Metro cities fail in urban governance, small cities fare better: Survey
NEW DELHI: The non-metropolitan cities have scored exceedingly well in the latest annual report of the survey of cities system (ASICS) for 2016 by marching ahead of the metropolitan cities. Bhubaneswar, Ahmedabad, Raipur and Ranchi have performed better than metros in terms of urban governance.
“Large cities like Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai have witnessed a failure in governance in the previous year,” stated the report.
According to the ASICS survey, civic bodies of cities which are dependent on states for funds are most vulnerable when it comes to the strengthening of infrastructures. This, in turn, results in poor governance.
The annual survey evaluates the quality of governance in 21 cities in India based on urban planning and design, urban capacities and resources, empowered and legitimate political representation and transparency, accountability and participation. This survey was conducted by Janaagraha Centre for citizenship and democracy, a non-profit organisation.
While Kerala's capital city Thiruvananthapuram retained its first position for two consecutive years, West Bengal's capital Kolkata retained its third position for two years in a row. The average ranking of the cities has consistently been between 2-1 and 4.4 which is much lower than the global benchmarks. Urban governance scores for cities such as New York and London are 9.8 and 9.3 respectively.
CEO of ASICS, Srikant Vishwanathan, said, “Though the rankings are changing, the average is still low. A lot more needs to be done. We need to reach a mark when the survey measures will only showcase constant improvement.”
Pune secured the second rank after jumping two ranks above the last year's rank. Bhubaneshwar jumped eight ranks since last year due to a number of reforms such as instituting Municipal cadres, tiered spatial planning at the ward level and single window clearance process for development projects in conformity plans. Bengaluru despite faring well in the transparency aspects fell from twelfth position to the sixteenth position.