TS draws blank in top 15 city list
Hyderabad, considered a happening city, a hub of research and a centre for excellence for the IT industry, has found itself way down a list of cities that the Centre has ranked with respect to ease of living (EoL). To make matters worse, it also did not figure in the top 15 cities in the Centre’s ranking of cities under the municipal performance index (MPI) for 2020.
In the EoL Index, Hyderabad was placed 24th while it came 17th in the MPI in the million plus population category of cities.
The rankings for cities, divided by their population as less than a million and more than a million, were announced by Hardeep Singh Puri, minister of state for urban affairs, in New Delhi on Thursday.
As many as 111 cities participated in the assessment. In addition to the population criteria, cities under the Smart Cities Programme of the Centre were considered for the rankings. Bengaluru was the top performer in the million+ category.
Among the cities with one million population, Pune came second followed by Ahmedabad, Chennai, Surat, Navi Mumbai, Coimbatore, Vadodara, Indore, and Greater Mumbai. In the less than a million population category, Shimla was ranked the highest in EoLI, followed by Bhubaneshwar, Silvassa, Kakinada, Salem, Vellore, Gandhinagar, Gurugram, Davangere, and Tiruchirappalli. Under the MPI, in the million+ category, Indore was ranked at the top followed by Surat and Bhopal. In the less than a million category, New Delhi Municipal Council has emerged as the leader, followed by Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, and Gandhinagar.
The MPI rankings were determined through the study of services, finance, policy, technology and governance, offered by the municipal bodies governing the cities. The EoL, according to the Centre, is an assessment tool that evaluates the quality of life and the impact of various initiatives for urban
development.
It provides a comprehensive understanding of participating cities across India based on quality of life, economic-ability of a city, and its sustainability
and resilience, and seeks to simplify and evaluate the complexities in local governance practices and promote the ethos of transparency and accountability.