Mumbai, Thiru'puram top cities on governance, quality of life

Mumbai and Thiruvananthapuram have jointly been ranked on top among cities in terms of governance and quality of life that is sustainable in the long term, according to a survey released today.
Chandigarh and Jaipur, however, found their place at the bottom of the list of 21 cities covered under the survey which judged the governance performance on parameters like urban planning and design, capacities and resources (municipal finance and staffing, use of IT), and transparency and accountability, among others.
"The survey seeks to provide an objective basis on which to evaluate the quality of governance in our cities. The better a city scores in the survey, the more likely it is able to deliver better quality of life to citizens over the medium and long-term," non profit organisation Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (JCCD) coordinator Srikanth Viswanathan said.

The 'Annual Survey of India's City-Systems' (ASICS) also revealed that Indian cities scored in the range of 2 to 4.2 on a scale of 10, as against global benchmarks of London and New York, which have scored 9.4 and 9.7, respectively.
In the score ranging from 0 to 10, Thiruvananthapuram and Mumbai scored 4.2, while Kolkata and Pune scored 4.1, Bhopal and Delhi 3.7, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kanpur 3.6, Jaipur 2.8 and Chandigarh 2.
The survey evaluated 21 major cities from 18 states.
Highlighting "systemic inadequacies" in urban governance across cities, Viswanathan said these scores imply that these cities are grossly underprepared 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 coupled with the huge backlog in public service delivery," he said.