The Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (Janaagraha), a Bengaluru-based nonprofit organisation, released the 5th edition of its Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) report. The study, which evaluates quality of governance in cities, covered 23 major cities in 20 States based on 89 questions.
It revealed that Bhubaneswar has made considerable progress in terms of urban governance during the last two years. While Bhubaneswar was ranked 18th in 2015 Survey, it went up to Rank 10 in 2016 survey. In the 2017 Survey, Bhubaneswar was tied with a score of 4.6 along with Kolkata and Thiruvananthapuram, just below Pune which topped all 23 cities. In terms of the increase in score, Bhubaneswar was second highest improvement of 1.1 just below Surat, which showed an improvement in score by 1.3.
It is to be noted that major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Benguluru and Hyderabad have been ranked lower in the Table. Among the Medium cities category (up to 1 million population), Bhubaneswar is at the top along with Thiruvanantapuram.
Bhubaneswar performed well on various reforms including credit rating, implementation of double entry accounting system and publishing of Demand Collection Book. It has also made available documents such as audited financial statements, municipal staffing data and internal audit reports online.
The ASICS 2017 report can be accessed at http://www.janaagraha.org/asics/report/ASICS-report-2017-fin.pdf
ASICS does not measure quality of infrastructure and services such as roads and traffic, garbage, water, housing, sanitation and air pollution, but instead measures the preparedness of cities to deliver high quality infrastructure and services in the long-term by evaluating “city-systems” of spatial planning and design standards, municipal finance, municipal staffing, political leadership at the city level and transparency and citizen participation.