country context. The greatest challenge for the urban managers therefore is to make the cities livable by providing its inhabitants with basic services of acceptable quality. Traditionally the Urban Local Bodies (ULB’s) are the institutions which are entrusted with the task of providing solid waste management services but it is quite evident that they have not been able to operate satisfactorily due to a variety of constraints. Thus as the challenge of providing this service in urban centres becomes more and more pressing, distraught ULB’s are turning to private sector to fill the gap and become the prime service providers. Privatization of solid waste management services is emerging to be a promising alternative and as such several municipalities have taken steps to introduce private sector participation (PSP) in solid waste management services. So while the PSP is increasingly being promoted, there is still only meager empirical evidence concerning the performance of the PSP and its strengths and weaknesses when weighed against a set of criteria. The research paper aims to apply a set of indicators to measure the PSP performance with particular emphasis on its operations and efficiency. This shall be done by taking the case of Amritsar City where PSP in solid waste management has been recently introduced.
