Public utility:

• Basic facilities like water, electricity, transportation, communication, cooking gas, sewage, etc. that are needed by people on a daily basis are called public utilities.
• Public utilities form a part of basic infrastructure of any nation. A nation needs to provide these utilities to every city, town and village.
• Every citizen has a right to avail and use these utilities irrespective of his caste, sex or income.
• Government tries to provide public utilities at nearest locations to each citizen.
• For example, we have bus-stands near our house, we get clean water to drink, electricity, sewage facilities, etc.
• Any deterioration in the quality of these services can affect human health and life badly. To see that these facilities are available to all on a continuous basis government joined hands with private sectors. Private companies like Torrent ‘ Power supplies electricity in few cities of Gujarat, Adani gas provides cooking
  gas lines, etc.
• It is quite possible that private sectors can monopolize the market if strict regulations and policies are not framed and observed by the government. Hence, government takes several measures to safeguard the interests of citizens and protect them from exploitation of private sectors.
• Similarly, monopoly existed at government level too. In olden times, government owned few sectors and so the customers suffered due to monopoly of the government.
• Later, by a law of parliament other private companies were also allowed to operate and hence the market became open. For example, more than one company and even private companies were allowed to provide services of telecom. This led to better, faster and cheaper telecom services in the nation.

However, government keeps a control over these companies to see that customers are not exploited.

• At local level the public utility services are raised and managed by village panchayat, taluka panchayat, zilla panchayat, nagar-palika or mahanagar-palika.
• The state government company or corporations takes care of utilities like transportation, electricity, health centres, etc.
• At national level, the central government, companies or corporations provide utilities like Post and Telegraph, Railway, Telecommunication, etc. to the entire nation.