The Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS), released by Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy on Tuesday, ranked 21 key cities from 18 states in the nation, based on 83 parameters on the City-Systems framework.
In the annual survey, Bengaluru has slipped from rank 12 in 2015 to rank 16 in 2016. It means, now the city has a long way to go in retaining its position.
Cities were ranked on a scale of 0 to 10. Significantly, the average score of Indian cities was between 2.1 and 4.4, which is much lesser when compared to the global benchmarks of London and New York. London and New York score 9.3 and 9.8, respectively.
“The survey is not an indicator of the quality of life in these cities. Like a thorough health check-up, the survey highlights the deep systemic flaws that exist in urban governance,” VR Vachana, associate, advocacy and reforms, Janaagraha.
Indian cities have persistently scored low over the past four editions of ASICS. This clearly shows that progress on fixing City-Systems has been sluggish.
“In the case of Bengaluru, the survey indicates several systemic inadequacies in governance that could affect public service delivery. Even though the overall scores have not changed for Bengaluru, the drop in rank is on account of improvements in scores of smaller cities such as Bhubaneswar, Ahmedabad, Raipur and Ranchi,” said Vachana.
As per the survey, Thiruvananthapuram retained the first position in 2016, while Pune ranked second, up two ranks over 2015, and Kolkata maintained its third position. The major gainer in 2016 was Bhubaneswar that jumped eight ranks to the 10th mark.
