NEW DELHI: Mumbai topped the list among 21 big cities in a survey conducted to assess the capability of city administration to deliver better quality of life over the medium and long term. While the maximum city moved eight places from last year, Thiruvananthapuram retained the second position. Delhi ranked slipped to sixth position from five in 2014 while Bhubaneswar, which ranked number one in the smart cities contest recently, came 18th in the list.
The Annual Survey of India's City-Systems (ASICS) survey conducted by Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, covered 18 states. According to the report, all the 21 cities had very low score when compared to cities such as London and New York, indicating the need to push major reforms in municipal governance as pressure increases on major urban centres.
In fact, one of the few planned cities, Chandigarh, has the dubious distinction of being at the bottom for the second time in a row.
The survey has revealed how all Indian cities continue to score in the range of two to 4.2 on a scale of zero to 10, while London and New York have scored 9.4 and 9.7 respectively. Cities that have made major improvements include Hyderabad, which has moved up from 17 to nine within a span of one year and Kanpur, which ranked at 14 in 2014, moving up six spots last year. Similarly, Chennai made remarkable improvement, while Raipur and Surat slipped significantly in the list.
"On the individual city-systems components, our cities have scored in a range of 0.6 to 6.4. These scores imply that Indian cities are grossly under-prepared to deliver a high quality of life that is sustainable in the long term. This is particularly worrisome, given the rapid pace of urbanisation in India and the huge backlog in public service delivery," the report said.
Highlighting the importance of the report Janaagraha coordinator Srikanth Viswanath said at a time when governments have been launching urban rejuvenation programmes, in the same decade "floods in Mumbai, garbage crisis in Bangalore, and more recently air pollution levels in Delhi and Chennai floods are alarm bells that more of the same solutions i.e. a series of patchwork projects, will not suffice. Root causes need to identified and addressed; the disease needs to be treated and not just the symptoms."
The report says that the city-system covers laws, policies and process in respect of spatial planning, financial management, skills and capability of the municipal staff, technology and quality and powers of political leaders besides accountability for performance and service levels. "The aim of the report is to focus on flawed legislations, policies, processes and practices that lie at the root of poor quality of life in cities," Janaagraha functionaries said while releasing the report.
They added that the scores imply that Indian cities are grossly under-prepared to deliver a high quality of life that is sustainable in the long term.
It has recommended major immediate and medium-term reforms in the areas of access to more buoyant revenue streams, comprehensive review of cadre and recruitment rules to get skilled manpower to meet expectations of people.
