Decentralisation has been widely promoted as a pathway to deepen democracy, improve service delivery, and make urban governance more responsive to citizens. In India, the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act and subsequent state-level reforms formally institutionalised this shift by empowering urban local bodies. Yet, the gap between formal policy and lived practice remains substantial. This study examines how decentralisation actually unfolds in the everyday governance of urban West Bengal, a state with a distinct political history shaped by decades of Left Front rule, intense party-society linkages, and a recent political transition.

Drawing on mixed-methods fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2025 in three contrasting municipal contexts -Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) as a large metropolitan city, Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC) as a rapidly growing Tier-II city in North Bengal, and Durgapur Municipal Corporation (DMC) as a planned industrial township - the paper explores how policies interact with local political cultures, bureaucratic routines, and citizen strategies. Data includes 72 semi-structured interviews with councillors, officials, civil society actors and residents, observation of 13 ward meetings and grievance camps, and 12 focus group discussions.

Findings reveal a variegated picture. While decentralisation has created formal spaces for participation, their functioning is mediated by party dominance, fiscal constraints, and administrative capacity. Kolkata exhibits institutional fragmentation across multiple agencies like KMC and KMDA, leading to accountability confusion. Siliguri and Durgapur face staff shortages and resource dependencies. Participation is often filtered through patronage networks where access depends on political affiliation. Nevertheless, residents are not passive recipients; they navigate the system through brokerage, everyday improvisation, and collective civic action. The paper argues that effective urban reform in West Bengal must move beyond formal institutional design towards a programmatic focus on fiscal predictability, metropolitan coordination, staff capacity, and protection of inclusive civic spaces, while remaining sensitive to the state's specific political economy.