B’LURU BEST MOST LIVEABLE CITY, SRINAGAR LEAST
NEW DELHI: Bengaluru is India’s most livable major city while Srinagar is the least, according to a central government ranking released that also noted cities in western and southern regions outperformed their peers in the east and north. The Ease of Living Index 2020 evaluated 49 cities with more than one million people and 62 with less than a million people. Bengaluru, Pune and Ahmedabad topped the first category.
NEW DELHI: Bengaluru is India’s most livable major city while Srinagar is the least, according to a central government ranking released on Thursday that also noted cities in western and southern regions outperformed their peers in the east and north.
The Ease of Living Index 2020 evaluated 49 cities with more than one million people and 62 with less than a million people. Bengaluru, Pune and Ahmedabad topped the first category, and Delhi was ranked 13th (16th overall across both categories). Shimla, Bhubaneswar and Silvassa were the best cities in the second category; Muzaffarpur was the worst.
The ranking, prepared by the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs and released by minister Hardeep Puri, scored well-being on quality of life, economic ability, and sustainability, with 49 indicators spread across 14 categories.
“These cities have emerged as models of development who will inspire others to perform better. Further, their peers will also benefit from emulating their best practices,” Puri said.
The 2020 report noted the index was born out of the need to measure the outcomes of programmes and verify whether interventions were effective in ushering progress. The rankings are crucial in shaping government policies and determining expenditure priorities. West
Bengal didn’t participate in the process. “India’s steady economic growth is reflected in the rapid expansion of her cities… with the current urbanisation rate, India is expected to have 50% of the country’s population residing in cities within the next 30 years,” Puri said.
Overall, Indian cities achieved an average score of 53.51. “Scope of improvement is thus imminently evident in improving the ease of living in Indian cities,” the report said. The report also included a citizen perception survey in which 3.22 million citizens across 111 cities participated. The survey had an average score of 76.08, indicating that despite variance in scores, citizens had a largely positive perception of their cities. “In fact, the CPS scores have contributed to significantly elevating the ranking of various cities, even if they had low scores in the pillars,” the report said.
Navi Mumbai, Greater Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan-Dombivli ranked ahead of Delhi at 6th,10th, 11th and 12th positions respectively. Also ahead of the national capital were Chennai (4th), Surat (5th), Coimbatore (7th), Vadodara (8th) and Indore (9th). The national capital region towns of Ghaziabad (30th), Meerut (36th) and Faridabad (40th) performed poorly in the million-plus category. Gurugram ranked 8th in the rankings of smaller cities.
The ministry also drafted a Municipal Performance Index 2020 to determine elements that prevent efficient local governance. In the million+ category, Indore emerged as the topper, followed by Surat and Bhopal while Guwahati, Kota and Srinagar ranked lowest.
Among municipalities catering to a population of a less than a million, New Delhi Municipal Council was the leader, followed by Tirupati and Gandhinagar while Shillong, Imphal and Kohima were at the bottom.
The MPI examined the sectoral performance of 114 municipalities (Delhi being assessed separately for NDMC, and three municipal corporations) across five verticals that comprise 20 sectors and 100 indicators. The five verticals under MPI are services, finance, policy, technology and governance, the report noted.
“The EoLI primarily seeks to accelerate India’s urban development outcomes, including the achievement of the sustainable development goals. The findings from the index can help guide evidence-based policymaking. It also promotes healthy competition among cities, encouraging them to learn from their peers and advance their development trajectory,” the report said.
The report had three major takeaways. One, cities with the best scores were predominantly from the southern and western regions, while the worst performers were mostly from the eastern and northern states. The report identified this disparity as a cause for concern. “Since the turn of the century, the northern and eastern regions have lagged behind the rest of the country in terms of economic growth and development. Despite efforts to correct the imbalance, the gap is only widening,” the report said.
Two, economic ability was the worst performing pillar. The average score on this pillar was 13.17 compared to 51.38 for quality of life, 53.63 for sustainability, and 76.1 for citizen’s perception. It is also the pillar where the metropolitan cities were far ahead of the rest. The report said the low national average scores on economic ability implied that India’s urban centres possessed the potential to develop into hubs of economic growth.
Three, most citizens’ perception of the city they live in was better than reality. The cities that performed the best on citizen’s perception, such as Bhubaneswar, were not the leaders in the average score of the first three pillars. On the other hand, the cities that performed the best on the average score of the first three pillars did not lead in citizens’ perception.