Govt moots annual assessment of liveability standards in 116 cities

Key Highlights:

• It involves yearly survey and compilation of datasets across the various indicators
• The assessment of liveability standards will help India to track and achieve these SDGs
• The framework will help cities to understand their baseline 

The government has planned to conduct an ‘Annual Assessment of Liveability Standards in cities, Hardeep Puri, Minister of State (I/C) for Housing & Urban Affairs said in a statement today.

The ambitious national project will involve yearly survey and compilation of a large number of datasets across the various indicators, analysis of such datasets, development of indexes and ranking of cities.

The minister said the implementation of this framework will help cities to understand their baseline and pursue tangible outcomes over time.  

He was inaugurating a National Orientation Workshop on Assessment of Liveability Indices for 116 cities in India organised in New Delhi today. 

Durga Shankar Mishra, secretary, Sameer Sharma, additional secretary, state principal secretaries/mission directors, municipal commissioners of cities selected for liveability index and CEOs of Smart City SPVs, representatives of multi-lateral/bilateral agencies were also present at the Workshop. 

Addressing the participants, the minister said that the purpose of this Workshop is to make the states and cities understand the complete process for assessment of liveability indices by the selected agency and deliberate on various issues and get feedback on the proposed methodology. 

The Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs has developed a set of liveability standards in cities which was launched in June 2017 with an objective of developing these standards to generate a liveability index and rate cities against these standards to facilitate a competitive environment among cities and result in systematic improvement in the quality of life of citizens.  

All these standards are also strongly linked to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The assessment of liveability standards will help India to track and achieve these SDGs, the minister said. 

These indicators have been adapted from various national/international indicator sets and service level benchmarks and after extensive consultations with state/city governments, citizen through MyGov portal and peer review by sector experts.

There are 79 indicators that have been organised in 15 distinct ‘Categories’ covering aspects such as governance, health and education, safety, identity and culture, economy, pollution, mixed land use and compactness, open spaces, urban mobility and various core urban services, and contribute to the 4 essential pillars of comprehensive development namely: institutional, social, economic and physical.