It's Time Indian Cities Moved Up The Liveability Ladder

India has time and again fared poorly in some of the world-renowned liveability rankings. While in 2015, New Delhi and Mumbai were the only Indian cities that made it to the list of 140 cities surveyed in The Economist's The Global Liveability Report, in 2017, no Indian city made it to the list.

In 2015's survey, New Delhi stood at 110^th rank while Mumbai was even lower at 115^th position.

Basis of rankings

These reports that study a cities' livability base their rankings on a city's stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. In such studies, 100 is the ideal score. In 2015 survey by The Economist, New Delhi garnered 58.9 points overall with 55 for stability, 58.3 for healthcare, 56.9 for culture and environment, 75 for education and 58.9 for infrastructure. As for Mumbai's score, the overall points stood at 56.9 with 66.7 for education and 60 for stability while culture and environment got Mumbai 56.3 and healthcare and infrastructure followed at 54.2 and 51.8, respectively.

Top cities in the list such as Melbourne, have successfully scored an ideal 100 for healthcare and education. In 2017, Melbourne was the most liveable city in the world, retaining its 2015 position.

Mercer's rankings and basis

According to the Mercers Quality of Living Survey 2017, India's financial capital Mumbai ranked the highest at 141, followed by Hyderabad at 144, Kolkata at 149 and Pune at 151. While New Delhi stood at 161 Bengaluru is rated the lowest at 177. For this ranking, 231 cities were surveyed worldwide. Overall 39 parameters were taken into account which includes climate, disease and sanitation standards, ease of communication, local political and social environment, consistent expatriate compensation for hardship locations, etc.

Monocle's rankings and basis

In this survey, which studied top 25 liveable cities across the world, none of the Indian cities made it to the list. Tokyo, Vienna and Berlin were the top three cities, respectively. Tokyo retained the top position for the third time consecutively. Monocle's release said, “Tokyo has urban living down to a fine art. The city's robust charms come from the combination of tight-knit neighbourhoods, exciting food scenes, trains leaving when they're supposed to and general ease of moving around of what should be an unbearably crowded city.”

MoUD takes a step ahead

If 2015 could see India grabbing two spots in The Economist's The Global Liveability Report, there must be a reason why no Indian city featured in the 2017 list. An internal competitive ranking system could help. In June 2017, Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) launched the 'City Liveability Index' for measuring the quality of life in 116 major cities, including smart cities, capital cities and cities with a population of above one million each. About 79 parameters would be the indicators which include extent and quality of infrastructure including the availability of roads, education and healthcare, mobility, employment opportunities, emergency response, grievance redressal, pollution, availability of open and green spaces, cultural and entertainment opportunities etc.

The incentive

The Ministry of Urban Development disbursed Rs 500 cr as an incentive to 16 states that performed well in implementing urban reforms during 2016-17. Reforms like e-governance, audit of accounts, tax revision policies and extent of tax revenue collection, energy and water audit, establishing state-level financial intermediaries for resource mobilisation, credit rating etc was taken into account.

According to a government release, the incentive would be raised from the current Rs 900 crore to Rs 10,000 crore over the next three financial years “that would make a substantial difference to urban governance and service delivery and resource mobilisation by urban local bodies.”

The winners

In the 2016-17 ranking, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Rajasthan, Punjab, Kerala, Goa, Mizoram, Gujarat, Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra were the winners, in this order. High scorers had the benefit of higher incentives.