Patna, Raipur beat Bengaluru in city-systems survey

BENGALURU: India's IT capital has fallen four spots and finds itself ranked 16th in the latest Annual Survey of India's City-Systems (ASICS), a clear indicator that quality of life and governance has worsened with growth.

Conducted by urban governance nonprofit Janaagraha, the fourth edition of ASICS covered 21 major cities and evaluated them on 83 parameters under four components -urban planning; urban capacities and resources; empowered and legitimate political representation; and transparency, accountability and participation. The survey relied on publicly available data to score cities. Bengaluru scored an average 3.3 on a scale of ten.

Poor execution of master plans, dismal revenue collection, a weak mayoral system (indirectly elected mayor with a one-year term) and absence of institutional public participation platforms such as area sabhas are some of the reasons for low ranking. Chhattisgarh capital Raipur and Bihar's Patna have scored better than Bengaluru.



“Bengaluru is not facing a hundred problems but the same problems are repeating a hundred times,“ said VR Vachana, associate, advocacy and reforms, at Janaagraha.

T he only saving g race for Bengaluru is that it scored 5.4 on transparency, accountability and participation. “While it is true that the BBMP has made public a lot of data, the same is not reflected in terms of having strong financial performance or institutionalising participatory budgeting,“ said Sapna Karim, head of civic engagement at Janaagraha. The city has much to learn from Pune and Hyderabad, whose ranks have improved from last year. “Pune has institutionalised participatory budgeting and has an open data policy whereas Hyderabad has effectively implemented area sabhas for citizen engagement,“ Karim pointed out.

Thiruvananthapuram, Pune and Kolkata are the top three cities, having done well in terms of urban planning, resources, political representation and transparency .

Chandigarh has the lowest rank.Indian cities, however, scored an average 2.1 to 4.4 out of ten against the global benchmarks set by London and New York, which scored 9.3 and 9.8 respectively.