Among 62 cities having less than one million population, Shimla has topped the list followed by Bhubaneswar, according to the Union housing and urban development ministry.
Unlike the first ease of living index (EoLI) report of 2018, the latest ranking of cities in 2020 has put 111 cities in two categories, million-plus and cities having population less than a million.
The report was released by Union housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Thursday. The assessment exercise was carried out last year just before the lockdown. No city has been included from West Bengal because of “data challenge”, the report said.
According to the report, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Surat, Navi Mumbai, Coimbatore, Vadodara, Indore and Greater Mumbai are the other eight cities that have found place in the top 10 among the million-plus cities in the EoLI.
While Delhi ranks at 13, its neighbouring Ghaziabad and Faridabad have found a place at 30 and 40 respectively. The other NCR city of Meerut ranked at 36.
Similarly, in the less than million category, Silvassa, Kakinada, Salem, Vellore, Gandhinagar, Gurugram, Davangere, and Tiruchirappalli have made it to the top 10 list.
The EoLI is an assessment tool that evaluates the quality of life and the impact of various initiatives for urban development. It provides a comprehensive understanding of participating cities based on quality of life, economic-ability of a city, and its sustainability and resilience.
The assessment also incorporates the residents’ view on the services provided by city administration through a citizen perception survey.
Bhubaneswar ranked top in the list on the people feeling satisfied with the local administration.
The ministry said the pillar-wise scores help cities assess their level of development and identify existing gaps that obstruct their growth. This also promotes healthy competition through rankings and incentivises them to improve further and even emulate the best practices from their peer cities.
The EoLI has been carried out on four parameters of quality of life, economic ability, sustainability and citizen survey. The ‘Quality of Life’ covers aspects such as affordable housing, access to clean water, basic education, healthcare facilities, safety and security, and recreation avenues.
According to the report, Indian cities have achieved an average score of 53.5 in the EoLI on a scale of 0 to 100. It has also flagged the low national average scores on economic ability at 13.2. This means there is huge untapped potential in urban centres to turn them into hubs of economic growth and prosperity.
The report shows among all the 49 million-plus cities, Chennai, Coimbatore and Navi Mumbai rank as the first, second and third so far as the quality of life is concerned. In the economic ability pillar, the top rankers are Bengaluru, Delhi and Pune.
Among the 62 cities which have less than a million population, Panaji, Tumkuru and Vellore topped the list on the quality of life parameters while the textile city of Tirupur, Gurugram and Kochi were ranked at the top three cities on the economic activity parameters.
