Ease of Living Index: Which is the easiest Indian city to live in?

It has attracted the attention of urban planners, municipal authorities and residents

delhi metro pink line flagged off [File] Delhi metro | Facebook page

Which is the easiest Indian city to live in? Bengaluru? Thiruvananthapuram? Lucknow? Or Jaipur?

Indians will know soon. The Ministry of Urban Development has launched the Ease of Living Index for 2019, in order to empower citizens to aspire for a better quality of life from their urban authorities.

In the last few years, the major surveys have been to assess cities and small towns in terms of cleanliness, thanks to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.

The recent global easiest cities to live in 2018 rankings, released by the Economist Intelligence Unit had many Indians disappointed. Of the 140 cities the survey had featured, only two Indian cities found mention—the capital, New Delhi, and the commercial capital, Mumbai. Cities like Mysuru, Pune and Chandigarh that are proud about their achievements in terms of “swachchata” as well as administration, were nowhere in the reckoning, much to the frustration of those who run services there, as well as the residents who are conscious stakeholders.

But that could be a thing of the past. The Urban Development Ministry rolled out on August 13, its Ease of Living Index, which, the government says, is “a unique exercise based on an open and participatory assessment of cities along with physical audit of urban metrics in a transparent manner”.

Within three days of its launching, it has attracted the attention of urban planners, municipal authorities and residents of many Indian cities. Moreover, the baseline data that goes into the survey is expected to fulfil people's expectations and aspirations for a better quality of life, from the city administration.

“The assessment is more than just a ranking exercise. It marks the beginning of the creation of a robust baseline along 78 urban metrics and seeks to drive evidence-based thinking on urban planning and development,”says a ministry press release.

The government hopes that the big bonus that will come with the scheme is the fact that it will lead to a healthy competition between cities, based on the rankings, and generate acute interest, comparisons, critiques and analysis by citizens.

The assessment will be done by three companies in a consortium. One of them is incidentally, the Economist Intelligence Unit that annually does a similar exercise for the whole world, on commercial terms.

Given that physical infrastructure has a 45 per cent weightage and several indicators focus on universalisation of services like sanitation, power, water, sewer, transport, and public services, cities with better infrastructure and delivering better services are likely to rank higher.

The online data that is part of the survey, will be subjected to physical audit.