Bengaluru, Shimla ranked 'most livable' cities in government's Ease of Living Index 2020

The ministry of housing and urban affairs on Thursday released the rankings of cities with a population of more than a million and a separate ranking for cities with population of less than a million. In the million plus cities, Bengaluru, Pune and Ahmedabad emerged as the most liveable cities of India. These were followed by Chennai, Surat, Navi Mumbai, Coimbatore, Vadodara, Indore and Greater Mumbai.

Shimla is the most liveable city on the Ease of Living Index (EoLI) of cities with less than 1 million population. Shimla is followed by Bhubaneswar, Silvassa, Kakinada, Salem, Vellore, Gandhinagar, Gurugram, Davangere and Tiruchirapalli. 111 cities participated in the assessment exercise that was conducted in year 2020. 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 across India based on quality of life, economic-ability of a city, and its sustainability and resilience. One of the biggest highlights of this exercise has been the citizen perception survey, which was included as a parameter in EoLI.

Smart Cities Mission director Kunal Kumar said, “While the government of India executes many different programs and announces many different policies, the same is also done at the level of the State governments, but a lot of execution happens at the level of cities. It is important for us to assess and reflect on the outcomes of these programs and policies on ground. Most importantly, the Smart Cities Mission has an emphasis at its core principle, of building cities around people and it is hence very important for us to understand, what citizens feel about all public and private initiatives and how they feel about the city they live in?” It is in this background that the EoLI was launched in 2020. A similar index was attempted in 2018. However, it was felt that citizen perception had to be included. “It is in this context that after the 2018, a decision was taken that we will split this index into two; one, which represents outcomes as espoused by citizens, which became the ease of living index 2020 and the inputs which go specifically through the government in achieving those outcomes as the municipal performance index 2020,” Kumar said.


The municipal performance index indicates what kind of governance makes the city liveable. In million plus cities, Indore has topped the municipal performance index (MPI), followed by Surat and Bhopal. In cities with less than a million population, New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has topped MPI, followed by Tirupati, Gandhinagar, Karnal, Salem, Tiruppur, Bilaspur, Udaipur, Jhansi, Tirunelveli.