In a bid to evaluate the implementation and performance of its various schemes, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs will soon come out with the ‘Liveability Index’ of 112 Indian cities for the first time.
As the name suggests, the index, which was announced last year, will rank the cities on the basis of how liveable they are.
“The objective is that with various programmes such as Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), smart cities, NULM and Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), we need to evaluate where we are headed, how these programmes are actually creating liveability and which cities are becoming more liveable,” said an official.
It will provide a window to the cities, from which they can gather where they stand and what are the areas they need to improve on.
Liveability is positioned on four pillars: institutional, social, economic and physical. These are broken down further into 15 categories such as governance, identity and culture, health, safety and power supply.
These 15 categories are again broken down into 79 indicators including 57 main ones and 22 supporting ones.
“With this, the cities will be able to see their status in a particular indicator as well as its overall performance,” the official said. He added that the index will be released every June.
“The index would act as a compass to measure the development of cities on institutional, social, economic and physical fronts,” said NSN Murty, Partner and Leader (Smart Cities), PwC India.
Evolving framework
However, the framework is an evolving one and its success largely depends on the availability and validity of data sources used by cities to furnish these indicators. Some of the data sources used are almost a decade-old, like the Census, Murty added.
“The other challenge is to localise the framework up to the ward level to make it a more organic exercise, so that city officers beyond city leaders could appreciate the need for such assessment for policy planning delivery annually,” he said.