Delhi slipped two places to ninth rank while Thiruvananthapuram retained its number one position in the annual city governance ranking, according to a survey released on Tuesday, which evaluated 21 major cities from the country’s 18 States.
In the survey, Pune is ranked second, up two ranks from 2015, while Kolkata retains its third slot.
The biggest gainer in the 2016 survey is Bhubaneswar, which has jumped eight places from 2015 to land at the 10th spot.
This survey was done post slew of reforms such as instituting municipal cadres, tiered spatial planning including ward level plans and instituting a single window clearance process for development projects that are in conformity with plans.
On the other hand, Bangaluru dropped to four places, rank 16, due to better performance by some of the smaller cities. Jaipur improved its scores on the back of passage of the Rajasthan Urban land (certification of titles) Bill that enabled better urban land utilisation.
“Delhi is ranked number one in terms of urban design and urban planning. Mumbai is number one in terms of urban capacities and resources,” the survey said.
The Annual Survey of India’s City-System (ASICS) was undertaken by not-for-profit institution Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (JCCD).
The better a city scores in the survey, the more likely it is to be able to deliver better quality of life to citizens over the medium and long-term.
Releasing the survey, JCCD CEO Srikanth Viswanathan said India’s cities are not poised to handle urbanisation well and the survey for 2016 reveals several systemic inadequacies in urban governance that could affect public service delivery.
Viswanathan said the survey showed that Indian cities score between 2.1 and 4.4 on scale of 10, as against the global benchmarks of london and New York, which score 9.3 and 9.8 respectively.
These low scores imply that Indian cities need to strengthen their city-systems - quality of laws, policies and institutions significantly to improve service delivery and deliver a high quality of life to citizens, he added.
The ASICS report is designed to help city leaders pin point issues in urban governance in their cities and help them chalk out a reform roadmap to make them more livable.
The City-Systems framework, comprises four distinct but inter-related components - urban planning and design, urban capacities and resources; empowered and legitimate political representation and transparency, accountability and participation.