Is your city liveable? Govt to launch liveability index next month

In order to know how liveable your city is the government on Tuesday said that it will be launching the Liveability index next month assessing just about 3% of total cities in India.

Rajiv Gauba, Secretary of Urban Development made this announcement today while addressing a World Bank organized knowledge sharing workshop on improving accountability for local governments.

“To start with, Liveability Standards of 140 cities including 53 cities with population of one million and above and Smart Cities will be assessed. The Ministry has already invited bids for selecting the agency for carrying out the assessment based on the parameters evolved by the Ministry,” the government said.

In a move to improve the quality of life in the country, this plan is a first for India.

The Ministry also said that it has come up with a document on “Methodology for Collection and Computation of Liveability Standards in Cities.”

“Cities will be assessed on 15 core parameters relating to Governance, social infrastructure pertaining to education, health and safety and security, economic aspects and physical infrastructure like housing, open spaces, land use, energy and water availability, solid waste management, pollution etc. Cities will be ranked based on Liveability Index that would cover a total of 79 aspects,” the government said.

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The index would check regulatory measures of cities like green space availability in cities, response of health emergency services, air pollution per million parts among others.

The results of the test are expected to be out by the end of this calendar year.

“Cities can’t be run and managed from state capitals and secretariats. They should be made to stand on their own for improving performance, responsibility and accountability,” Gauba said.